Doing bad in undergraduate but good in a masters program Suppose you do bad in undergraduate school in say computer science. But you do very well in a masters program in computer science. If you want to apply to a PhD program in computer science, will the masters degree grades offset the undergraduate degree grades?

Sort of.

I was in exactly the situation you describe 20+ years ago.  My undergrad GPA was horrible (even restricted to computer science classes); my MS GPA was near-perfect; I got into Berkeley as a PhD student.  But I don't think the improvement in my grades was as important as the improvement in my letters.  My undergrad letters said "He's smart but lazy", which is the kiss of death.  My MS letters were much more positive.  Also, when I applied to Berkeley, I had some research results in submission, so my positive letters had some substance to draw on.

Also, I got very, very, very lucky.

Now, as a faculty member who reviews PhD applications, I would certainly look at the improvement in grades as a good sign.  But as I've mentioned elsewhere, above a certain threshold of "good enough", grades don't matter.  Especially since you're applying with a master's degree, your demonstrated research ability is much more important.


How to /Should I include a disadvantaged youth in personal statement I'm currently writing my personal statement for a big ten university, I have read many guides on the subject and have written out most of my undergrad research experience, my academic interest, my involvement in student life, connections to faculty and involvement in sports.
On to the subject; while I was growing up my father was an alcoholic, for what it's worth he managed to go through life with this illness, and I growing up had no real need uncovered. While i was in High school he really let go and seemed to hit low in his life, eventually passing away from a gun related accident (alcohol related) just before I began college. I feel no resentment towards him now.
Should I include this somehow in y personal statement? I'm mature enough to know that what I lived through might not have been the single best infancy, yet I didn't lack of any real necessities, albeit most of the time struggling for money.

Would it be safe to share this in my statement? I feel somehow it pushed me towards the student life somewhat, yet it was a struggle each day as effectively he was drunk most days of the year, and despite of it I excelled in school (high school). Is the admissions committee likely to be inspired or view this as a crutch as it happened too far back as I hold a bachelor's, and there is some water under the bridge now in regards to how I perceived my father.

If you prove how it has strengthened your character, then perhaps it would be a valuable statement to make.

If you do decide to put it in, then ensure you keep it short and matter-of-fact; otherwise it may seem like you are "milking" the situation for sympathy.


What are possible next steps after the completion of a less-than-stellar PhD? I recently graduated with a Ph.D. in a STEM field from a reputed university in the US. I took more time than what it normally takes to finish the Ph.D.(over 6 years), partly due to some personal, familial issues I was coping with. For the same reason, my GPA during my doctoral studies remained around 3.4. Neither I had any internships during the Ph.D. Recently, I sent my first paper to a journal and I am expecting to work on a few more in the coming months. Clearly, my academic credentials are far from being stellar.
Before starting my Ph.D., I was hoping for continuing with a postdoctoral job after Ph.D. studies, followed by a career in academia in my native place.
I see the following options right now:

Ask my advisor for a position to work on some more papers
Apply for postdoctoral positions elsewhere (hindrance: lack of published papers)
Apply for industry jobs (hindrance: GPA is not good enough)

Here I am asking you all to offer me a reality check on whether options (2) and (3) are really realistic in a case similar to mine. I will also appreciate your valuable guidance on how I should build my credentials hereafter (I know, I am already late) that will help me get into good academic positions.

You are putting up your own roadblocks. Your GPA isn't material if you have a doctorate. The quality of your dissertation might be. The recommendations from your advisor and others might be.
But you should at least apply to a few external places, perhaps both for post docs and for regular positions. If you go to industry it might be hard to return to academia if that is your goal.
But, in the US, at least there are a lot of institutions whose faculty doesn't focus primarily on research. If you can teach and inspire undergraduates then you can probably find a position if you try hard enough.
The conditions and requirements in your "own place" can't be judged here. And much depends on the economy at the time. And now, the pandemic also.
But don't give up before you start.


Can FERPA or privacy laws be used to censor medical information on my college transcript? I had to medically withdraw from one semester at an American university due to documented illness. My transcripts indicate that the withdrawal is due to a medical reason. Can I use FERPA or other American privacy laws to censor this information from my transcripts? The withdrawal was during the COVID-19 pandemic but the illness is unrelated to it.

