Is it better to pull out of exams or fail them? This year I have been pursuing my second Master's degree in pure mathematics. It is a one-year program in which the final score is determined 100% by the final exams. I have excellent scores at my previous degrees, but this year I faced a health issue which resulted in me making very little progress, to the point that I'm pretty certain I will fail my upcoming exams. Assuming that I will be able to overcome my health issue and apply for a PhD* in the future:

Would it look better in a PhD application if I pulled out of my upcoming exams completely or if I took them and failed them?
What would I write in my CV in each case?

The second scenario sounds a bit worse to me because there will be a transcript with extremely poor grades which I will have to attach to any future PhD application. But maybe I'm missing something. Any advice is welcome.

*: I haven't decided whether I will be pursuing a PhD or not, so I'm posting the analogous question at workplace.SE as well. I don't think this is cross-posting since the option that is best for pursuing a PhD might not be best for job hunting (for example I'm not sure whether you are supposed to attach your academic transcripts in a job application).

You should go and speak to your course lecturers as soon as possible, and put in a request for special consideration on the basis of illness.  Your university should have a policy of how to apply for special consideration, and the criteria for granting consideration.  This differs from place to place, but most universities are accommodating of problems caused by illness (assuming you can give evidence of this via medical certificates, etc.).  Given your position, I would suggest you request for them to allow you to defer assessment in your courses until you have had time to recover from your illness and study for the exams.  If this is too much for them, then as a fall-back position, ask them to allow you to withdraw from the courses without failure.  Whatever you do, don't just make a unilateral decision on what to do without speaking to your lecturers --- discuss your circumstances with them and find out their position.


E-Mailing supervisor during Masters Thesis - How often and how much? I am in a terminal masters program in the Humanities. I will have to write my masters thesis at some point and have been told that I will have 3 meetings with my professor.

I have never worked on a thesis or with a professor as closely as this (I did not write a thesis as an undergradute), so I am a bit worried about the whole process.

What am I expected to do exactly? Am I allowed to email my professor with emails? Is it even expected? And if so, how often and much is appropriate between the meetings, and what can I expect to get out of the emails (as opposed to the meetings).

Sorry if this seems basic to some of you - it surely is. But it would be great to know if there are certain academic standards or rules I might not be aware of.

There is no standards about contacting your professor.

I think the proper answer to this is : ask your supervisor about it. Only he can tell you what he expects of you and how available he is. If you keep your email or contact with him civil and polite, their is nothing more to do.

Depending on how many student he has to supervised and his working habits, he might tell you whether he prefers emails or meeting, or if he is able to make extra meetings with you should the need arise.


Going to a different University for part of my PhD SHORT: Is it normal -or perhaps "is there likely to be any kind of existing framework"- for me to go and do part of my PhD at another institution? For, say, a summer - although I might prefer something like 5 months or even a year?

DETAILS: I'll now try to explain why I'm thinking about this - while keeping details anonymous!

I am working on "X". I'm very happy to be doing so, but X is not quite a large enough thing to be the entire focus of a PhD - this is something I and my supervisor both believe. I am ~1.3 years into my 4 years of funding.

A few days ago I met "Dr Y" at a conference. With Dr Y, I conceived an idea/project "Z", that is very closely related to X. In my next supervisory meeting I will be talking to my supervisor about Z, and I believe it will excite him, because it fits so nicely into my PhD. So I am going to start working on Z soon; and if Z turns out really well, I might very well want to invest a year or maybe more out of my PhD into Z.

Thing is: Z is deeply integrated into Dr Y's work, but not that of my supervisor. My supervisor's work isn't even very related to X! Which I know is kinda bad, but we've been getting by ok.

However, if Z starts to turn into something cool, maybe you can see why I'd like to go off and work for Dr Y for a bit! He is in the same country but a different institution. Skype conversations and email can do the job but it's nice to be alongside the person whose work you are contributing to.

I believe Dr Y would be willing to make room for me if Z started to look promising. Not sure what my supervisor would think; but of course all of this is contingent on it all being an administrative possibility at all. So what's the verdict?

Further information related to the comments

I feel like this is very different from "transfer for unhappy", because I'm not unhappy and I don't want to permanently transfer. I want to come back to work on project X. If nothing else, there's more paperwork with that, right?

"Ultimately your dissertation needs to be on something that matches the expertise of your supervisor, and that doesn't seem to be the case for Z": Well, it is not particularly the case for X either.

I'd hope to continue using the funds given to me by my current funding source.

I'm based in the UK, but I can't be more specific.

As Tobias Kildetoft pointed out in a comment, in some places it is quite common -- and sometimes mandatory -- for a PhD student to spend a period in another group, possibly abroad, frequently paid by the home university (e.g., "study abroad" at my university). The visit period is usually from few months to one year, six months being probably quite common.

I personally consider such an experience an important part in the formation of a researcher.

There's usually no need for a framework. On the part of your home university, what counts are the regulation of your PhD programme, the opinion of your advisor and, sometimes, that of the PhD programme committee. The opinions of advisor and PhD programme committee usually depend on how much the activity in the other group is related to your current one or, more generally, to the topic of your PhD. On the part of the other university, the opinion of the group leader is usually the only thing that matters, especially if funding comes from the home university.

From your description, I think that you can certainly propose the visit to your advisor with chances for a positive outcome. You didn't provide enough details for us to tell you whether your university regulations allow this activity or not, but it's easy to check this with the university administration. Do this check before making the proposal.


Can a paper get rejected in the copyediting phase (after peer review acceptance)? A journal with high impact accepted my paper after peer review.  In the copy-editing phase I noticed some errors -- mostly mixed up references.  Can the paper now be rejected due to these errors?  What about if I want to update some references?

Formally, a paper can be rejected at any time, even after printing.  E.g. IEEE describes such cases, which are mostly plagiarism-related.  In your case of mixed-up references, a rejection is unlikely.

Updating references should be a non-issue in the early copyediting phase but problematic in the late stages.  You might have to live with published wrong references.


Should my withdrawals be included on my transcripts for graduate admissions? When I first started college out of high school I attended a university for a few months before withdrawing. I received all W's on the transcript from that school. I am now about to graduate from a different university and am applying to different graduate schools.

Do I need to send the transcripts from this first school where I received the W's or do I only send transcripts from schools where I earned credit?

This will depend on the schools that you're applying to. The best bet is going to be to call the admissions office and just ask.  Every application I've sent in has specifically stated all colleges attended, but I suspect that your mileage may vary.

House-keeping note: Welcome to Ac.SO! Your question is fairly specific to your circumstances and so would be generally frowned upon as it doesn't really adhere to the format of the site. Check out the FAQ for more information on what a good SO question looks like.

Best of luck with your applications.


Sampling question for telephone survey. Health sciences researcher out of my area of expertise. I have an assistant calling businesses at random, using a publicly available registry, to ask about their automated external defibrillator (AED). We are sampling without replacement.

My question is, what happens methodologically if we call one of the registered AEDs (selected by random) and the person/informant can give us info on multiple AEDs on the registry that have not been selected as part of our random sample? We're in this position with a large business who has 10+ AEDs, all of which are registered, but our randomization only selected one of the 10+ devices. It seems crazy not to get info on all the devices to me.

Can/should we include these devices that were not randomly selected? I'm having trouble understanding the implications of sampling these and including them in our analysis. Including these other devices seems like snowball sampling instead of just simple randomized sampling.

Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thank you!!!

This isn't my field, but statistically speaking, you will possibly invalidate your study if you change the parameters mid stream.

However, you can gather the extraneous data, since it is cheap to do so. But isolate it and use it only as a guide to future work and, perhaps, to give yourself confidence (not statistical confidence) in the outcomes.

If this is dissertation work, then knowing what you could have done differently is worth exploring and maybe including. But let the experiment you designed be carried out faithfully. Otherwise, at best, you will just confuse yourself with the results.


Do npj and Nature-branded journals have the same reputation such that I can say I published "in a Nature journal" after publishing in npj? In 2014, Nature collaborated with parters and launched npj, and they state "Nature Partner Journals adopt a modified set of Nature editorial standards". In fact, relatively high impact factors are observed in these "npj" journals but these journals are branded with "npj (Topic Name)" rather than "Nature (Field)".

What's more, the journals like npj Computational Materials (IF~9) and Nature Communications (IF~12) are slightly comparable in terms of the impact factor.

So my question is, do "npj" journals have a comparable reputation to other Nature derivative journals like Nature Materials, Nature Physics etc.? Basically can I say I published in a Nature journal after publishing in npj?

The answer is a resounding no, they don't carry the same reputation. The npj journals are quite clearly on a lower rung of the prestige ladder. You can easily verify this by comparing the impact factors, which is >40 for Nature, and ~9 for npj Computational Materials, for example. It isn't only age either - the Nature Publishing Group clearly has an incentive to offer a range of journals for different topics and levels of impact, while preserving the reputation of their flagship journal.

As for whether you can say that you've published in Nature, see When someone says a paper is published “in Nature”, does that mean it's published in Nature? In short, you're much better off not misrepresenting where you've published.


