What are the differences (if any) of the tenure-track job hunt if you're a professor compared to a PhD student I'm asking mainly for the field of computer science.

It is expected and often encouraged for PhD students to market and advertise themselves during several months it takes to apply and interview for academic positions. However, it seems that when non-tenured/tenured faculty switch institutions, it's normally done silently and even the faculty's own students might now know about the search until it is a fait accompli.

I'm wondering how the process of switching universities might be (or is) different for someone who is already a professor. What is the procedure for professors planning to switch universities?

The difference is that when you are a PhD student, everybody knows you won't be around for long, and everything is (or should be) planned accordingly. You are assigned duties knowing that you will move on relatively soon.

Someone with a more permanent position is assumed to be around for much longer. They can take on longer time duties, and other people may start depending on them actually sticking around.

So, if a faculty moves to another place, some people are likely to get upset. Now, people upset with you across the country is not a big deal; but if you advertise it and fail to get the new position, you will have upset people in your own corridor.

Another factor is that, as soon as faculty announce they are likely to move away, people are going to start dividing up their loot: I'll take half of your lab, because you are leaving anyway; I'll teach your favourite course, because you are leaving anyway; we won't buy you the new equipment because you are leaving anyway... Again, if the deal is off and you have to stay, you have lost part of your lab, teaching, and opportunities for equipment or funding. Note that the second factor is also true for positions on soft money, that understandably, no one should count on them sticking around.

And lastly, the good old pride: "so, you think they are better than us?"


AAAI review criteria I am submitting my first paper ever to AAAI and I really would like it to be accepted, but I feel like it is not good enough.

Can anyone tell me the criteria they use so I can tweak my paper to better fit them?

Thank you.

The best way to determine their criteria is to look at what has previously been accepted in your area of research. AAAI is generally a strong conference with tight standards (around 15% last I recall, if I'm remembering correctly), so there will also be a significant stochastic component driven by the particular reviewers you draw and their mood when they read your paper. AAAI has been taking steps to make the process more fair, however, including giving an author response period, so you are likely to be treated reasonably given the quality of your work.

Bottom line: compare your work to similar prior, and if its close, submit. And be prepared to learn from the experience.


Submitting a crude working paper in a Ph.D. application I'm applying to math Ph.D. programs which usually give the option of uploading a sample of some original work. Very recently I have produced some of my first serious results but I haven't yet had the time to write them up anywhere near the standards of publication (and doing so isn't an option since I only have a few days before the big Dec. 15 deadline). For example I'm missing proofs of lemmas, there is no explanatory text in between the math, etc.

My question is whether I have anything to gain by submitting something like a very rough working paper. I'm not sure if it's essential because my statement of purpose contains a brief account of the results and techniques. Also I expect the professor who advised it will validate that it is good work in his recommendation.

It's been a few years since I've reviewed applications for math grad school, but I don't remember ever looking at "mathematical writing samples" of candidates. (I'm not even sure if this is an option at our school.)  As discussed elsewhere on this site (e.g., https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/67732/19607), actual research outcomes are not typically a major determining factor for admission (though a great letter from someone based on your research experience may be).  Thus, I don't think it will make too much of a difference, provided the rest of your application is solid.

That said, if you do decide you want to upload a writing sample (it could make some impression), my advice is don't upload something unpolished.  That almost surely will not make a good impression.  However, you could write and submit a summary/expose of your paper, which will take less time to write.  If in this case, you should try to have one of your professors look over it if possible.


What are the benefits of being a convener/chair of a session in a conference? I wish to submit a proposal to a conference to chair a session. To do this, I will have to spend a lot of time to think about many things such as the objectives & scopes of my session. But I am wondering about the benefits/ achievements after all these.

What could be the benefits/ achievements useful for a researcher involving in such activities?

The following answer is based on my understanding of what it means to organise a symposium in a conference (i.e., commonly a conference session of about 60 to 120 minutes with around 3 to 8 talks all with a common theme, where the chair is the one to invite and arrange the talks and often provides a more general introduction to the talks). Obviously, I'm not talking about the more mundane task of merely chairing a session, which can be as simple as you being the designated person that ensures that each talk keeps to time.

You can build relationships with the other presenters in your session. If you are organising a symposium, then you will be contacting other possible presenters who you think may be attending. This often provides an excuse to connect with people you may only know through their research. For people you already know well, it can provide an excuse to catch up at the conference, which in turn can flow into research collaborations or other opportunities.

You are likely to get more people to your session, and those that come may be more interested in your topic. If attendees see that your session is all about your topic, then people interested in your topic are more likely to attend. In contrast if you present an individual paper, it may get lost in a more general session.

Chairing a session can help people see you as a person active in the topic.

Chairing a session can be something you put down on your CV, performance review, promotion application, grant application, etc. It's generally not a huge thing. In many, but not all, fields, conferences are more a means to an end. In these cases journal articles and grants are more important. That said, chairing a symposium that you organised does show some academic leadership that would count for something.


Does an MD make a difference to a PhD application in bioengineering? Does having an MD affect in any way, help or hurt, a PhD application to a top tier program (right after medical school and in the same field as the undergrad major--bioengineering, in my case)? Does doing or not doing a clinical residency matter to this either way?

I am in a PhD program and we have students who are 2 years into their MD who have transferred (not MSTP-MD/PHD) to complete a PhD before they finish medical school.

The main components most schools look at are:
(1) Test scores - whether they accept your MCAT depends on the program, but having a strong GRE score is a great start.
(2) Research experience - this is the biggest make or break. If you can show that you know how to do hands on research, and even if you have a publication or abstract presented at a national conference, that weighs a lot.
(3) Grades - obviously there is some weight on your ability to successfully complete rigorous classes.
(4) Letters of recommendation

Will it help or hurt? This depends on how well you currently stand in components 1-3 that I mentioned above. If you have a very low GRE score, it may hurt you regardless of your other degree. Alternatively, if you have a very high score, it may help you because it proves you've been successful previously in a tough program.

The question you should be prepared for is why you want a PhD now that you have an MD. There are plenty of residency programs where you can have protected research time and gain experience in the lab. When interviewing, they will want to see that you have really considered dedicating another 4-6 years of your life to a PhD.

I do not think the residency matters, but I do not have experience with this. No students in my program have done residency yet.

Best of luck!


Absent a formal policy, is it rude to use a mobile phone to take notes in lectures and seminars? I like to use my iPhone to take notes in lectures and seminars. I prefer it to using paper (easy to lose, hard to search, bad for the environment) or a laptop (cumbersome to carry and loud to type with).
However, I get the impression that many people are against the use of phones in lectures for any purpose. As an undergraduate, I remember some lecturers publicly shaming people who used their phones, even when they were making notes or looking up something relevant to the lecture. One lecturer in particular even brought a jug of water to the class with her, and threatened that if she saw anyone with a phone she would put it in the jug. Admittedly phones can be used for irrelevant or distracting purposes, but this is also true of laptops and paper! I am now an academic myself, but still worry about offending colleagues.
Is it acceptable to use a phone to make notes in a lecture? If not, what makes them particularly unacceptable/rude compared with a laptop or tablet? And are there any strategies that can be used to indicate to a lecturer that you are using your phone to make notes (and not to make Tik Tok videos)?
Note, I am not asking for advice about whether taking notes on an iPhone is wise, nor about whether a "no phone policy" would be a good idea (the latter point is discussed here).

Phones are not perceived as note-taking tools, making them undesirable in education and business settings. Laptops are tolerated in both settings, but don't expect respect. Tablets are perhaps the lesser-evil, especially when used with a stylus. Better still, specialised note-taking devices (not dissimilar to tablets) are now available. Paper will serve you well and set the best impression.


Ws on transcript affecting admission to engineering masters? I have a 3.67 GPA at Rutgers in Materials Engineering and I plan on going to UConn for a masters in Mechanical Engineering since my job after graduation is more aerospace and mechanical engineering ( I am working for Pratt & Whitney) and I am more interested in the crossovers between MechE and MSE. However I have some W's on my transcript. One was a Matlab course my freshmen year I took that I hated and dropped a week after the withdrawal deadline (wasn't needed for my major). Another was during my junior year when I did a full time internship and this was an elective in industrial engineering for systems and reliability engineering. The course was in the evening but at a horrible time after work and I disliked it by the middle of the semester and I didn't have an interest in the material anyway. I also withdrew from 2 major classes because of courseload problems one semester my senior year but I took them the next semester and got an A in both. I dropped a graduate level MSE class in thermo recently because the course subject matter was dry (I don't like phase diagrams and chemical thermo too much) so I dropped it; I took the class originally to see if I would like MSE at the graduate level despite my career path moving towards mechanical engineering just to get a feel for things.
I anticipate doing well on the GRE and I can have many letters of recommendation.
Will these W's hurt my chances of being accepted into the UConn engineering masters program?

