What to do if international student exchange supervisor doesn't answer my email? I am applying for an exchange program in Romania next semester. The teacher in Romania sent a research topic one month ago to my teacher (So I guess they both found an agreement and I should be able to go?). I am now expected to do most of the rest . So I sent a first e mail asking for more information about that topic as the research topic has to be accepted by professors and lectors at our university. A few days later I sent him another e-mail specifying exactly who I was as it may have been unclear in my first e-mail. Its now been one week and still received no answer.

What should I do? Keep waiting until I maybe don‘t receive an answer? What would be a good way to deal with that type of situations?

Professors are often very busy and receive many emails, sometimes more than a hundred a day. It is not uncommon that an email gets forgotten, especially if it was sent from a stranger. Since a week has passed, it is certainly appropriate to send another polite reminder. However, other strategies might be more effective:

Ask your local teacher about the issue or ask her to contact the Romanian teacher, explaining that you could not get a response although the issue is urgent.
Write an email to the Romanian supervisor's secretary/the secretary of the institute.
Call them on the phone

When writing email, make sure that the issue can already be understood from reading the subject line.


Masters before Math PHD? I'm currently finishing up my last year of study as an undergraduate mathematics major at a top 2 public school.  I've been interested in getting a phD in mathematics for some time now, but my GPA and work in some classes in my 1st and 2nd years leaves a lot to be desired.   Let's just say I got pretty bad grades in important classes.  Since then, I've worked my but off and currently have around a 3.3 GPA.

Luckily, I was accepted into a Statistics/Computer Science related Masters program.  In this program, I will have the opportunity to take electives and plan to take some higher level math classes.

My question is, will doing very well in my masters program next year override my poor performance as an undergrad? Also, should I be really trying to get a research position this summer?

Yes, high grades and excellent letters of recommendation from the master's program can help overcome poor grades from earlier.

Remember you will apply for the PhD program a year in advance, so the professors you have the first two semesters in the master's program will be the ones you need to ask for letters. You need to be excellent from the start of the master's program.

The other thing that can help overcome bad grades (to some extent) is a high score on the math subject GRE. You want to study thoroughly for that, unless you already have a high score. See e.g.  What is the median math GRE subject score for admission to a Group 2 or 3 PhD program in applied mathematics?


When is it appropriate to decline a review request? There are some clear reasons to decline a review request, such as conflict-of-interests or not enough free time (e.g., going on a vacation..).
But what if you are just not interested in the paper you got (i.e., it is loosely related to what you do, but not entirely irrelevant)?

On which occasions is it appropriate to decline a review request?
Does it matter if the review is for conference vs journal?

There are a few clear reasons to decline a review request, although in complete honesty, I've never actually declined to review a paper yet, so these are all at least "in theory" for me. Some of them are one's you've mentioned, but there are some others:

Conflict of interest. This one's pretty clear, though with the way some reviews are handled - based on recommendations, closely related expertise, etc. what actually constitutes a conflict of interest can get a little vague.
Lack of time. This is one that people seem to ignore or discount, but it's a big one. If you can't give a paper the attention it deserves, or your review is going to be late (predictably, not because of unforeseen things), then you should probably decline to review it. You're not doing you, the authors, or the editor any favors by making them chase you down for months to get a review.
Lack of expertise. If you read the methods section of a paper and your primary thought is "Huh?" not because the paper is unclear, but because its far afield from your expertise, I'd strongly consider contacting the editor for advice and asking not to be a reviewer.

I wouldn't necessarily not be a reviewer due to a failure to find the paper sufficiently interesting. If your expertise is indeed appropriate and the work is not of sufficiently compelling interest, that is a review finding all its own. Additionally, one would hope that you can evaluate the scientific merit of things that - while you are capable of understanding - you might not find directly interesting.

Whether or not it matters if its a conference or a paper likely depends on your field (how important are conferences?) and the particular conference or paper. For example, I might make a special effort to "find the time" for a journal I submit to (or would like to submit to) or a conference I frequently attend, but might not for a journal or conference I've never heard of.


How do I know if I'm good enough to be a math professor? I would like to apply for graduate school to become a mathematics professor.

However, given that the opportunity cost of grad school is high and that I already have a stable, good paying job, I would like to know whether I have the talent and ability to be a math professor before I start. This is obviously a very difficult question to answer, but I'll explain my situation.

I believe I have above-average math talent, although I wouldn't consider myself a genius and I've had people in my classes smarter than me. However, I've gotten high marks in nearly all math courses and I've written a honors thesis which has also received very high marks. I've also worked as a research assistant. Basically, I think I've done pretty well and perform competently in all the mathematical challenges that has come my way so far.

But being a math professor requires original ideas and lots of publishing. I haven't had any significant original ideas, but it's probably true that most people at my level of education also haven't (correct me if I'm wrong here). My main concern is how do I know if I would be able to generate enough original ideas to keep publishing and maintain a successful academic career? Unlike working in mathematical modeling in the private sector, where one cannot really get "stuck" in the same way, it seems like a risk to be a professor since it's really hard to guarantee that you'll always be able to produce new research.

Do any mathematicians working in academia have any comments about how one knows if they'll be able to continually generate new ideas to produce publishable research?

Do any mathematicians working in academia have any comments about how one knows if they'll be able to continually generate new ideas to produce publishable research?

I can remember freaking out about this as I was writing my first paper.  It was the only publishable work I had ever done, and I remember thinking to myself "What if this is the only idea I have in me?  Or what if, instead of getting easier, generating ideas gets even harder as I have to scrounge around in deeper recesses of my brain?"

Fortunately, generating ideas turns out not to be as intimidating as it sounds.  In practice, it's very rare to sit down in a chair and say "I shall now think deep thoughts."  Instead, any depth comes as a spin-off from much more mundane activities.  You read papers, you idly wonder about things, you come up with questions you care about, you figure out how to investigate them, you grapple with technical obstacles, you study things you hadn't realized you needed to know, you chat with colleagues and ask them questions, you work with collaborators, etc.  Each of these activities is pretty natural, and they all feed into each other in a complicated web.  At any stage you may come up with or run across new ideas, but they are generated organically rather than being something you have to worry about explicitly.

You can expect that a strong graduate program will bring you to the point where you can do this reliably.  Of course some people will be faster or more prolific, some will have more striking or creative ideas, some will work on more important questions, etc.  You can still improve many of these factors through practice and mentoring, but at that point the question is a little different.  Not whether you can do research, but rather how to reach your full potential as a researcher.

So I'd recommend not worrying about this too much.  Doing research is a skill that most undergraduates don't have but that graduate schools can teach.  Once you get up to speed, generating ideas doesn't end up being a bottleneck.  [In fact, you'll end up having more ideas than you have time or energy to investigate yourself.  This lets you suggest some to students to help them get started with research, without worrying that you are giving away a limited resource you need for your own research.]

  However, given that the opportunity cost of grad school is high and that I already have a stable, good paying job, I would like to know whether I have the talent and ability to be a math professor before I start.

Doing good research is necessary but not sufficient for getting a job in a research university.  It's difficult to assess talent and predict career success, but one way to get a crude approximation is by looking at what happened to past students in your position.  When you are admitted to graduate school, you can look up former students of advisors you are considering and see what happened to them.  For example, you can find lists of students using the Mathematics Genealogy Project, and then you can search for them on the web.  This is certainly not perfect: some advisors don't have many students yet, job markets change over time, some former students are just not representative of your situation (if a potential advisor used to be at a less prestigious school, then placement records from that school are not so relevant), etc., and of course there's always random variance.  However, it will give you a crude picture.  If the advisors you are considering have had many students who got jobs you would like, then maybe you will too.  If very few of them got jobs you would find acceptable, then you are taking a much bigger risk.


Postdoc recommendation letters: The European-American gap and how to overcome it I heard from several sources that European recommendation letters for postdoc positions tend to be minimalist and understated, while the American ones are way more enthusiastic. I have two questions about this phenomenon:

Is this cultural difference taken into account by members of postdoctoral search committees in high-ranked American universities?

The second question is more personal:

I'm a European grad student aiming at a postdoc position in an American university. I'm currently gathering my recommendation letters, and I'm supposed to get one from one of the leading figures in my field. He knows my work well, and I believe he has a good opinion of me. On the other hand, being familiar with his style of expression, he will never write one of those "omg he is the best researcher ever" letters that top American universities expect to see (he won't write it even for someone who is actually the best researcher ever). So the question is: Should I use his letter in my application or am I risking that the search committee will translate the adjective "good" (which is a very significant compliment considering the letter writer) to "horrible"?

ps. For whatever it's worth, I work in pure mathematics.

Is this cultural difference taken into account by members of postdoctoral search committees in high-ranked American universities?

Yes, certainly.  If your letter writers are sufficiently well known, then there's no issue, since the letters they have written in the past will serve as calibration.  (If someone shows poor judgment in their letters, then committees will start discounting the letters, but committees can and do adapt to good judgment expressed in unconventional ways.)  If the committee members haven't seen many previous letters from someone, then there's more of an issue, but everyone will be aware of the phenomenon of European-style letters and will try to take that into account.