Legality and feasibility of digitizing old text books and course notes for private use I have finished university already some years ago, and am now working in the field of my previous studies. I was always very careful, diligent and organized when it came to collecting and archiving my course notes and course text books.

Well, in the current situation, I have all these notes and books stored at my parents' attic. However, quite often at work, I remember some of the content I studied and think "well, that would be quite useful now to know" or "I did a case study at school that was very similar to my current project - what did we do back in the days?". I can even point to the specific book or course, where the topic was covered. However, I cannot look up anything because they are physically stored somewhere in a geographically remote place.

So I have been asking myself repeatedly: "why don't you digitize your course notes, text books, hand-outs, etc.?"

Has anyone of you similar issues? How did you handle it?
Is it even legal to scan full text books for private use? I would store them in my Dropbox and do not intend to share with anyone. Of course, there is always the risk that my account gets hacked and files leaked, but I definitely do not have the intention to share any of these files (also, I do not know how probable this threat scenario is, given that I use two-factor-authentication). It is only and exclusively intended for my private use.
Is it even feasible to scan dozens of books and folders full of notes and print-outs?

I am really curious to hear your opinions!

How did you handle it?

With an unstapler, a xerox/scanner with paper feed (and a few after-hours spent listening to my mp3 player and hoping the xerox machine wouldn't clog).

  Is it even legal to scan full text books for private use?

This depends on your jurisdiction, but generally speaking it's probably considered fair use. Also, "no plaintiff - no judge". (Lest anyone asks: No, I'm not advocating anything illegal here.)

  Is it even feasible to scan dozens of books and folders full of notes and print-outs?

Books will give you a hard time, because they don't fit into the automatic feed. Notes and print-outs do. Have you considered paying someone for doing the manual copying for you (the neighbor's kid, a poor student etc.)? After you have the files, however, only part of the work is done. OCR'ing the files and saving them under intelligible file-names is still something that can be delegated. Digging up the references and ordering the files in some reference management software is the harder part that requires more or your own work or at least oversight.


Professor falsely accusing me of cheating in a class he does not teach, two months after end of the class. What precautions should I take? I'm a domestic student in the US. Despite my poor English, it's my first language.

In May 2019, I finished a class on web development.
My final submission was a simple but fully functional web app.
The professor of the that class seemed happy with my work (and the work of my classmates) and gave positive feedback. No one was accused of plagiarism. It was a small class with only five people, we all know each other fairly well and I don't think anyone cheated. I know I certainly didn't.

This summer I am taking another class, which is co-taught by Prof X, who has made it clear that he thinks I am an idiot. Prof X is also one of the co-chairs of my program.

Last week, I asked Prof X a question. He scoffed at me and asked me how I completed the web-development class if I didn't already know the answer to the question.
I told him I had completed it just fine. Then he told me I couldn't possibly have completed the final project. I told him I did. I asked him the question again.
Then he asked me what my grade was in the web development class. I got an A, so I told him that. Normally I wouldn't get into it but I was happy with the grade.
I was not able to get an answer to my question.

This week I found out that Prof X is starting a formal university disciplinary process against me.

I didn't cheat and I can prove it. I have all the code I wrote for the project and it's in my GitHub in a private repo so it was all version-controlled. I also have the presentations I gave to the class that show the work in progress. The web-development class's professor would vouch for me if needed, I'm sure of that.

While I think this is likely to blow over and not result in any problems for me, what are some precautions I should take just in case?

Bringing info from OP's self-answer below up into the question:

@MichaelKay - "my guess would be that you wrote the code and got it working despite not understanding some fundamental concept of WHY it worked; and the Prof, having a more theoretical mind-set than yours, can't imagine the possibility that people can get code working without understanding the theory."

I accept that I may not understand some fundamental concepts of why it worked. However, Prof X is not a computer science professor and by his own admission is not a programmer. The class I'm taking this summer is in psychology and that is the area of research of Prof X.

"It would help to know exactly what the question was."

Sure, without going into too much detail about the coursework, I had asked for help with my presenting skills. My question did not have anything to do with programming. The class I'm taking this summer is in psychology, no programming involved.

Prof X has never criticized my coding skills, only my ability to pass the web development class based on my question about giving presentations.

@Bey - This isn't a major research university, it's a medium-sized state school. Prof X is not a department chair, he is one of the co-chairs of my program specifically, not the whole department. I can't drop the course as it is past the drop date now. But regardless, Prof X is one of three professors teaching this class and the other two seem to think highly of me so far, so I am less concerned about the grading.

@JeffE recommends in a comment:

  Discuss your situation with the department chair and your previous instructor, and keep careful documentation of everything.


What's the difference between a degree in Mathematics and in Mathematical Sciences? I'm considering degrees (in England) and I noticed that Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences are separate. What is the difference? Is it the case that one subject is a sub-subject of another? Would either have no advantages to studying over the other?

Short answer:

You should consult the specific programs you are interested in to find what they cover and how they differ at that particular institution, and the advantages of one versus the other depend on your interests and goals.

Longer answer:

"Mathematical sciences" suggests a potentially broader focus of study to include math-adjacent subjects like statistics, mathematical approaches to computer science, actuarial science, etc.

The specific focus of a given program depends on that particular program; a particular program awarding a degree in Mathematics could include study in 'mathematical sciences' as well as more of a 'pure math' approach, or it could not, and vice versa: a program in 'mathematical sciences' could include mathematics itself alongside other related topics. A program in 'mathematical sciences' in one institution might include mathematical statistics; in another institution there might be a clear separation with another program specifically in statistics and no overlap.

In summary: you should consult the specific programs at institutions you are interested in, most likely starting from their website (for example, for Oxford's MSc in mathematical sciences).

Advantages of one versus the other depend on your interests and goals, and can't be answered here.


Should I always force the use of active voice in my dissertation? I decided to use first person ("we") and active voice as the primary style of writing my dissertation in the domain of Computer Science. I have read some discussions about this topic and the people generally agree that we have to be consistent.

Nonetheless I also noticed that are some instances in which the passive voice seems to be a better fit, like when I want to emphasize the action rather than the actor or when I don't know who is the actor (or it doesn't matter).

It seems hard to me in those situations to force the use of active voice (maybe because English is not my first language). To what degree should I force the use of active voice? Are there some guidelines regarding this topic?

The goal of style guides is to give suggestions for how to write well. These are guidelines and suggestions, not immutable rules. Once you understand what the base suggestions are, and why they’re there, you can begin to understand when not to apply them. As you said, if you don’t know who the “actor” is, an active-voice sentence becomes more difficult to make clear without sounding stilted.

(I’ve tried writing a paper entirely in active voice when I was still a student. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the results.)


Given a DOI, how can I programmatically obtain all the author affiliations? Given a DOI, how can I programmatically obtain all the author affiliations? The coding part isn't the issue, but finding a proper database/API is.
E.g. for DOI 10.1186/s12920-019-0598-0, the author affiliations are:

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7N 5A9 Canada
Division of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7N 5A9 Canada
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, 571158 China

First of all, the main sources of citation data are:

Proprietary data sources:

Google Scholar
Scopus
Web of Science (WoS)

Open access data:

Crossref
MEDLINE (focusing on medical papers)

Some papers compare the comprehensiveness between these different sources, e.g. see {1,2}.

To extract the author affiliations given a DOI, a few options (search for "affiliations" on the links below) :

https://support.datacite.org/docs/api-get-doi
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/licensee/elements_descriptions.html (MEDLINE database https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/medline.html)
https://github.com/CrossRef/rest-api-doc  suggested by Anyon.

For option 3 (CrossRef API), one can use the https://github.com/CrossRef/rest-api-doc  API via the Python library https://gitlab.com/crossref/crossref_commons_py:
# If testing in Docker
docker run --interactive --tty ubuntu:18.04 bash
apt update; apt install -y git nano wget htop python3 python3-pip unzip

# Requirements
pip3 install crossref-commons

# Python code
import crossref_commons.retrieval
crossref_commons.retrieval.get_publication_as_json('10.5621/sciefictstud.40.2.0382')  # affiliations are empty
crossref_commons.retrieval.get_publication_as_json('10.1148/radiol.2018180887')       # affiliations are present

though it seems that quite often authors have no affiliations on CrossRef.
My guess is that MEDLINE (option 2) has more thorough metainformation (I based my guess given the information I see on the PubMed website, which relies on MEDLINE database, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936069/ has author affiliations, but not crossref_commons.retrieval.get_publication_as_json('10.1186/s12920-019-0598-0'), even though 10.1186/s12920-019-0598-0 = PMC6936069. Anyon's comment also questions CrossRef's comprehensiveness for the author affiliations field). The MEDLINE database can either be downloaded or accessed via API (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/). See https://stackoverflow.com/a/62974197/395857 on how to access the MEDLINE database in Python.