I shared my question on avvo.com, which is a website that connects individuals with experienced lawyers amongst other things. Two education law attornies from Colorado and Massachusetts responded to my question on avvo.com:

No, FERPA does not give you any authority to control what appears in your educational records. It limits who the school can release your records to, but it does not direct what information the school keeps in your records.

No. A medical withdraw is not, in and of itself, a type of confidential information as that status is generic in nature. The school would be prevented from disclosing the specific nature of the medical issue (that is more a [HIPAA] issue). As stated in the other answer, FERPA control who can see your educational records, it doesn't necessarily control the content. The issue is like credit reporting. A person's credit report can contain medical debt that is in collection. The mere fact that a person sought medical treatment or has medical issues is not confidential.

Reference:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200819212608/https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-ferpa-privacy-laws-be-used-to-censor-informati-4958767.html


Do old preprints actually exist? It is quite common (in some areas) to see the reference to the paper, which is cited as "to appear" or "in prepapation" but never actually appeared. Such citations are treated in the same way as references to unpublished results, conference talks, etc.

However, this approach doesn`t really work for references to preprints. The results are published. The problem is that old preprints (say, from 1985) are now inaccessible, they are often not digitized.

So, it is not clear how to treat such old preprints and papers based on results from them: should I believe the authors citing it or consider it as non-existent?

You should try to track down the preprint.  Having to track it down is annoying, but it's usually not hard to do by asking around.  If your friends don't have a copy, and the author can no longer be contacted, then you should feel free to write to someone who has cited the preprint to ask if they know where to find a copy.  (You can also try the author's collaborators, thesis advisor, students, etc.)  When I've done this, it has generally led pretty quickly to a copy, and I've always found one eventually, even for unpublished work from 40+ years ago.  If necessary, you can also do things like post online requesting a copy from anyone who has one, but this is typically not necessary.

If you can't find a copy, I would suggest giving the citations you have seen the benefit of the doubt and mentioning the preprint in your paper; it's possible that the citations are mistaken, but not likely.  If you can't verify the claims, you can note that you have not been able to track down a copy, but it is cited in X, Y, and Z.  (You should only say this if you have seriously tried to locate one but failed.)

For some purposes, seeing the preprint doesn't really matter.  For example, you may be citing it merely to assign credit, in a situation where all the factual content can be obtained from elsewhere in the literature.  In that case, it's perfectly reasonable to follow the consensus in the field about credit, without worrying about investigating it yourself.

On the other hand, if your work depends on the actual content of the preprint in a way that cannot be verified without a copy, then you really need to track one down.  Some people may be lazy about this, but that's not a responsible scholarly approach.

The most frustrating situation is when you're told that something you've discovered may be previously known, but you are unable to access the paper that might contain it.  In this case you need to try especially hard to find a copy, to counteract your natural incentive to give up and decide the paper doesn't exist or isn't relevant.


Better chances for math grad school: graduate in three years or four? I finished freshman year of college and I am transferring from a liberal arts college to a university to study a more rigorous math curriculum. I got accepted at UC berkeley (but as a junior transfer, so I can only be in college for 2 more years). I'm going to hear back from stanford, cornell, and colubmia next week. I would choose stanford over berkeley if I got in, but I'm not sure about the other schools since berkeley is a top ranked math school.

-My question is, if I get into columbia or cornell, should I go and be in college for 3 years, or go to berkeley for only 2 years? Is it better to stay in college for 3 years to be more competitive?

Background: I took  real analysis, topology, complex analysis, algebra 2, linear programming, cryptography. I'm self studying algebraic topology and homological algebra, but recently I'm studying probabilistic methods and graph theory to prepare for an REU this summer. I'm interested in anything algebra related.

Why I am worried: I looked over mathematicsgre.com, a forum where grad school applicants post their stats and results. People who get into top math schools usually have taken 10+ grad level classes and did research, REUs, and (probably) have  great letters of rec. If I go to berkeley, I only have 2 years, actually less since I would apply to grad school as a senior so I only have full 1 year and a few months.