While it is impossible to know what is in the minds of an admissions committee, I would think a few W's shouldn't matter much as long as your GRE scores are strong and your letters are positive. However, I would consider briefly addressing those withdrawals in your personal statement in a positive way (ie, you preferred another course vs you hating a course).

Basing this on a brief stint on a medical school admissions board in the USA.


How to sell my current solution to my advisor? Long story short, a long time ago (2 years) I had a research project, that for various reasons was not completed. Some months ago I came back to it and started trying new methods, state-of-the-art algorithms, some battle tested for decades, and some novel ones that came in the past few years (after the project got put in hiatus).
I don't disagree my method is naive, but it works fast and is more accurate than all the other ones. I need to mention, my method works only in a very, very niche subset of cases, all these other methods are designed to be general and work on arbitrary shapes, so my method outperforming other methods is not a great discovery it simply can leverage more assumptions than the other methods can.
I measured and tried a bunch of stuff and well, yes the method I came up with is really, really silly it's a naive approximation (it's definitely not an exact solution), but of all the other things I tried, this seems to solve this particular problem in this particular subdomain better than all the other algorithms I have used to solve the problem, based purely on the numbers.
If a paper comes out of this, the paper would essentially be "here's how you can leverage this silly math fact to come up with a rough approximation of the true solution in microseconds, vs hours or days for an exact one".
With that being shared, I don't know if or how I can pitch or sell this to my advisor, considering that after so much time I have come with a lot more work done, just to say that the method he didn't like the first time works better than the state-of-the-art algorithms (for this specific case).

In general trying to sell things to your advisor puts you on dangerous ground.
For example, the way you pitched your research in the question makes it seem like there are no problems that bar publication with your approach (as pointed out in the comments, fast approximations are generally publishable if they are novel). So I can't say why your advisor is hesitating. From the information given, it seems your advisor 1) is hesitating for no reason or 2) has a legitimate problem you didn't describe. If it's the 2nd case, be worried. Someone who brushes over and can't articulate legitimate problems with their approach is not someone who usually puts out high quality research. A big part of getting a PhD is learning how to be critical of your own work, and your advisor can't help you learn this if you don't listen to criticism.
Rather than sell to your advisor, I would open up more communication with them. Find out more about their reservations. Really try to get to the root of why the advisor doesn't want to publish. If your research has merit, that will come through in an honest investigation of its merits and its flaws. If your research has flaws, then listen to people who point them out, understand the flaws, and work on figuring out how to fix them.


What is the minimum score for the GRE subject exam in mathematics? Unfortunately, the admission website of a university I am interested in applying to does not list the minimum score required on the GRE math subject exam.

Does anyone know the minimum score requirement for this exam when applying to graduate schools to study mathematics?

There is no definite minimum GRE score (other than the smallest possible score on the test) for any program, unless that program explicitly has adopted one. If they don't mention it on their website, you could try calling or emailing their graduate coordinator and asking them.

In all, here are the main possibilities, and the reality varies by institution:

Case A) There is no minimum, and they consider all applications.

Case B) There is a minimum, and they will tell you.

Case C) There is a minimum, but it is a secret.

Case D) There is no formal minimum, but there is a de facto minimum in that they almost never (or never) actually accept someone below a score of X, even though they technically say there is no minimum. In the end, this is the same as Case C above.

In practice, the most selective institutions will occasionally mention "averages" like 80% percentile or 90% percentile - but without a standard deviation that's not really very informative. It is also the case that many people view GRE scores differently depending on your country of origin, so it is not necessarily meaningful or helpful to know anything like averages.

In the end, the advice for the GRE is: do as well as you can without harming some other aspects of your application (don't let your grades slide just to study for the GRE), and as always try to have the best overall application packet to maximize your chances.


How can I encourage/incentivize students to do lab work early? Normally, my computer architecture class has 10-15 students. This year, there are 35 students, not all of whom could fit in our small lab, much less be helped by our few lab assistants. I am thinking I will need to skew deadlines, with half of the students turning in an assignment at the ends of weeks 1, 3, and 5, while half will have deadlines at the ends of weeks 2, 4, and 6.

While I could randomly assign students to the earlier or later group, I'd rather incentivize students so the ones in the earlier group don't feel disadvantaged. One idea I had was letting anyone in the early group turn in one assignment of their choice at the time of the later group. I would like to solicit additional ideas on what has worked well for other classes.

Assuming that cheating/collaboration isn't an issue, just create a sign up sheet at the beginning of the semester, breaking each assignment into two blocks. The students will most likely self-select into groups: those who want to get the work done and out of the way, and those who want to put it off as long as possible. While the relative size of the groups may be imperfect, this will just urge them to fill out the signup sheet as early as possible as well. Then you could probably handle a few case by case switches as needed and thusly manage the resources.


Is there evidence that suggests students should take notes? I hear a lot about good note-taking strategies vs bad note-taking strategies, and I have seen a lot of research papers on different styles of note-taking. What I haven't seen though is any study that has asked if we should even be taking notes in the first place.

Specifically I would like to know the long-term effects of taking notes vs not taking notes. It is clear to me that if someone has taken notes their entire academic career, then immediately stops, their performance will probably plummet, but how do students who have never taken notes compare to students who have always taken notes?

I would guess certain learning styles would benefit from note-taking while other learning styles are hindered by note-taking, but I would like to see some actual data on this if anyone knows anything about it. A cursory Google search didn't return anything, so I hope there is someone on here that may be able to shed some light on this.

Edit: A lot of people have taken this question to solely be asking for research on this topic. While I would most like to see actual data, I did not intend this to solely be a literature search, and people can post their anecdotal evidence, as long as it is pointed at the long-term difference in note-taking vs not taking notes.

You said you're not looking for research on note-taking, so consider this a freebie.

That said, I'm not entirely sure what you are looking for here. There's a preponderance of research showing that (1) putting things in your own words and (2) recall exercises over time significantly improve memory. This pdf has some good overviews, and points to this academic publication (note: paywall) which contains a bunch of actual references.

Actually, the more I'm researching here, there does seem to be significant evidence that the act of note-taking itself is beneficial to recall and understanding. Two more recent examples relate to mock jurors watching a mock trial while either taking notes or not [1][2]. There's a paper which I can't seem to download but I've seen cited a few times that discusses the positive effect of note taking on student performance [3].

All this said, there's more to it than this. There are numerous note-taking methods, and they have a literature all of their own (e.g., [4]). The way you take notes definitely affects how effective the note-taking will be.

So yeah, it helps.

Edit based on comments: There is substantial evidence that note-taking, by itself, improves retention. That said, the OP seems to be curious whether the fact that we take notes at all is biasing our results; perhaps we should be focusing on comparing pure memory recall techniques to note-taking. Said differently, will someone with memory training outperform someone proficient at note-taking?

I still think that this question itself has issues. Specifically:

There is a significant difference between someone who simply doesn't take notes and someone who has trained themselves to not need written notes. I know people who avoid writing anything (mostly psychiatrists who don't want everything written down and subpoena-able), and it took years of mental training to get there. That is different from the lazy kid who just says "I can remember everything."
As with note-taking, there are many different techniques for remembering without notes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I think that ignoring the techniques ignores an important part of the question.
I don't think this question is even answerable anymore. Most of the modern world takes notes in some form (source: I made this up), whereas a very minor percentage of people nowadays use purely memory-based techniques (source: I made this up too). As such, finding a representative sample from the second group for our comparison would be pretty doggone difficult.


Bad Relationship with Master's Supervisor: Missing Reference I'm in the situation that I'm completing my master's research degree and I'm in the process of applying to several applied mathematics / computational science programs.

Here's me complaining:
I do research for a collaboration and most of my research work has been for the calibration field of the experiment. My relationship with my supervisor has been less than good. He originally lied about the kind of research I'd be doing and because I'm in a program where you pick you supervisor before entering into the program, my impressions of him where very preliminary and not reflective of his concern in students' interests. My current impression of him is that he's a career administrative academic, his involvement in the collaboration is merely to appear involved in research despite not being in charge or overseeing any research that comes out of the collaboration itself. In the past, I've voiced my concerns with him about needing to be more clear and direct about the work he wants from me for the collaboration, only for him to be incommunicado for several months, that is until someone in the collaboration needs something he promised he'd get for them. At that point, he comes to me telling me to get something to him in the next week, saying I haven't been doing anything meaningful; over working me. The research I do do often does involve different people from different institutions, but it's never enough to be a reference for me as my involvement with other collaborations is somewhat scattered
End of complaining.