If one cannot find the affiliation in the metainformation and if the PDF can be obtained from the DOI, one could use PDF-to-text extraction programs for scientific papers, such as:

https://github.com/kermitt2/grobid (has the ability to parse affiliation and address blocks)
https://github.com/allenai/science-parse
https://github.com/allenai/spv2

To test pybliometrics that BND refers to in their answer:
# If testing in Docker
docker run --interactive --tty ubuntu:18.04 bash
apt update; apt install -y git nano wget htop python3 python3-pip unzip

# Install and configure pybliometrics
pip3 install pybliometrics
from pybliometrics.scopus.utils import config
config['Authentication']['APIKey'] = '' # Enter Elsevier API key obtained on http//dev.elsevier.com/myapikey.html

# Retrieve author affiliations
from pybliometrics.scopus import AbstractRetrieval
ab = AbstractRetrieval("10.1016/j.softx.2019.100263")
from pybliometrics.scopus import AuthorRetrieval
au1 = AuthorRetrieval(ab.authors[0].auid)
print(au1.affiliation_current)

Unfortunately pybliometrics relies on Elsevier Scopus's API, which isn't free: some institutions have subscribed to it, but fewer and fewer are willing to feed the Elsevier sharks.

References:

{1} Harzing, Anne-Wil, and Satu Alakangas. "Google Scholar, Scopus and the Web of Science: a longitudinal and cross-disciplinary comparison." Scientometrics 106, no. 2 (2016): 787-804. https://web.archive.org/web/20170922223941/http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/18511/1/gsscowos.pdf
{2} Van Eck, Nees Jan, Ludo Waltman, Vincent Larivière, and Cassidy Sugimoto. "Crossref as a new source of citation data: A comparison with Web of Science and Scopus." A blog post in the website of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, URL: https://www.cwts.nl/blog (2018). https://www.cwts.nl/blog?article=n-r2s234 (mirror)


Alternative ( and programmable) referencing tools for word on mac I am using microsoft office word, the newest version (2016) for mac. I have previously used Endnote as a referencing tool, but now I switched to Mendeley because It is conveniently good at organizing my PDF files. There is also a neat plugin for word on my mac for this program, and I can use it without a problem.

However, I was using the writing program LaTex for a while as an alternative to word, and since I switched back to word I miss the ability to just "command" the reference to appear in the text using a referencing key word. Mendeley is a very neat program, but you still have to "click" around on the screen a lot to enter one reference.

So I have two questions:

Are there any more "programable" referencing tools which are comparable with microsoft office word (for mac)? Or is this an absolute limit of what word can do, and I have to accept that if I want to use word.. then the referencing tools will always be plug-in's that I have to "click" around in the program to use - each time I want to add a reference?
Are there ( based on personal preferences ) better programs out there then Mendeley?

Jabref: A cross platform, nice tool with a ton of useful features. Does not have big dependencies, and does no rely on obscure formats. Has good import/export and manages links to pdfs.


Better to cite github project or web page of unpublished software? In my research, I am using several compression algorithms that do not have a related publication. For example Facebook's lzfse. Would it better to cite it's active github project (e.g., https://github.com/lzfse/lzfse) or blog or other web content introducing this utility (e.g., https://developer.apple.com/reference/compression/data_compression)?

I guess I am concerned with the amount of time this will stay active online as well as relevance.

As a reader, I would find a citation or mention of both resource types to be useful, especially in the all-too-common event of a link breaking or a github project going dormant. If you're concerned about formality then contacting the original authors to determine which citation they would prefer would be helpful. Otherwise, as long as your audience knows what you're referencing and where to find out more about it, you should be fine.


Is it OK to start a PhD with a side project still running from your master's? I just finished my master's and I am about to start my PhD studies. As I am very used to do many independent projects during my bachelor's and master's, I am willing to continue a side project on a fairly related topic. Actually, this is project is on a topic completely related to my potential PhD project and even during my job interview my supervisor said it is a plus for me to have experience with these kind of projects.

I have been working on this project from second year of my master's and I worked only about 3-4 hours per week on that, so I guess I can manage to keep it as a side project. The thing is it still needs some work to lead to some acceptable results, but I'm sure it will pay off, if I can make it. Yet, learning about the methods used in the project are really helpful for my PhD project as well. The problem comes where most professors want concentration from their students and this might not be Ok with working with another researchers. Besides, my collaboration in the side project seems not to be very efficient since it is a side project for my collaborators as well.

The question is should I discuss this with my professor even if I want to dedicate some of my free time to that?  Should I risk my relationship with him in the early stages of my PhD studies (in case he is not Ok with that?)? Do I look like some trouble maker if I ask him about this? Do you think I should continue this project or just simply drop it and concentrate on my PhD project?

Let me answer in two parts:

With the right advisor, projects undertaken on your own initiative will be valued rather than seen as a problem.
You definitely need to talk to your advisor now to make sure you're with the right advisor.

Expanding on this a bit... one of the hardest things for many people to learn in a Ph.D. program is how to organize and initiate their own research portfolio.  You show signs of doing this right from the start, so as long as you are willing to accept feedback and guidance, this is potentially a really good thing.

Whether it is a good fit for your advisor, however, depends on what your advisor's needs are at their current stage in their career.  Some professors really need their students to be focusing on particular problems that the professor currently wants or needs to tackle.  Others are able to give their students more freedom to wander intellectually.  This is partly based on career stage (pre-tenure professors are likely to demand more focus), and partly on personality (a control freak or an empire-builder will not be mellowed by tenure; a highly confident professor may give much free rein even before tenure).

So: talk with your advisor about your desires and plans.  If your advisor is receptive to the idea, great: now you can sort out how to balance things and make sure you aren't neglecting any responsibilities or making strategic mistakes.  If your advisor is not receptive, you need a different advisor.


Assistant Professor at my state university, Research Scientist at my Ivy League, or both? I am a Research Scientist at an Ivy League. I have been offered an Assistant Professorship at the state school. The Ivy League has suggested that if I take the professorship, I could stay on in a 20% role and continue my present research. The state school seems amenable to this arrangement, and would credit my past time here toward tenure, and the ongoing 20% as a tenure-admissible external collaboration.

Within my network, I cannot find a single person with this kind of arrangement. Are joint appointments an uncommon thing? Pointed questions:

What might be the unanticipated issues of joint appointment at different ranks (asst. prof. and research scientist)?
How can I frame this relationship such that my tenure committee is positive about the arrangement? Any other political considerations?
Is it generally permissible to write for money from two institutions, in effect to be your own subcontractor?
The department at the Ivy is much more highly ranked than that at the state school (top 10 vs 80-90s, engineering). When I move to my next position, how will the time at each institution likely be viewed? Will the Research Scientist role even be considered? Worse, will it be fairly necessary for such a move, such that I dare not let it end?

There is nothing against having a joint appointment. I would take both! At 20%, you gain from networking at the Ivy, and show up once a week...or even half day to attend faculty meetings or seminars. However, focus your research at the State school. In return for 20% support, you must co-list the Ivy in pubs and seminars you give. I’ve done this before, and it’s not hard. Good luck!


Applying to multiple fellowships simultaneously I am considering applying for three different postdoctoral fellowships, from three independent funding bodies. Each of these is a rigorous multi-stage process, including an expert peer review. Most likely, these reviewers will be at universities within my own country, rather than international reviewers.

What I am worried about, is that the same reviewer may be sent my research proposal from more than one of these fellowship applications. Therefore, it may appear, as far as the reviewer is concerned, that I am not dedicated to that particular fellowship. Furthermore, the research proposals are likely to be very similar for all three of the fellowship applications.

Will this cause a problem?

I don't think there's any reason to fear "commitment" when you're applying for competitive fellowships. Because they're competitions, it's likely that the success rate will be exceedingly low, and then it makes sense that candidates will apply to multiple programs to improve their chances.

(I also would think it unlikely that the same reviewer accepts the same proposal for multiple fellowships, since doing so would represent a conflict of interest.)


Mail forwarding after graduation It's been less than a year since I graduated and my university e-mail address is still active. Therefore, I have been able to receive invitations to review papers (presumably from my publications).

As per university policy, the e-mail account will be terminated soon. They offer an alumni.xyz.edu account but do not offer any forwarding for the xyz.edu account.

Apart from petitioning the university to change this ludicrous policy, has anyone else experience this problem?

Policy Note: Yes, this is happening all the time. However, each university policy might be different on its students/staff data. Also, might be different in each case, based on the level of education. For example they might do this for their previous postgraduate students; but not their undergraduates.
You need to send an email to the system admin of the university and ask him/her very nicely to forward all the upcoming emails to your current account. Something like following:

Dear Mr/Miss X,
I was a student/staff at the university from 20?? to 20??. My university email account was me@uni.asd.edu. Could you please forward all the upcoming emails to this address to my alumni/current email address (e.g., alumni@x.edu/currentemail@site.com)?
Kind Regards,
Me


Cons of graduating quickly I read this question Does rigor/thoroughness of undergraduate program matter (for graduate/PhD applications)? and became very worried when I saw everyone blasting the OP for contemplating graduating in three years. The general consensus was that there was no reason at all to graduate early and that the lack of additional experience would hurt your chances at graduate school. I am concerned because I am graduating with only 2.5 years because I can only barely afford this by maxing out all loans.  I would love to be able to develop greater depth in my field. Instead it has been a constant sprint to finish before I run out of money completely. I was rejected from every top ten university, and the one token safety school I got into jacked up the price as soon as they found I had nowhere to go.