What jumps out at me in your question is the assumption that because of your advanced standing you can only stay at Berkeley for two years and thus only spend three years in college altogether.  Though I do not have any direct experience with this (i.e., financial aid at state universities in California), I find that quite surprising.  Berkeley is an elite institution, and presumably they don't let just anyone transfer in.  The fact that you have two years' worth of university credit after one year in college is to your credit and probably factored into their decision to accept you.  So they turn around and penalize you by only offering you two years of financial aid?  That doesn't make much sense.

I would at least make a phone call and, if necessary, schedule an in-person appointment with a financial aid officer.  My first guess, honestly, is that you may not be understanding the situation correctly.  If you are, you need to explain why the junior standing could stop you from making best use of the amazing resources that UC Berkeley has to offer and could make you less competitive in your later academic plans.  I would expect them to be sympathetic to that.

On the other hand, I find your discussion of what it takes to get into a top mathematics program (here and in the other question you asked) a bit reductive.  It is not simply a matter of taking the most graduate courses, doing multiple REUs (in my opinion as someone who was involved in graduate admissions in my math department, one REU has the same effect as multiple REUs unless you do some truly notable research in one of the REUs, which is unusual; also, doing multiple REUs makes it natural for you to get more than one recommendation letter from an REU director, and this is a mistake: most REU letters sound the same no matter who is writing them or is being written about), and so forth: the goal that you rather want to pursue is to show mastery of mathematics and show the potential and the interest in doing mathematical research.  You can show this by taking 5 graduate courses rather than 10.  (Ten courses sounds almost ridiculously high, by the way: I took 9 trimester graduate courses -- so the equivalent of 6 semester courses -- over the last two years of my undergraduate program.  I got into all the top mathematics departments.  If I had taken a few courses fewer I don't think the outcome would have changed.)

In fact, the list of math courses that you've already taken compares well with what very strong undergraduates take up through the end of their second year in top mathematics programs in the US.  If you did really well with them, then I think you would be ready to take graduate courses (what other undergraduate courses would you take?) in your next year and thus as far as I can see you could graduate in three years and still be competitive for a top program.  But do you really have to?  If you are serious about studying mathematics, then you have the entire rest of your life to do that.  I would recommend a more balanced undergraduate experience that is not 100% calculated to optimize the graduate program you can get into and which lasts for the traditional four years: there are other interesting courses to take as an undergraduate which you will never take again, and there are other things to do with one's undergraduate life aside from coursework.  Don't get shortchanged on your undergraduate experience.


What factors contribute to the credibility of a book used as source? Possibly a very amateur question, yet I think is the best to know the answer as simply and as soon as possible.

Let me use a (not yet IRL, but only hypothetical) example: I want to write either my thesis, possibly even my PhD in the field of video games: construction, psychological relations and so on. I know a man, who's actively working on a successful indie game, and was working on Bioshock games as well - he has a great book in the matter, that is not only easy to read but I found it insightful, too.

What determines, if I'm allowed to use it as a credible resource of game design?

In general, what a resource should qualify to not cause controversies using it in any kind of publication? Or, if the question is too broad, let's focus on a BSc thesis.

It depends on how you are using the source - what claims you make based on the source.

For example, if you cite the results of some experiment written up in a paper as accepted scientific fact, then that paper should ideally be in a peer-reviewed publication, and be written by someone who is qualified to perform that experiment. (Or it should be something that you can - and have - verified independently yourself.) A blog post written by someone with no credentials in the field, describing an experiment he did, that you cannot replicate, is not a credible source.

On the other hand, if the claim you make is that "one mistake sometimes made by non-professionals studying X is lack of consideration of Y", then it would be perfectly OK to cite that same blog post as evidence that someone studying X failed to consider Y.

To take your example, if you say "Some professional game developers say that X increases user engagement with a game" or "Contributors to Y say that X increased user engagement" and cite the book, that would be fine. On the other hand, if you state "X increases user engagement with games" as a matter of scientific fact, you need to support that with reference to a credible experiment that studies the effect of X on user engagement using science (not just personal experience).


Can you post an article on arXiv while under peer review? Would doing so go against the declaration many journals require that the author has not submitted the work anywhere else?

It depends on the journal.  If it is not found on their web site, ask them.


How to proceed when one peer reviewer gives a much lower score than the others but provides no negative feedback? I have received peer reviews for an academic proposal for a project. Three reviewers (A,B and C) submitted sets of observations and scores for three criteria/sections of the evaluation.

