How should one deal with fellow students constantly asking for notes? I'm an undergraduate student in the Netherlands, and as the title states, I'm encountering an annoying situation. How should one deal with the situation of constantly being asked for the notes of a lecture, summaries of book chapters, flash cards, etc by other, fellow-students?

I do not mind to share my stuff with my study-group, because everyone is working hard in the group, and we all benefit from each other, however what I do mind, is strangers (from my course) approaching me for my work; it even went as far as people offering me money for summaries, and other work of mine.
Also, I don't mind when someone approaches me asking for an explanation to something; I like to explain material to other people; since I benefit from that as well. I, and others, however feel that it would be unfair to give away the work, on which we worked on very hard, to someone who didn't do anything.

I know it would be easy to just give in, and thus having dealt with the problem. I just fear that:

The students will come back for more
They will give me the guilt if they can't study with my notes and don't receive the grade they wanted
It will go around and more and more people will come to ask

So, how can one politely deal in such a situation? I do not want to appear as hubristic or miserly.

Giving course notes is probably ok, if you are happy to provide them as a one-off.

If becomes a regular occurrence and the person has no very good reason to not take their own notes (disability or serious family constraints), I think it is perfectly reasonable not to be "their mule". Once is fine, twice is perhaps ok, three times is being exploited. You are not being rude by saying no. It is simply unfair to you for them to exploit you. Don't let them define what is acceptable middle ground, they clearly push the limits to their own advantage.

However, in my time some students produced LaTeXed versions of course notes for everybody to use. If that's what you want to do, it's your perfectly acceptable choice (but it would be a good idea to check with the lecturer - in my time, our lecturers were enthusiastically in favour of a student-typeset version of their lecture which could even serve as a basis of a book; these days, copyright issues may make some lecturers wary of agreeing to that, so - ask!).

Giving out homework is a strict no-no - it's an assessment offence (collusion), and plus, you do not really help them this way to learn.

Addendum: since you are worried that they blame you for later failure, if you give them out make a clear disclaimer that the notes are incomplete and inaccurate and you take no responsibility for their content.


Arxiv Endorsement from Conference Moderator (for someone not from academia) I'm presenting some of my independent work (in industry) at an academic conference. My paper has been accepted to the conference, but since I am from outside of academia, I'm having difficulty posting it on Arxiv. Would it be appropriate to ask for an endorsement from the panel moderator?

Yes. It even happens to people inside academics that they are not endorsed for a particular subsection of the arxiv.

If your only contact is the panel moderator, I would not hesitate to contact them in a polite email. However, you can and probably should first look whether they can endorse you (find one of their publications and click on their name—it will say for which areas they can endorse) and change your message accordingly.


Copied Letter of Recommendation? I asked one of my professors whom I've known for 2 years to write a recommendation for me now that I'm planning for graduate school— about 3 years later after he left to another university. He asked for my full name, and just copied a letter from the web and sent it to me via email. I expected to get an accurate letter that highlights my strong points and improve my chances of getting to a good school; instead, I got a banal letter that doesn't set me apart from your average student, and which its copy can easily be found online.

I'm  reluctant to add his name on the list of Referees in my application now, but I can't find a third professor other than him who is willing to write a letter for me.

Would his letter hurt my chances of getting accepted to a good school? Even if one of the other 2 letters was relatively stronger(slightly better) compared to this one?
Can I get a letter from a professor who didn't teach me? Or a professor from another university(a family friend)?

A professor whose idea of a good or even appropriate letter of recommendation is to copy a letter off of the internet and send it to you is a knucklehead.  (That is a technical term: I am after all an academic professional.  I could have used stronger language...)  At least, he is in this respect: in the comments the OP mentions that he got a job at Waterloo, which is a university with a high international reputation.  So he must have some other good things going for him.  In the fullness of time, I have to believe that he will learn how to write a reasonable recommendation letter.

But that's not your problem.  I would advise you to look at the fact that the professor gave the letter directly to you -- which is itself irregular and, in certain circles, inappropriate -- as a real blessing.  He could have just sent this miserable excuse for a letter quietly to all the places you're applying to, and you would be the one (in the short term, at least) to suffer the consequences.  I strongly disagree that you should work further with this guy to write a better letter.  (In particular, I vehemently disagree that you should write the letter yourself.  As I have said before on this site, I find that "immoral and wrong" -- a recommendation letter is a commissioned expert opinion.  Looking over the opinion desired by the person you have been commissioned to evaluate and deciding whether or not it requires any modification is not how expert opinions work.  But I've made my feelings on this moral issue clear enough already.  Here let me push the practical side of this: as a student, you cannot write for yourself a good recommendation letter.  There are components of such a letter that require expertise and personal experience that you necessarily lack.)  It is time to start fresh and get a letter from a new person.

The part of your response that jumps out at me is "I can't find a third professor other than him who is willing to write a letter for me."  That's the real issue here, and I hope it will serve as a warning to other students in your position.  All undergraduates should be thinking -- from their first year -- about building good relationships with their instructors that will lead to multiple people being able to write them strong recommendation letters.  It is all too easy to go through an undergraduate program -- even, perhaps especially, to excel at it -- while having very little contact with the faculty outside of the classroom and regular coursework.  That is certainly a mistake.

Okay, though: what do you do?  You ask whether someone who has not taught you in a course can write you a letter.  The answer is certainly yes.  You want the letter writer to (i) have stature in the academic community and in the particular area you're applying to, and (ii) have something meaningful to say about your academic background, skills, work ethic, and prospects for success in graduate school.  Someone that you have done research with can speak to aspects of that as well or better as people who have taught you in a course in which you quietly got an A.  In a pinch -- as you seem to be -- I would advise you to try to make contacts with people who satisfy condition (i) and try to rapidly achieve (ii) with them.  Thus for instance if you've done any research at all in the field you're intending to study, you could send a paper (or code, or interesting data, or whatever) to an expert in that field and mention that you'd like a recommendation letter.  This is a bit irregular, but if your work is solid, why not?  I would do it.

I strongly recommend that you work harder to find the right person to write you a strong letter than to have further dealings with someone who has already proven to be hopelessly inept at the job.


Should I appeal the F grade I received in my programming class? I received a F grade in a class I was doing pretty well in throughout the semester. I had a B up until I got a C on the final which brought my overall grade to a C, not ideal but not horrendous either. On Christmas Eve when the semester was over I checked my grade and spit the cereal I was eating all over my laptop. I checked my grade through the class website and my last assignment still said "upcoming" with regards to my grade. I was so shocked by the F I received that I immediately shot off an email to the Prof, letting him know the grade he gave me was wrong... big mistake. The Prof told me I got a zero on the last assignment (even though it said upcoming not 0) which was worth about 20% of my grade because my project which was turned in 100% correct and on time was not configured correctly. My project was on GitLab and I had added him as a guest by accident not a developer to the project; thus making it impossible to grade.

I could tell he was angered by my unintentional accusation and he said we were done talking about it, and my grade was final. I failed at a 58% with an assignment worth 20% of my grade and took weeks to complete being worth nada. So I had a unbelievably bad Christmas to say the least. I waited a week and wrote an email to the professor apologizing for my rude behavior and to propose a compromise. Take as much points as you want off, (I could get a 10% on the assignment and still pass). This made sense to me, the Professor accepted late work for up to a week with 5% deducted per day. If I got a D at least I didn't have to retake the course. No response, I must've emailed at the worst possible time or really ticked him off.

Just some more background. This is by far my most disorganized, forgetful and laid back Professor I have ever taken in college. He's also the funniest, most caring and fair instructor I've met so far. He will personally tutor students outside office hours, clear and fair in grading and will bend over backwards to hear you out. I really think I just pissed him off at the worst possible time. The downside to his laid back attitude is that we didn't get out first program back for two months, it was due week 3. We didn't get program 2 back until week 9. And the last two assignments, due a month and a month and a half before the semester ended weren't graded until after our final. Which would explain why I spat cereal all over my lab top on Christmas Eve. There was no opportunity for recourse. No way for me to speak with him in person about why I shouldn't fail for selecting the wrong entry on a drop down menu.

Anyways before I embarrass myself any further with a grade appeal do I have any standing, any case to make? The instructions on adding the Professor as a developer is clear on the first assignment, not on any of the subsequent assignments. Not disputing that, I made that mistake he literally couldn't grade it because of that. All I'm saying is that it is in line with my computer science department policies to deduct points for silly mistakes regarding submitting code. I Will talk to the department chair first, funny story is I sat next to him all semester last year and didn't even realize it was the department chair sitting in observing some of the classes.

Mistakes happen.  If the prof couldn't grade your work because of some system problem -- regardless of whose fault the problem was -- it could have easily been resolved at the time with a simple email from the prof to you.  You could have resolved the issue, and he could have deducted an appropriate amount for the glitch.