I can't switch advisors because for one, he's the assistant chair and would and would have impact on if I should be kept in the program if I request a change.   And if I did end up switching, the department would likely delay my defense, which I cannot afford. I'm stuck with my advisor and project till my thesis. Which I can deal with, it's the lack of reference in my applications that worries me. Now, I have quite a bit of research as an undergraduate where I'm getting letters of reference (all research experience). But will the lack of a letter from my thesis research screw me over?

I was in a similar situation last semester. My advisor had me join a research project, but gave me little to no information regarding said project. He told me that I would be working with honeypots, and it wasn't until my first day that I realized he meant honeypots in the cybersecurity sense and not literal honeypots. Although I was relieved to find out that I wouldn't have any bee stings from my research I could tell that I wasn't going to get any help from my advisor. In fact, he was away attending conferences for most of the semester, and rarely responded to any of my emails.

Here's what worked for me that I think will help you. You need to post up outside your advisor's office. When he finally comes in, you need to talk to him about how you're feeling and your current situation. I don't want to say confront him because I think that's too strong of a word, but he needs to know that he is not pulling his end of the bargain. Or, if you can't switch advisors, just ask him if there is anyone other resource that you can talk to, to gain more knowledge about the project (but on the low make this your "advisor").

As for the references, I would talk to the other people that you are collaborating with. See if they can help you with a reference letter. Or try to find other people who have worked with your advisor and see what they have done. I hope this helps and wish you well on your future endeavors.


Vertices & edges vs. nodes & links I'm writing a paper on graphs. Personally, I've always disliked the vertices/edges terminology. I found it very confusing when I started working with graphs, and I much prefer the alternative names nodes and links respectively. These terms are used, but far less than vertices/edges, and it depends highly on the field. I think nodes/links is more intuitive (to a modern audience) and I would like to see people move to this convention.

Now, I have a habit of choosing less common conventions if I don't like the common ones, sometimes to my own detriment. On the other hand, if nobody ever bucks the trend, there's no chance of poor conventions ever improving.

So my question is, specifically, is it acceptable to use nodes/links, and would it give a reader/reviewer that immediate slight sense of distrust towards the paper? Are there fields where it would simply be unacceptable? My paper is somewhere in between practical computer science and machine learning, but I'd be interested in the unwritten rules of other fields as well.

As a secondary question (if you care to elaborate), how should these situations be judged in general? Is it ever smart go against the most common convention, just because you don't like the common way? Are there good heuristics for such decisions?

EDIT: I edited the question to make it a bit more subtle. The original phrasing suggested that I'd made up the nodes/links terminology myself, when it's more about choosing between a popular and an unpopular convention, rather than introducing a new one. Apologies for changing the question after answers have been given.

And what if the next author likes neither your terminology nor the previous one and decides to call these elements bars and joints? And then the next one goes for arms and knees?

I'm an electronic engineer: what if I decide that I don't like the terms resistance, capacitance and inductance, and I decide to use the terms opposance, tankance and springance?

Readers should not struggle to follow author's idiosyncrasies about terminology, the effort is already enough to understand the new concepts that are typically introduced in a paper. And recall that the first readers of your papers are the reviewers, and sometimes the reviewers complain for even more conventional terminologies. Moreover, if you are free to make your terminology choices, they have even more freedom in rejecting your paper.

Here is an example. As I said in the above, I'm an electronic engineer. However, due to the tradition of the field in which I work, most of my readers are physicists. When I write a paper, I typically use terms and symbols that are widely employed by the engineering community, and are even defined by standards. For at least three papers, the reviewers complained that I haven't used standard symbols or terms (standard for them). And so I had to reply with references to standards, literature etc. It's annoying, but at least I had references to provide, and eventually symbols and terms were accepted. What do you have to backup your choice of terminology?

  I think it's more intuitive (to a modern audience) and it would be better if people adopted this convention

Aren't you generalizing too much?

  we'll never get rid of all the poor choices made in the past.

Are you sure that there are so many poor choices?

  So my question is, is it acceptable to use nodes/links?

I think not or, better, as I explained above, I think there is no sound reason to use nodes and links in place of the accepted terminology.

  Is it ever smart go against convention, just because you don't like how things are done?

It is seldom smart, unless there are good scientific reasons or the existing terminology is really misleading, but before going against an established convention, you have to provide evidence that that convention is wrong or misleading. An example in this sense is that of relativistic mass, a term which was introduced at the beginning of the theory of relativity. In later years, however, the concept has been criticized [see e.g. Adler(1986)] and the term is now considered utterly misleading, and modern books on relativity avoid it altogether.


Is it unethical to edit grammatical errors in a letter of recommendation? I have worked at a processing facility for three years as the head of the shipping department. Last week, when my time with the company came to a close, my supervisor wrote a letter of recommendation and asked me to refer any future employers to him. He assured me that he would give them glowing reviews, etc. I'm very appreciative of his kindness and his generosity, but there are three or four grammatical errors in the letter. Is it unethical to edit those errors? Would it be considered "edgy"? It's nothing but awkwardly placed commas and a single typo.

Speaking strictly as a matter of ethics, I would have to say no, it would not be unethical so long as you did not change any of the actual words (other than perhaps correcting their spelling) or change the meaning / intent of the letter. I would further add that you may even be saving the person some level of embarrassment.


How can I get my name removed from the acknowledgments of a published paper? I was actively working in a research project, contributing experiments, hypotheses and analysis. Suddenly, I was forced to leave the program. The adviser stopped to sponsor me and replaced me by another person (who had only contributed purification for 3 weeks). I was relegated from the second to the third or fourth author. The supervisor decided all this without consulting anyone in the project.

Finding this unfair, I resigned from the paper, and I specifically requested not to be acknowledged at all. Against my wishes, however, my name was included in the acknowledgement, as if nothing had happened. I was stunned. (The paper itself was not even very fascinating.)

What can I do to have my name completely removed from this published paper? This includes not only the authorship but also the acknowledgment and anything else.

Thank you for everyone's answers.

My point is I do not want to be in academic at all so there is not much to talk deeper of academic career.

I was never informed about this publication

ie I was not given a copy before it was sent to publication.

I did not know when and where it was published until I was looking for job and looking for details of that work after a year later.

I had very explicitly stated that I did not want to be involved in this publication by the time I left. This was cc'ed to a third party.

The result I had was not reproducible and I did not agree the methodology of the publication on top of the disagreement.

You can't, and you shouldn't.

Authors are obliged to give proper credit to everyone who does work contributing to a paper. This is why papers must cite earlier relevant research.  By failing to acknowledge you, the authors would be falsely claiming credit for your work, just as if they had failed to cite a relevant paper in which you were an author.

Unless the acknowledgement is factually inaccurate, your disagreement with the authors is irrelevant.


How should I deal with a colleague talking on my behalf? Our Chair is writing a major proposal and me and my colleague are on-board (both non-tenured)... Chair has asked for a meeting next week to work on the bid for a centre and this colleague of mine has replied back to both of us accepting the meeting and on our behalf and has suggested working two-three full days for the Chair.

I replied to the Chair saying "sure lets meet" and didn't acknowledge anything else that was said.
I am tempted to write to the my colleague and say I know they had the right intention but please never ever talk on my behalf again as its not professional. Is this the right thing to do?

I am worried if I don't react this will continue as I am new in my current job. On the other hand I am worried if I react by sending an email or verbal communication and asking them not do it they might just forward/talk with the Chair with some lame excuse like suggesting that I am really busy and unhappy and they will do it themselves to make me look bad or with the genuine intention of correcting their mistake which in both cases will make me look poor!

What should I do?

I'd suggest putting in those days - they may or may not be lost, but losses occur*. No use crying over spilt milk. Writing the time down as lost means, you can be happy if something good comes out of them at the end. OTOH, aking a fuss creates a serious risk of a trench war that would cost much more time.

However, I'd also talk to him in a calm minute. I may be taking a line saying that he luckily foresaw the way my opinion went, yet I'd wish him to quickly ask me beforehand in the future.
Talkin calmly may need that you know exactly why you are so angry that you have to post in a public Q&A site.

* partiuclarly in writing proposals. There's a rumour here in Germany that the Bundesrechnungshof once estimated that for different kinds of public grants from a national economic point of view (i.e. including all proposals that are written: accepted as well as rejected) about as much money/effort goes into writing grants as is distributed by the different grant programs (estimates ranging from 1 : 2 to 2 : 1 are mentioned).


What is a good set-up for the board of directors/executive committee of research institutes? I have been elected as employee representative for the board (edit: not really a board of directors, the competences seem partially advisory and partly decision making) of a new interdisciplinary research institute at my university. The board in its current setup consists of ~ 10 professors (all stakeholder in the institute as department heads) + dean + 1 employee representative, all with the right to vote, only the employee representative is elected, there is no student representative.

Is this a common setup? Are there any good examples of other boards with better parity/more egalitarian representation of relevant groups?