Are the criticisms that finishing too fast valid in the context of extreme debt? I am saving over $100,000 by finishing early, will this reason be accepted by graduate schools? I see that graduate students do not have to pay tuition and get a small stipend, this sounds like a wonderful way to pursue an education and is very attractive to me right now. I feel that my education is rushed and I have not had the time to contemplate open research questions which are very important for graduate admissions. Graduate school is also the path to a job in research labs or academia.

edit:
I have done well enough (6th in graduating class unless I mess up). They offer to tack on a year for a masters at your current rate, which is touted as a way extend finiancial aid. This is untenable for me.

Are the criticisms that finishing too fast valid in the context of extreme debt?

Yes, the criticisms are still valid: the world, unfortunately, does not care about any particular person's debt problem.

The answers/comments given at the linked question in the OP are spot on; thus I would encourage you to try to find other sources of aid to fund your full-length undergraduate studies, if you haven't already done so (scholarships, etc.).

Having said that, some schools have a diversity statement that you are to submit along with your application. In this statement, you can provide some background on the adversities that you have faced and how you overcame them. If you have significant financial hardships that you are battling through, for example, then a diversity statement would probably be the place to talk about that and hope that someone would care enough to have it positively impact your admission decision.

Whether the "diversity statement approach" will work or not depends on (among other things) your particular situation (e.g., how inadequate is your preparation for grad school due to graduating early relative to others in similar situations?) and the number of available slots the school has for cases such as yours. I still think this approach is too risky to count on, and I would, again, encourage you to look for other ways to stay in your undergraduate program for the "normal" amount of time so that you may reap the many benefits of doing so.


Eternal Doctoral Thesis How can I help a friend who is working on a doctoral thesis since about 10 years?

It seems to me that achieving a doctoral degree is close to impossible at that point. I am sure that there is no actual progress on the thesis out of a lack of motivation and too little motivation to try something else.

He evades questions about the thesis, but at least tries to pretend that work progresses, if slowly.
I think there is no gain in helping him in the short term. By that I mean that currently my friend seems to be happy enough, and it does not feel like he just pretends to be. Also, he gets financial support from his family.

But my judgement might be off, since I only know him since about five years, and I heard an other opinion stating that he changed significantly. Also, when I try to put myself in my friends position, I would likely be devastated to the core. But try as I might, I don't think that I could repress my problems and veil them to the outside for long.

Putting that aside, I suppose that he will suffer social and financial insecurity in the long term, when his parents will not support him any more. So in this respect, it seems to be a good idea for him to get a job, except that he would need to face that he failed at his academic career to a larger extend. Even though it seems to be a rational choice to me, assuming that I manage to convince him to apply for a job, it might have psychological repercussions and damage our friendship.

Nonetheless, I would still like to push him to get a job if it can be done. So instead of asking about other options or more insight; Do I have a chance to nudge him into getting a job and if so how can it be done?

There is no fail-safe formula or instant solution to this problem, but if you have advice apart from the actual question please leave a comment/link.

The tricky aspect of this question is that you don't seem to know for sure how much progress he is actually making.  Ten years is a long time to spend in graduate school, but not unheard of.  If he is slowly making progress and supporting him isn't too much of a burden on his family, then he might be better off finishing in eleven or twelve years total, rather than quitting after ten.  (Finishing may feel much better than quitting, even if he doesn't get an academic job at all.  There are also different sorts of academic jobs: he might benefit from the degree if he ends up in high school or community college teaching, where having a Ph.D. could mean something and they might not care if it was a long, slow process.)

If he is making no progress at all and will most likely never complete the degree, then doing something else with his life would be a better choice, but of course that's a very difficult conversation to have.  If this is the case, then his advisor should already be dealing with this issue, but it's possible that the advisor is avoiding the topic.

Another difficult case is if he could complete the degree, but nobody wants to support him for long enough, or if his plans for what he'll do with the degree are unrealistic.

My recommendation is that you shouldn't intervene unless you have an exceptionally close relationship (romantic partner, best friend, etc.).  Otherwise, it's really none of your business and I doubt you'll have a productive conversation.

If you do have a close enough relationship, then the first step is to have a honest conversation about how things are going, what his hopes are for the future, what's realistically possible, what the trade-offs are, what his fallback plan is, etc.  Without that, all you're doing is guessing.  Merely having this conversation could be a useful way for him to clarify his thoughts, so I'd start with that rather than focusing on making changes.  Discussing potential changes can wait until you have reached consensus on the situation he is facing.


How can code be classified in a Thesis(Figure, Table, Listing, etc) I am writing a Thesis and there are sections that require me to add fragments of code or a complete code. Should this be classified as a figure, table,listing or snippet ?

Insert it as a listing. The convention is to print code verbatim in monospace font. If you're writing in LaTeX, the listings package exists for this purpose.


Accused of cheating on online final exam Last month I took my final exam for accounting online. My grades in the class are very good as I have a tutor for the class. I got an email from my professor telling me that she had to talk to me and I assumed it was because I did very well on the final, but when we talked she told me that I was getting taken to the board for academic misconduct because the written part of my exam (solving equations) was "almost identical" to another students. She said after reviewing she noticed that our midterm exams were also almost identical. I did not cheat, I don't know what I got on the exam as she would not tell me, or who the other student is. I would not be worried as I know that I am not guilty, but I have already talked to the board about plagiarism as there was a mix up with some homework in a previous class (it was not stated it was individual work and I worked on it with a classmate) it was an honest mistake and they just gave me a warning. Anyways, that really stresses me out as the teacher claims "there is no way this could be a mistake" but she won't let me know who the person is or what the similarities in our tests were? I feel like I have no way to prove my innocence.

It isn't up to you to prove your innocence. It is up to your instructor to prove your guilt. Insist that you did nothing wrong, assuming that is the case. Don't try to explain how you aren't guilty, but do explain, if asked how you solved any questions on the exam.
Let me note two things. Two correct answers are frequently likely to be the same, as that is just the nature of truth.
Second, all of the students had the same instructor and learning materials, so it is natural that they work in similar ways. It is natural that they approach problems in the same way. It is almost inevitable that there will be overlaps in how they solve problems.
No one can guarantee that injustice won't be done here, but similarity is not proof. Even using the same phrasing, if it is similar to that of the professor or the learning materials, is completely natural and to be expected. Especially from the better students.

You have a difficult task and can only suggest that if there is another faculty member who would be willing to speak for you at any hearing as your advocate, then it might make a difference. It is hard to stand alone against authority.

Also note that in technical subjects, there is frequently the situation that there are a limited number of ways to express something correctly. It is why some things in mathematics, for example, can't be copyrighted.
My personal opinion that a statement like "there is no way this could be a mistake", is both foolish and biased.


Seven years of postdoc with no first-author publication – what are my career prospects? I have been a postdoctoral fellow for seven years, but I have no first-author publications. I am really struggling with my projects; none of them could be completed. I have several review articles, one book chapter and one publication as a co-author.  I am too depressed and livid with myself. What are the prospects moving to company or other non-academic jobs? I had five publications as a first author during my PhD. Can I become a medical writer or science writer. My professor advises me to try and complete at least one project, because I have one last year of funding left.

First, if you feel depressed you should seek professional help. Naturally because you should take care of your mental health in general, but also because you're less likely to achieve anything useful (let alone get a new job) with a negative state of mind.
Ok so publications as first author is not going to be your selling point. Now there are certainly a lot of other things that you have done: maybe grant proposals, supervising students, experiments which require particular skills, organizing scientific events... The publication record is an important indicator in academia, but it's not the only one. And outside academia, it's frequently useless.
Try to objectively identify your skills and motivations: what are you interested in? Which skills do you have that most other people don't? Clarify the direction you would like to take and study your options, usually there are quite a lot for somebody with a PhD anyway. Your PI's suggestion could be a good idea, depending what you are looking for. You could also use some of the year you have left to perfect your skills or expand your professional network, for instance.
A simple way to get an idea of your career prospects outside academia is to contact a recruiter, they are usually eager to find skilled people. Even if you don't apply for the jobs they propose to you, this might give you a nice little ego boost ;)


Can a conference paper be an extended version of a previous conference paper? Will it face copyright issues? I am currently reviewing a conference paper, which I found is just extended version of a previous conference paper. I have heard that a journal paper can be a new version of a conference paper with some new stuff added, while the paper I am reviewing is something like this. Would this paper be rejected simply because of the copyright issue?

It would seem that you should contact the organizing committee of the conference and get their advice. To me it seems kind of low to write papers that have very similar content but it does happen.  If you are questioning it that much I would bring it up with the Organizing Committee and see what they say. You don't even have to mention names or specifics but just get their general opinion.


Send reference letters from mathjobs to other positions I am currently applying to several postdoc positions. My referees have uploaded their reference letters to Mathjobs, but I'm also applying to some positions out of Mathjobs. In order to avoid disturbing my referees again and again:

Question: Is there a way to send a reference letter uploaded on Mathjobs to a position out of Mathjobs?