In the meantime, I assume that because you're using a version control system for managing the project, that absolutely everything is time stamped.

I think you'd be in line if you send one more polite email, once again apologizing for screwing up privilege on his access, and asking him to please reconsider the grade, given that all the submissions are time stamped, and that you wish he would have notified you of the problem when it arose, and not surprised you with an F.

If that doesn't work, you might politely approach the department chair.

It goes without saying that I offer this advise assuming that I know the whole story, and that there are no undiscovered surprises such as academic dishonesty anywhere in the mix.


More or less sections/subsections in a journal article? When writing an academic paper, sections help organize the paper and make it more navigable for the reader. I can imagine a number of pros/cons of having more or less sections in a paper, but I'm not sure how to weigh them all when writing my paper.

My Question

How should I determine how many sections/subsections/etc. to include in a scientific journal article?

Obviously this is very paper-dependent, and is subject to the publisher's standards. I'm not looking for advice for a particular paper; I'm looking for general guidelines that would be useful for an academic paper in any scientific field (i.e. I want this to be of value to the community).

How does this depend on the length of the paper?
How can I determine an appropriate branching factor? (How many sub-sections per section?)
How much text per section is too much or too little?
What other considerations are important?

As you point out, this is likely field specific and also depends on the type of article you are writing within that field. The old saying of "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" applies here too. If your article doesn't need a lot of subsections and subsubsections, then don't use them. However, if they are needed, well, then they are needed!

I have found that the STROBE statement and the CONSORT statement are very useful for helping structuring articles that are of the statistical type. Perhaps similar documents are present in other fields too?

But, as JeffE pointed out in a comment to your question, pick the structure of the article that makes it easiest on your reader to understand your results and how you arrived at them.


Should I talk to my professor about my grade? I just found my grades for the fall semester, in an introduction to international relations class that I took, I got a B.

I got a 93% on the midterm, which was worth 25% of the grade.

I always came to class prepared, having done the reading, and actively participated, so I probably got an A in participation, which is 5% of the grade.

There was a mock UN simulation which was worth 20% of the grade that I felt my group did pretty well on, but I never got an actual score back. I made some small mistakes, but worse case scenario, I think I got around an 85%.

My final paper, worth 25% of the grade, everyone said that it was a really good paper, and that it deserves an A, even people who took the same class from her, as well as writing tutors that I went to.

The other 25% of the grade was reserved for quizzes that according to the syllabus, we're supposed to take place every two to three weeks. However, she only gave us two. The first one, she failed everyone, and said that she did that to scare us, and make sure that we read the material. The second one, I got an A on.

I asked her about the quizzes, and she said that they were used for extra credit, which doesn't make sense according to the syllabus.

I am really confused about why I got a B, and I think that she might have made a mistake.

Should I talk to her about it when I go back to school, and if so, do you think that she made a mistake?

To expand Bob Brown's answer, yes, you should talk to your professor politely with the objective how to improve your study in the future.

In my opinion, your grade is probably on the borderline between A and B. You need to ask her what grade you got for the final paper (worth 25% of the grade). [E]veryone said that it was a really good paper, and that it deserves an A is not enough for you to say you did get an A on it. You need ask her how well was your final paper.

Generally speaking, it's not easy to change a grade after it's out of the professor's office unless there was an obvious calculation error.So, don't expect she will change your grade from B to A unless your final paper was extremely well written.

I won't be surprised if she tells you that your final paper was okay but not good enough for an A. In that case, you should ask her what you can do to improve your writing skills so that you can get better grades for the future essay writing assignments in other courses. Good luck!


How to cite Arabic translation of a German book in an English paper? I have a question and I searched a lot but couldn't find its answer. I write in English and there are a few books which are originally written in German and French, and unfortunately there is no English translation of them. I don't know these two languages but can read the Arabic translation of these books. How can I include them in the bibliography, according to APA or ASA citation styles?
I think I should transliterate the titles and then I don't know if I should put their original titles or the English translation of the titles or maybe both of them.
could anyone please help me?

Unless your specific field indicates otherwise, I would consider German and French to be more widespread as scientific languages than Arabic. Thus, the primary version to cite should be the original. To safeguard against potential mistakes through translation, you can add a note that you accessed the Arabic translation.

As there is no English translation of these books, translating the titles into English would be massively misleading. Don't do that.

[I am not familiar with APA or ASA citation styles, so this is just a "common sense" answer.]


Getting into a doctorate program with B- So I am doing a master's degree in mathematics in a large state school that is not very high ranked. I am planning to go for a doctorate, but not necessarily at a top school, but still an R1 school. My undergraduate degree is from Europe, and my GPA is not that great, since there was a lot of grade deflation in that school. However, it is a very good school, in top 80 on the planet.
Now, my master's GPA is quite good (3.7) right now, but the problem is: I have a B- in a core class, which is real analysis / measure theory. My previous analysis grades are pretty much all A's. I've taken other classes as well, such as algebra, number theory, topology, probability, statistics, advanced linear algebra, numerical analysis and have pretty much all A's in those. My question is: how much would this one B- affect my chances of admission?

Since I am frequently a member on the PhD student admission committee in our math department, I can tell that B- in one class does not really affect the chances. What affects it are recommendation letters and  Summer projects (REUs).
If the letters are not very strong and there was no (Summer) research done, the chances at my department are very small.


Awards in which gender identity is a requirement A friend of mine is considered a minority in her research field, for being female.  Recently, her advisor wanted to nominate her paper for an award sponsored by a kind of Women's Engineering Society.  (Not actually the WES; I don't want to give away field-specific information for her sake.)  To qualify for the award, the student must identify as female.  She therefore asked her advisor not to nominate her, saying that she does not want to compete for an award where identifying as female is a prerequisite.

Her rationale is essentially that while she does identify as (mostly) female, she does not think it's fair to restrict award eligibility based on attributes outside of someone's control, such as gender.  (There are also subissues, with the award eligibity requirements treating gender in a binary fashion, and my friend viewing gender as a spectrum.)  She said she would be happy to participate in an award program sponsored by a women's society if the gender prerequisite weren't there.

After much debate, we further boiled down the issue to the following question:

Do awards with gender identity requirements help or hurt the minorities they intend to support?

We are looking for studies and statistics to answer this question; not just anecdotes.

(A side question is whether her individual refusal to participate could hurt the community she is a part of.  For example, a snowball effect: if a large number of people refuse to participate in the very programs designed for them, perhaps the programs lose funding and then cease to exist for other members of the minority group who do wish to participate. Or perhaps the reputation of the award just goes down.  I would be curious to know if there are documented cases of this happening.)

Note: my friend gave permission to post and update this question.

I applaud your friend for refusal to participate on ethical grounds. I think your second question can be answered in the negative. But not making a public statement leaves the (unfortunate) status quo intact.

The first question however is, at this time, pretty opinion based and some research might actually help settle the question. It isn't my field, so it is possible that something has been researched and reported.

But we are in a time of change. The past was bad. We hope the future will be better. But there is still observable discrimination against women and many others, especially gender fluid individuals. Hopefully this will sort itself out if enough people get enlightened. But there are observable disparities in treatment even when it is (largely) unintended. And those things won't just dissipate without pushback. Individuals of "good will" need to be part of the pushback even (especially) when they aren't part of people and groups who are discriminated against.

But (opinion), if such awards tend to highlight the underlying problems, then they might be useful. And I hope that such things can go away in the future. A future in which individuals are judged only for their own accomplishments and not, at least in part, for things over which no one has any control.

I believe that more than one Nobel Prize has been given to a male whose female student actually did the work and had the breakthrough.

Fifty years ago, in the US, we thought, through the civil rights movement, that we were approaching a better future. Sadly progress has been slow, at best. Maybe stalled.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Attributed to several people, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)


How to cite a google survey in an original paper? Is it even possible to cite a google survey (designed by yourself) in an original paper? [via docs.google.com]

Any explanations would be thanked!

Regards.

If you designed the survey and this is the first paper in which you discuss the results, then you don't need to cite it you need to present it as original research with all the detail that requires. The fact that it's a google survey doesn't seem especially important, but you can probably find a good review article on methodological considerations for Web based surveys.


Is it reasonable to cite published computational results rather than reproduce them yourself? In computer science, when we write an academic paper, we often have to include comparative results that our method has some kind of quantitative advantage against some other state of the art results.

While it is sometimes easy to reproduce a cited paper's results (e.g., classification of small datasets), other times it is very time consuming and you could spent the better part of your research time just writing code testing the other methods.

However, it sometimes happens that when we reproduce the method, we do not get the presented results. So it can be tricky to do that as well.

Is it reasonable just to cite another paper's results at face value?
What suggestions would you give to this conundrum?