There are many examples of University research boards and their makeup (as I'm unsure what your research institute focuses on, it's difficult for me to pick a similar one, but it's easy to find examples on the net) however I'd definitely recommend a few things from my experience on non-profit boards.

Firstly, all those influenced by your decisions should have a representative. This means students in your case - it's vital to stop problems down the line.

Secondly, wherever possible, all members should be elected as impartially as possible. This isn't always easy, but it's an important step in proving the high standards of the board.

Lastly, realise that a board of any kind tends to get into cliques. Anything you can do to stop that is important. Examples to stop that would include a rotation of positions, or setting tenure lengths.


Why are many funded PhD programmes in the UK not open for non-EU applicants? I once wanted to do a PhD in the UK, but found out that the opportunities were limited for those coming from outside Europe (I did my PhD in Norway instead). I think it is still the case today. I am wondering why this is so.

EDIT:

Additional thought: I am wondering, for instance, if the vacancy were open to anyone in the world, would it not increase the chance of getting the best applicants? Also, what differences are there in the UK system compared to other countries (e.g. Norway) which open their PhD vacancies to anyone?

Most PhD funding in the UK comes from Government run research councils, for instance the ESRC, who allocate funds to groups of Universities known as Doctoral Training Centres. Given the restricted level of funding available applications are only open to students who are citizens of an EU member state. Funding may also be available directly from individual University departments but this is so limited in availability that they tend to prefer their own graduates or current students. In either case a requirement for funding is to have a Master's level degree from a recognised University, which is often interpreted as being a UK institution. Basically it's a very small pot of money that's available so applications have to be restricted.

To answer your edit: to get research funding in the UK (certainly for Psychology, and I assume for other subjects as well) you must demonstrate that your research falls into the national research plan. In other words, the UK government is only interested in certain areas of research which will be of long term benefit to the UK economy. While I accept that opening up funding to everyone irrespective of nationality would attract the best of the best, from the Government's point of view there would seem to be little point to spend money helping non-nationals get PhDs if, ultimately, the knowledge and skill sets which they have paid for are then lost from the country due to people returning home once the degree has been completed.


Applying for multiple lecturer posts in the UK There are multiple lecturer openings in the UK that are very relevant to my work, say posts A and B. I prefer B over A, but B's application deadline is a about 2 months after A's.

If I apply for both posts, there is a chance I might be accepted for A while I am still waiting for a response from B. In that case, how should I react and what should I do if I get a positive response from B after I have accepted the offer from A?

My question is particular to the UK. In Germany, for example, I know that people openly apply for multiple positions and leverage this for negotiations. But I am not sure if the process is the same in the UK.

how should I react and what should I do if I get a positive response from B after I have accepted the offer from A

This should not happen except in very rare circumstances. The typical UK hiring timeline is the job is announced with a known interview date and an offer will be made within days (sometimes hours) of the interview. They would then expect you to verbally accept the offer within days and then ideally present you with a contract a day or so after that.

The conventional wisdom is that after getting the contract, you should withdraw your other applications. If you verbally commit to A, but A cannot generate a contract in a timely manner, then most people (but not necessarily the people at A) will understand if you accept another offer. I am not a huge believer in the conventional wisdom. A good job offer can be your job for the rest of your life and to turn down your dream job in your dream department at your dream university in your dream city with great resources and salary and a position for your partner for a job you do not want to do with crappy resources and salary in city you hate, in my opinion is not reasonable. To screw over a department because someone else offered you a step higher on the salary scale also does not seem reasonable. In other words, you need to use your judgment to decide what to do.


What does “query to referee” in the tracking system of Physical Review Letters imply? After the report was sent in, the status of my manuscript in the tracking system of Physical Review Letters indicated a query to referee.
What does this mean?

The editor explained further information is needed from the referee.
This is basically what query to referee means.
But I am wondering what it implies. Is the report good or bad?
Does anyone has any experience on this issue, and what is the outcome?

It can mean that there was something problematic about the referee's report.  This can indicate that there is some kind of inconsistency between what the referee says in different parts of the report.  For example, the referee may have provided a very positive written evaluation, but accidentally clicked the box saying "Reject."  If that happens, the editor will naturally ask the referee to clarify what they actually meant.

One other thing it can mean, particularly in connection with a journal like Physical Review Letters, which has selection criteria that require more than just a correct and interesting paper.  If a paper is deemed to be, in fact, correct and interesting, there may still be some additional back-and-forth communication between the editor and referee(s) to ascertain whether the work is important enough for that particular journal.


Implementation of a journal article in a Graduate research My supervisor told me to select an article so that I implement that as my graduate research undertaking. After a year, I am in a deadlock now. Reasons:

the article is abstractly written (apparently, the writer didn't write the article very clearly in order to stop it from being replicated).
my supervisor is prepared to do nothing. His opinion is it's my job, and I am the only one who should come up with the solution.

Now, I have several questions:

Is there any other alternative way to undertake a graduate research rather than implementing a published research article (this form of research seems to be very rigid in nature, as I need to replicate the exact result which has been talked about in the article)?
What precautions could have I taken in order to avoid any more deadlock in future (as I am planning to change my graduate school due to livelihood-related issues)?

My supervisor told me to select an article so that I implement that as my graduate research undertaking. After a year, I am in a deadlock now. Reasons:
the article is abstractly written (apparently, the writer didn't write the article very clearly in order to stop it from being replicated).

After spending a year, you found an article which is not be replicated. Why didn't you choose an article which is written in simple English and lesser complexity, and easy to implement. Many won't agree with your statement on apparently, the writer didn't write the article very clearly in order to stop it from being replicated -- This is a strong statement. What if the other way "You lack serious fundamentals of the methods to understand the article.".

my supervisor is prepared to do nothing. His opinion is it's my job, and I am the only one who should come up with the solution.

Yes, he is right. It is your job to understand the article fully and then present in front of him. Then, ask for advice on further research or possible extension. Or, working on the demerit part of the article. Even, you better take advice on the article itself "whether should you change it now, as it is difficult to follow through?"

Is there any other alternative way to undertake a graduate research rather than implementing a published research article (this form of research seems to be very rigid in nature, as I need to replicate the exact result which has been talked about in the article)?

Different supervisors have different styles of working. From your comment, it seems that you are doing MSc. I feel this kind of research is pretty reasonable, as you would not be knowing a lot of things to continue independently on a modeling. If you have idea, then defend this situation with that idea and start working on the idea. But, be careful! You might fail and at that time your supervisor might step back.

What precautions could have I taken in order to avoid any more deadlock in future (as I am planning to change my graduate school due to livelihood-related issues)?

Just don't follow yourself all the time. Supervisors are rude, selfish and strong at times, but they are there to help the students. Analyzing your present situation, I see that your supervisor is a decent person. "What precautions ... issues)?" -- This is a separate question itself. Ask another question instead.


How to deal with student putting their (home)work on github While using github for source code is generally something I love to encourage, if a student puts their (computer science) homework there, it's generally easy for others to find and copy - which creates a temptation to use it as a "baseline" for their own (identical in most cases) homework - while I understand the benefits of using github (versioning, transitioning across machines easily, teamwork-capabilities), and the individual student who is using it has verified that it is indeed their account and can explain the code well, I still feel uncomfortable with it.

Has anyone else dealt with this issue? how did you handle it? does the university have some sort of policy around publishing student-created work openly? (even if it is part of an assignment)?

As a side-note, my general policy regarding "very similar" assignments is that whomever submitted it first gets the points, and the other submissions do not receive any points, however I tend to ask the students to explain their code and how it works, why they chose X over Y, etc. in such cases first.

edit: I have been informed that there does exist a free version of github that students can use to host private repositories, and this is likely the course of action I will go with for the near future, however, there are several drawbacks:

The student will be unable to showcase their work (i.e. a link to their github on their resume)
The student will not be a student forever, and thus the repository won't be able to be private for free indefinitely
I have very little control (and interest in policing it) once the class is over, so the student could decide to make the repository public once the class is over.

Give students assignments where their work must address one of their personal interests.  For example, instead of having every student program pizza maker, have each student program a machine to make their favorite food.  This will make copy-and-paste cheating more difficult.  It will also make students more interested and make your grading more interesting.


How to acknowledge a MathOverflow user? I am writing a research paper. A small but important idea for the paper was found on MathOverflow. I know the real name of the user. I tried contacting him and offered him co-authorship, but I got no reply. How do I acknowledge him now ? Do journals encourage citations under pseudonyms?