Short answer: no.

As suggested by user4050, I contacted Mathjobs directly and they answered the following:

  Hello Sebastien,

  Applicants do not have access to the letters uploaded into MathJobs.
  There is some import capability between MathJobs and
  AcademicJobsOnline, but you do not have the ability to export your
  letters otherwise.

  If you need anything else, please let me know.

  Regards,

  Kim Kuda
  Senior Program Coordinator


Should one include irrelevant background on CV after career change? If one changes careers/subjects dramatically,  would it be necessary in the interest of full disclosure to include irrelevant aspects of the educational background and work-experience etc. ?

For instance if somebody has an undergraduate degree in politics and 2 years of experience in PR but then goes on to an academic career in theoretical CS (essentially starting from scratch i.e. including an undergraduate degree), would it be better/necessary to clutter the CV by mentioning that earlier background ?

I guess there must be a certain degree of flexibility, as people would not include say a part-time job in the cafeteria etc. pp. but I am not sure what the academic conventions are in different scenarios. ( I am thinking about this in the context of applications for conferences, funding, workshops, travel funds etc. pp. )

The context for what the CV is going to be used for is key. I have a single CV that includes "everything" since I started grad school and selected things from before then including seemingly unimportant part time jobs. Having a long CV makes it easier for me to create short CVs because it means I need to delete things instead of remember things.

For your intended context, I would not include the work experience, but might include the degree in politics. Including that degree will likely lead people looking at your CV to think you are older (which might be a pro or a con). If you are worried about age discrimination, I would drop it completely.


Time needed to present a poster I am joining in few days a computer science conference where I will have to present a poster, based on a paper accepted to the conference.

My poster is a standard A0 3 columns poster, and presenting it  takes me around 5 minutes; I have no idea if 5 minutes is the right amount of time, as this is my first poster presentation.

I am afraid that it may be too long: the full poster session takes 30 minutes, with about 10 posters exposed.

Any experience on this? Should I try to shorten my presentation?

In general, depends on the conference's poster presentation format. Check the guidelines for a given timespan. If there is none, then it is probably no presentation, but a normal poster session where you are presenting your poster in parallel with a lot of other people in a room. People will come by and you can explain your work to them.

In such a scenario, I would not assume to do a fully linear presentation. Rather I'd prepare a very short topic introduction (at most a minute, better 30 seconds). Then check back with your visitor if they seem interested or are asking questions already.
Then based on interaction with your visitor, try to find out which aspects of your work are interesting to them and drill deeper in the respective direction.

Poster sessions are very much about direct interaction, so don't try to shower everyone with a whole bucket of water as soon as they arrive, give them small sips and see if they like your wine. If they do, you may end up empyting whole bottles with one or two of them and drunkenly end up in a bar in the evening to plan your collaboration. Most people will just nod and smile to your short intro and be happy to go on.

P.S. If you can present all your content in about 5 minutes that's however a good indication that you've chosen about the right level of abstraction - I'd just cut it in smaller pieces that you can dish out individually/as layers.


How to retrieve number of citations for a list of papers? I have a long list of papers in a word file and I want to quickly retrieve how often each of them has been cited to get a quick (although of course somewhat rough) idea of which ones are the most influential. Is there a tool that allows to retrieve for a list of papers from e.g. Google Scholar the number of times each of them has been cited? I would prefer not to have to check manually for each paper on Google Scholar.

One solution to programmatically retrieve Google Scholar results is scholar.py (open source,  BSD license), which is

  a Python module that implements a querier and parser for Google Scholar's output. Its classes can be used independently, but it can also be invoked as a command-line tool.

Amongst other things, it can fetch the number of citations of an article.


Origin of the thesis-degree procedure It just came to my mind, currently if one wants to obtain an
academic degree one must to do a thesis. This is a widely accepted
method to prove the knowledge of certain academic level, sort to say.
But my questions are, where this method was originated? Which historical
or social circumstances originated it? Is there any philosophical background?

(note: I have no references for the below, nor am I qualified in the topic)

First of all, the premise of your question isn't quite accurate: certainly in the UK it's very common for undergraduate degrees to have no thesis requirement. But putting that aside:

I think there are parallels with other mediaeval professions, which required proof of skill in order to become a member of a guild (the professional organisation). To be a 'master' of the guild one had to produce a 'masterpiece' (the origin of that word); this has obvious parallels with the idea of a thesis proving that an individual should be admitted to a degree (remember that historically a degree is more like a rank than an award, honour or qualification).

The MA at Oxford and Cambridge is still awarded automatically to those with a BA seven years after the start of the degree, which I believe matches the time someone in a professional guild would take to become a master.

Note also that the modern doctorate is a much more recent invention than the MA.


Editorial rejection: should I write back? I recently submitted a paper to one of the Physical Review Journals (not Letters). I think that the result is both novel and important. After I uploaded the preprint to ArXiv, I received several emails from researchers in the field whom I do not know personally saying that they liked the paper and it is an important advancement in the understanding. People I personally know reacted similarly. I was sure that the paper would at least be reviewed considering that it seems to be important and that it is not submitted to PRL.

After two weeks, I got an email from the editor saying that it is being rejected without any review. My friend has got such rejection from the same journal, he received exact same text, which means that it was simply copy pasted. Now, I am a researcher who has a small number of citations, I have never published in Physical Review before and I am from a third world country. My feeling is that these things have biased the editor against the manuscript even though it is a good work if not groundbreaking and he should have at least sent it to reviewers.

I feel that I should write back to him these concerns. However, I have never done anything like this before and I am not sure if I risk lifetime rejection from the journal if I do this. I would be glad to hear the experienced researchers on this issue.

No doubt your first instinct is to challenge this desk rejection, but I would advise against it.

It is well known that appeals rarely succeed when referees go against you. When a handling editor thinks your work is not sufficiently interesting, I'd say an appeal is even less likely to be successful.

Coming specifically to Phys. Rev., your situation is somewhat worsened by the fact that alternatives to the Phys. Rev. A-X stable are not as attractive or popular.

But if your work is sufficiently useful, and helps advance your field, it will get cited even if you take your paper elsewhere. There is evidence for this in your case: You have senior researchers on arXiv giving you good feedback.


Citing the same idea in different studies Say like you have an idea that says: 'X is a cheap alternative to Y' (Smith 2010, p. 2). Now you write a paper about ABC and paraphrase Smith's idea. Next week, you write another paper which happens to have an idea similar to ABC and you had to use Smith's idea again to solidify your choice or analysis. The same thing happens for a third time, etc... Can you use it again over and over? Albeit I will admit that I try to differently paraphrase the idea each time I use it.

Of course! If you write multiple papers in the same area, you'll cite many of the same papers in each paper. No one should be required to know your history of publication to get a fully account of related work from one of your papers.


Can I write a book based on my own published papers? I have published several research papers, from my PhD thesis, in varied journals and proceedings of international conferences. Now I wish to publish a book that shall be utilising the majority of the contents of these papers. Would it be called plagiarism?

If your book is simply reprinting your papers it certainly isn't plagiarism. However, if you are re-writing and re-phrasing them, to bring them together as a whole, you should do it just as if you were writing a book based on the work of others.

In other words, when you quote or paraphrase your old papers, give a citation, just as if it were someone else's paper. This makes your intent clear to the reader. More importantly, however, is that it lets the reader go back to your originals for any context that they feel they might want.

Moreover, if your book contains new material as well as the old, the citations should make it clear what is new and what was previously written.

But just restating what you said before without citation is, today, considered self plagiarism. In some circles it is considered very serious, but mostly as it prevents the reader from finding that original context along with your references and such.

Even a statement at the beginning of your book that says that you will be copying and/or paraphrasing without citation would not be appreciated by your readers.

Treat your own work like you would that of any other scholar. This is true in general, not just for the example of a book.


Why don't first-world universities use video surveillance to catch in-class cheating? With so many first-world universities upgrading their academic buildings with state-of-the-art classrooms that have advanced technology, eg, capability to record lectures and post them on websites shortly after, why don't these universities consider utilizing similar technology to catch in-class cheating on exams?

Implementing a procedure where the classroom exams are videotaped and audiotaped could reduce cheating dramatically, in turn reducing any huge headache cases that department chairs and university deans would have to deal with.

If appropriate notice is given beforehand, I don't see that such procedures violate any privacy laws for students.

Or is utilizing technology to catch cheating a really impractical idea?

ETS, the organization that administers the GRE exams, already videotape and audiotape their exams, at least in American test centers.

This is one of those problems which may seem like they can be relatively easily alleviated, but in practice they face many challenges.

For example:

properly videotaping and audiotaping a classroom would require the careful placement of many cameras and microphones; you also have to consider the testing and maintenance of all the equipment
signal processing is not yet at the level where it can catch all the inventive ways students cheat, so your system would still need substantial human involvement
many legal/ethical/moral considerations
students will always find ways to circumvent anti-cheating systems

Given that typically only a small percent of students cheat and that examinations are held just a few times a year, it seems unreasonable to sink so much time, money, and effort to catch some, not even all, of the cheaters.