I treat computational results as in silico experiments. They have been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so I trust them by default, unless I have a reason not to. I cite them without a need to recompute them.
Sometimes, I have a reason to doubt them: they don't match my intuition, or they don't match my own results in a related case; they seem incoherent; they don't match experimental data; etc. Then, I redo them, possibly in more than one way (different software, try checking the effect of some of the assumptions, etc.). If I learn something from it, I consider publishing this study.


How does a math degree help in electrical engineering graduate studies? I am doing a double degree (bachelor of electrical engineering - bachelor of math) and I am in year 2 (my double degrees takes 5 years). My final goal is to enter electrical engineering graduate school. I love math and I am getting excellent grades for my bachelor of math degree but since my goal is entering electrical engineering graduate school, I feel that I am wasting my time by making my bachelor degree much longer. On the other hand, I think that I may forget the majority of my math theorems in a few years. I am thinking of dropping my math degree and just continue with my bachelor of electrical engineering but I can not decide for sure.

How would a double degree in math and electrical engineering help me in electrical engineering graduate school? Will I have any disadvantage if I just enter graduate school with a straight bachelor of electrical engineering? When it comes to graduate admission, does the graduate committee look more favorably to someone who has done a double degree in electrical engineering and math than someone with a straight electrical engineering degree? If you enter electrical graduate engineering school with just a straight electrical engineering degree, would then learning the required math be doable?

Edit: I am thinking of control theory and/or signal processing in graduate school.

Yes, it would help if you study Applied Mathematics.

However, how much it would help depends on your intended field of study. If you plan to go into Computational Electromagnetics or Digital Signal Processing or similiar fields, then it's great. If not, I advise you not to invest more than one semester in studying Math.

To give you a perspective: I graduated with a BS (GPA:3.5) and MS (GPA:3.5) in EE only. I took the subject Math GRE and scored in the 30% percentile.


Where should I host a (simple) personal academic webpage? I've finally decided to stop putting off creating an academic webpage for myself... both for the purposes of a job search and more generally to communicate what I'm about research-wise. But - where shall I put it?

The options seem to be:

My institution's personal webpages facility
My own web server at home
Some for-pay general-purpose webpage/website hosting service
Some gratis general-purpose webpage/website hosting service
Using one of the specialty academic-webpage platforms (which apparently exist)

What are noteworthy pros and cons of these options, in your view, that are worth considering might not be immediately obvious?

Notes:

I'm a post-doc with a contract ending in several months, which may affect the choices, but feel free to answer this question for other stages in one's academic career as well.
I'm not interested in "Why I think provider XYZ is best"-type answers, although if you describe your experience and what you opted for, and provide a link I think that should be fine.
The page is not intended to store any content such as copies of my papers, zipped source code etc - but it will have links to those. We're talking about a vanilla "about me and what I do and some links" kind of a thing.
Relevant question covering one aspect of my concerns: Institution domain or domain of my own for two of the possible options. Related but not-so-relevant question: Self-hosting vs Wordpress hosting for your collection of articles and blog.

This doesn't sound like your website will have special requirements that an all-purpose CMS couldn't handle. My advice is to go for one of those "all included" packages by a mainstream provider with something like Wordpress, and find a nice-looking template. This is the easiest choice, it will guarantee up-time, and you don't have to spend valuable time to administrate or design the site. It is also not very expensive: Perhaps around 5-10 USD/month, plus a one-time expense for the template (5 USD and up). Two alternatives might be attractive as well:

Nerdy option: If you are familiar with GitHub, you can use GitHub pages to self-host a static website with Hugo, like so. Once it's set up, it's a breeze to update. Here's an example.
Thrifty option: Use google sites.

Details:

  My institution's personal webpages facility

Pro: Demonstrates academic credentials and shows your affiliation. Con: Not much leeway. Will you be able to use it after you leave the institution?

  My own web server at home

Pro: All the control you need. Con: Way too much overhead; perhaps you can't implement what you need after all.

  Some for-pay general-purpose webpage/website hosting service

Good balance between control and ease of use.

  Some gratis general-purpose webpage/website hosting service

Free comes at a price. Perhaps you'll have up-time issues, ads or no own domain, certainly less control.

  Using one of the specialty academic-webpage platforms (which apparently exist)

See here.


How do I find the standing of a journal or conference for an academic CV? I'm writing an academic CV for a PhD application and they have asked for the standing of journals or conferences of published articles.

  Research publications

  Include articles published or accepted for publication (with the three most significant marked with an asterisk).  Please specify the publication details, your contribution as an author to multi-authored publications, plus the standing of the journal or conference.

I'm really not sure what they are looking for or how to express this. Is it the impact factor of the journal? And what about conference proceedings which don't have impact factors?

Seems it isn't actually that important. I sent them an email to clarify and they replied:

  Don’t worry too much about the standing of the journal or conference, as long as you list any publications and conferences that you have.


Publishing again acknowledging the original publication of oneself I have come across the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA).  The copyright section says that "Authors retain the right to publish their material elsewhere, providing the original publication is acknowledged."

Can the same paper be sent to somewhere else as well. Given that I have seen that mostly conferences/journals require unpublished material, what does this clause exactly mean ? Is it normal clause in Open Access Journals ?

That means that IJACSA will not try to stop you from publishing your work elsewhere.  (They'd have little reason to do so, as they are not profiting from it.)  It is common for open-access journals to let the author retain the publication rights.

However, no reputable journal will publish an article that has already appeared somewhere else.

You could "publish" it on your web page, or on arXiv, or as part of a book (though again, a reputable book publisher will probably balk if the content is just recopied).

Note: IJACSA is published by The Science and Information Organization, which is on Beall's List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers.  Its website makes the journal look very dubious, especially the ridiculously broad scope and the promise to complete peer review within 15 days.  I wouldn't publish there (or would I?).


Where to Apply for International Relations? I'm having some trouble figuring out what schools to apply to for a Masters in International Relations. There are a number of lists I've seen but many of the schools are very focused on the practical side for mid-career people. I'm interested in eventually getting a PhD and being an academic. Also most lists are only of the top 5 or 10 schools so it's hard to tell how good other schools are. My application is a little mixed, some strong parts some weak parts, so I was thinking of applying to a wide range of schools but I could really use some advice in what schools to look at. My undergrad GPA isn't good, 3.14 (3.5 in the major), but my GRE scores are good, 170V 168Q 4.5. I've been living in China for the past 5 years, but only speak a tiny bit of Chinese. I'd love some advice about where to apply or any rankings to look at. Thanks.

International relations at the University of St Andrews are quite highly ranked. They definitely give you the option of eventually moving on to a PhD. I don't know much about their entry requirements though; I'd suggest that you contact them and ask.


Why don't most academic conferences make their budget publicly available? I wonder why most academic conferences don't make their budget publicly available.

Making budgets publicly available could help explain high conference fees (which attendees often complain about), help other conference organizers, receive feedback to be able to improve, improve transparency towards the taxpayers since they fund most of academic research, explicitly mention what the private sponsors are and to what extent they are involved (e.g. to detect conflict of interests), etc.

I don't think there's any universal policy behind this.  One reason is lack of interest: in many cases I'd bet nobody involved has thought much about the issue, the world isn't clamoring for the budget, and publicly releasing it would take at least a little work.  Inertia is a common reason for not doing things.

Another reason is to avoid arguments.  The main thing people would do with a publicly available budget is criticize it.  Some criticisms would be based on ignorance of the options and constraints, while others would amount to saying "more should be spent on my favorite things, and less on the things I don't care about" (which is not so useful if there's no consensus as to which aspects are more valuable).  E.g., is money for snacks essential or wasteful?  What if they are overpriced hotel snacks, but there's no other option without moving to a venue that is worse overall?  What about a reception with alcohol?  Basically, imagine repeating every discussion the organizers had about the budget, but with an unmanageably large group arguing, and with random trolls from the internet chiming in.

In general, I would assume it's not an attempt to preserve secrets or disguise unpopular spending.  If the conference is funded by a grant, then the funding agency saw a budget.  If it's funded by registration fees, then participants at least know how large those fees are and can compare them with other conferences.


What is an extended abstract? Some conferences ask for an extended abstract. What are the differences among "abstracts," "extended abstracts," and "full papers?"

An abstract is a preliminary submission that summarizes the contribution of a paper. There are usually strict limits on the length of an abstract, either in terms of words or of total characters (rarely do they exceed 1000 words or 5000 characters; they are often substantially shorter than this.

An extended abstract and a full paper are nearly the same; the primary difference is that an extended abstract tends to be somewhat shorter than a full paper; I've seen extended abstracts from 2 pages up to 6 pages, while conference papers run from 4 up to about 12 or 15, depending on the space allotted.