Let's say it was a big enough contribution to require a citation. You could cite the MathOverflow post, as Massimo Ortolano suggests, especially if the entire conversation was generative, and it would be worthwhile for readers to visit.
However, linking to a pseudonym is not going to be clear or able to be attributed to that scholar. While William Sealy Gosset stuck to a pseudonym, he also had a non-academic job to protect.
There are citation formats for message board postings, etc. in various citation systems, as shown here for MLA from Purdue's Online Writing Lab:

Include screen names as author names when author name is not known. If both names are known, place the author’s name in brackets.
Editor, screen name, author, or compiler name (if available). “Posting Title.” Name of Site, Version number (if available), Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), URL. Date of access.
Salmar1515 [Sal Hernandez]. “Re: Best Strategy: Fenced Pastures vs. Max Number of Rooms?” BoardGameGeek, 29 Sept. 2008, boardgamegeek.com/thread/343929/best-strategy-fenced-pastures-vs-max-number-rooms. Accessed 5 Apr. 2009

The best practice is to use both screen name and real name, "if known."
HOWEVER. I think the best practice, instead of violating pseudonymity, would be to send an email to the academic email address of the person you believe this is. Say that you are interested in citing this, and wonder if they would prefer this to be cited with both names, as "personal communication" with their academic name, as some closely related work they had on a blog post under their academic name, etc.
If the person declines to confirm that they are this person, you can ask in a MathOverflow chat or as a comment to that answer whether/how that user would like to be cited.
If you are truly hoping to honor and thank them--especially if it is an acknowledgement rather than a citation--then give them the courtesy of having some say in how they are recognized and whether their pseudonym becomes published knowledge.

EDIT specific to MathOverflow: MathOverflow is indeed cited fairly often, and it appears that most of the top citations are to real names, according to a Google Scholar search. One could avoid (newly) revealing the person's identity by searching to see if the person's real name is already associated with MathOverflow on Google Scholar, check the post to see if it's the same username/permanent identifier, and if so, cite in the same way the previous person did.
Discrete Lizard offers a Meta MathOverflow post dealing with a very similar issue, which suggests leaving a comment asking, and/or asking moderators to send a message to the user and ask. Finally, Peter Taylor mentions that the norm on MathOverflow is to use real names, such that many of the user names already reveal one's identity.


Can one's PhD work be an extension of their Masters research? I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Literature, and I see potential in further research on the current topic of my dissertation for a PhD in the future. I have been told that an Honours thesis cannot be used as a foundation for a Masters dissertation, so i am wondering if a Masters dissertation can be used as a base for a PhD dissertation later on.

Seeing your question, I guess this can vary from field to field, but the practice I've seen (engineering, neuroscience, and psychology) is that the PhD work often is an extension of the masters research. The masters work explores one facet of the research problem, and the PhD thesis explores two or three more. This is often a practical matter, as sometimes the masters is one step towards the eventual granting of a PhD.


What are the potential pitfalls of having a PhD in machine learning? This is a follow up question from this one. From what I read in that question I understood that in most cases the PhD is not a good idea to grow a good career in the industry.

However I contacted two people in the industry who have PhDs in machine learning and data mining and they work in Amazon Germany as machine learning scientists or data miners. They told me almost any job in data mining or machine learning requires a PhD.

My question is: do the same pitfalls for other fields also apply for PhDs in machine learning and data mining? If not, then are there still other pitfalls?

As a person who has hired quite a few people in industry, I will simply say that advanced areas (or even areas that are perceived to be advanced) often see PhDs being preferable. In this respect I completely agree with Bitwise.

I do not, however, agree that you might earn less. Those with sought-after skills get paid well in industry. It is about supply and demand but supply (people who can do the job) is not high and demand is growing.

Machine-learning is hot in the business literature. That is, managers are becoming well informed about the potentials of machine-learning and they are becoming worried that the only way they can compete for the long-term is by taking advantage of this area.

While lower-level programming jobs might not see any benefit from higher qualifications, areas like machine-learning are not seen as lower-level.

To answer your main question, are there pitfalls of having a PhD if you want a job in industry? The answer is no. I am unaware of anyone who has ever thought lower of a job candidate because they have a PhD. Yes, you could get a job without one but for your areas of interest, a PhD will give you lots of advantage when it comes to getting job offers.


How to teach first-years? First, some context: I'm a PhD student, and this term, I'm running a bunch of seminar groups for first years (I believe these are what would be called "discussion sections" in the US - essentially, each group is 20-ish students out of a much larger course, and I'm doing stuff to support the lectures. I'm marking, but not setting, the assignments). My previous teaching experience has all been with what I believe would be "upper division" courses in the US, and thus far I've tried to approach this in essentially the same way, but there are some pretty significant differences that lead me to think that I'm not using the time well. Specifically:

In previous teaching, I've been able to rely on students (at least after a little prior prompting) turning up with questions that we can discuss, being able to tell me which parts of the course they're struggling with, etc. and dealing with these issues has taken up a large part of the available time (essentially, because dealing with the things that they're definitely struggling with seems more reliable than me trying to guess what they're struggling with). This doesn't seem to be the case with these students.
Previous students have been able and willing to get involved in discussions, either in small groups or all together, and have even started such discussions. The default expectation from these students seems to be that they can sit there and do very little and I'll somehow pour mathematics into their brains.
Previous courses have all been heavily proof-based, and I've spent a good part of the available time helping with details of proofs that students have not been comfortable with, providing alternate proofs, and trying to drill down to the underlying concepts. This course, thus far, consists entirely of matrix algebra, and the expectation seems to be something far more computational.

As far as what I've done so far, besides the usual start-of-course administrative stuff, is briefly summarise the content of the course thus far, provide a couple of worked examples, and get them to work on some practice questions (theoretically in groups, but I haven't managed to overcome their unwillingness to talk to each other very successfully yet), while I walk around and provide support. I also experimented with asking a question involving slightly more thought ("so we've seen that it is not always the case that AB = BA, but we've also seen that this does hold when either A or B is the identity or zero matrix. Can we say any more about when AB = BA does or doesn't hold?"), which they found significantly more difficult than I had anticipated, and needed a lot of help to even start.

In general, this doesn't seem like that effective a use of the available time: in particular, there's very little that I've done that couldn't have been done by handing them a textbook with plenty of practice questions. I also haven't gained much information about concepts that they struggle with - most of the errors that I've found, both in their assignments and in the class, are purely failures of mental arithmetic, rather than any conceptual issues.

Essentially, I'm looking for ideas of how I can adjust my teaching to make it more productive. Ideas for encouraging more active participation would also be much appreciated.

If you were the professor for the course, I'd give a different answer, but consider the following.

I'll assume that you have the same group for each meeting, rather than a random selection of students that changes randomly over time. This lets you set expectations and a general flow.

One problem you may be encountering is that the students haven't yet learned how to learn. They haven't learned how to take notes and study properly. It is a lesson that needs to be taught, actually. Many students at this level have had an easy time of their earlier education. For some, at least, this is now changing and they need better procedures to capture and retain learning.

If you aren't getting questions, then ask a lot of questions yourself. They can be simple or complex. One of the simplest is to ask the class for volunteers to answer "What was the most important point in the professor's previous lecture?". Ask if anyone has anything to add to that. Evaluate and supplement any answers.

Use metaphor and examples to explain/illustrate things rather than being pedantic. Try to give them insight. While precision is good, it sometimes masks what is really at the heart of things. Why do some mathematical systems obey the commutative law and others not?

It takes some experience, but you can turn some things into games. Even competitive games. I once created a Jeopardy like game for teaching key ideas. It was a computer program that automated the questions. "Square Matrices for 10, Professor Buffy". Teams were formed and the students had fun trying to outdo other teams. This might solve your "working together" issue to some extent.

But just repeating what the professor said isn't likely to be effective. If they don't know what the professor did say then they need some instruction on effective note taking. Also on lecture summarizing, etc. Show them what tricks you used to learn hard stuff.

In fact, if you want an "ice breaker" question, ask what it was that the professor didn't make clear enough in the previous lecture.


What should you do if coauthor refuses to work on paper and refuses to consent to submit it? My old PhD adviser and I had a falling out. We wrote a paper together, it is done at this point in my eyes. He "disagrees". Near the end of revisions the edits became more and more banal and even flip flopping. "Do it this way, no change it back, no change it back, no change it back etc" endlessly. I have shown the paper to other faculty and they think it looks fine.

We got into an argument about this, the paper has been done for well over a year at this point. I have a new adviser. At this point the old adviser flat out refuses to submit the paper, he refuses to make any edits to the paper, he refuses to even talk to me.

The grad head has been notified, other professors have been notified. My current adviser is really pissed off about the whole situation and is planning on talking to the old one.

Can he just not submit the paper? Do I have any recourse? I wrote the paper, I did the majority of the work (other than his idea etc). Can I just submit it myself? I feel like he would email the journal and complain about it. But I don't see any other choice.

No, you probably can't just submit it yourself if the prof is validly a co-author. You need his permission, just as he needs yours.