Reviewers A and B gave generally favourably worded reviews with pertinent clarification questions and observations that reflect themselves in the scoring they awarded for each section - generally high, with explanations on why deductions were made.
Reviewer C gave significantly lower scores for all sections when compared to A&B but their review only mentioned positive aspects of the project proposal and no questions or negative observations.

For each criterion I am able (and expected) to submit a short "applicant's rebuttal" in order to offer answers and clarifications which address the reviews for that section (one combined field for all three reviewers per section). The three reviewers are going to see these observations, have a panel discussion and potentially amend their scores/reviews if they see fit.

Would it be appropriate to politely point out the discrepancy between A&B's and C's scores and note that much higher score deductions were made by C without any suggestion on what could be improved, taking into account that I would have to do this for each of the three sections in the evaluation?
Should I instead just focus on answering A&B's questions and hope that C would (if their score deductions were concerning the same questions) favourably change their score?

Any suggestions on other ways I could proceed with this situation would be greatly appreciated.

My suggestion would be to ignore the scores and focus on the comments. For any comments from anyone that are positive, thank them. For any comments that are negative say how you intend to address them to make the project better.

Fighting over the scores is a matter of interpretation. Ignoring C's positive comments leaves out an opportunity.

Don't think of it as a "rebuttal" but as a "response". Focus on the positive aspects whenever possible and on how you can address any others. Leave the interpretation for others as they will do their own interpretation in any case.

Perhaps C is just known for this.


Greeting potential supervisor in email A potential supervisor is greeting me with "Hi" followed by my first name. How should I greet him in return? If I say "Hi" followed by "Dr." and his last name, this will look awkward. If I say "Hello" followed by "Dr." and his last name, this will look more formal than his original greeting, and might look like a sign of my trying to distance myself. So how can I keep being formal yet not look awkward or "cold"?

Reply with "Hi" and his first name. If he's using this format to address you, that's a sign that you don't need to be so formal anymore.


Finishing a Phd in two years and few months I am a phd candidate in education. My doctoral program takes 3 years. However, I have worked very hard and got several publications that sole-authored. My supervisor thinks that I can  finish my phd in 2 years and a few months, but I am not sure about this move. Most of eminent scholars that I look up to took their time and finsihed their phds within the normal timeframe, so I am thinking that it is not wise to take the risk and finish earlier than the usual time.
I would like to have your take on this. Would the fact that I finish my phd in shorter time negatively affect my chances in getting a tenure-track academic position?

It likely doesn't matter much. The major question is whether finishing in two years will adversely affect the quality of your dissertation. If the quality of your publications is high and your dissertation makes a strong contribution to your field of research, it's unlikely that a search committee will care that you finished early. Depending on the type of institution you are applying to, they'll have specific criteria that they're looking for with regard to your ability to produce high-quality research, conduct high-quality teaching, etc.
If you believe that taking a third year to finish your dissertation will help you produce better work, then you should take the third year.


How to write paper from PhD thesis? I finished my PhD in October 2017. I have tried to write a publication from my thesis, however I am finding it quite a struggle. I am not receiving any help from my PhD supervisor. So my question is, what should I take into account in order to write a paper (I have not written any papers before)?

Can I write a paper from my thesis after the university has published it?

Shorten, shorten, shorten, and rewrite.

When writing directly for the thesis, people often are elaborate and generous. You have all the space in the world, and having 180 pages instead of 150 might be a plus.

In a journal paper you have, say, 10 pages of a condensed formatting and that's it. So, the writing has to accommodate this.

I have three suggestions:

In most cases you would like to pick some aspect of the thesis, not the whole work. So start from the relevant chapter.
It depends a lot on the writing style and personal preferences, but for me personally it's often easier to read a paragraph and to come up with a way to tell this in one sentence (i.e., rewriting) than to edit said paragraph to be shorter and more concise.
All things that are somewhat relevant, but too large or not immediately needed either land in the supplementary document, or you directly refer to the thesis for more details.


Obstacles in job hunting for US citizens in non-US nations I am curious to know the kinds of obstacles a US citizen would come across when trying to find work in academia outside the US and/or those that a non-US-citizen faces when trying to get an academic job inside the US.