Also, there are many easy "tricks" which can be used to discourage cheating, e.g.

make exams challenging enough so that students don't actually have time to cheat
include problems which require working out and which cannot be readily copied (or whatever)

But most importantly, instead of trying to catch cheaters, it's much better to actively try to educate your students why cheating is never a good idea and why cheaters only cheat themselves.


Surname change during PhD (as a male) I'm currently undertaking my PhD and I have plans to get married before I complete my candidature. In particular, I will be double-barreling my current surname with my fiancée's current surname. We are indifferent to which name will appear first, and/or hyphenation. I have not begun publishing yet, however, I do have a first-authorship on a conference paper from my undergrad, though it is not likely this will contribute towards my PhD.
The core questions I have are:

How should I identify myself on publications produced before I am married (still >12 months away)?

My goal is to achieve consistency despite my decision to change my surname. My current thoughts so far:

Use my birth surname before marriage (First Birth), and initial my fiancée's birth surname before my own on post-marriage publications. (First F. Birth). In this case, I'll likely continue to be referenced by my birth name (e.g. Birth et al).
Continue to just use my birth name in publications, even after I change my surname. This seems like the lazy option: the option which is most convenient/appropriate at present but will become more inconvenient in the future as I continue to publish. I do have female collaborators in this situation, though they had more publications with their birth name before their name change.

A third option would be to simply change my name before I get married, and use that name on all publications. But, officially changing my name doesn't happen overnight, and I'd like to be prepared should I have to put my name on a publication before my name is officially changed.

This is a lesser concern, but I'd still like to consider: In academia, what are the implications of:

a hyphenated surname?
a double-barrelled, non-hyphenated surname?

I appreciate any thoughts and contributions. If it matters, I'm in STEM, and my surname is already quite unique, ~30,000 according to [1]. My fiancée's is ~300,000.
[1] https://en.geneanet.org/genealogy/

I know you aren't considering this possibility, but a lot can happen in a year. What happens if, for any reason, you don't wind up getting married?
There is some advantage to keeping a permanent name throughout your career, but it isn't overwhelmingly important. Eventually your future work will dominate your current work and a few exceptions probably won't be a (serious) issue. Just a bit of inconvenience at times.
I suggest, as a first option, that you just keep your birth name as your publishing identity into the future. It may be "lazy" but it causes the least problems overall.
If you don't like that idea, then a hyphenated name is probably best, though you might use the hyphen only for publishing identity, with some other form in every day usage (and even legal usage).
But neither of these is a firm suggestion, just a way to avoid the inconvenience attached to the alternatives.
A third option is to adopt a pseudonym, unrelated to your legal or common-usage name and stick with it. It isn't especially common to do this, but it has some history behind it.


What does "All deadlines are: 11:59 PM UTC-12:00" mean? For example, what would this be for July 1st, 2020, in New York (Eastern Time)?
Is UTC-12 the same as AoE ("Anywhere on Earth")?

"UTC-12" is a timezone 12 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time, which is (more or less) the time in Greenwich, UK. Nobody actually lives there, though.
A day is 24 hours, and the Earth is divided into 27 major timezones from UTC-12 to UTC+141, with the UK in the middle(ish). Therefore, someone in UTC-12 is the very last person to reach a time. At the time it is 12:01 AM UTC-12, it's 12:01 PM UTC+0, and 11:01 PM UTC+11.
So by setting the submission deadline to 11:59 PM UTC-12 on a given day, it ensures that anyone anywhere in the world who submits on the appropriate day will be on time. Hence, "anywhere on Earth."
New York is UTC-4 during the summer, which means the deadline is 7:59 AM the following day.

1: It would seem like only 24 timezones would be necessary, but a few regions chose to move to UTC+13 and UTC+14 for their own reasons. Someone in UTC+13 is 25 hours ahead of UTC-12 (so 1:01 AM the next day). The details aren't important, but in case you'd like to do your own reading.


I would like to apply to a masters program in Japan but I have no research experience. Any advice? I am pursuing a B.S in Math at UCLA, which is in the United States. My academic performance is above the average. My major GPA is 3.73 and my GPA for upper division courses is 3.56. My GRE General is 327. I might also pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level N1 held in this December, so I might be able to apply to programs taught in Japanese.

I am thinking about applying to some master programs in Japan such as information science in Tokyo University. The only thing that troubles me is that almost all universities require you to write research plan and contact the professor whose research interests you. This is quite different from US. As someone without research experience, how should I deal with this situation? Is there any taught masters program in Japan? Thanks in advance.

I'm currently on a Masters program in Japan, and I also didn't have any experience with research at all when I had to write a research plan, which made me very stressed.

  As someone without research experience, how should I deal with this
  situation?

There is no other way. You'll have to write your own research plan and contact your potential advisor.
It is pretty hard to write a research plan when you have no clue, but here is what I did:

Find something you would like to research that can actually be done at the lab you pretend to go. Read about previous publications on the laboratory's homepage, read about your potential advisor's areas of interest. You should know how to justify why you chose that lab as your potential advisor will probably ask you during email exchange.
Now that you have something that can be done at where you want to go, you'll have to justify why you chose that theme. Try to write about the potential applications of [your research theme] or how that will save the world or make everybody happy. Being able to strongly justify why your research is important is also essential.
Describe concretely which approach you will take to tackle [your research theme]. Of course you might have no idea, but you should at least have a hint from the point you researched the stuff that can be done on the lab. Write a rough schedule of about how much time your research will take (literature review, experiment designs/simulations, analysis, time for writing up your thesis etc).
Your research plan should have at least introduction, objectives, methodology (possibly with a schedule), and references. Include references from japanese authors if possible.

Remember that there is some flexibility, and once you are here you might find other research themes that are also interesting and/or more feasible than the one you initially planned.

Contacting your potential advisor is also a very important step. Professors from prestigious universities receive a LOT of emails and yours may just be easily ignored depending on your attitude. Depending on the university's guidelines, you'll have to first introduce yourself to the university's international office ("Kokusai-ka" or 国際課), which will then contact your potential advisor.

You should be very humble and polite. Of course they might not expect it from an international student, but it will give you a positive image. Overdo it and you'll look desperate.

In the first email, apologize for the sudden contact, introduce yourself, write up which university you're coming from, from which major. Say that you've read [potential advisor]'s articles about [research theme] and that you're interested in doing research under his/her guidance, and ask if that is possible (the lab may be full capacity). Do NOT attach anything in the first email, it's suspicious and will look rude (like you're pushing something for them to do for you).

If you are lucky, you might receive a reply within 2 weeks. If it is positive, you may be asked to send your research plan, academic transcript, TOEFL or JLPT certificate and possibly be asked some questions via email or Skype. At this stage you will probably be fine.

In case your first option gets rejected, write another email from scratch for other potential advisors (read his/her papers, etc - they suspect when the email looks like it had just one or two names changed, it suggests that you send the same email for many other places and conveys that you are desperate).

In any case, be prepared not to receive any reply at all. I tried contacting over 15 potential advisors/laboratories and got replies from 3 of them. I got rejected from one because the lab was full, and from another one because I didn't have a JLPT certificate.

  Is there any taught master program in Japan?

I'm currently in a taught masters program in STEM field. We have many lectures, tests, appointments, seminars, etc. pretty much like undergrad, except that grading is mostly done by assignments instead of tests. Of course, it will depend on your university and department.


Is it tough to apply for a CS PHD degree after several years in industry? Advantage:
Family support. My parents believed I should and are willing to offer some financial support. Actually they urged me.
I am currently in a big company doing relevant work and I did great.
I want to.
Disadvantage:
GPA is not good for me, 2.6 is pretty low for applying to a PhD. From what I know about my friends, those who applied for a PhD program right after undergraduate often had a much higher GPA(3.7+) than what I have.
Financial support from family may not be that much due to many reason.
I only have one published result in an irrelevant domain as third writer.
Details of my background:
I lived in China and want to apply for a PhD abroad.
Academic years
I was graduated from one of the best university in my country with a bachelor degree at 2015. I spent my academic years in my teacher's lab and competition.
I have ACM/ICPC regional bronze,  Meritorious Winner of ICM(Interdisciplinary Contest In Modeling) and National 2rd prize of MCM(Mathematical Contest In Modeling).
I cooperated with my teacher and senior, finished a paper about A* algorithm as third writer.
I would say putting efforts in competitions had some side effects to my GPA but I know excuse is pale and useless.
Industry Career
After 2017 I worked in a big company as a NLP engineer, later in 2018 I took lead of NLP team. My job allows me to follow most new discovery of academia. During the process of applying those state-of-the-art result to real world I earned much experience with huge dataset in many ways.
Goal:
I want to apply for CS PhD in NLP related domain.
In short:
I want to have apply for PhD and I'm worrying about my weak background.
Any advice/experience is appreciated

It sounds like you have many industry experiences that would look really good on a PhD application. To be blunt though, your GPA is pretty bad. If I was reviewing your application, I would worry that you are one of those students who is very capable, yet also not very focused. Experience has taught me that students who show immense promise (publications, awards, test scores), yet have really poor GPAs, rarely amount to much as graduate students in the modern system.