But I suggest that you let the two professors fight it out among themselves. That could result in a good result for you, and probably not a worse one. Professors sometimes don't mind behaving badly in front of students, but are less likely to with colleagues. Collegiality is still valued in most places. If it needs to get escalated, let the new advisor do it also, on your behalf.


If someone gets a PhD in Israel, can he work in the universities in Muslim-majority countries? Are Israeli degrees recognized in Muslim-majority countries?

If someone gets a Ph.D. in Israel, can he work in the universities in Muslim-majority countries?

Edit:

I give you 3 names so that you can focus on the answer:

Saudi Arabia
Pakistan
Malaysia

I think some countries prohibit people from entering their countries who entered Israel.

"Islamic-majority countries" are a fairly heterogenous group and the answer is unlikely to be the same across all of them.

Turkey and Albania, both Islamic-majority countries, are signatory to the Lisbon Recognition Convention which would seem to imply a default recognition of Israeli degrees.


Am I obliged to answer student queries that can readily be answered by reading the syllabus? I maintain an email group for my class where the reading list and other course materials are made available to the students. Despite sharing all relevant information with them, I still have students asking me exact page numbers and sections from the book, and whether 'Topic X or Y will be on the exam'. I am fed up! Am I obliged to entertain these queries? They usually ask these queries on email or typically on sms.

This is a second-year undergraduate class (about 50 students) majoring in economics. I teach them a statistics course. I've included a link to the syllabus (page 2 of linked document).

Link to syllabus

Whether or not you're obliged is debatable, but here is what you can do to reduce the time that's consumed by answering redundant emails:

Have your students write all questions into an online forum that's accessible for every participant of your course.* Post your answers there as well.

You can "pin" answers that are of a general nature. Your first pinned message should be a FAQ, entitled "Frequently asked questions. Read first before posting" and with the first line reading something like:

  Before posting a question, please make sure that it has not already
  been answered. In particular, check the pinned messages first. Chances
  are, your question has been answered and you can save yourself and me some work.

If you get a duplicate question, just refer the student to the relevant message. This should work as a gentle nudge that deters other students form asking redundant questions in the future (remember that the answer can be read by the whole course).

* and only them.


Is it normal/okay if my professor grades me lower "in comparison to my peers"? My Uni is in Minnesota and classes started a couple weeks ago.  I'm taking a class for my undergraduate degree. I knew it was going to be writing intensive from the syllabus.  Every week we're going to have at minimum one short writing assignment due.  In the syllabus he said we would be graded on:

Structure/Organization
Word selection and sentence structure
Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization
Content

My first two writing assignments were bad, 60% on them.  His feedback was:

I didn't cite my sources
"Your grade is based on how you compare with your peers"

First of all, I didn't use any sources because they were basic questions that only required critical thinking and my opinions.

Second, is grading my work compared to my peers something that is actually done?  It seems bizarre to me, I've never heard of something like this being done before.  I have absolutely no control over the other people in my class.  It's frustrating that in a class with 20 writing assignments, I'm getting docked points for something outside of my control.

If this wasn't such a writing intensive course I wouldn't be as upset.  Is this normal to deduct points because someone subjectively wrote better than me?

Sounds like you're in a course which is grading on a curve. The idea here is that everyone's score is going to fit a Bell curve with a predetermined mean. This means there won't be any "Christmas-comes-early" results where everyone scores A's, but also no "what-the-hell-everyone-is-failing" panic attacks either. Grade inflation is unlikely in a class that's grading on a curve, because there'll only be so many students who get A's.

If you're in a class which is grading on a curve, then yes: it's normal to "deduct points" because someone wrote better than you. "Deduct points" in inverted commas because you don't actually lose points, you just get a lower grade.

If you want to score well in such a class, you'll need to outperform your classmates.


Supervisor and GRA roles in submitting a grant I am required to complete 300 practicum hours to fulfill my requirements in a Masters program.  I decided to fulfill these hours by creating a practicum experience with my GRA (graduate research assistant) supervisor.  This experience was designed for me to develop skills in tasks that I would not normally do in my GRA.  We decided to work on a few different projects- I was to submit an letter of intent after taking a course on grant writing, help develop a couple of publications in the works, and work on a presentation for our group.

I took the grant writing course, developed some general ideas with my supervisor on paths that we might pursue, and we submitted the grant.  I was told that I would take the lead on this grant as part of my experience.  And I have for the most part.  We did a lot of editing together, we met with the grant coordinator of our school, and I did most of the research for the grant.  It was a continuation of an earlier project, but the application was novel and it was something that I created and took ownership over.  I was excited as this was my first grant and I worked very hard on it.  I wanted this to happen.

Months go by and we are working on the other parts of the practicum, mostly working on some publication work.  But it felt like I was being excluded from the main discussion and I was not receiving much support.  It is an area that is not in my background, but I wanted to get experience in this area.  It felt like I was wasting hours sitting there with no support, so I did not count my hours towards the practicum.  I would try to get her to help, but it always seemed like I was bothering her or she didn't have time or was frustrated.  When I told her that I have not counted my hours recently, that I was just doing GRA hours, she seemed frustrated and told me that I need to get this over with.  I didn't think I was getting enough out of the experience.  At this point I started regretting doing my practicum experience here because I would have had a chance to develop real skills elsewhere.  Then, I thought that I probably should have been given more tasks in my GRA hours.  I was horribly underworked to begin with, and my practicum was an attempt to gain more meaningful experiences out of this group.

Recently, we get the word back that the letter of intent was accepted and there was a very good chance that we would get the grant.  I reply back to the grant coordinator like I had done before, since I was taking the lead on this grant, and instead, my supervisor gets in and starts coordinating things.  I keep trying to set up meetings and figure out the next step, but she took over the project.  No discussion, no email at all.  Now there is a lot of work going on with this grant and I feel excluded.  She has not assigned me a task to work on for this and I have not heard anything.  I feel like I am left in the dark.  I know she has a lot more experience and skill with these things, but this feels like it would be a big opportunity for me.  To be honest, I would like some recognition from department.  I feel like I helped the department score funds with a practicum and grant idea that was mine.  I feel pushed away on both the grants and the publications.

Can you think of a way to approach this?  I really do like her and I don't want to cause any issues.  I just think she is a poor leader and supervisor.  I viewed it as a team effort to begin with and I was hoping to continue this way, but it does not feel like it is going this direction.

You seem to be having two issues. The first is you are not happy with your GRA experience and the second is you are confused about the grant. It is important to separate these issues when talking to the supervisor and only bring one issue up at a time. Sicne you questions focuses on the grant, so does my answer.

While it is too late now, before starting to work on a grant or any research project it is important to define the roles of each team member. You then need to review these roles frequently as the project progresses.

There are two possibilities for the grant. The first case is that the grant includes funding for you (or someone like you). In this case you need to have a friendly chat to discuss what your role will be if the grant gets funded. This should be fairly painless since you (or someone like you) is listed on the grant. The second case is that the grant doesn't include funding for you (or someone like you). If this is the case, then it is pretty clear that you are not really included on the grant. If the grant could have included funding for you, but you were not included, you should have raised the issue as soon as you realized. This is potentially problematic and it is worth discussing with the supervisor why you were not included. If the grant could not have included funding for you, then it is not clear what the issue is.

Whatever happens, you should have a nice civil conversation with the supervisor.


Postdoctoral (or tenure-track) positions at ETH and knowledge of local language At ETH Zurich only undergraduate courses are held in German (graduate courses are in English). There both postdoctoral positions and assistant professorships require a certain teaching load. The job descriptions are fairly detailed, but the following point doesn't seem to be addressed:

  Does the postdoctoral positions (or assistant professorship positions)
  at ETH require knowledge of German to teach classes or carry out any other duty? Does English suffice?

The question can be generalized in the following way:

  Do European universities with English courses normally require professors to
  know the native language of the country?

(Clearly, I realize that a basic knowledge of the local language may be useful for daily life.)

For postdocs @ ETH:

If this is not said specifically in the job text, you can safely assume that no knowledge of German will be required, although it may or may not count as a plus depending on the PI. There will almost certainly be no statement in your contract that you will need to learn German within a time frame, as postdocs are not "career" positions in the first place (and neither are they particularly teaching oriented, which is the only place where ETH potentially cares about you speaking German).

For professors @ ETH:

Unlike most other European universities, ETH is actually fairly international. I would be surprised if all of the faculty from around the world teaching there speaks German, although many that I know do (as you say, learning the local language is generally helpful if you stay in a foreign country for a longer period of time). German language skills will almost certainly not be required at time of appointment, but it may become part of your contract that you are obliged to be able to teach in German within a given number of years. This requirement may be negotiable, with the main concern from ETH's side being that this would limit what courses you will be able to teach. However, honestly, I would not worry about this too much at this stage.