As a general rule, letters still need to offer concrete details and say something substantive.  A very short letter along the lines of "This young mathematician does solid work and would make a reasonable postdoc at University X" won't help, because it offers nothing but a vague sense of approval.  However, a substantive letter will be useful even if it's more understated than the U.S. norm.

  I'm currently gathering my recommendation letters, and I'm supposed to get one from one of the leading figures in my field. He knows my work well, and I believe he has a good opinion of me. On the other hand, being familiar with his style of expression, he will never write one of those "omg he is the best researcher ever" letters that top American universities expect to see (he won't write it even for someone who is actually the best researcher ever).

This doesn't sound like a problematic situation to me.  If you're worried, you could look into whether he has ever had a student or postdoc who subsequently got a job in the U.S.  (Presumably the answer is yes, in which case his letter must not have ruined the application.)


How to support students whom other faculty abuse? Some of the students in my class take a class with another member of faculty.  That other, tenured, member of faculty has taken to abusing individual students in front of the whole class. This abuse takes the form of calling them "dumb" and "racist", and threatening to "report" them (whatever that means).

From my perspective, in my class the students are polite, diligent, and get on well with their peers. I'm happy to have them in my class.

Is there something I should / could be doing more than being as objective and supporting of them as possible for my own course?

The students have already started walking their complaints about the tenured faculty member up the university hierarchy. Each successive rung (department head, dean of school, provost so far) seems intent on fobbing them off.

If it makes a difference, the students involved are women of color and I am an older, white male.

Added: Apparently this behavior is not new. That's how the faculty member started out pre-tenure. The behavior modified. They were granted tenure last year, so the previous behavior has returned.

Depending on how your department works there might be something you can do. People don't like their foibles and sins brought to light. Bad things happen in the dark.

See the caveat, below, but if you have regular faculty meetings, you could raise the issue without naming anyone. "Students are complaining to me of racist/sexist behavior by some faculty member. I think we need to discuss it and whether we need policies to prevent it going forward. It is affecting their learning. It is affecting our reputation." This isn't a formal complaint about a person but it could bring about some discussion and possibly a change in behavior, if the person thinks they get no support from colleagues.

I can't guarantee that, of course. Some jerks will just be jerks.

But the caveat is that if you are a new faculty member (within, a couple of years of hire) this could be extremely dangerous for you to mention. Some places have a culture and they don't want newcomers to rock the boat in any way. All you will get, in some places, is "shut up shut up shut up". You will need to analyze how faculty generally treat one another before stepping forward. If they are willing to accept bad treatment of students, perhaps they are willing to do so generally.

In the worst case, start looking for an exit. There are some things over which you have no power and no control as a newcomer. You can find a place where faculty respect one another and the students as well.

A second option, if you don't feel safe in coming forward in public, is to feed ideas to students to make the issue a public one. Nailing theses to the cathedral door has a clear historical precedent. But this would need to come from students and they may not have thought of the possibility. Having a list of grievances posted on office doors is pretty dramatic.

But this would depend on some solidarity among students themselves. Some actions can be anonymous. Some can be through a spokesperson. And they can get a conversation going amongst faculty that is necessary.


Do I have to cite common CS algorithms? I'm working on my final thesis for a CS grade course and I want to use a common sorting algorithm (quicksort for the curious ones). Do I need to include a reference to this algorithm (cite or quote)? Or it is so common that I don't need to? Take into accout that it was first published on 1961 and it is extremely used and known by almost anyone in the CS world.

Do I have to cite common CS algorithms?

No.

The fact that it was first published [in] 1961 isn't relevant, you needn't cite it because it is [widely] used and [well-]known by almost anyone in the CS world.

That said, although a citation isn't necessary, you can provide one at your discretion. Such a citation is probably more important for a final thesis than for an academic publication, since it may be considered important for students to demonstrate they can cite.

Beyond citing the original source, you may like to cite your favourite textbook(s) on the topic (rather than citing the entire volume, reference a particular section, e.g., \cite[Chapter 4.3]{Textbook} in LaTeX).


How to Access an American PhD Thesis? I need to download the following PhD Thesis:

"LH Jensen - Large deviations of the asymmetric simple exclusion process in one dimension"

However this website forces me to pay for it. I think it is possible to download the thesis from the Columbia Library (link), but as I am a PhD student based in the UK, I don't have access to it.

So how can I access an American PhD thesis?

You could use ProQuest for free at the British Library.

Obtaining theses in the Reading Rooms: North American theses
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is available online on the electronic
resources terminals in Humanities - Floors 1 and 2.

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/theses/hrrtheses/theses.html


Is it okay to ask someone for an (electronic) copy of their PhD thesis if it is not available online? I am a PhD student and recently I came across a researcher who is currently an assistant professor. I don’t know them. But I want their thesis, which is currently not available online. I want to know details of their work.

Is it okay to ask an unknown professor or researcher for their PhD thesis via email?

Yes, it is completely fine to ask them, but before you do, it helps to be aware of a few things:

In many if not most fields and countries, PhD theses are somewhere between

a recompilation of previously published papers with an introduction and a conclusion and possibly with some additional content that did not fit into publications,
just a collection of published papers.

This is particularly likely to apply if the thesis is not to be found in a published form.
So, the more important results of a PhD work are likely to be published.

This doesn’t make it invalid to ask for the thesis, but it may be worth checking what that person published during their PhD time before asking.
This way you can establish whether you are actually interested in the thesis and what parts you are interested in.
Depending on the field, it is rather uncommon that somebody is really interested in an entire thesis, and not just a certain aspect.
Hence a more specific request including why you are interested in the thesis or what specific aspects you want to know about is more likely to gain you what you need.
Usually, the author can directly tell you, which chapters or sections are relevant to you.

For example, the most interesting content that is exclusive to my thesis is a brief review of the general topic in the introduction.
The requirement of publishing my thesis was waived because all essential parts were already published.
If somebody wrote me a mail just asking for my thesis, I would ask them what part or aspect they are interested in and then send them the corresponding paper(s).


What to write for subject when contacting potential supervisor? I am trying to contact a potential supervisor about doing a master’s by research. I have already wrote my email by I am unsure about what to write for the subject box of the email. Different people have advised me on different things and I am unsure what do. Does anyone know what is a good subject line?

When I was applying for PhD, I used "prospective graduate student" as a subject line, which was quite sufficient. If your potential supervisor accepts students for different programs, you can specify the degree you are seeking (Master's) in the subject line.

The rest of the information (your background, interests, etc.) should be in the email body.

Good luck :)


Letter of Recommendation from an unofficial college email ID I will be applying for MS (computer science) in US schools. I am from a rural part of India where lecturers (who will be writing letter of recommendations) in my college still don't have official email id (e.g. name@mycollege.edu) and they use commercial services (e.g. gmail or yahoo mail).

What shall I do? Will it harm my application? I think so, because I doubt how it can be evaluated as not-fake.

My other option would be not to consider this LOR at all. I am currently working under a professor in one of the top institutes of India and I can get a recommendation letter from the professor. But I am working under him from past 6 months. How does this weigh against the LOR of my bachelor school lecturer who knows me for 4 years ?

To add more details, I completed my bachelors 3 years ago, so will this LOR be any of help since the lecturer only knows how I was 3 years ago, but not now ?

“Will it harm my application?” — Maybe, maybe not… it depends on the mindset of the persons who will review the application. The likelihood that it impacts negatively your application is probably not very high (there are more people than you think, even in non-rural non-Indian areas, who use commercial email accounts rather than institutional ones).

However, you are right there is some slight risk: there have been recent cases of people using faking email accounts for other researchers, e.g. in order to increase their chances in peer review. Because these cases have been publicized recently, people may be more wary of non-institutional addresses.

But more to the point: what can you do? — Not much. If the format  of the letter is free, ask your letter writers to use official letterhead from their institution… Otherwise, try and see if your letter writers are listed on their institution's public pages, at least, with their email address: that way, the person receiving the application will be able (if he wants to) to check their identity.


My partner posted our code on Github and I am now being investigated for cheating. What to do? Last year I took a class where we had to work with a partner on programming assignments.  Apparently someone's solution from this year has a 50% match with our solution from last year.  I did not share my code with anyone but I would not be surprised if my partner did.  What should I do?

Edit: I just talked to my partner and apparently he posted the code on Github so he could show a professor his previous work.  But then he deleted it later.

Update: We talked to the professor and he says my partner and I will not get in trouble.

I am sometimes involved in panels that investigate unfair means. I am also in the position of checking my own students' code for suspected plagiarism, often by comparing code from a large pool made from the current and past submissions. There are several tools that assist with this, such as Moss and JPlag.  I have experience with both these but there are others, and some that academics have made for themselves for local use.

It is quite possible, therefore, to get a match between a current student's submission and a previous student's submission without the lecturer or university knowing how that occurred. All they can do in this situation is to convene an investigation to determine the facts. Often these investigations are formal affairs, mainly to protect the interest of the students concerned and to ensure that the decision makers are impartial.