One other important difference—outside of computer science, extended abstracts almost never go through a formal peer-review process before being published, while a conference paper will typically have at least one reviewer. (I think this is the case for almost all such papers, but there may be exceptions.)


Global university ranking for graduates, not research I work at a university that gives a small number of scholarships to PhD students to pay their fees and tuition.  Currently, the decision for who to give these to is based on their undergraduate transcript and the global ranking of the university they attended as an undergraduate.   If you don't get a scholarship, you have to pay full fees and tuition.

Unfortunately, one consequence of this system is that graduates from certain countries, for example India, are grossly disadvantaged.  The highest ranked Indian university is ranked below 250 in the main international tables (and below 400 in Excellence at http://www.webometrics.info/en/Asia/India?sort=asc&order=Excellence%20Rank*) . As far as I can tell, this is mostly because the ranking measures research output and many of the top Indian students go on to graduate school in the US.

Now we can all say how ridiculous it is to be doing this in the first place but that isn't going be helpful. I feel that in order to help address this question I need to give them an easy alternative.

Are there any more relevant league tables that might measure the quality of graduates on a fairer global basis, rather than the quality of research output from the relevant department?

It is not clear what rankings your university uses or what you think is a fairer ranking. The QS World University Rankings ranks on:

Academic reputation (40%)
Employer reputation (10%)
Student-to-faculty ratio (20%)
Citations per faculty (20%)
International faculty ratio (5%)
International student ratio (5%)

I would think that "research output", whatever that is, would impact both academic reputation and citations per faculty. I am not sure if any of the other factors are fairer for judging academic success, but the nice thing about the QS rankings is you can sort based on any of their factors.
If we look at a couple of the IITs
                 Overall     Academic     Employer     SFR     CPF     IFR     ISR
IIT Bombay         222         160          60         400+    301     400+    400+
IIT Delhi          235         199          90         393     329     400+    400+
IIT Kanpur         300         229          229        400+    345     400+    400+

Despite any impact of loss of PhD students to international schools, the "Academic Reputation" is still helping the ranking. The Citations per Faculty are hurting them a little, but they are most hurt by a lack of international draw at the faculty and student levels and a high Student to Faculty ratio.


Correct term to address the "academic publications" I am trying to use/find the correct term for the practice of publishing research results in academia, mainly a reference to the practice of publishing research findings in a formal journal or conference.

The term has to have a clear contrast to the practice of publishing full data-sets of research results (ex: in a repository), but which is also a sub-form of "publishing of research results"

I have started my work by using the term "Scholarly Communication" which was somehow influenced by one of my mentors. Although I was happy on the initial suggestion, I am finding myself not so keen on the use of it, as it seems cheaper in contrast to for example: Academic Publishing which seems broader to include more research ventures (done also by non-scholars, but still viable for academic recognition).

The problems with the term Academic Publishing are two for my perspective. 1) I have not been able to find a strong definition of it, and 2) it is so broad that can include the "publishing of research data-sets" which I need to reference separately.

Would appreciate a discussion for a creative term which coins the academic publishing as it has been referenced traditionally?

Update 1: Considering also Academic Literature referenced in a comment below by darthbith

I suggest "(modifier) dissemination" with (modifier) used to make things more specific.  Usually I find the phrase "dissemination of (noun)", and it often refers to a formal release of information, where some semblance of validation of (noun) has occurred.  You might find "result dissemination", "data dissemination", "report dissemination" useful.  Of course, I'm already getting tired of seeing the word "dissemination" used many times in the same paragraph.  I also suggest some synonyms to alleviate developing madness in the reader.


Should I continue reviewing a paper after having discovered plagiarised content in it? I received an invitation to review for the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. I started to analyze the manuscript by reading the title, abstract, introduction, results and discussion and conclusions before assessing the proposed methodology.

I detected that the authors copied approximately 7 pages from another article without a considerable change so that it looks like his own ideas (plagiarism). should I stop analyzing the paper (assessing the methodology), or continue?  because from my experience I think that the editor will reject the paper even though there is a novel contribution.

Don't bother with more analysis, there is no point, since the paper should be withdrawn or rejected because of the plagiarism (if it isn't decline further review for this journal). Write a brief report along the lines

The manuscript contains 7 pages which are almost verbatim copied from < plagiarized paper >. In view of this I refrain from any further analysis as I expect you to reject the manuscript.

You should also check, whether the paper has already been published as a preprint (e.g. on arXiv) and if so inform the editor and suggest him to require the authors to withdraw from there too (I know of a case where this happened) but you may also contact arXiv directly (to protect your anynomity don't contact the authors or make your knowledge public).


What is the standard/recommended font to use in papers? I looked around but did not find that anyone has asked this before, but what are the fonts that are standard/recommended while writing academic reports/papers?

For an academic paper each publisher journal have their standards. These do not affect or are affected by the manuscripts sent in to the journal. Some journals specify fonts, commonly standard Times Roman, for their manuscripts. If the journal specifies something, follow that specification. Otherwise use a font that is easy to read. There is no need to use anything but a standard font for whatever typesetting/word processor system.


Can I withdraw from one conference and attend another one with the same abstract? A few weeks ago I submitted a two-page abstract to a conference in environmental sciences/ecology/biology. I haven't received the decision yet – poster or presentation. A few days ago I found out there will be a different conference, where my contribution would fit better and the main speakers are directly from my field and I could finally meet them.

Due to funding I probably cannot attend both conferences, so I have to choose. Another approach would be to withdraw my current submission and send a different one to the second conference.

Is it unethical to withdraw my submission and send it to other conference?

It is not unethical, but people will not be pleased.

usually conferences would like to have good presentations, and if yours is accepted, they would like to have it.
if it is currently under review, the reviewers put (sometimes significant) work in it. This work is wasted now.

Nonetheless, it happens that authors of accepted publications do not attend to a conference - which is much worse. So retracting it as early as possible wopuld be a good option.

If the work is under review, it might happen that the reviewers of the other conference overlap with your current reviewers. If I would be such a reviewer, I would immediately reject the second submission because I would assume the work was already published or it would be a duplicate submission (which in both cases would be unethical).

You can avoid this situation by submitting something different to the second conference (or you can check the program committee for potential overlap - but it is not always visible who is serving as reviewers).


How to send electronic TOEFL scores to institutions? This is the paper result, right?(I just randomly entered a university) So...how can I let ETS send them the electronic result after the score had come out?...0.0

Firstly choose "Order Score Reports, then select "TOEFL Services"

After that click the "Send Additional Score Report(s) to Institutions" and choose the test you want to send and then look up the institutions information. You will need to pay 19$ per report.


Attending graduate school at my undergraduate university I've been told by numerous people that (1) my undergraduate university will be disinclined to bring me on as a graduate student, and that (2) it's a bad idea to attend grad school where you completed your undergraduate degree, anyway.  Is that true? If so, why?

Pros

If you stay at the same school (this applies even more when you join grad school immediately out of your undergrads), it'll be a matter of remaining in your comfort zone - same department, a faculty who know you, even the same apartment/neighborhood! This can be a major factor, depending on the person concerned - the pros of staying at your Alma mater are all about convenience IMO.
If your UG department has an influential professor with whom you've worked before and are planning to continue as well, that can be very advantageous -  as having such a faculty get to know a student's work as an undergraduate can lead to a very strong recommendation (since he has accepted you in the grad program, it is reasonable to assume your work had impressed him during your undergrads).

Cons

An important advantage of going to another school is that you will be exposed to a completely different department, with faculty who may have diverse research ideas for you to work on. The department, in turn, will benefit as well as a new student from another school will cross-pollinate their department with fresh ideas. This is so important that some top universities have a strong bias against accepting their own undergraduate students into their graduate programs.


Is it cheating to use solutions to identical problems from other universities to do my homework? Is it unethical to refer to solutions to assignment questions that have been asked at other universities before? The questions are the same word for word.

EDIT:

A lot many answers are very helpful. Most of them revolve around introspection and the classical definition of plagiarism. I agree with that. I know I am digressing from the original topic and may seem to justify copying but at the end of the day I have to pass the course. I spend hours trying to learn all the background concepts and then try to apply them to the assignment questions. Thats what I have done till now. Not all the times I get them correct. Many of my classmates get the solutions online, rephrase the wordings and then submit it. Its a no brainer, they end up getting more marks than me. Sometimes(many a times) it feels really bad. Am I just being stupid in that case? should i follow their approach when I am not able to get some questions or to verify just to be sure?