For other European universities:

As usual, customs vary a lot across other European universities. For instance, I have seen announcements for German universities where PhD students were required to be able to speak German. That being said, the rules from above are good guesses in the absence of contradicting further information - don't worry about it for postdocs (unless the announcement specifically says that you need to speak the local language), and don't worry too much for faculty positions, but be prepared that you may be obliged to learn the local language.


Obligation to quote an unpublished source if I am the source? Let’s say that, during my undergraduate studies, I have written an essay on some subject. It was a seminar paper, which never got published anywhere.

Now, while writing my master’s thesis, I find that one line of thought I’d like to express is pretty much exactly what I had written in that seminar paper.

Would I have to formally quote and cite that (unpublished) seminar paper (which I had written myself), or can I just repeat what I have written there without marking it as quote?

It feels awkward quoting myself, but I don’t want to run afoul of any misconduct here.

Avoiding self-plagiarism is very much different from avoiding plagiarism. In the latter case your goal is to avoid using someone's else's work without credits. In the first case you avoid publishing the same piece of work twice (say, avoid inflating your cv). Thus avoiding self-plagiarism means avoiding reusing only your published work without references. So theoretically if you were using your unpublished essay in a new work, there would be no need to cite it. However there are several things to consider. First, as you're writing a master thesis, and not a journal paper, this is a qualifying work rather than just research, and you're are supposed to invest a certain amount of work in this assignment. In this sense reusing an earlier work may be considered sparing some efforts you're supposed to invest to get your degree. Hence, you may want to indicate that this piece of work was done earlier and should not count towards rating your work on the thesis.
Second, as your essay was written within the framework of some assignment given by a professor/instructor, you should acknowledge their input when reusing the essay. Did that person suggest the topic, guide your work or otherwise contribute to the essay? You should clearly give credits to their role, and in this sense it would also be better to mention that you're relying on your earlier essay written in the class of professor XYZ.


Academic dishonesty -- math graduate school admissions I have been somewhat incorrectly convicted of copying another student's test, and the prospects of reversing this seem doubtful. My school's policy is somewhat more lenient here due to it being a first offense so they removed points on questions they think I cheated on and that this happened is kept on file, though it is not on my transcript. How would this affect my ability to get into top math graduate schools (assuming I am unable to successfully reverse this)? In particular, do many ask me to specify such things?

This is certainly not going to help your application for graduate school, and it can be fatal if it doesn't look like you've learned from it. I suspect the default position of most people is going to be against you, unfortunately.

If you still have time (i.e. years till you graduate), make sure to show that you can put the incident behind you. Don't cheat in other classes, but get good grades in them anyway.
If you don't have time, that's bad. You'll need to write a good explanation in your application.
You will be asked about this. There's a box in many graduate applications asking if you've ever been involved in academic dishonesty situations. Don't omit this even if you've put the incident behind you, because if you do, you are not reporting full facts and if discovered any offer of admission can be rescinded even if you've already matriculated (see the statement you have to sign at the end of the application).


What is expected in a masters thesis for Phd admission in Europe by admission committee in Number Theory Background of question ( Background is somewhat related to this question Asking about how to minimize the effect of a not so good thesis due to abandoning by supervisor without even telling in Phd Application Form  but question is entirely different)

I am a masters 2nd year student( 4 th semester)in mathematics .During my masters degree I self studied 3 books of number theory ( 1 elementary,2 analytic)because I was really interested in learning it and no faculty in my Institute is specialized in it( most people in my Institute are specialized in Applied Mathematics) . I am in an 3rd world country.

I want to do phd in number theory in Europe. So, for my Masters thesis I wrote to one of professors in a top Institute in my country and she said yes.I visited her Institute in January,2020 for 8 days but she abandoned me and didn't even bothered to tell as she didn't replied my e - mails and despite the fact that she gave me a research paper in January to study and after completing it I e-mail her on 20 Feb asking her to tell me which paper to study now/ problem to work and when should I visit her Institute again . I e mailed her on 29 Feb, 7 March, 25 March, 4April.( in between I read 2  papers to know a bit more about the work in the area).

Also I am 100% sure that she is not suffering from covid. So, I  talked to a professor in my institute and he took absolutely no interest in helping me and send prepare a report from the paper what you have studied and hung up.

  I have read 4 papers in analytic number theory till now( all are related to 1st paper given by professor) . And i am thinking of reading another research paper in analytic number theory but it's related to a different problem if time permits. But i have not done any original work like writing a research paper or proving a theorem.

  My questions are 1.what kind of work is expected in a Masters thesis by the Admission committees of European Institutes ?

2.Is is necessary to have a publication or original work like proving some results for applying to European Institutes  .

Please guide. I have no other sources of help. I wanted to work really nicely for the thesis but things changed completely due to negligence of that professor. Even the professor of my Institute didn't bothered.

  I am in desperate need of guidence.

From a Finnish perspective (the department was focused on analysis, not number theory):

No, it is not expected for you to have original publications from your master studies, but if you have them, great! I am not sure how a publication in a predatory or very low quality journal would be taken; in the spirit of being careful, I suggest not publishing unless you are certain it is a decent result and a decent journal. Or maybe only publish a preprint.
A good master's thesis need not include original research, but it might. It shows a clear grasp of mathematical thinking and good and non-trivial proofs. An excellent thesis has original work, or does the same as a good one in a very demanding subject.


Why does a professor cite his own works with unbelievable proportion? There is a professor X who publishes as many as 20-30 research articles (usually in journals) every year. It is quite obvious that these are the outcomes of his big lab and multiple collaborations.

I usually follow his works. However, his publication surprises me in terms of the number of his own published works he cites in each paper. For example, in one of his latest paper, there were 145 references out of which 70-80 were his own publications. Many of the cited references are not so related to the latest published work and cited like this ([1,7,8-10,12-18]).

Moreover, it should be noted that he has been the top-cited researcher in his field as per Thomson Reuters.

My questions are:

Why might he be doing it? (Is it just to increase [self-]citation?)
If this is the case, then the claim that he is the 'top' cited researcher does not hold. Isn't it?

While there can be good reasons to self-cite, and sometimes self-cite significantly, if many of the self-citations are not relevant, then it's pretty clear the citations are there in order to inflate citation metrics.

The appropriate response is to pay less attention to citation metrics. After all, by those sorts of metrics King Abdulaziz University is ranked above MIT in mathematics.


How to politely request to magazine editor for the following issue? I have one article accepted in the magazine and the editorial team has send me the proof-read version. I have a little issue that I need to change the name of the article as the requirement of my thesis. The article was accepted with the name "Future trends in Personal indoor communication". I want to change it to "Future trends in indoor communication". I will really appreciate if the seniors can comment on my following response.

Dear Mr. Editor,
Thank you for accepting the article titled, “Future
trends in Personal Indoor Communication” for publication in IEEE
Potentials. As part of the proof-read stage, I would request a minor
change in the title. Since my modified PhD thesis title includes
“Indoor Communication”, instead of “Personal Indoor Communication”, I
will really appreciate if the editor allows me to reflect this change
in the mentioned article. This is important to maintain the coherency
between my published work and the PhD thesis.
The modification in the
title will subsequently require minor (editorial) changes in the text
as well. For example, Personal Indoor Communication (or PIC) should be
replaced by Indoor Communication (or IC) in the text. Likewise, Fig. 2
should be modified to reflect this change. For this purpose, I have
attached the new figure as the supplementary material.
Please do let me know if this is possible. I apologize for the
inconvenience it may cause to the publishing team.
Shan Jaffry
On behalf of the Authors

Changing a figure and / or title of a manuscript during proofreading isn't a problem. At most, the production team might wonder if you're changing something that shouldn't be changed (e.g. if the author amends the paper to conform to reviewer comments, and then changes it back during proofreading, we have a problem). However you've given a sensible reason to make the changes, so in all likelihood the production team will just make the changes and move on to the next paper.

As for the letter itself, it's a bit deferential, but journal production administrators see a lot of such letters and won't be fazed. The only thing I'd suggest is that, since you say minor editorial changes are necessary, to also include these in the email, e.g. "on page 2 line 5, change "delete the word 'personal'". This speeds things up: the JPA can make all the changes and the typesetter can implement them at once. Without these changes the JPA would have to write back asking what other changes you want to make before he can pass the manuscript to the typesetter.


Is it possible to measure/evaluate one's progress or development in quantitative terms? I often end up frustrated over the pace of my work, or rather the lack of "worthy" results. During my feedback talks with my colleagues and superiors I usually get good feedback but I find it distressing that most of it is qualitative arguments.

I sometimes feel like I have not progressed as much as I would have liked to, but not sure how to assess whether or not I have developed "enough" over time. Which led me to wonder if it is possible at all to measure how well a PhD student is progressing.