This is highly likely to be the position you are in. At the moment they do not know how another student came in possession of your code. If the investigation is organised properly you will be given the opportunity to explain your position, just as you did here. Most investigations should allow you to submit written and verbal statements. You should ensure you do this. I also suggest you seek advice from others who can assist you locally, such as a students union or student association or other student advisor. They will have assisted other students in the same position as you before and help you make the best of the procedure that you have become involved with.

Although it may not be your fault, at the moment the university does not know this. Help them to understand.


PhD courses instructs language in Germany What's the main language used in PhD courses in Germany for most of the fields ? CS, chemistry...
Thanks

In Germany, there usually are no PhD "courses", except for some specialized programs ("Graduiertenkolleg"), which are still in the minority.
Most PhD students conduct research from day 1, under the supervision of a specific advisor. The language of communication will depend on the advisor and the student. Working with international students is not an issue for most advisors.


How can the choice of "where to publish" affect the potential number of citations? I study petroleum engineering; however, I want everybody from different fields to express their opinion based on their personal experience.

Let's assume you have the following options: publishing in a journal that is not open access and has a high impact factor, publishing in a conference, and finally publishing in a journal that is open access and has a low impact factor. The only option that has ever been appealing to me is to publish in a reputable journal, simply because I don't think the other two are challenging enough and also the whole process of modifying your paper based on peer reviews will help improve the quality of your paper. However, I have recently stumbled upon some papers that had me rethink about the whole thing.

It seems to me as if for some reason open access publishing increases the potential number of citations. The straightforward explanation is that many more people will have the chance to see your paper and there is a huge chance that some of them cite your paper at least in their literature review. (I understand that if they don't have access to high quality journals, they might not be currently in the right setting to necessarily publish a good work, but in this context a citation is a citation even if it's by a poor quality paper)

Also, I do have a feeling that depending on the field you're working in, the number of conference publications can hugely exceed the number of journal publications. For example, petroleum engineering is extremely industrialized and  a huge number of fellows in the industry are only willing to publish in conferences. This is simply because publication in a conference is easier, it is fun to travel for free (!) and in general networking is very important to many of them. Also, I keep thinking that there a chance that some of these people, for some reason that I don't know of, have exclusive access to conference papers, but no access to journal papers or maybe they simply don't have the willingness to spend time on reading journal papers because they don't need to! What if my paper gets exposed to this huge number of people if I publish it in a conference, but only to a small number of researchers in the academia if I publish it in a journal.

A prior question would be why you care about the number of citations. There are valid career-related reasons, and I assume that you know that citation-gathering businesses do not always include "self-publication" and conference proceedings. That applies both to the article being cited, and the citing article. So there is a difference between actual citations in the abstract sense, and enumerated citations. That could support the refereed respected journal approach, depending on your motivation. Also, there are numerous open-access respectable peer-reviewed journals, so since you are looking for non-overlapping categories, I assume you specifically mean unrefereed repositories of various kinds, in referring to "open access".

I would be surprised if there is any evidence that open-access results in an increase in citations, because in the subset of people in the world publishing academic papers, I doubt that the factor of having to pay to read an article has a significant effect on whether a researcher can actually read the paper. Via my university, I get to read articles in any arbitrary journal, and request a free copy if they don't subscribe. An opposite expected trend is that an article in a large, open repository may more easily be missed, if say they get a hundred submissions a week, and if authors are unaware of your work, they won't cite it.

In my field (linguistics), conference proceedings were traditionally just a minor notch below peer-reviewed journals in stature, due to there being few journals and a major publication lag, but now conference proceedings are in third place (behind book chapters). But in some sub-areas (computational), conference proceedings are a major publication venue. Correspondingly, CL conference proceedings go through a serious wringer.

So your basic distinction centered around peer-review is correct, it's just that peer-review standards vary considerably for journals and conference proceedings. It may be that more people will have access to your paper if it is in an open repository, but they will also have access to thousands of other papers, and to generate a citation by the subset of the public that writes scientific papers, you would need to do something extra to draw attention to your paper.

I suggest you first scrutinize the notion of "citation", to determine what citation engine(s) you care about, and whether they scoop up citations of un-reviewed works that appear in other un-reviewed works.


Can I get a masters degree if I drop my PhD? I am an undergraduate right now, looking to apply to Grad schools. I am just confused about the kinds of degrees offered by graduate schools. Some state they have a "M.S, M.S/PhD, and PhD" programs. I have read a lot that students who quit their Ph.D in between after realizing that the program is not for them can leave with a masters but is this available for (almost) any PhD program or just the M.S/Ph.D program? Does a university that simply states an offering of a "Ph.D" program also allow students who quit in between to leave with a masters?

My field (economics) in the US generally works the way you're describing - you can quit in the middle of your PhD and leave with your masters.  At my program, once we completed some number of graduate credits (I think it was around 2.5 years worth) we simply filled out an application on the student management portal for a masters, and they awarded it.  It was like five extra minutes of work, so I think all of my classmates did it.  They called it an "incidental masters degree"
That said, PhD programs frown heavily on entering a PhD with the goal of leaving in the middle with a masters degree.  They offer funding to PhD students with the goal of putting quality applicants on the job market, which masters students can't do.  Conversely, students who enroll in a masters program not only aren't funded, they usually pay a lot in tuition.
It does make for a nice consolation prize for the few classmates I have who never finished though, since they at least come out of the program with a masters.


What is the value to a student of a professor offering to supervise their PhD? I am currently getting my M.A.T. in secondary mathematics. As a part of my degree, I take graduate level math courses. I am currently in a PhD level math class, and the instructor of this course has told me that if I want to get a PhD in mathematics he would want to work with me because he believes I have a "future" in his subject area.

My question is, what is the value of his offer? Is his kind of offer easy or hard to come by?

The mathematics department at this school is not renowned, but I respect this professor's work. Is his offer something I should definitely take advantage of, or should I shop around for different universities/offers?

I hope my query isn't too specific. I am feeling quite conflicted and would appreciate any and all input.

The easiest way to get into a Ph.D. program is to have a professor who knows who you are and wants to have you as a student.  In many other questions on this site, people talk about the difficulty of standing out from the crowd amongst the large number of applicants to any decent Ph.D. program.  With this professor, at least, you have stood out, and that's quite significant... if you want to do a Ph.D. with them.

First a sine qua non: don't even consider it if the program doesn't guarantee some degree of funding.  Every respectable university should be offering support for its STEM Ph.D. students through some mix of research and teaching assistantships.  It should be the department and not the professor that guarantees funding (though if the
professor has funding, they may be able to give you more time as a research assistant rather than a TA, if that is what you both want).

Beyond that, key things to ask yourself:

Do you actually want a Ph.D.?  Getting a Ph.D. is a terrible, soul-wrenching process and it renders you unfit for most employment.  If you are truly drawn to research, however, it is the best and only course to take.
Are you OK with not being at a famous institution?  There are only a few famous institutions in any field, and getting into them is a gamble. Often, however, there are a great many solidly respectable institutions that can launch you on a totally reasonable career, especially since it is often possible to "upgrade" institutions through postdocs.
Do you really want to work with this professor?  You don't know what working with this professor will actually be like. One advantage of the high-profile institutions is that if you find things aren't working with your advisor, there are often many opportunities to switch to others.  In a smaller and less renowned department, you will likely have less alternatives should things go wrong.

Ideally, if you answer yes to all of these questions, you should start doing some work together now, so that you can get a sense of whether there's a good working relationship.  If so, embrace it and be grateful that you found a good match.


Is Research Right for me? I am going to start college in a while and one of the programs I've applied for is a Bachelors in Technology followed by Masters in Science Program which is a consolidated program here and can be done in 5 years minimum and according to the statistics around 88% of the students manage to complete it in that time.
However I've always had Money as a major motivator over fame in the research field. I'd very well prefer having a Job at some Multi-National Company which is highly paying over being stuck with a PhD program afterwards. However with all of that said the program has a very high placement rate here with a Median salary comparable to other top non research courses.
I've applied for this course due to my childhood dream of finding something new or making a breakthrough but in Hindsight i don't feel I am well suited for research as I have never been able to stick to solving a problem for a while like I've read all these books and interviews by Top researchers who said they stuck with the problem for weeks and months and had this obsession since their childhood days but when I'm in a similar situation like when solving some questions and practicing my first instict after like some odd minutes of no progress is to look at the solution see how did they do it and then try doing it myself. I feel this will not be a good habit for research based studies.
I forgot to mention that the course is Computer Science based and the Masters programs offered are in Computational Natural Sciences, Computer Science and Engineering and Electronics and Communication Engineering.
I would like suggestions from people who've gone down similar paths or been at similar junctions of life.

You give a number of reasons why you don't want a PhD and one reason why you might want it: A chance of a higher income after graduation. Is there anything else? If not, I would rather look for other ways to earn more money. A PhD is not the sure-fire way to make money. And lacking intrinsic motivation, you will most likely struggle more than others, have a higher chance of dropping out than others, and perhaps need more time to graduate.
That said, your PhD program is starting only in a few years. Preferences and motivations change and that change is hard to predict. Why not enroll in a research-based course in your undergrad studies, and take stock after the BA to reflect back on what you enjoyed about it and what you struggled with.