I do not view it as generally unethical to refer to these solutions.  This situation is more complex than I think some other answers have admitted. Here is a list of claims:

In an ideal world, the point of homework is for the student to learn the material.
In a perfectly ideal world, we would not need to grade homework, because students would do it on their own to master the material. They might refer to other people's solutions to see if theirs are correct, and that would be fine.
Experience shows this world is not perfect. Students will often skip ungraded homework, and their learning and exam grades will suffer.
So instructors assign homework for a grade. But this isn't because the grade is really important: it's because we want the students to do the homework and learn the material!
Some students then get the idea that the grade is the real goal of the homework, and simply copy their assignment from others. Professors often find this unacceptable.

One important point that others have answered is that, if you are going to turn in the homework, what you turn in should reflect your own understanding of the assignment. But, equally importantly, it is important to let yourself struggle with problems for a while before looking up the answer.  That is the only way to really learn how to solve problems.

Most professors accept that the internet exists - we know you can look up other people's answers. It used to be that fraternities had giant files of old homework and exam answers for this purpose (maybe they still do).  And students study in groups all the time - research shows study groups can dramatically increase learning.  So getting help is not a bad thing.

But you don't want to get help too quickly. Make a genuine effort to answer the problems yourself first. If you find that you are looking up the answers to all the problems (even the easiest ones), then something is off - try going for more tutoring, or studying more before doing the homework.

If you find that you occasionally need to look up one of the most difficult problems, that's perfectly normal (but it still wouldn't excuse directly copying the solution into your homework, of course).

Of course, the usual caveats apply: some professors may specifically tell you not to collaborate with anyone or use any other resources. But most professors know that students usually collaborate with each other on homework (e.g. study groups) and know that students can look up answers using other resources. We have no problem with that, as long as each student's submission reflects their own understanding in the end.


Test an already existing hypothesis but in a different setting/country? What if I conduct a study and suggest a hypothesis to test but later find out that this hypothesis was already tested before in a different industry/country. Can I still continue? In other words, is there such a thing as plagiarism in stating the same hypotheses?

I find it a burden to go and check the web for every hypothesis I write to see if someone else tested it before. Even though I am sure there are some common hypotheses and studies (like: customer loyalty leads to customer retention, albeit in different industries and/or countries) but I still have doubts.

I think you have a big misconception of what plagiarism is. Passing other people's work as your own is plagiarism; doing something and later discover that it was done before is not. It is not even unethical.

The worst case is that your work is rendered redundant, but this depends on how different your settings and results are.


Order of authors when publishing bachelor's thesis (CompSci) Forgive me if this is a duplicate; i found a few somewhat similar questions, but none which matches my situation exactly.
I wrote a bachelor's thesis in computer science. After I was done, we (myself, my supervisor, my professor) tried to get it published. We have succeeded now after some unsuccessful attempts and a few days ago, my supervisor asked me whether I would be okay with him being the first author on the paper, which would help him towards completing his PhD.

Would I be correct in refusing this? I just don't see how I can NOT be the first author when it is my own thesis. Note that naturally, we did not publish the exact thesis; we significantly shortened it. It is a review paper and the bulk of the review work is still my work; he added main parts of the conclusion and some things throughout the paper
If I am correct in refusing this, how can I communicate this? Is there any document which might help me in formulating an answer? So far, I have only found a document by the APA which says "A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored article that is based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis." [1] Does anyone know of a similar document for computer science / the natural sciences? AFAIK, my university doesn't have an explicit rule; it only says that the authorship of a thesis is solely with the student since anything else (e.g. having the advisor as co-author) would be against the notion of a thesis being a demonstration of the student's capabilities.

TLDR:

publish modified bachelor's thesis
get accepted
Supervisor: Can I be first author?
Want to say no but not sure if I'm right / how to communicate

[1] https://www.apa.org/science/leadership/students/authorship-paper.pdf
Edit
The subfield is rather applied.

Actually, the concept of "first author" is a bit foreign to CS in most places. Authors are listed alphabetically and only contributors are listed as authors. You say the supervisor contributed to the paper and if so should be an author.

I think you are correct to refuse if it is your thesis that is being published, and I think the university will back you on it. I hope so, anyway. But for a paper "related" to the work, it is a different issue.

But, you have a political problem. One way to handle it is not to publish a shortened version of the thesis jointly, but an extension. Publish the thesis under your own name, but acknowledge your advisor. Then get to work on an extension.

The concept of "first author" is common in other fields, of course, but not really in CS or in math.


What should I do if my master's advisor used a figure from my thesis in a publication without citation or acknowledgment? A year ago, I finished my Master's degree and ended 6 months of working for an incredibly manipulative and demanding supervisor.  We started working on a publication of my Master's results, which is awaiting final approval (post-corrections) at the journal we submitted to.

Last week, I read a paper this supervisor had published recently, which had a figure taken directly from my Master's dissertation.  Our in-press article wasn't cited, and I wasn't co-author, referenced, or even mentioned in the acknowledgements.  No direct reference was given for the figure, but the text surrounding it made it sound as if it had come from another article by my supervisor from last year.

It seems pretty clear to me that this is plaigarism - we worked on this project together, certainly, but the final product was a result of my work and their guidance.

My problem is, I don't know how to deal with it.  We are currently co-authoring a paper, so I don't want to cause a rupture.  I also plan to continue working in this field, and would like to avoid having a senior researcher and previous supervisor to be angry.  At the same time, I don't want them to get away with using my work, and taking all the credit for it.

I will certainly tell them that I feel uncomfortable with how they used my work, but realistically, what can I expect/hope to happen here?

UPDATE - the figure in question is an overview of a simulation model I created, so is pretty much the core part of my Master's work.

The issue here is somewhat thorny. Relative to you, however, there is unfortunately not much benefit in any event, because citing the figure is not normally enough to merit authorship. All you would have is one extra citation, which would likely get "lost," because the publication with which it corresponds doesn't exist yet.

So I would make sure that your new paper cites the old paper, since it is the first to publish the figure. I would also make sure that you mention politely the concerns that you have over the use of the figure without citing.


Is there anywhere I can find reliable reviews of popular textbooks? My mathematics department is adopting a new calculus textbook. The publisher has refused to continue printing the same edition that we have been using, and their new edition is one of several options which we are considering.

Several of these books are extremely well-known and widely used, and we have to judge which is the best. The most important step is to look at the books myself, which indeed I did. Beyond that, I am curious how the various choices have played out in actual teaching situations. Indeed, in our deliberations I feel that I am reinventing the wheel.

Are there any trustworthy sources of reviews of popular textbooks, written with an eye towards the experience of the student reading them?

I am not aware of any specific aggregator of textbooks review. But... reading reviews on Amazon may help. (By reading I mean actually reading, not just comparing average scores;  especially reviews with non-extreme grades. Usually they also gives some context the reader's position and motivation.)

Also:

some journals have a section with book reviews,
some researchers and lectures write blog posts, reviews or suggested readings,

however, each single review is only a single data point.

But once you focused on a few books, there is no shortcut to actually looking at their content and deciding whether it fits your course, approach, taste, etc.


Is it common that marker TA make the marking scheme instead of the professor? I had a course in which the instructor let the markers make the midterm marking scheme and had students ask the TAs to resolve any marking issues instead of talking to him, though the instructor provided sample answers. As far as I know, many TAs are inexperienced and I think leaving the job of making marking scheme to TAs may be too much for them. IMO, making marking scheme should be the instructor's duty. I don't know if it is common in university.

This might vary by country, but in the US, if the graders are undergraduates--which shouldn't be the case for midterms--then I would say that it's unusual to allow them to decide on the grading scheme. If the graders are grad students, it's quite common. At many schools even first-year grad students are the instructor of record for a course.


Should I mention that I'm able to self fund my degree in my SOP? Should I mention that I'm able to self fund my degree in my SOP? I don't find anywhere else in the application process where I can communicate such information.

I'm a prospective international student applying in the US in the field of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

At least here funds to finance graduate students are scarce, so somebody who will be an asset without cutting into said funding, is clearly welcome. You should definitely state that in your application, by attaching proof of your funding. If said funding is e.g. a competitive scholarship from your origin country, it should be a definite plus in your application.


Two papers with identical introduction and related work I wrote a paper (for an economics journal) that contained two main theorems. It was too long - over 60 pages. So I split it to two papers - one for each main theorem (and the related lemmas). Now, the introduction and related-work section in these two papers are almost identical, since the topic is the same. Will this be considered self-plagiarism (e.g. by automatic plagiarism detection tools)? What is a good way to write these papers preventing duplication?

If you treat a different aspect of the topic, it is absolutely fair to split it up in two parts. The introduction will sound quite the same, but this is also the case for most introductions in a specific research field. If you define well the objective of the paper you are presenting, you should be fine.

Here is an example of a paper (among many) splitted in two parts that takes interest in one main topic : Part 1 and Part 2


What do I do when a student working in my lab "ghosts" me? I am in my first PhD year and have some teaching duties -- assisting my supervisor with his lectures and also advising students. At the beginning of the semester, a student started working on his Bachelor's thesis and initially everything was fine.