The usual measures in the community appears to be:

number of publications
which journals the publications appeared in (or rather the impact factor)
number of hours in the lab (regarding how "hard-working" one is)
number of credits taken from courses during phd studies

I personally find none of the above to be a good measure. Publications are a fact of research, or the goal rather. But they should not a be measure of how well a PhD candidate is doing in research. I believe the pragmatic demand on "more publications" has essentially lead to overall lower quality and novelty in individual publications. But even without that subjective comment, it should not be a revelation to anyone here that the amount of publications (and especially in which journals they are published) is more dependent on the seniors on the paper rather than the grad student who wrote it.

As for the other two measures I point to, they are just too naive variables to mean much. I mean you can be in the lab for 18h a day, but not learn much new or even worse not even remember those things you have learned. Besides one can also argue whether or not it's actually better for a grad student to be obsessed with number of hours in the lab, or courses taken.

Summary: Is there a good way to measure your progress through-out your studies? How can I evaluate my development as a scientist, in quantitative (and unbiased) terms?

To reduce anything to a quantitative score, you need a valid metric. There are very few valid metrics you can use in research, as you state in your question. The only other half-common metric that you didn't list above is Papers read/annotated. We all know reading is really useful, and you should definitely aim to read X papers a week (where X is some random number that makes sense in your field). That said, the goal of reading is to gather information, and how much information was gained (and retained) is a lot harder to measure.

That said, I have two half-answers:

Make up your own metric based on hours of productive work. At the end of each day, just write down in an excel sheet or something how many useful hours you worked that day. You can use some service like Rescuetime to help you in this, or the Pomodoro technique, or just simply buy a stopwatch and keep track yourself. At the end, do a simple # useful hours/total hours worked to see how productive you think you're being. That'll probably be more useful than anything else you'll come up with.
Make task-specific metrics. I tracked my progress on my thesis using a custom shell script I wrote that tracked how much text I added in a given time period and plotted it out. (Yes, I probably spent more time making the shell script than I gained in motivation from using it. Whatever.) I tracked progress on one of my projects by how many datasets I had analyzed. I tracked progress on another project by how much coding I completed each day. These are much more useful than broad, overarching metrics.


Do you list a long-term visit as an affiliation (in a paper, presentation, etc.)? As a frequent long-term (more than a year) visitor (with official visitor status) to a different nearby institution, would you list it as an additional affiliation?
Much of the experimental work (the field is physics) on a project has been carried out at the other institution by myself.

I don't think that this question has a general answer as there might be guidelines applying to specific institutions.
I know of some institutions that explicitly require long-term visitors to state their affiliation. You should probably inquire about this with your institution. The institutions that I know that have rules about this usually require you to state your affiliation, and I have never seen a rule where you would be disallowed from doing that. So in any case, if a lot of the work has been carried out at the other institution and thus been taking advantage of their resources, an acknowledgement of that should probably be given in some way, whether it is in the form of a full affiliation, an affiliation with a footnote, or mentioning them in the acknowledgement section of the publication.


How can I find the altmetrics for a specific paper? Alternative metrics for a paper, include not just the citations in other academic journals, but also all Twitter mentions, citations in Wikipedia, citations across the Stack Exchange network, etc.
The company Altmetric is one of the companies that shows the altmetrics for papers, and it has been mentioned in the answer to this Academia.SE question: Finding all communication related to any research paper.
It used to be as simple as installing the Altmetric extension for your web browser, which creates a bookmarklet (a tiny icon at the top of the web browser) on which you can click to get all the altmetrics. I used this for many years and find out extremely useful. However what if I'm using a browser at, for example a library computer where a network administrator has blocked me from installing custom extensions? Is there a place where I can just copy and paste the URL for the paper's DOI and get the altmetric data, just like Google Scholar allows you to see which papers have cited your paper without installing any browser extension?
It seems that while Altmetric still offers this bookmarklet for free it's still just a bookmarklet that has to be installed, rather than just a place where you can copy and paste a URL of the paper. Furthermore they now seem to want the user's email address, which I'm sure many people will not be delighted to do, as they would certainly find themselves automatically subscribed to get emails which they may not desire.
How can altmetrics for a paper be found without installing anything and without giving away your email address?

Yes, you can use Altmetric's API to do that.
The URL is https://api.altmetric.com/v1/doi/ + DOI.
For example: https://api.altmetric.com/v1/doi/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102194.  However, the API is designed to be machine-readable (and not primarily human-readable), so you will only see a (possibly confusing) JSON-document which you may want to "beautify" using a JSON-Beautifier.
At the bottom of that JSON-document you see the element "details-url" which links to the actual page you probably want to see, i.e. http://www.altmetric.com/details.php?citation_id=93559766.
(For large-scale use of that API, you may need to request a key. See the Altmetric's API Documentation.)


How to add a timeline to my CV? I had my CV reviewed by an academic professor, and she advised me to put a timeline on my CV. The problem is that after I ended up my bachelor studies, I spent some years working because I was the only support for my family and I was also saving for my graduate studies. After that I followed some undergraduate courses in a foreign country, that was because I was rejected to do a master's degree; the reason was that the courses I followed in my bachelor degree were not 100% Computer Science oriented, but more to the IT field.

So after finishing that, I started back working in my country and after saving for some years; I finally managed to get accepted for MSc studies. The problem with this is that there are some overlaps like:

bachelor studies---work for saving for further studies---undergraduate courses in a foreign country in CS----work again for saving some more---MSc studies----working again

So it is some sort of a mess, so if somebody from a doctoral admission office sees my CV; he will be a little bit wondering about why I have those overlaps.

The question is pretty simple, how can I add a sort of timeline that could help the reader to have a quick view about my academic and working experience? and also how can I explain that in my CV? or should it be in my motivation letter?

Not putting the summary of your educational information at the top of the CV would look strange (since that's essentially the universal standard).

However, what you could do afterwards is have a "blended" list of your educational/research and professional experience (in backwards chronological order):

X1-Y1:  Most recent experience/job/schooling/miscellaneous
X2-Y2:  Next most recent
X3-Y3:  Next-next most recent
. . .

and so on.

But I don't see how there would be any real confusion if you use a standard layout and explicitly write out the start and end dates of the different experiences you've had, unless some of those also overlap. (Even then, though, I think you could explain part-time work and study accordingly.)


Is it considered okay to mention all the correction in an accepted article which is typeset by the press Let's say that I got a paper accepted to a nice journal (feels so good!), in fact of a very reputed publisher. Then, the press / editorial office asks me to submit all the source files for preparing the proof for publication and I have submitted all the source materials (in word / .tex format).

Here it is worthy to mention that the accepted manuscript is already respecting the journal's format (closely). But of course, the press will completely change the article's looks to match the journal's own proprietary style(s) etc.

A few weeks later, I receive the proof (in the native journal format) and much to my surprise, I see that the original mathematical equations in the manuscript got vandalized (in terms of alignment, even missing some equations etc.), subfigures (in a whole figure environment being named as a, b, c, d, ...) getting copy pasted (even including the subcaptions etc.), texts running across the borders, tables being sloppily copy pasted as images and even what not the mathematical symbols in bibliography are typeset as images!...
If that is the case, could you advise, whether I can mention each and every mistake that is present in the proof that is sent to me?

Honorable mention: I deeply feel bad for my paper, because, even after giving all the source files for compiling the proof, the typeset is being subpar given the journal / publishers standards (IMO).
Update: Today,

I got an email from the publisher that the corrected proof is available online --> which accoring to their definition means ready for  production.

Upon seeing the so-called corrected proof I found that it was an exact replica of the one they sent before.

I thank all of you for your suggestions :)

If there are so many issues, I would suggest to not mention every last one of them but instead write a short email to the editor.
Don't go blaming people, ask if there is something you can do, maybe you sent your sources in the wrong format, maybe there was a misunderstanding.

If this journal frequently publishes mathematical papers, they should have proper ways to do things and what happened here is most likely not a small typo that can be mentioned while reading the proof, but a deeper problem that should be solved before doing the final proofreading.
(If, on the other hand, they only use MSWord 2003 and just copied stuff from your .tex-file or PDF, then maybe you need to reconsider your choice of journal...)


Disclose industry salary as COI at academic conference? I'm a recent transfer from academic to industry research. I am submitting to a conference in my new company's field, and I am disclosing COI -- organization (my company), relationship ("employment"), relationship ("salary from employment"). Then they want "dollar amount". Regrettably they are not more specific than that. Is it customary to put:

one year's base salary?
total income from my employer for one year?
all they have ever paid me?
something else?

I suspect that the form was intended for academic researchers who are funded in the form of industry grants. In that case, the size of the grant would be the right number. In your case, I would leave it open -- nobody needs to know your salary.