How does Lecturer in UK compare to other systems? I have never lived in UK, I did my graduate studies in the US. I was a postdoc in Europe, but the situation there seemed grim, I applied for a few positions only, one of them was this junior prof job in Germany (in theory, an assist prof equivalent of US ) though I figured out despite it being an assistant professorship, it is somewhere near the lecturer position of USA and a bit post-doc? So definitely not as an assistant prof equivalent of a US system in practice. Perhaps a research leader junior prof position could work better in that sense. But how does it work in UK? Currently I am in my country of origin, to be fair, the work is good, practically Tenured (what I need to do is very minimal to complete the track), there are some opportunities for research that I need to apply to (I am certain some grants would be easy with my background meaning a PhD abroad, if not the more challenging), but the university / department and students lack research vigor in every way And research is all I want to do to be honest, it is not a top notch school, I simply wasn't able to attend to some interviews while I was living abroad for top tier private unis and now positions are canceled, and the top tier state schools require just too much paperwork which might take years. I am happy with the job in certain ways, but it is not fulfilling for me in research and standing.
Now, I see this great fit in UK, at a top university, I know the professors there, it is so fitting to my research line etc. Though I don't know anything about the system and how much job safety there is. It is for about one year only, but with a chance to extend the contract. Now that I have an actual job to lose, and a pandemic, I feel like I could use some more information on

where the lecturers stand,  what is the usual timeline,  are people
offered tenure track positions afterwards?  how long it takes?  what
it requires?  How much research is involved? (it implies both
coursework and grad students/research opportunity) etc in the ad.

Also, I have never been confident in just asking for a job, so I saw this ad online (I always only apply through listed ads), but I know many people put ads only after they have their strong candidate. Although I know the prof there I don't want to ask, at the same time I feel a bit uneasy applying if they already have a candidate. How does it usually work? Also, not sure whether they would prefer someone living abroad during a pandemic.

"Lecturer" is the main entry-point academic rank in the UK system, and spans quite a wide range of pay grades: someone at the top of the lecturer pay bracket can easily have 10-15 years more experience than someone at the bottom. Promotion is usually to Senior Lecturer, and then to Reader and Professor. Nearly all Professors will have started out as lecturers.
The precise duties of a lecturer will vary between institutions, but typically involve a balance of research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities. One sometimes sees positions advertised as 'teaching-focussed': this means a higher teaching load and limited expectations of research output (and often an assumption that any research you do produce will focus on pedagogy).
Jobs may be advertised as 'fixed-term'/'temporary' or 'permanent'. Permanent jobs are more-or-less what they sound like: positions supported by the university's central funds, which are expected to continue indefinitely (though lecturers can be made redundant if, say, the university decides to close or merge departments in the face of falling enrolments). Often permanent jobs will have some element of probation, with a review 1-5 years after appointment. Each institution has its own procedures around this: in some it is purely an internal administrative process; in others it is more similar to a US tenure review, with external referees and the like. However, it is much less of a hurdle than the US tenure process, and failing to pass probation is rare.
Fixed-term jobs are usually supported by transient funding sources, and often arise because a permanent job-holder is expected to be on leave for a period (e.g. maternity cover), or has 'bought themselves out' of teaching responsibilities for the duration of a major grant. Whereas new permanent hires often get a soft start, with a reduced initial teaching load, fixed-term appointees may find themselves immediately lumbered with the teaching responsibilities of whoever they are replacing. Invariably adverts will make vague claims about a 'possibility of extension', but you should not place much weight on this: there may not be a clear plan for where the funds would come from.


Job sites for applied/interdisciplinary jobs in Mathematics? I was wondering whether there're job sites that post jobs in applied/interdisciplinary mathematics, more specially, say postdocs or higher positions in mathematics and medical imaging, mathematics and computer vision. I'm aware of mostly all the popular job sites, mathjobs, euro math jobs, jobs.ac.uk, nordic math jobs etc etc, but most of the jobs there are of 'pure' nature, with very few for applied/interdisciplinary. I find it a little strange, since it seems (I might be mistaken) that they've more funding in the interdisciplinary areas, which should mean they'd have more available jobs too, but I don't see any!

For my particular case, I'm trying to find postdoctoral position in mathematical imaging problems, which would use significant amount of conformal/quasiconformal mappings, Riemann surfaces, differential geometry etc. I guess looking into individual group's webpage is an option, but that's just too much work, since you've to google them first, then see what groups actually work in your areas, then look at their sites etc. But if there's an webpage containing all the information, that'll be much better!

So, if you know any such website for the above (for Europe and the US), I'd appreciate if you could pass them onto me. Thanks! And sorry for having sounded so shameless about the funding comparison.

I know of:

The SIAM Job board
The NA-Digest list, ostensibly restricted to numerical analysis but in practice lists jobs in a wide range of math-related subjects


Considering prospective grad schools; professor whose research interests me most may be visiting professor elsewhere currently, how to handle this? At a certain grad school I am considering, there is a certain professor who I would be most interested in researching under, in fact if I couldn't have him as my advisor I my interest in this school would become diminished, but I read in his bio that he is a currently a visiting professor at a different university. In this case, should I still express my interest in his research in my statement of purpose? How long do visiting professorships typically last? Could I hope that I could have him as an advisor? I'm unsure how to approach this situation.

There is no point in guessing.  Contact the professor directly.  Express your interest in working with him, and ask if he is planning to be back at the "home" university next year (or whenever you'd be starting), and if he would be looking to take on graduate students.

A likely scenario is that he is visiting the other university while on sabbatical, which would typically last one year or less.  However, there are many other possible scenarios and no way to know the true situation without asking.


How can I cite an entire paragraph from one source minus a line in the middle I have an entire paragraph mostly based off one source, but in the middle of the paragraph I have a sentence that comes from a direct quote and then the rest of the paragraph is from that first source. How can I cite this using MLA-style?

Use three citations, plus a bit of supporting prose: one for the first part of the paragraph, one for the direct quote plus some prose indicating that you've changed sources, and one for the final part of the paragraph plus some prose indicating that you've shifted sources again.

For example:

  According to the consensus of the time, electrons might be blue but they were never green or yellow (Dali 89).  Picasso, however, declared "I have many times seen green, yellow, and even polka-dotted electrons" (Picasso 322).  The obvious retort to this declaration, however, is that Picasso was probably mistaking protons for electrons (Dali 89).

If your paragraph is particularly lengthy, you may need to use more citations, just as you would if the inserted quote did not exist.


How to deal with my thesis chair? I am a 2nd yr Master's student set to graduate this may. My plan is to pursue a PhD afterwards at another institution. In my program, you either have to do a Master's thesis or a 45 min oral summary presentation of what you learned.

I always had the intention of doing a thesis and had a really cool one my first yr. We were collecting data over the summer and everything was going well. All of a sudden, my thesis chair told me she was leaving for another teaching position in a different state. B/c it was not possible to do this without her and no faculty wanted to take over, I dropped the thesis. This occurred the summer before my 2nd yr.

I still wanted to do a thesis, and so I asked a man (who was on my first thesis committee) if I could be his thesis student. He agreed and he had me print articles so I can get started reading over the summer before I started writing my proposal. Summer went by and everything was fine. School started in Aug. (2nd yr) and things were still okay. I had started writing a portion of my draft and had sent it to him for edits. He edited and sent it back. I edited it again and sent it to him before our meeting. He then emailed me, saying he needed to talk to me regarding his plans.

Just as background info, I felt completely dropped and abandoned by my first thesis chair. When I asked my 2nd (and current thesis chair) to take me on, he assured me he wasn't leaving.

Anyways, we meet and he told me he was leaving late Feb. on medical leave and wouldn't be coming back. We decided to continue on with the thesis, but tweak and shorten it in order to be ready to propose this Fall and defend early Jan.

I started to work harder and he would send me edits. We always seemed to get along, and we had a nice flow. However, something in him changed, like snapped. It was like he went from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jeckel. October came and it was complete radio silence which was SO unlike him! He never responded to any of my emails although I emailed him every week in Oct., he didn't edit any of my stuff, he forgot our meetings. He was just so radically different. After not hearing from him over email, I started to wonder if I had said something. I had texted him (he said I could text him any time) b/c I hadn't heard from him and he sent me this snippy, rude text, telling me not to text him this early.

Because he failed to respond to my emails and give me edits, it was about 4-5 weeks until we met again. Because of this gap in time, it is impossible for me to do a thesis with him.

What gets me is that he went from being kind to me to almost borderline rude. He isn't as nice, he's cold, snippy and distant. The 2 of us talked to the department head and it's decided that I will do the summary presentation instead of a thesis (my chair decided that for me not my decision).

The summary presentation is like a reflection. It doesn't involve drafts of edits or anything like a thesis requires. It's really easy. Since he doesn't know any of the rules, I've had to explain this to him.