However, for several weeks now I have not received any response from him. I wrote him mails on a weekly basis asking for a status update and inquiring whether he was stuck. Now the deadline is getting closer and while he could make some progress during the first weeks, I am afraid it is too little to pass. On the other hand, I saw a quite familiar post on SE recently and I believe it is actually him, as the topic is quite specific. Therefore I assume he actually is still working on his thesis.

I already have escalated the issue to my supervisor and he told me to let it student fail if required. I am not too satisfied with this way of dealing with the situation. Are there other options for me?

I wrote him mails on a weekly basis asking for a status update and inquiring whether he was stuck.

It seems that you are completing your duties as an advisor well. You can and should continue to offer help and suggestions in accordance with your duties. Perhaps this student is too busy or too anxious to respond to your emails. In that case, you could provide links to resources that might benefit them without the necessity of responding (if you feel that they need more advising).

While I personally try to respond to emails in a timely fashion, I often work better independently and only reach out when I am in need of assistance; this student might function the same way.

  I already have escalated the issue to my supervisor

Great, this means that your supervisor is aware of the issue and is likely to be understanding in the event that your student does not do well.

  he told me to let it student fail if required

This is also fine. If the student does not adequately complete their work, this is the expected outcome. If you are concerned that the student is unaware of this, you could send an email letting them know (or possibly reminding them of policies in the syllabus regarding this).

  Are there other options for me?

You cannot force the student to respond or work on their project. You should continue to advise this student to the best of your ability, but beyond that it is their responsibility to follow through.


Can I ask a reference letter from someone I met at a place I interviewed? I had an interview at a university for a tenure track position.  They decided not to give me an offer, but I met a professor there (for the first time) that supported me as a candidate.  This professor saw my application, went to my talk, and was not on the search committee, but participated in my campus visit.

I corresponded with this person through e-mail, and the phone, about my career (not just about the position).

Since I didn't get an offer for a job I wanted this year, can I ask this person if they would write me a reference letter for my job search next year?

You can ask the person and there would be no conflict of interest in doing so. While this person might have a good understanding of you research, teaching, and background from the previous job process, they generally will not know you well enough to write a strong letter of recommendation. The best letter writers are people who have known you for years and have worked with you on a daily basis.


How does the teaching of biology differ from teaching physics? Respected teachers, I have this question for quite some time and I need your ideas.

When we teach physics we can have a lot of brainstorming sessions and adopt the "scientific method"  ( Observation, Hypothesis, Experiments, Conclusion ).  I do this regularly in my physics class. Recently I was asked to take a course in elementary biology. I find that most biology books are filled with facts instead of stimulating questions, observations and experiment opportunities which I find in good physics books. In biology, we find less opportunity for real demonstration and conducting experiments-  e.g. how to do an experiment on the digestive system as clear as we do to demonstrate and understand Newton's laws in physics. You might suggest using models but all models are inaccurate. On the other hand Netwon's laws can be directly observed without aid or model ( though that is also possible).

So my question is

1- Fundamentally how the two teachings differ, and what could be the most appropriate and meaningful strategy for teaching biology that keeps the students motivated and curious to know living beings?

2- Can we still use scientific methods as we do in physics? (But I see a narrow opportunity for observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion.)

I think someone who is experienced in the teaching of biology, as well as physics, might explain how he/she shifts strategy when moving from one to another.

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions.

Edit:
By 'fact' I mean rote learning. You just remember what is Newton's third law without bothering to know how Newton discovered it and how in general scientists discover and invent things. I am talking about the lowest level in Bloom's taxonomy. If that is the best learning experience in science, we could not have come where we are today. In my class, I prefer Questioning, inquiry and challenging the set notions instead of accepting and forcing things as Gospel truth. In my opinion, all famous scientists work like this. Galileo did this and was punished by Church but was ultimately proved right.

See Eric Lander's introductory biology OCW course lecture videos for a refreshing take on biology from someone who was trained as a mathematician. The way Prof. Lander (and likely many others) teaches biology is similar to the 'hard sciences' (chemistry and physics), but the history of the science takes a larger role than it usually does in (say traditional introductory) physics and math courses.

Maybe a reason for this is that the ways that important biological processes take place are way too complicated for us to easily derive them from Newton's laws and some calculus, and so to bring people to speed in basic cell biology, one really needs to rely on a large amount of collected observations on non-intuitive, less widely observed phenomena than one does in classical physics to begin doing meaningful studies. One way to do this, is to just say such-and-such is the way things happen, now memorize it. Another approach however, is to explain how the existing models came to be. The second takes (much) more work.

At the most basic level, in either case one tests whether the conclusions/predictions that come from the models are consistent with what is observed, so the distinguishing of intro biology and intro physics on this point seems artificial. A real fundamental difference between the two again is that the type of things which are discussed in the intro biology course are much more complicated than those covered in a basic physics course, and so one must rely on more 'hand-waving' or historical references at certain points. To quote the famous mathematician von Neumann, 'If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.'


Can I publish an article as a sole author if my supervisor agrees? I'm currently working in a project that is funded by me and the supervisor doesn't contribute much to my work (he is just directing me slightly if I asked him) and he told me that he doesn't need to publish and I can publish as a sole author if I want. I only have a Master degree, can I publish as a sole author? can some journals accept that? Should I contact a journal to ask? if the journal agrees, so this is will be fine? (By the way my field is Biochemistry)

Everyone can submit articles to journals, there is no degree requirement.
There is nothing negative about single author manuscripts.

Manuscripts should (ideally) be evaluated by its content not by its author list.


Should I do anything about a recent article in a respected math journal that is not up to its usual standards? A respectable journal with high standards recently published a (mathematical) article. I care about the topic deeply, so I had a look at the paper. In several parts, it is poorly written (the authors are not native speakers, but I'm unsure whether they are students). In my opinion, the results are definitely not substantial enough for the given journal (the same journal has both rejected and accepted my work). However, after fixing language errors, it would have been an OK publication for a lower-tier journal (in my opinion).

The following two facts raise my suspicions even more. First, the authors of the paper are from country X, and the paper was communicated by a person from country X as well. Further, the whole process (from "received" to "received in revised form") is only 3 months, and I wonder if enough time has been given to review the paper.

I know "bad papers" appear in "bad journals", and with these I don't bother. This time I'm wondering though: should I let anyone know, or just move on?

You could consider "doing something about it" if the article was indeed questionable in terms of its science,  i.e., if the data seems fabricated or you find faults in the proofs. Finding that this article's contribution is not exciting  enough or minor language issues almost certainly do not qualify. How substantial the results of a given paper are is rather vague and subjective, and spelling errors almost certainly are not grounds for retraction. The best you can hope for, in my mind, is a corrigendum of the spelling errors.

You should also keep in mind how your supplemental arguments will appear to an outsider:

  the authors of the paper are from country X, and the paper was communicated by a person from country X as well

First of all, this is not "suspicious" as it happens all the time. Further, and this is the big concern,
replace "country X" with "the United States", and see if you would still find this suspicious. With concerns like that, it is very easy to be perceived as judgemental or downright racist, so I would be extremely cautious in following this line of argumentation any further.

  the whole process (from "received" to "received in revised form") is only 3 months, and I wonder if enough time has been given to review the paper.

We all know that the review process is capricious. While 3 months is certainly well below my average review time, it's not outrageous to assume that the paper had the usual number of reviewers, all the reviews were returned reasonably quickly (in one to two months) and found the paper acceptable, and the authors only had to do minor changes for the revision. While most manuscripts don't go through as easily, this does not appear particularly suspicious either.


Where to upload/publish gigabytes of experiment data I have conducted experiment that had unexpected result which goes against  consensus in my community and I worry whether it will be accepted by other researchers. For that reason I would like to make all my work public - the resources, the programs, the results.. Is there online service where I can publish the data for free and obtain DOI number that I can reference in my paper?

It makes over 2GB when packed.

I have heard that such services exist for people in biology and medical research but I work on transportation systems which is rather different (we do not produce so much data usually). I plan to submit the paper to journal published by IEEE.

You could also use Zenodo, which I personally prefer over Figshare since it is an open platform run by a scientific institution (the CERN) instead of a for-profit (compare the privacy policies of zenodo and figshare to get an idea on why this matters). They also guarantee that, should they ever shut down, they will migrate your data to another platform (and until then, your data is on the same infrastructure as the data created by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)).

Their size limit is 2 GB per file, and you can add multiple files to a single dataset upload (which means you may not even need to pack your data, if it can be sensibly split into multiple files of <2 GB - and if you need more space, you can contact them). Finally, you also get a DOI for your data (which will be updated to point to the new home of your data if they ever shut down). Right now, it can be used free of charge while they develop a sustainability plan (later, they may charge you for uploading larger datasets, but there will always be a free tier with reasonable sizes).