While this may or may not describe you, students with low GPAs tend to also be the students who struggle to get to their teaching assistant duties on time and who cause administrative nightmares for the graduate committee. (E.g. failing all classes, but arguing that they should still be retained as a graduate student because they think they have a great dissertation). I'll admit that I personally only recommend PhD applicants below a 3.0 GPA for further review by the graduate admissions committee under very rare circumstances. (E.g. they overcame cancer or something). When I am reviewing applicants, low GPA is one of the easiest metrics to immediately discard an application.

What to do:

Your industry experience should be emphasised as an indicator that your GPA is not reflective of what type of PhD student you will be. Your letters of recommendation need to speak to your work ethic and dedication specifically. These are the very best things you can do. I would be much more willing to overlook a poor GPA if everything else was very promising for the applicant (GRE, publications, letters of recommendation, industry experience, in person interviews).

If you have external funding, some programs are much more willing to take you on. (If you are willing to pay the tuition, why would they turn you down? It's low risk for them).

I would also consider applying for master programs as a means of "proving" yourself to PhD programs down the road.


Is it unethical for professional societies to offer conference discounts to members? There is a recurring pattern I see in conferences organized by several professional associations. Two different conference fees are offered, X for members and Y for non-members, with Y>X. Often, the annual membership fee for said professional associations is less than Y-X, so becoming member is cheaper than paying the non-member fee. For example, for different reasons today I have stumbled upon the pages of this, this and this conference.

I can only see two possible reasons for this practice, both ethically dubious:

to force people to become members, increasing artificially the dimension of the professional association.
to "move" funds from the conference treasure to the association treasure, leaving them available for a larger number of activities.

Often conference fees are paid by research funds, while membership fees are paid personally by the researchers, so this practice also has unpleasant side-effects on their personal finances.

Questions:

Am I overlooking more plausible justifications for this practice? Do you agree with my analysis?
How ethical do you find this practice?
Should I raise the issue with the professional societies I am a member* of?

*: You can probably guess the reason why I am a member. :(

Typically the organizations that do this are professional societies. And, as you mentioned, they have many more activities than just running the conference, so having membership fees separate from conference attendance fees allow them greater flexibility to manage their accounts.

Some places allow membership fees to be paid out of institute funds (this depends on the country and the situation, of course). However, many countries also make such professional expenses tax-deductible (after a certain threshold). Obviously it doesn't recoup the full cost of the membership, but it's better than nothing.

However, one additional point to consider is that most such conferences require that at least one of the authors of a presentation to be a member of the society. (Sometimes, this requirement falls on the presenter herself.)


What type of Grad School if I'm interested in Quantum Computing? I'm currently an undergraduate at a prestigious private university in the U.S. I'm majoring in Physics, Math, and Computer Science and currently am a junior. I've taken 5 graduate level courses so far (including Real Analysis and Algorithms) and have undergraduate experience working in a lab in a field unrelated to quantum computing (for which I'm in the process of writing a paper about). I've also taken a course in quantum computing, 2 semester of undergraduate quantum mechanics, 2 semesters of discrete math, and a course on complexity theory. I plan to take 2 semesters of grad quantum in my senior year as well as 2 semesters in mathematical logic.

I'm interested in going to graduate school for theoretical work in quantum computing and quantum information theory. I'm wondering if I should be aiming to apply to Computer Science, Math (Applied I would guess), or Physics departments if I want to do research in those fields.

You should aim for whichever department has people working on the topic.

Quantum Computing is somewhat multidisciplinary, and not present in every university. So, before applying, check where are the quantum computing groups and follow them. Your background seems to be a good fit for either side.

By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if there was somewhere a department dedicated to quantum computing. Recently I saw a "department of glycoscience".


Should I mention I had no funding in my Ph.D experience? A professor mentioned on his website that his looking for postdoctoral researchers. And he mentioned that interested people should sent a short research statement and added this link.

Discuss where you will get funds to sponsor the research project, who will be the collaborative partners and what facilities will be used by you.

Unfortunately, I did research under no funding because it's hard to find research grants in my country. And it's not mandatory to have a grant or a scholarship to be a Ph.D student. But that's another topic. Now, I am trying to write a research statement and I don't know if I should completely ignore talking about funding. The only thing I have is experience in preparing, with my supervisor, project proposal documents for funding (Around 2 months of work). I don't know if I should write that, because it also could be a double-edged sword since my experience is "failure in finding funding". Any suggestions?

I can't see into the mind of the PI, but think that you would harm your chances by suggesting that you might not need funding when they may be, explicitly, looking for funding sources. (Caveat below)

Since they ask for your proposed funding sponsors, you probably need to provide that to be in contention. If you can do that then an "Oh by the way, I've done research without funding" may not hurt you, but otherwise it could (possibly).

But you would probably be wise to look elsewhere for a PI that can themselves provide funding for their postdocs. If they can't do that, I wonder how much commitment they will have to you.

Of course, since the link is a very general one, they may not require all elements, especially self funding. You could also inquire directly about that.


Can the graduate school administration change graduation dates? (Breakdown of a larger issue - full story here)

Following the deliberate delay my thesis paperwork by my professor, and after my department ignored my thesis revision requests for over 6 months, I finally got my graduation paperwork completed (with a $200 late fee) just after the start of the 3rd semester after my thesis defense. My official graduation was therefore graduated a full year after my defense. Due to the concurrent program I was in, this meant my undergraduate degree also did not post until that date - 2.5 years after I finished my undergraduate classes. As my profession requires 4 years of post-degree training for licensing, this has significantly delayed my professional career. If not for delays beyond my control by school personnel, I would have had time to complete the graduation paperwork and finish my degree a full year earlier.

I went the the director of my program and was kicked out before I could do more than state my problem - "I don't believe the department could have held you up; students just don't know how to be responsible." I finally got issues escalated to the dean of the college, and he agreed that the department had grossly mishandled things. He contacted the dean of the graduate school, who refused to even hear the case - all that he or I ever got back from the graduate school was blanket statements about 'policy', which I presume meant their own and not some oversight body. Even when I (repeatedly) went to the graduate office in person, the (brand new) graduate dean refused meet with me. I suspect that the program director (a very aggressive personality) had preemptively contacted him to ask him to ignore me; the dean of my college was retiring that semester and presumably carried very little weight in department politics. However that is purely conjecture.

Why would the graduate dean refuse to talk to me? Liability concerns? Or just pure pomp and disregard for the woes of a lowly student?
Is there a valid reason the graduate school would be unable to back-date my degree to the semester I had completed all my coursework and successfully defended my thesis?

John Nauhaus' extensive comments in response to your related question apply here as well. However, there is a direct question that needs a direct answer and an emotional core to your posts that deserves more direct attention as well:

[Could] the graduate school administration change [my] graduation dates?
Is there a valid reason the graduate school would be unable to back-date my degree?

Your graduate school's administration cannot and will not change your graduate date if your request does not come with the support of your advisor and your department. The graduate school and the university may be "higher ups" in terms of a traditional administrative hierarchy, but in academic and curricular matters your department has absolute primacy. Any effort by the administration to "force" a graduation date on your department would be seen as an encroachment on their academic freedom, and that would get the attention of outside faculty and peer institutions in a tremendously negative way.
This may be unrelated to the harm that has occurred to you, but it is a valid reason for the graduate school to deny your specific request. If you still have any credibility within your university's administration, you could get more traction seeking other forms of redress.

Subtext: Does the department get away scot free?

You will not get what you decided to ask for. This does not mean that your efforts have had no impact. They have cost your department in at least two ways: First, to the extent that you still have the sympathy of anyone in the administration the dispute has cost your department credibility and administrative reputation. As you press the matter in increasingly intrusive ways, this cost will decline and eventually flip into sympathy. No program wants to be pitied, but it's better than being disliked. Second, if you've reached the point where a dean refuses to meet with you then you've earned the "problem child" achievement regardless of the merit of your complaint. Your graduate program admitted you, and will therefore be seen as bringing a "problem" (that would be you) to the university's doorstep. The administration—even the sympathetic administration—will call your department's judgement into question because they vouched for you.
Your department has paid and will continue to pay for what you went through.
None of this will be visible to you. That is what professionalism looks like from the outside: calm seas and a gentle wind, nothing happening here.

More subtext: Why should the department's error cost me?

This is the most important part of your question. As a student and teacher (can't and won't speak to this as an administrator), I have seen graduate students throw away their professional futures over pride and pocket change. It may not look like pocket change from the perspective of a graduate student's meager income, but you need to review your relative costs in terms of a tenured professor's considerable income.
Based on what you have written here, it looks like you are burning your professional future to ash over four years of lost pay. That "problem child" tag you've earned is sticky, and it will follow you. No faculty wants to hire a colleague that brings trouble, and no faculty wants to hire a colleague that escalates trouble.
Here are two ways to overcome this tag that I am aware of:

Be at the very top of your field. If your scholarly stature outweighs your immaturity, some good university will accept the latter's cost. This is emotionally easy—everyone would happily be the best at what they do—but it is intellectually difficult. Are you capable of being that good? What would achieving this cost you elsewhere? (It will cost you a lot. For example: Ever looked at the divorce rate for professors?)