Basically, my question is, how do I deal with him? I'm thinking of switching advisors although I dont know anyone who could take me on. My thesis chair is still demanding that I do lit reviews although it is pointless. He basically is telling me that if I don't do what he says (the lit reviews and other things that is ONLY necessary for a thesis and NOT the summary presentation), he won't sign off on it. I NEED this to graduate.

My question is, what do I do?! I'm usually very calm but lately I've been stressed and anxious, I'm breaking out and haven't taken care of myself in a while. I am perpetually stressed and fear hearing from him. I just want OUT. He's toxic and mean. It's like I'm being held hostage. Please help me.

Also, if people are wondering, I have done NOTHING to him but be nice, obliging, etc. I always tell him if I can't make a meeting and am polite to him. People are telling me it's stuff in his personal life, but I just want him to stop treating me like trash.

The thing that stands out here is that the new advisor is going on medical leave and won't be back. This sounds serious. Maybe he is facing his impending death. This would make his work very unpredictable.

It sounds like the department head was trying to make the best possible decision for you, though probably shouldn't have done so unilaterally. But starting over again will probably just delay your completion, which I assume you don't want.

You've been caught in two bad situations which is very unfortunate. Work with the head to find a good way to reach completion and also get good recommendation letters to support your future.

At least ask if the head can find a way to give some stipend to your first advisor to permit her to continue to work with you. Even if that isn't possible it may get the department head to start thinking of better solutions. It is a situation that is uncomfortable for the head as well.


Can I put a tuition fee remission on my CV under scholarships? My scholarship entails an annual stipend for 3.5 years and a fee remission (its quite significant because the fee is 39,000$ per semester) for 4 years. Should I include the fee remission on my CV as well? If so, should I couple them or state them separately? Citizens receive them as two different scholarships but internationals receive them both under one name. In addition, would you put the total amount or amount/year?

Ph.D. studies are fully funded in many countries such as the US and Canada. If you receievd a merit-based scholarship/fellowship then you can certainly put it under the "honors/awards" section of your CV. However, if this scholarship was not awarded on a competitive or merit-based basis, and it was merely the standard package received by most Ph.D. students, it probably does not warrant a line in the CV.

(This answer assumes you are talking about Ph.D. studies based on the number of years mentioned in the question)


How much advanced notice is expected for faculty interviews? I have a faculty interview for a Canadian university coming up some time in the next week. For this interview I have to prepare 2 lectures.

I still havent received the date, nor the lecture topics. So I havent even booked time off work yet.

How much advanced warning is expected for this sort of thing? I feel that I would need ample time to prepare and with working full time elsewhere, it might be right. Or maybe Im just overreacting and stressing out.

It's totally reasonable for you to want to plan your schedule at least a week ahead.

Contact them and ask if they have the date yet, or if not, when they expect to have it.


What can be listed as "invited talks" on your CV? I've come to learn (the hard way) that grant referees value significantly the number of invited talks given by an applicant. I'm talking about funding instruments such as the ERC Starting Grant, where the profile of the PI is one of the main criteria to evaluate.

For junior academics who are not "superstars" it's difficult to get invited to give invited talks at conferences. I know have the impression that, at least in my field, most junior academics who deliver invited talks at conferences are doing so either on behalf of or referred by their supervisor/advisor. As a matter of fact, my only invited talk at a conference happened this way, and having recently organized a workshop I've seen this play out in practice.

However, I do get "invited" quite often to give seminars at institutions where I am visiting a collaborator. These seminars can be on the topic of the collaboration or something else: I usually (so far always) have freedom to choose.

I was wondering two things. 1) Would I be misleading people by listing these "invited seminars" as "invited talks" on my CV? 2) Are these "invited seminars" generally valued by the community, especially by those senior academics who are likely to review my next funding application?

Your first question is addressed in the answers to this question mentioned in the comments: Difference between contributed and invited talk

Namely, it is standard to list seminar talks under the heading of "Invited talks", so you should do this.  Some people separate conference talks vs colloquium talks vs seminar talks under appropriate subheadings.  I don't know whether it's standard in your field for junior people to do this, but you could try asking colleagues.  I am in pure math, and I don't, though at some point I started margin symbols to highlight conference talks.

For your second question, it depends upon the reviewer, but in my mind there is some value in seeing a bunch of seminar talks.  It means if we fund you, you'll be active in telling people about the research we've funded, so that's a positive.  It's of course not a primary deciding factor, but grants are competitive so even small positives can make a difference, so it is certainly worth listing your seminar talks on your CV  (assuming you're talking about applications where you send a standard CV, rather than a mini-CV with page/content limits).


Scientific Topic on Wikipedia originated from a Scientific Article with Low Citations As fas as I see it, one way to known if certain scientific article is important or relevant, is to see how much cited it is .. For example, let's take Karl Schwarzschild

He's known better known for an article called:

  Uber das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einstein'schen
  Theorie

He published this article in 1916 and from this paper, concepts like Schwarzschild Black Hole, Schwarzschild Metric, Schwarzschild Radius, Schwarzschild Coordinates were originated

So, all of these topics are in wikipedia and one should expect this article to be highly cited, and it is, according to google scholar it has 1331 citations, so it is an important or relevant paper

Schwarzschild publised other topics, like this article:

  On the deviations from the law of reciprocity for bromide of silver gelatine

In this article originated the concept of Schwarzschild's Law, one might think that that scientific concept is not as important as a Schwarzschild Black Hole, so, if you see how much cited it is, according to google scholar, it only has 62 citations

From here, we can do a conjecture, the more cited a research paper it is, the more relevant or important the scientific work it is, and if a Scientific Work is important, it is going to be possible to find that topic on places like wikipedia.

My problem comes with certain topics that sometimes I find, for example this one: Fubini–Study Metric. Since it has its own article on Wikipedia, one should expect that the paper where Eduard Study introduce this concept to be highly cited, but when you see where it was originated:

  Kürzeste Wege im komplexen Gebiet

published in 1905, you only find that according to google scholar, it only has 14 citations ...
For a topic with a wikipedia article almost as big as the one of Schwarzschild Radius, this doesn't make any sense to me ... What's going on? Google Scholar is not giving me the corerct number of citations? Does it really has only those citations?, Does the concept was not originated on that article (Wikipedia says it was)?

Wikipedia is a volunteer encyclopedia. People write whatever they want to write about. Someone found Fubini–Study metric interesting enough to write a big article on it (you can look through the article's history to see who they are). This doesn't mean the subject is very notable, only that it meets Wikipedia's so-called "general notability guideline". Therefore there's no reason to expect that the scientific articles that initiated the Fubini-Study metric to have a lot of citations.

As an illustrative comparison: the relatively obscure Bowling Green State University has a much more comprehensive article than the more highly ranked, bigger, and richer University of Tokyo. This doesn't mean that Bowling Green State University is somehow more notable than the University of Tokyo; more likely it means that among Wikipedia editors there are more BGSU alumni than UTokyo alumni - which shouldn't be surprising, since these Wikipedia articles are written in English. Compare the same articles in Japanese.


Being an academic far from the action I'm currently halfway through a PhD in computer science at a good school in the US. After I graduate, I want to stay in academia. I also want to return home to Australia to be closer to my family.

However, I worry that I will struggle to do good research when I am thousands of miles from where the action is happening. It's hard to collaborate when you can't meet in person and are in a vastly different time zone. It's also hard to keep up with recent developments from afar. I find that collaboration and keeping up with developments are essential to doing good research. Computer science is a rapidly-moving field, so being behind can make your results much less interesting.

How do academics in Australia, New Zealand, and other "remote" places deal with this?

I have several Australian colleagues, and the challenges are, in fact, real.  The key challenges I have heard them speak of are:

Time zones isolate Australia/New Zealand from the United States and Europe, though not from India and Asia.
Travel is very long and costly.  Most particularly, it is often difficult to get people from elsewhere to attend conferences in Australia/New Zealand.

The strategies that I have seen employed are:

Some universities in Australia and New Zealand apparently provide significant amounts of travel funds to make it easier for their scholars to travel and to bring others for sabbaticals to Australia.
Increased emphasis on collaboration with Asian colleagues.  My anecdotal information seems to point particularly toward India, where there are fewer language, cultural, and legal barriers, particularly for computer science.


Reviewers’ comments are not sufficient to reject my paper, what to do? Recently I received a rejection letter from a journal editor (including some comments). However, when I checked the reviewers comments (from two reviewers), I found that their comments do not seem to be sufficient to reject the paper. Given these comments, I would have expected the decision to be "minor revisions." Specifically, some of the comments are very simple like: I mentioned table 1 in text, while I used table 5.1 in table headings. I got total of ten comments, two of them are just related to formatting and acronym, two are repeated from both reviewers, ending up with only six significant comments. What can I do in this case?
Here are two related questions I found on this site:

Do editors allow authors to respond to reviewers when a paper has been essentailly rejected?
How to react to unfair reviewer comments?