Job portal of US universities: when is the application status updated? I recently submitted applications for tenure track positions to several US universities via their online job systems (https://jobs.xxx.edu/).

Last week I got a feedback from one of the schools that my application would no longer be considered. However, a week later, the status of my application on the portal is still "under review".

This raises a question for me: after the department has decided to reject the application, how soon is the status in the online system updated?

I want to know that because I have not received a feedback from the other schools I applied, and am wondering if it's possible that the department has already decided to reject but the portal was not updated?

Academic jobs are a nightmare from the HR perspective. While the posting might be on the jobs portal, the files themselves initially go to the hiring department which comes up with a long and then medium list that they then do some preliminary screening before ending up with a short list for on-site interviews.  This can take several months.

The search committee then comes up with a ranked list with some candidates "above the line" and some "below the line" that the department votes on. This list -- which may have one, two, or three people that the department thinks are hireable (or in some cases, none, if the search fails).  This list then goes to the provost, equal opportunity, and numerous other sundry university committees before getting approved (or not) and sent back down the line. This can take several more months.

So we are now 4-6 (or 6-8) months into the search. The search can have several results:

A single finalist who is contacted. Maybe they
dawdle for a couple of weeks in giving a reply. If they decide not
to take the job, then the search is failed. The department may or
may not be authorized to search again next year and if they are, the
search remains open.
Two finalists. The first accepts (or not). If the first doesn't, the second is given a chance. If both decline, then it's a failed
search.
No finalists. Failed search and the slot goes back to the provost's office. It may or may not be returned to the department.
The provost hates all of the finalists and either cancels the slot or forces the department to re-run the search.

In other words, there are many reasons why a job posting might still remain open even one or two years after the initial posting. Departments are hesitant to finally close files unless they are absolutely positive that they are never, ever getting that slot back again -- or that the person who accepted the offer really is going to show up on August 1st.


I cannot get funding to travel to conferences, is it normal to target journals instead and would it affect my future Computer Science career? One of my research papers have been accepted to a very prestigious conference (top most in my field of study in Computer Science).
Since I am not a full time student, university rules do not allow for funding my travel and conference registration charges. Also, I do not earn enough to support my own travel to a different continent. Moreover, my advisor, who is also a co-author in the paper cannot travel due to personal issues.

The conference website doesn't mention about any kind of support neither have I ever seen(short career) such a support being provided.

So my questions are:

Should I rather target journals for publications since most of the reputable ones in my field are free to publish but may take anywhere between 1-2 years to get accepted. Moreover, they may require more comprehensive work and analysis which I may not always be able to commit to, resulting in my work lying unpublished.
Is it normal to just aim for journal publications ?
I am a Phd Student. I want to go in academia in future. I believe aiming for journal publication would result in less number of publications for me. Would it affect my career in future ?

Very likely having only journal publications will NOT harm your future career prospects. Let me elaborate.

If you plan a career outside the US, this is even truer. As far as I understand most countries are moving towards a more journal evaluation of computer science. I cannot point to a paper to that effect, but most of the papers that discuss conference x journals in CS are from non US researchers, which may indicate that there is some pressure in these countries to move out of the conference publishing business-as-usual model for CS.

For a career within the US, @jakebeal answer to this Academia question seems to suggest that journal publications are also the important metric of evaluation in "lesser institution".

I heard from someone that was applying for faculty positions two years ago that the most prestigious CS departments were only considering candidates that had at least 1000 citations - so the most prestigious institutions do not seem to care for number of publications and where (this is hearsay information).

Now for the caveats, as you realize, a journal-based career will imply in less papers - which I argue is not necessarily a problem, but you have to be sure that you will have some paper/papers published when you apply for a job. Avoid, if you can, journals with too long a review cycle - you may not have any/enough papers published by the end of your PhD.


How does the author's native language impact the likelihood of having his publication accepted in an English-speaking venue? I've heard a few authors whose native language wasn't English complain that they are put at a disadvantage with respect to authors who are English native speakers, when it comes to publication acceptance in English-speaking venues.

Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the impact of the author's native language on the likelihood of having his publication accepted in an English-speaking venue?

It's probably more a commentary than an answer. I look forward to others' input on this issue as well.

As an ESL myself, I joined the English academic community knowing that language will be an extra barrier. I wrote (or perhaps still write) many awkward sentences that are grammatically sensible but funny to read from the angle of general English usage. To compensate this shortcoming, I read papers and study their styles, I read books on scientific writing, and I coauthor with native speakers. My English has improved somewhat and now I can even throw a couple trivia about academic writing in front of my native speaker colleagues. But deep down, I know it's a never-ending project, and chance is I will not be as fluent as a native speaker, and should perhaps settle for "good enough."

If I were to talk to your author friends, I'd probably ask if those submissions were anonymous. And if they are anonymous, and in multiple occasions comments like "English needs improvement" were given, I would suggest them to spend some time to work on their English rather than complain about unfairness. Non-native speakers having more difficulty to publish in English speaking channels is logical; to expect a fair ground that would totally ignore linguistic difference is unrealistic.

To formally answer the question, I have not come across with any study similar to what you described. And even there is one, I will study the results very cautiously. Native language cannot be randomized, so it's impossible to have a randomized controlled trial. This means what we will likely to see are observational studies, which are prone to missing important confounding variables: Native language intertwines with too many factors (education system, country of origin, culture, socioeconomic status, writing style and syntax construction, quality of English education, existence of equivalent concepts in English, etc.) that probably cannot be fully adjusted for in the analysis. At the end, we will likely see that non-native speakers are at a disadvantage, but the true cause of such disadvantage may be lurking elsewhere, and the true effect contributed by the linguistic difference alone is next to impossible to be parsed out.

Truth be told, I believe discrimination exists. If a reviewer reads that the data were collected in a non-English-speaking country, he/she may pay more attention to the grammar, or be more likely to suggest comments like "Please consult an editor or a native speaker in order to polish the English." I am fortunate enough to be working in the biomedical field in which most writings tend to follow a framework of being succinct, direct, and optimally simple. Most of the time I could easily parse out the ideas from the writing quality and give comments separately to both. Researchers in other fields may feel differently.


Expiration of accreditation of the program In the university Master degree transcript, if it is written that accreditation of program is valid until Jan 10, 2016, then what does that imply?

For you, who hold the degree: nothing. Your degree does not have an expiration date. It will remain valid for all uses after Jan 10, 2016.
For the department: if they want to continue enrolling students in this program and handing out this degree, they will have to renew their accreditation. This means justifying to a local or national regulating body (depending on the country and local law) the value of the degree, the seriousness of the degree-granting process, and many other such assurances.


How to start writing a literature review? I have 2 months where I should write the literature review for my PhD thesis. However, I don't know how to write one.

In general terms, what would be a good way to start the literature review? For instance, how can I organize the reading and divide it in topics?

I would appreciate any helpful ideas, books, or articles.

Since you don't say what field you are in, this may not work for you - but I'll describe how I do a literature review in the biomedical sciences. I've tried to be general, so it could apply to other fields, but if you're not in science at all it might not work for you.

The first step to writing a literature review is defining your topic. What is the key question/ concept you are trying to explain or summarize? This can be difficult if you are really starting from zero on a topic, and will probably need to be refined as you work on your review. But it's important to define this at least in draft form before you start.

The second step is coming up with search terms. Begin by searching your question/ concept on Google Scholar or another large database - if it's a biomedical topic, Cochrane Reviews is a good place to start. I'm not sure if there are similar review databases for other fields. Look for a few key papers in the area, read those, and look at their reference lists. Also, record their 'key terms' (usually below the abstract) - these will help you define search terms. Pull relevant papers from their reference lists and repeat. Once you've gone through ~ 10 papers you will probably have a good sense of the type of key words that are important for your topic. Use these terms to build an improved literature search.

Third, you need to actually do the literature search. Your field probably has a database of journals - use this and your search terms to identify all relevant papers over whatever time frame you are interested. You'll probably need to refine as you go, so you don't get swamped with papers. I prefer to go use a systematic search strategy, even if I'm not doing a systematic review, since this removes some subjectivity. This means going through all results, and reading any papers which have titles or abstracts that suggest they may be relevant to your question.

Fourth, you need to read and take notes. Make sure your notes are indexed by paper, so that you always have the citation of the original paper with whatever facts you note down. I find OneNote is a great way to do this, but there are other tools I'm sure.

For me, once I've read 20 or so papers, I usually have a pretty good idea of what the answer to my question/topic is, and what the nuances are. Then it's just a matter of organizing the notes that I've already taken into a rough outline of what I want to say (remembering to keep label all the facts/opinions with their citations). After that, you're ready to start writing, and it's not too difficult since you've already got a good sense of what to write as well as a rough draft in the form of notes.