Demonstrate a "newfound" maturity. If it looks like you learned from the experience, this will slowly offset the negative reputation you've acquired and allow faculty search committees to review your applications on scholarly merit. This is easier intellectually, you just need to be an employably strong scholar. This is very difficult emotionally because it requires an extraordinary humility. That's uncommon in academia; it can work against the strength of will and self-confidence needed to succeed as a professional scholar.

Deans, directors, and other professors may sometimes look like colonoscopy bags full of "pomp and disregard," but the attitudes that give you this impression are the same ones that got them through a dissertation, tenure probation, and other indignities of the profession. You seem to have that attitude in larval form, and it seems to be acting out. These "dismissive" deans and directors have learned to channel their attitudes into socially acceptable forms, and search committees will be looking to hire only those professional scholars who have learned to do the same.
John Nauhaus' comments elsewhere are going to be more valuable overall. The answer to your question about what the graduate school can do is little more than a footnote to his discussion of what you can do, and of what you need to do to recover personally.


How to structure a presentation for a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship After the initial peer review stage, most research fellowships (for example RCUK or ERC grants) have a final interview stage primarily assessing the qualities of the candidate. Alongside the interview it is typical to give a short talk around 10 minutes in length. What points should the talk focus on to give the best chances for success?

Firstly, your host institution might offer some advice on this, possibly also including the opportunity to practice your interview before a panel of people who have sat on grant assessment boards.

Otherwise, take the hint from the time allocated to you. There is little point in going into any details of your proposed research. When I went through the interview for a similar grant, I posed and answered the following questions:

What?
Very briefly, and for a general audience, describe the proposed research.

Why You?
Express why you are the right person for the job. Your background, skills, networks.

Why Now?
Why should this research be done now?

Why Here?
Why should you be doing the research at insert host institution, in particular?


What steps can US undergraduates take to reduce the frequency and severity of assignment of unearned grades, as from grade inflation and cheating? The book Academically Adrift, by two University of Chicago professors, is one salient source. The following refers to collegiate institutions in the United States.

Reports, including from professors like Rebecca Schuman, show:

Professors, especially adjunct faculty members, often inflate grades with the goal of bribing students to leave favorable anonymous reviews. Adjuncts' jobs often hinge on these reviews, so pressure is high.
60-90% of undergraduates probably cheat often.

According to The CUNY-Wide Conference on Academic Integrity, a quote-worthy report concluded that "9 in 10 students [actually 86%, according to CampusTechnology.com] admit to cheating in college and the students who do report cheating indicate that they cheat frequently using a variety of techniques and that they suspect faculty do the same" (however, the original source seems to be unavailable).
According to the Stanford Academic Cheating Fact Sheet, "73% of all test takers, including prospective graduate students and teachers agree that most students do cheat at some point."

Large segments of both groups want students to have unearned grades. This is likely to mean:

Many students pursue unearned grades by various means, not limited to cheating. According to some professors, these include:

simply begging professors for unearned grades
escalating demands for unearned grades to institutional administrators

There is a strong incentive for students and professors to collude so that students get unearned grades. This can occur via:

acceding to demands for unearned grades
assigning grades that are disproportionate to learning and/or work (by making courses easy to begin with and/or by raising grades that would have been lower according to rubrics or other policies)
inadequately testing for plagiarism (Anecdotally, I have seen this on assignments submitted to Canvas, a platform in which all students can view one another's work. Canvas also calculates average scores for all assignments, so I can calculate average grades for the course as a whole.)
failing to adequately monitor exams, so that students can easily do searches under tables (I have seen this)
allowing students to leave exam rooms (I have seen this)

Possible steps to combat the problem might include:

ascertaining causes of grade inflation
determining whether academic misconduct is a factor, and whether implicitly allowing cheating is a common method for grade inflation, given that it confers plausible deniability to professors, unlike other methods which might require suspicious changes to rubrics or violations of them
seeking allies among faculty or even students
seeking media coverage
seeking involvement from citizens outside the institution, especially in the cases of publicly funded colleges, which have specific standards of accountability to the public

Where have such measures, or others, been attempted, and what tactical and strategic indicators can be gleaned?

Grade inflation is not happening because of academic misconduct.  That has zero to do with it.  Most of us are surprisingly good at spotting plagiarism and we give out a depressing number of zeros for that and other forms of misconduct.  Trust me, very few of those students are contributing to inflation.

Grade inflation is a long-term slow trend.  Most instructors try to grade "about like" their colleagues in the department.  But few of us want to seem unfair, so we err on the side of being a bit generous. Over time, you get inflation.

But go for it.  If you came to me, pleading for a tougher curve and a lower grade, you'd definitely be my first.  I would certainly remember you.


To what extent should a professor give students freedom to do independent research? During the discussion How/when to become independent in research as a graduate student?, there were one or two professors who not only agreed with the idea of independent research, but also said that they encourage their PhD students to conduct independent research as long as this helps the students to be more mature and successful researchers in their future academic career. I decided to bring this question to the main topic that if you are a professor and allow your students to do independent research:

What do you mean by independent research?
Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?
If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?

At the end of a PhD a student should be able to conduct their own research.  To reach this goal it is helpful to reduce the amount of direction given during the course of a PhD.  When the student starts, some defined goals and guidance can allow the student to make rapid progress.
Students should make unique contributions and understand a broad range of concepts.  For example, producing a PhD thesis just on one tiny component of an analysis is a bad idea.  Students should be allowed to make mistakes, but be prevented from loosing a large amount of time on bad choices.
Within highly competitive research environments one might have to defend a students work with additional members of staff, since students are typically slower than experienced post-docs.
All students are different.  Therefore, the level of guidance needed should be balanced accordingly.
The final mark for the PhD should reflect the ability of the student.

  What do you mean by independent research?

Completely independent research implies that one has to define the project and direction, using knowledge of the field of study.  One needs to read journals and join workshops/conferences to determine what has not been studied and can be studied within a reasonable time frame.  Given this, one then writes software/develops an experiment to measure the chosen parameter(s). (There are many holes that a student can fall into along the way). It is a lot easier to carry out independent research as a post-doc or professor, since one builds up knowledge.

  Should your students conduct independent research and publication in the field of their PhD/MSc research topic or it can be in any other field of their major and interest?

Their PhD is typically on one topic e.g. particle physics. The independent research should happen within the discipline that is being assessed.

  If their independent research is not in the field near to their PhD research, should they inform you about their other research projects or not?

PhD theses contain a fraction of a student's work. They do not contain all of the work of a student. For example, one might build a silicon detector for two years and then spend 1.5 years performing a data analysis. The silicon detector work (even if performed independently) may not end up in the thesis. It is very hard for examiners to assess work that is not in the thesis.

(From ~13 yrs of supervising particle physics PhD students.)


Doing an unpaid Post-Doc in the US with own savings, visa I was wondering if it is possible to do an unpaid post-doc in the united states (Boston, MIT) for one year, especially in regards to the needed visa (I am german). I am unsure if I would be eligible for a visa when my plan is to cover all the expenses during that year with my own saved-up money.
I already looked at all the regulations of J-1 visa but I couldn't find anything regarding the possibility of getting a visa without being paid. It seems like I need to be paid for H-1B though, so this won't help me.
Thank you in advance for any information or experiences you can share :)
Cheers!

I don’t know about the visa, but even aside from that there are legal, ethical and reputation issues with your idea. Considering all of those, I’m 99% certain that neither MIT nor any other reputable university will give even passing consideration to the idea of an unpaid postdoc.
On the legal side, there is this thing called minimum wage that forces organizations to pay their employees. The exceptions are volunteers and unpaid internships, and there are rules governing who can count as either of those, to avoid organizations using those categories as loopholes to exploit workers. I don’t know enough about this topic to be able to say for certain that a postdoc couldn’t be categorized as an unpaid intern, but I suspect that at the very least, the idea would be unusual and eyebrow-raising enough to deter anyone from wanting to even test whether this is possible.
On the ethical side, postdocs are already a somewhat vulnerable population that are paid less than their qualifications make them “worth” on the free market (outside of academia). This raises real issues about the potential for exploitation. There are reasonable arguments why this pay structure makes sense, but employing unpaid postdocs absolutely does not make sense, and would undermine the ability of people who can’t afford to take such unpaid positions from being competitive in the academic jobs market. The last thing a university would want is to open itself to accusations of such exploitative behavior.
On the reputation side, a university like MIT can afford to hire the best postdocs in the world, and its reputation is much more valuable to it than the cost of employing a postdoc. If you are good enough to want them to work for you, they will offer to pay you like any postdoc, to avoid anyone getting the impression that they are settling for subpar talent in order to save money, if for no other reason - even setting aside the legal and ethical issues I mentioned above.
Bottom line: an unpaid postdoc at a good university almost certainly isn’t going to be an option for you, sorry.