You make the suggested changes, assuming you agree with them, and submit to another slightly less prestigious journal.
Most likely, the editors didn't think your paper was interesting enough for their journal, and the reviewers weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about the paper to convince them otherwise.
At the top journals, for a paper to be accepted, it's not enough for reviewers to recommend acceptance; if the reviewers don't explain in convincing and gushing detail about why the paper is the best thing since sliced bread, it's not likely to be accepted.  (Of course there are the few exceptional cases where it's obvious that the paper is the best thing since sliced bread and there is no need to gush about it.)


How to prepare for the French language exam as part of PhD program? I am about to take the French language exam as part of the requirements for the PhD program at my university. The exam will consist of having to translate (with the help of a dictionary) a subset of a mathematics paper written in French. As an Indian international student in the US, I speak a number of languages, but I've grown up knowing them (i.e. never went through the process of having to learn it) and none of them (except perhaps English) give me any insight into the French language, which makes me nervous!

I would appreciate any tips as to how one might prepare for this exam, and materials that might be handy. For example:

  Did you have to take a language exam? How did you prepare for it?
  Has knowing said language helped you out in your mathematical career?
  Do there exist collections of mathematics papers in French that one can practice on?

Thanks you in advance for your answers!

Yes. I took both German and French. I was already fairly comfortable with French from having studied it in high school and in university, so I'll write about German instead. I prepared for my German language exam by going on to the GDZ server (a program to retroactively digitise documents, including a lot of classical mathematics papers) and downloading some papers in mathematical analysis (my field, sort of) from around the 1950s to 60s (when still a lot of the papers were published in German). I then went to the library and borrowed the copy of Hyman's German-English Mathematics Dictionary (for the nouns) and a copy of a normal German-English dictionary (for the verbs) and sat myself down and started translating word by word. After about a month I translated about 30 pages or so of math papers (and at the same time learned about uniform spaces), and proceeded to take my exam.
Not much. I have absolutely no conversational German, and only very rarely do I have to look something up in German that I cannot find a write-up in another language. (So far twice only, one a slightly obscure result in algebraic lattices that the only reference I could find is to a paper in the 30s.) (French on the other hand has been useful; mostly because the abovementioned "write-up in another language" often turned out to be in French.) Given how much I've found French to be useful for me, I'm sure that if I had actually properly learned the language, German would be just about as useful. Conversely, if you don't really learn the foreign language, you will probably be able to get by through other means in this day and age.
The canonical place to find French papers to read is NUMDAM. Of course, for practice, you can also check out Bourbaki from the library; it may be slightly less intimidating to start working first on the language by reading something whose mathematics at least you are familiar with.


Listing a low-level expository work on your CV I'm a PhD student. Just before starting my PhD I wrote up an expository paper about the basics my domain of study, in a peer-reviewed journal for graduate students, with almost no new results (the only new result is from my master's degree thesis, which is not published anywhere, and it's not groundbreaking by any means). It recently got accepted and published.

Should I list such a paper in my CV? If so, where should I put it: in the "Publications" sections (hoping that the name of the journal makes clear what kind of paper this is), or somewhere else?

If it makes any difference, this is my first and only "publication" so far (I'm in pure math, I have preprints but the review process is insanely long). On the one hand I feel like I should list it because I think I should list everything on my CV and omitting something is akin to lying by omission; but at the same time I don't want to make it seem like I'm "padding" my CV.

At this stage of your academic career, I would go ahead and include the article on your CV.  You are a student, and publication in a student journal is a meaningful accomplishment, even if publication in a research journal would be a significantly greater one.  I see CVs from students with masters degrees in applied math that sometimes have these kinds of things listed, and I don't think anyone has a problem with their appearance.  And you can always get feedback from the faculty in your current program, as to whether they would like to see something like that on a student's CV.

If you think the name of the journal will make its nature clear to anyone viewing your CV, then that will probably be fine; however, if you have any doubts (and you definitely do not want to give anyone the impression that you are attempting to be misleading on your CV), you may want to include a bracketed note "[student journal]" just to be clear.

Later, you may want to drop this item from your CV.  When you have a doctorate and have published multiple articles in research-level journals, people may wonder why you have included something so minor among your accomplishments.  But you are not to that stage yet, so including it at present is probably fine.


What is the standard scientific conference poster size and quality? What is an ideal poster size for scientific conference?
Should it be printed on paper or flex or photo paper?

Conferences should tell you what poster size you should use - the ideal poster size is 'one that will fit on the poster area assigned to you by the conference, without being too small'.

Normal paper is a bit lightweight for travel, most of my conference posters have been printed on thicker paper (which may have been photo paper; generally, I've just gone to the campus printing facility and asked them to print the poster, with no input from me as to what material the poster should be printed on). I've seen a few posters printed on flex, and while it's something of an unusual choice in my field, I can see the benefits in storage and transportation.


labmate stealing ideas I am a new postdoc at a lab and really worried/confused/upset.
As I am new to experimental work (I have a computational background) the principal investigator (PI) has grouped me into a weekly meeting with 2 PhD students (the lab, in the US, is large with over 20 members in total). One of the PhD students is a "star student". A star student without so far any ideas which worked out - so stealing my ideas seems to be currently her go to.
When I entered the lab the PI suggested I join these weekly meetings, because me and the 2 PhD students would be interested in similar topics. I, naively, presented the ideas I am interested in just to see that the star PhD student has taken them, implemented them (as she already has experimental experience she can do that quickly), presented them, while also presenting herself as benevolent (mentioning during her talk my name, saying that I must be surely interested in these ideas as well - um yeah, given that it these were my ideas..). She basically immediately abandoned her own ideas after she realized that the PI likes mine and is just copying 1:1 my ideas.
Worse than that, the prof, who really cares about the star student doing well and about her being happy with him, told her then how great it would be if "her" idea would work out, and then added an extension to her idea which was also mine (which he knows).
What do I do? I am new and can't get into a conflict, especially since this PhD student is the PI's favorite and well established. Ideally I would like to avoid these weekly meetings altogether, because if I go I naturally also have to share what I work on, which does not seem too good given that the star student does not mind stealing ideas and presenting them as their own. But I worry that leaving the meetings would already cause a conflict etc.
Also meetings should be a place where I can voice my ideas, safely, in particular when the PI is present, but given that he is helping to feed her my ideas I really don't know what to do. It sucks.

If your ideas were fleshed out experimental plans that someone else took and used, that's not cool. You should complain.
If your ideas were a bunch of "wouldn't it be great to study this topic" thoughts, that's just not enough to stake a claim. If the PhD student is acknowledging that you're also in that area I wouldn't complain. You should ask her for help designing and executing an experimental plan. The best outcome is that she teaches you some new stuff and you both end up coauthoring something solid.


Is it possible to earn a PhD in mathematics with emphasis in teaching? I am currently a final year undergraduate, majoring in Pure Mathematics. My aim is to become a Maths lecturer in a university. With this in mind, I need to apply Phd in mathematics in the coming year. However, I'm not the person who likes to do research (not to the extend of hate, but I would not dwell myself for the whole day just to do research) while Phd is mainly research-based.

Question: Is there any university which offers Phd in mathematics with emphasis in teaching? Also, what are the alternatives to become a lecturer in university besides applying Phd in mathematics?

UPDATE: Anonymous Mathematicians mentions 'Doctor of Arts' (DA) in his answer below. Here is the list of graduates from DA program offered by Idaho State University. Don't the data give a sense of difficulties, in such a way that it is difficult to enroll in the DA program? Also, I see most graduates end up working at university.

The "doctor of arts" degree was created in the 1960's to solve this problem.  It's like a PhD, but it doesn't require original research for the dissertation.  The goal is to prepare students for teaching careers that do not involve research.

Several universities in the U.S. offer DA degrees in mathematics, but they have never become popular.  Many people aren't even aware that such a degree exists, and those who know about it generally consider it inferior to a PhD.  Even institutions that do not expect their faculty to conduct any research at all often prefer to hire candidates who have some research experience in the past, in which case they would prefer a PhD to a DA.  (And many institutions require at least a little research to get tenure.)

For most people, getting a DA would be a bad idea: the time and effort required are comparable to a PhD, with worse career prospects.  However, there are some narrow circumstances in which it could make sense.  For example, some institutions (particularly high schools and some community colleges) don't require a doctorate at all but pay a higher salary to faculty with a terminal degree.  In that case, a DA might work just as well as a PhD.


Revison due date "by"? I have a question regarding the deadline for submitting a revised paper. Does "due date by" mean the day before or that very day?
I know it's better to not put myself in such situation in the first place, but for the worst case scenario, has anyone ever experienced a situation in which submitting the paper on the due date was unsuccessful? And the submission system has already closed on the due date?
I should add thet in the email sent by the editior, there was no specification of time, time zone or anything else. Just A simple "due date by"

In my experience with academics, many of us will do things by the absolutely last moment. No person that knows what they are doing would set a deadline of "by January 11th" and expect everything to be done at January 11th 00:01.
When it comes to "deadlines" for submitting revised versions of journal articles (non special issue) are there predominately to avoid the case where authors just always prioritize something else and never get it done. The editorial systems I have worked with from the editor perspective would just auto-fill those in a few months time. But there is no real point for the editor to enforce those - it means that the work they've put in the refereeing process is for naught.