One important caveat is that you should always re-write all your notes in your own words as you go through the outline converting it into a paper. This way, if you occasionally just copied the original author's text when taking notes, you won't end up with their words in your paper (which would be plagiarizing).


Referencing earlier passages: Cross reference or "as discussed earlier" I am looking for stylistic advice regarding the (over) use of cross-references. For instance, using cross-references in Latex through \ref{...} for major structural blocks like chapters and sections certainly is a good idea. But when it comes to subsections or subsubsection that are only one or two pages long, technical cross-references begin to feel a little over the top and I prefer using phrases such like as mentioned earlier or as discussed in the previous section (while possibly actually meaning a latex subsubsection). I also prefer it this way, as I don't like numbered headings for subsections and subsubsections, for the same reason: It looks overkill. But numbered headings are requiered for the cross-references to work.

So, should I rather use technical cross-references with \ref{...} throughout the text? Are the more or less agreed upon stylistic rules for this in scientific writing?

What you prefer is barely relevant; think of the reader. It so happens that earlier today I was consulting a book to find a specific method. I quickly found an example of its use, but the book said '...as explained in detail in Chapter 13...'. Chapter 13 was a long chapter. The explanation when I found it was very short - and it took me a long time to find it.

In general, the more cross-references the better but you have to credit the reader with some short-term memory. A cross-reference to the previous paragraph would be more irritating than helpful.


Can I keep using my old academic affiliation for publishing? I have recently completed my Ph.D. and would be joining the industry in an analytics profile where publishing is not mandatory. I want to keep on publishing to ensure my return to academia if I feel like it someday. Can I keep sending papers to journals and conferences using my old academic affiliation?

When you are really not affiliated to the institution anymore, you should not put it on your publications. Certainly not, when the work you are publishing has not been initiated during your stay at the institution.

Many institutions have the possibility to offer you a 'zero hours' contract. In this scheme you remain affiliated to the institution, and can use their facilities (e.g., email address, etc), but do not receive any monetary compensation.

If you agree to such an arrangement with your previous institution, you obviously can still use the affiliation on your publications.


When I send a recommendation request, does each REU request a different "style" of rec letter? I want to apply to quite a few REUs and I'm asking a professor to write me recommendations. I was wondering whether for most REUs, he could write one recommendation and then use it for everything, or whether he would have to rewrite or edit the letter for each program. This is so that I don't feel bad "spamming" him with requests from various programs.

Also is it a faux pas to put down the professor's email into the request box in the app without sending them an email? (Even though I discussed this briefly some time ago with professor)

Before you put their name down, email the professor again just to make sure they're still ok to write the letter.

Once they've agreed, don't worry about the different formats that may be required for different places. Professors are generally fully aware of what the letter writing process demands and would not (or at least, should not) commit to it unless they know they have time for it.

In your initial email, it may be a good idea to list the places you're applying to and their respective deadlines, so the professor has a rough idea of the time commitment.


Finding a Professor for my Honors Project I am doing an undergrad in Computer Science, and am seriously considering entering in the honors program at my school.  I fulfill all the requirements (certain courses, GPA, etc) and now I just need to find a professor that is willing to work with me.

An honors project at my school is a two-part process:

First there is a Directed Study where the student and the professor work one-on-one to bring the student up to speed on the subject material that may be required for the thesis project.  This happens over one semester like a regular course
After the directed Study, the student sets to work on the actual project/research, and presents their findings whenever they have completed their project (usually two semesters).

I have read the backgrounds on all the professors in my faculty, and have identified half a dozen who do research which would be similar to my project.

My problem now is that I don't know how to "apply".  I have prepared a one page "pitch" which talks about my background, my project idea, and why I think that professor would be a good fit (based on their research interests), which I was going to email to my half-dozen potential professors.

Is this too formal?  Too informal?

Extra info:

I go to a Canadian University.
I study Computer Science.
I am away on an internship, or else I would go talk to the professors in person.

For what it is worth, I successfully 'applied' for a similar program as an undergrad simply by sending emails to the potential mentors. I used a one or two paragraph pitch, then asked if they would be willing to explore the possibilities. This meant that the professors could have agreed to meet me to discuss the project without committing themselves to anything. It also meant that if I had decided that I didn't want to work with a particular professor after meeting them in person, I had left myself an option to gracefully decline.

(I ended up with a very successful honors project in this way. Good luck with your endeavors!)


What's the rough budget size for one person year (research asssistant/postdoc) in academia? For my CV, I want to mention the budget size of third-party funds I helped to raise, but I do not know the financial details. So:

What's the rough cost for one person year in academia, including personal costs, travel costs, overhead costs, etc.

Update: Since the budget seems to depend on the location: It was a German project ("DFG Einzelantrag auf Sachbeihilfe") and I computed the personal costs per year to be about 60 thousand Euro. But I have no clue how much the travel and overhead costs are per year.

The total amount of funding is difficult to guess. If you can't get detailed information, it's better to just state the number of positions in the grant and the total duration. Even that could be left out. If you're applying within Germany, everybody will know what a "typical" DFG grant includes. For applications somewhere else, I'm not sure how relevant this information would be.

The personnel related funding received from the DFG is standardized. See for example there for rates in 2012. The important question here would be wether it's a full-time or part-time position. That is field-dependent.

Overhead cost is standardized at 20 % of the total funding (at least for recent grants, it has been less earlier).

Travel costs and other is really dependent on the project.


Prospects with a Computational Social Science degree During college, I decided to use my free electives to pursue a second major I had an interest in (Sociology) besides my main focus on computer science.

I am contemplating applying to some phD programs that intersect both of these fields. However, I know these are new programs.

I have e-mailed a few departments but I get the vibe that they are more focused in getting people to apply to these new programs rather than necessarily being honest about prospects.

So my question is essentially, are there tenure track professorships that are interested in applicants with these kinds of backgrounds? And if so is it only a very small group of institutions?

Example of one of the programs I am referring to: Ph.D Program in Computational Social Sciences

Generally, if this is a relatively new cross-disciplinary area, this will start as a very small group of institutions. If it's a fruitful area, that number will grow quickly, and among  the early adopters might well be some of the best universities.

And yes, to set up these programmes in the first place, does indeed require buy-in from professors and top-level university administrators, so there are tenure-track professorships interested in applicants with those sort of cross-disciplinary backgrounds

What is it like to study in a new cross-disciplinary area?

There are a few things that make it different.

You might find yourself building the foundations. A lot of the work might be much more exploratory. It can be the wild west, with few established paths and no signposts; and you may end up making up the rules as you go along.

That is to say, established fields tend to have well-defined protocols for things like data collection; and a proven set of tools to work with. Whereas in a new cross-disciplinary area, you're more likely to be building the basic toolkit from scratch: writing your own protocols starting from bare bones.  There will be things you can take from each of the disciplines that you span, but combining them will be untested ground.

Some of the papers you write may end up being foundational for the new cross-disciplinary area, and highly-cited for years to come. Even though the work they contain, might seem fairly basic to you.

It can be lonelier. Scarier. More exciting. Harder to get funding. Or easier to get funding. Your reading will be broader, as it will span journals across more than one discipline, and you won't find enough journals or conferences that are closely-enough targeted at your field. You might end up starting your own conference, just to help build the platform.

disclaimer: I do work in a new cross-disciplinary institute, but I do not work in computational social sciences (though one or two of my colleagues are indeed computational social scientists)


Is there any way to pick a right direction in research while solving a problem? I am a PhD student mid stage, working on computational aspects of mathematics. I am working on a research problem with my supervisor. I am at a stage where I can't take much help from the supervisor because I am in the fourth year. I can't do something like going to supervisors office to verify my answers. I did these things in the initial years of my PhD, but now I can't poke my supervisor that often.

I am facing a difficulty that how to come with something non-trivial on myself. The problem with me is that I go into wrong directions many times, and in the past I have spent many days, weeks, or longer on these wrong directions. I want to minimise the number of these trials and failures. Does it come with age?

Question: Is there any way to pick a right direction (which yields a paper) in research while solving a problem? I can take the help of my research supervisor once in two weeks. However, many times a day or week, I also need to discard some of the possible directions of research.

Short version: no.

Long version: absolutely no. Having experience in the field helps (and experienced people are those that have already taken lots of wrong directions in their life), but ultimately encountering road blocks is a part of research. It happens all the time. You take lots of wrong directions, you waste time.

What you read in the papers is the road that works and gives the best and shortest solution to the problem, but the people who wrote them typically have also tried several approaches that didn't work, or were a lot more cumbersome.

If it is already clear from the beginning what will work, it's not research anymore, it's just an exercise. :)