How to inform the editorial office that a special discount has been received? I just submitted an article in a special issue. This article is based on a talk given in a conference, and we received a discount. So after I submitted the article, the website told me to contact the editorial office about the discount. How shall I write the letter? It is the first time for me to do this kind of thing, please suggest some sample letters.

I also want to point it out that in the website of the special issue, it is clearly stated that all papers in the issue will be published free of charge. Does this mean that it is not necessary to contact the editorial office? If so, why is it that after the submission, I still got the suggestion to contact the office?

Thank you!

From the details given in the question it's a bit hard to tell what exactly happened. Still, my read is that the journal is accepting papers for both the special issue and regular issues. You're asked to contact the editorial office to identify your submission as part of the special issue, since otherwise they wouldn't know how to tell one from another. So you write something similar to what you wrote in the question: I'm submitting this article that's part of this special issue, and I'm told there's a discount applicable / free.

On a side note, it's unusual to me that you're asked about payment upon submission, since usually payment only happens upon acceptance (and then only for open access articles). You might want to check if the journal is a genuine one.


Potential ethical concerns on advisor's advice on publication venues I can't be sure, but my instinct tells me that I am about to step in a minefield. I want to seek your advice on how to handle the situation. Here is the brief story:

The background: my PhD thesis is almost ready for submission and I am now working on turning it into several publishable papers. I have identified a few potentially suitable outlets, with one of them a special issue in a prestigious journal in our field edited by my advisor's ex-student (who he has been close with and has influences on). One of the essays in my thesis fits perfectly the scope of the special issue that has a deadline 3 weeks. I want to revise my essay to fit the requirements and submit to the special issue, but my advisor has been trying to stop me using three reasons: (1). It takes a long time to write a paper for a top journal and I wouldn't be able to make it; (2). The journal usually publishes highly technical papers and my multidisciplinary mix-method paper does not at all fit methodologically (actually, the special issue calls openly for these types of papers); and (3). If I rush to submit my paper, it'd certainly be rejected and if I then revise and re-submit it to other less prestigious journals, I'd likely run into the same reviewers and be seen very badly in this community. When I told him that I felt comfortable meeting the submission deadline, that I understood the possibility of getting rejected and would take it as a learning experiences, and quoted the section of the "call for paper" that shows my method actually fits the scope, he seemed to lose his temper, became quite upset, and sent me a message saying something like "it doesn't work this way" and another journal (similar level of prestige, but he does not publish there often, and it is edited by other scholars) would be a better fit. His arguments obviously are not convincing to me.

More background: I sent him this essay 6 months ago and he seemed to start working towards this direction since then. Actually, the idea of that special issue might be from him (he as a highly influential academic in this field organized a workshop soon after with many people from different disciplines coming to talk about this topic, and he mentioned back then that he'd write a few papers based on the workshop, probably planning to publish in this special issue). And I also asked for his advice on selecting journals for the other four papers from my thesis, he pointed me to those lower-ranked journals which I think is not a fair evaluation of my work (I have received very positive feedback on my thesis from other academics in our field), neither a good-willed gesture an advisor would show to his students. So I now have the strange feeling that he might be trying to slow down my progress as a young and promising scholar in the same are. He is seen as a world renowned so-called "guru" in this field. I am also concerned that he might have already used my ideas (interesting and new) in the essay that I sent him 6 months ago to write his papers and might have already submitted them to the same special issue.

My question: what should I do now? I feel it is a right thing to do to submit to the special issue. But I am afraid that might expose him if he'd done something unethical (he is about to retire and it is certainly not the most graceful way to go). I am also afraid that he might sabotage my job search for tenure-track positions as he will be one of the two key references for me. However, I also feel strongly about standing up for what I believe is right, and not to tolerate unethical behaviors around me. I think tolerating such exploitation (if it actually exists) would only reinforce such behaviors and empower these human sharks.

Please share your thoughts and offer your advice. Thank you in advance.

In essence, you're peddling in conspiracy theories: You're claiming some dark motive in your adviser's response for which you have no real proof. You also claim that he might sabotage you, without actually having any concrete evidence nor do you show any reason why he might do so. Moreover, your adviser actually gave you three quite sensible reasons why he thinks that your current plan isn't good that you dismiss out of hand.

Here's the thing about life: If (i) someone says something that actually makes sense, then (ii) that's usually what is actually the case. In your case, I very much believe every reason your adviser gives you: It genuinely is hard to write a paper in 3 weeks; I'm going to claim that it's impossible. If he says that the journal generally published a different kind of paper, that's something that can be checked by why not just believe an experienced researcher and author? And finally, if the community is small, you do risk running into the same reviewers and your adviser is correct that there is a stigma attached to having reviewed someone's half-finished manuscript. Nearly every other statement by your adviser in your question also seems totally reasonable to me.

So I see no good reason to believe any of your conspiracy theories. I think you fundamentally need to adjust your assumptions about people indeed meaning A when they are saying A.


What do you suggest to keep track of new published papers? I already know of the app Researcher, but lately I found it is quite buggy and was wondering what people do to keep updated. Do you just join mailing list from selected journals or search daily for some keywords? Or is there something else I could use?

Just follow all the people in your subfield on twitter. At this point that's easier than google or pubmed alerts, plus you can see when they're hiring too.
That + conferences (if conferences ever come back) is how I stay up to date.


Determining the co-presenters of a conference presentation when the work is already published I am the lead author of an article publication, and there are 3 co-authors for this publication.

I will submit a proposal to a major conference to present the findings of this published work, and I will be the only one who will do the presentation.

So, I wonder if I should indicate only my name for the submission, or should I also include the co-author's name also as the co-presenter although they will literally no present anything.

I know it is not nice to exclude them since they contributed to the study, and I will probably include their names. However, I want to know what is common practice for this.

Common practice is to include all the authors of the publication/research that the presentation is based on, regardless of which authors attend the conference.  When in doubt, always include all authors.

If you're the only one attending the conference, list yourself as lead/contact author.  That's the only difference.


How to tell supervisor that you first want to do something else before accepting his offer? My supervisor (in a big German company) has offered me a master's thesis and a PhD position in his company.
Before I would like to start the PhD there, I would like to do some other internships to get more experience in different fields and write my master's thesis somewhere else. It's not that I do not like the topics in the company, but I want to find out what it's like to work in different companies and fields. How can I tell him about this without giving him the feeling that I do not like the work and would like to come back probably?

Understand the specifics first: To make an informed decision, you clearly need to understand the specifics of the position you've been offered: Can the start of work be deferred? If yes, how long? Does the company have such openings frequently or is it an unique opportunity? I suggest to ask these questions to your potential supervisor first, before making an announcement  that you might later regret.

Honest communication: Tell him exactly what motivates you to defer your potential start of work. There is a non-zero risk that he will still be disappointed, but this risk cannot be avoided, no matter how good your communication skills are. Also, be prepared to negotiate the date when you're ready to start work in his company.


Minimal reference content I'm currently preparing a paper for a conference and I'm struggling a bit to stay within the page limit imposed by the Latex layout of this conference. I'm trying to make some extra space for my content without having to use any Latex related tricks (like reducing margin sizes, font sizes, etc...) as this would probably just annoy the reviewers.

Instead, I'm trying to reduce the size of the references by removing unnecessary contents. However, the question is: What is actually unnecessary?

I consider the following to be essential:

Name(s) of the author(s)
Title of publication
Date of publication
Journal or conference of the publication
Page number if the publication was published in a book or proceedings volumes

But what about additional information like DOIs, keywords, abstracts, etc...? Could I safely remove those items to save space?

Thank you very much for your input.

What information is mandatory depends on the applied reference style, e.g. APA6 oder Chicago Style. The reference style even sets the number of authors listed maximum in the reference. Most of the times, the journal/conference sets the reference style you have to apply.

Usually, the mandatory information for journal/conference papers includes:

Author(s) name(s)
Title
Year
Journal/Conference name
Page number
DOI

The only real option to shorten anything is to use the abbreviations of journals/conferences. But the applied reference style might even prevent this trick.


What is "arrêté de nomination" in ATER application for the French universities? I'm applying for a French university for an ATER (temporary research + teaching) position, and they're asking for a document called "arrêté de nomination". I emailed the HR but no reply yet. If you're familiar with the French education system, could you please let me know what that is?
P.S. I've applied to other ATER positions recently, but have never been asked for this document before!
Thanks in advance!

From my understanding, this document should only be asked for persons who have already a permanent goverment employee position in France. For applications for ATER positions, this would for instance be the case for an academic that would have succeeded at the agrégation, which is one of the recruitment level for high school teachers. A number of persons in academia in France start by getting the agrégation or a lower-level CAPES guarenteed high school employment before starting their PhD. They could then apply for an ATER temporary position, but the administration will need to be told about it beforehand.
This document mentions that it is only required in such situations (I - POUR LES FONCTIONNAIRES DE CATEGORIE A which means for A-level public servants.)
If you are not familiar with the French system, it is quite likely that you do not need this document.


Email address etiquette - Which address should I use to contact professors? I am currently a master's student outside the U.S., and I plan to contact professors in U.S. universities for PhD applications. I have a bunch of email addresses available, and I don't know which one is the most appropriate for communication.

My main objective is to make sure my email doesn't get lost in the spam folder, and a decent first impression would not hurt.

My options:

(1) surname@university.edu.xx: Email given from the current institution where I attend.

(2) surname@alumni.university.edu.xx: Alumni email from the university where I got my undergrad degree.

(3) f.surname@university.edu: Email from a well known U.S. university where I spent a year as an exchange student.

(4) firstname.surname@gmail.com : Private email address

My question is, do you think the possibility of getting a response depends on the email domain? What email domain should I use?

A friend of mine who ended up at a top-5 grad program suggested me to use (3), saying that it could increase my chances of getting a response. However I am cautious that it may look pretentious or delusional, considering I had been there some time ago.

Am I overthinking this?

Personal email is OK, as long as it doesn't look too unserious (mickeymouse666@gmail.com is bad). Gmail looks more professional than other providers, but not by much.
Avoid email addresses that will expire soon. Unfortunately, many university addresses are like that. An expired address means you won't get late followup answers (and trust me, there are emails threads in research that span decades).
Avoid anything with alumni in it. Many people have a delete reflex when they see the word "alumnus", as it mostly appears in the context of panhandling by alumni orgs.
There is nothing pretentious about .edu addresses.


Good data entry and management systems I am a PhD student and am thinking ahead to when I start up a psychology lab---what are some of the best data entry and management systems?  To avoid the "it depends" answer, below I list what I'm looking for.  If you must say "it depends", it would be helpful to know what it depends on (i.e., what the good options are for different needs).  I've done some work with data management systems in SPSS and Excel, and have not been impressed.

Here's what I'd use it for:

Entry of ~100 variables for every one of ~100 measures and ~10,000 cases.  In other words, the entire (merged) data matrix could be about 100 X 100 X 10,000 cells (10,000 rows and 10,000 columns).
Data involve human subjects and are mostly from questionnaires

Here are some things I'd like it to be able to do:

Data entry can be restricted to specified, plausible values for each variable (string, number, integer, value from 0-2, etc.) in order to minimize data entry errors
Double data entry checking (users enter the same data twice and the system flags discrepancies to minimize data entry errors)
Data from different measures are entered in separate forms, but data can be easily merged by one or more matching columns (full outer join)
Data can be easily imported into R (ideally in base R with a .csv or .txt file)
Efficient (time & effort) to open and use
User friendly (undergrad RAs would be using it)
Can interface to import data from other sources so that not all data are entered manually (iPad-entered data, website-entered data, physiological data, .csv files, tab-delimited files, etc.)
Data can have appropriate safeguards because they involve human subjects (e.g., password protection, encryption, others?)

Not necessary, but ideally it would be:

Low (or no cost) and a one-time license that can be installed on an entire lab's worth of computers
Platform independent (can be run on Mac & PC)

It really depends, but more description would be helpful. For instance, if you're getting an NIH grant running a drug trial, then the system will be entirely different as if you're on another grant checking people's quality of life using questionnaires. A data set with 10,000 rows and 10,000 columns is definitely not considered as a big data set in today's data analysts' point of view. Of course, what exactly goes into the cell matters as well: coded responses like 1=male and 0=female versus thousands of genomic data inside one cell will mean a huge difference.

Assuming you're working on just collecting data in the level of questionnaires or clinical observation, I feel that general commercial software you mentioned (SPSS and MS products) should work.

  Data entry can be restricted to specified, plausible values for each
  variable (string, number, integer, value from 0-2, etc.) in order to
  minimize data entry errors.

Excel and SPSS are the wrong tools for that purpose but their related products like Access and SPSS Data Collection Data Entry do that. For freeware, CDC's EpiInfo can also do that.

  Double data entry checking (users enter the same data twice and the
  system flags discrepancies to minimize data entry errors).

The SPSS program and EpiInfo mentioned above do that. Even the SPSS base program can also do that. In fact, most statistical software have some of this capability. e.g. Stata compared file command (cf) and SAS command COMPARE, just to name a few.

  Data from different measures are entered in separate forms, but data
  can be easily merged by one or more matching columns

To me, this is more of a management and planning rather than system. As long as there is a well developed ID assignment scheme, most software can pull up and merge data pretty efficiently. I agree that SQL would be nice, and most software have some of SQL incorporated into it as well: Access, SAS PROC SQL, Stata odbc, R, etc.

I'd consider a good documentation trumps all on any day. If there is a clear linkage between data sets or tables, even Excel's VLOOKUP is an okay tool.

  Data can be easily imported into R

Packages like foreign, sas7bdat, and xlsReadWrite are readily available.

  Efficient to open and use

Efficient on what? Time or effort? Some of these software suggested have a steeper learning curve but eventually can be highly efficient (R, SAS) while some are more icon-based point-and-click (SPSS, Access) that are easier to pick up but eventually will become a bit slower if the users do not advance into the script-based interface (aka running SPSS and Access using scripts.)

  User friendly (undergrad RAs would be using it)

That depends on what your school is teaching the undergrads. But no matter what they know or what they claim they know, I still train everyone.

  Can interface to import data from other sources (iPad-entered data, website-entered data, physiological data, etc.)

For iPad you'd need to talk to the programmer (if you have one) to make sure the exported data can be read. For website-entered data (I'm assuming you mean something like Survey Monkey,) SPSS and Excel are still dominating. But both can be easily read by most statistical software. Physiological data are device specific, you may get comma separated, tab delimited, or even proprietary encoded data, you'll need to check with the device makers.

  Low (or no cost) and a one-time license that can be installed on an
  entire lab's worth of computers

I'd check if your institute has any site license agreement with the major software retailers and start from there. If no license agreement, then expand your search to educational discount agreement. A statistical software that is about US$2,000 can be bought at less than $200 if your institute has agreement with the retailer.

I like R (as a free stat software) but am other totally ignorant when it comes to free database or research management platform, can't help here.

  Platform independent (can be run on Mac & PC)

Then you probably want to avoid SAS unless you are willing to install Windows parallel onto your Mac. Most others mentioned in this answer can run fine on these operation systems (like Stata) or have separated versions for each system (like MS Office.)

If you're not sure what is a "good system," I'd suggest looking for general guidelines from data repository organizations. They often have guidelines like this one which delineate what are good enough data sets to be hosted by them.

Books on "data cleaning," "data management," and "work flow management" may also help you refine the system. The tools are important, but the rules of using them are a lot more crucial for a less frustrating data management experience.

And finally just a disclaimer, I don't have financial affiliation with any product that I mentioned in this answer.


Publishing in one vs. many journals I have started publishing papers this year - 3 so far, of which 2 are in an international journal, the 3rd in a local journal.

My question is, is there any particular disadvantage with publishing the majority of papers in one or a very limited array of journals? Or is it a case that it makes no difference either way?

I am sure opinions and traditions vary concerning this question. For me the quality of the journal (say, impact factor) is the most important, you try to get published in good journals. In some cases, the field may be so narrow that only one or a very few journals may be good. In such cases the selection may result in a single journal.

To publish in a variety of journals seems to be a means by itself for many but I think the reasons still vary. There may be advantages in getting published in many journals to show that the research has wider applications and is accepted more generally. It may be a way to avoid the suspicion that you have a back way into a single journal (not that that would be true). In some cases, you may select different journals because you know your ideas are not favoured by someone in a specific journal's editorial board (strategic reason).

So reasons for spreading the publications may vary quite substantially. The main point for me is, however, still that primarily the quality of the journal will decide. I would not chose a different journal just to get a new journal mentioned in my list of publications.


What should advisors do if one of their PhD students has to withdraw? Unfortunately, there are circumstances when not everything goes right in a student's PhD career, or there can be personal circumstances that require doctoral candidates to withdraw from a PhD program before they have completed the requirements.

However, what is not clear to me is how to handle this situation from the advisor's perspective. What should an advisor do to:

Help the candidate, should she wish to apply elsewhere?
Discuss the situation with the group, to maintain morale?
Handle the "transition" process (during which the student is still officially on the payroll)?

Without additional details, it will be impossible to provide very detailed answers so from a general point, each case has its own solutions. The first question I would ask is, what is my part in this and how can I best help out (best may be = nothing). In general I would try to help out as much as I can unless the problem lies in the realm of a conflict or personal problems. Then there is not much you can do except suggest professional help. If the candidate is a good student then I would certainly support with any letter of recommendation I could. Since you mention morale issues in the group, it suggests some form of non-trivial problem. In some cases too much help makes people fall into a false sense of security so to be shaken can be useful as long as the reasons are very clear.

So without trying to read too much into what is between the lines, I think the degree of help depends on to what extent help can or should be given (seen from an objective point).

Probably not the most satisfactory answer but being responsible for the research education at my dept., I have seen how difficult these matters can be. In our case, I would also be a resource to help out, if nothing else just to discuss the matter. (This does not mean I run a research group completely without problems myself!)