It would seem that, logistically, it would be easier on the department to hire a citizen over a non-citizen. Is there any advice applicants can follow that would greater their chances?  Do you have to be extraordinary for a department to hire you over an equally qualified citizen?

There a multiple levels on which this problem operates. This is especially true for places saturated with immigrants. (For instance, USA with Indians/Chinese)

Getting the Job

This problem itself has a million subdivisions. Firstly, it is fairly difficult for immigrants (who studied in that country) to get jobs without exhibiting something really outstanding. The problem is not so bad for sectors such as computer science and electrical engineering wherein professionals are required by the dozen. The problem, however, is really bad in areas such as Theoretical Physics or Chemistry (or basic sciences). With limited vacancies and a million outstanding candidates, it is really difficult to crack that "top job".
Working in Sensitive Sectors

I don't even want to get started on sectors like Aerospace. More often than not, graduates from the top universities in USA and Europe have returned to their homelands because all companies stress on citizenship. For EU, it is fairly difficult for a Non-EU resident to get a job in the first place, add to that defense and secrecy and you have a useless degree. In USA, it's even better, if you graduate with a PhD in Aerospace Control Systems from say, Stanford, you are still worthless for US companies because they don't ask just for citizenship anymore but also Top Secret (or Lower) Security Clearance! That's at least 10 years for a foreign citizen.
Immigration and Visa

Getting a job is one part, getting the necessary immigration documents cleared is another. I mentioned about Aerospace engineering being a potential problem as far as jobs are concerned. But thats not all! USA has published a list called the technology alert list which requires screening of candidates before granting a visa.

The immigration laws in the Europe aren't very friendly for Non-European to begin with but as far as I know, they don't maintain a strict segregation between "things non-citizens can't do" and "things they can". However, rising far-right politics, things don't seem to get any better in the future.


Co-authors decided to remove most of my contributions from a Nature paper without my consent I am a postdoc and have dedicated the past five years to working on a big project spanning several groups and countries.
My and my supervisor’s contribution was to interpret their results in light of our knowledge in my field.
For me, the project was an “aside” project, i.e. I have done volunteering work and the other authors explicitly said repeatedly that they were not the boss of this project.
We submitted a manuscript to Nature, with me being one of the first authors.
This article contained insightful information interesting for both our fields.

We got feedback from five different referees. Most of them saw our results as interesting but had many questions and one did not like it. The editor’s decision was that the manuscript could be considered again if the issues were addressed correctly. They did not request a change of format or length, respectively.

We have been rewriting the manuscript to make things clearer, and people from the other field have worked on their side for the past six months without giving me any updates. I discovered a couple of weeks ago that it is now a short letter and most of my contributions have been removed. I remain on the authors list.

When I asked why, no one answered. A rumor is that the part on my field was too complicated for them so they cut it because they believed that my contribution on their field is sufficient for submission. So in the end, the project started as multidisciplinary but it ended with a short letter addressed only to scientists of their field, not mine.

I disagree with this move since it was in my opinion illegal to take such an important decision without my consent and because the paper has lost a lot of interest for my publication list, now that a big part of my original work has been cut out.
Since I have worked on this for five years, this decision jeopardizes my career. My own director does not care but I do.
The rest of the authors do not really care about my opinion and are saying that even without my consent, the paper will be quickly published with my name removed. I don’t think that is right.
They indeed asked me to write a new paper and publish it on my side, but I certainly won’t be able to publish it in the same journal (Nature) and the problem is that I finish my contract in a month. I guess it is somewhat possible to justify five years of work for a Nature paper, but for lower-ranked journal, it is more difficult.

If I decide to retract, can they publish the work as it is? Meaning that they still use my contribution to this work? If not, who and what department/lawyer can I turn to?

First, take the time to carefully consider your options.

From your description the problem looks like a disagreement between co-authors: the behaviour of the corresponding author is careless and disrespectful, but it doesn't look like a major breach of ethics. Turning this into a legal battle might cause a lot of trouble, especially in a large multidisciplinary project. This could damage your reputation.

This is why I would suggest a more subtle approach first:

Ask your co-authors why the article has been shortened and why your parts have been removed.
Try to negotiate with them: explain why you think some parts you wrote are really important and should be added back
If this does not work or if too much of your work has to be removed, ask to use your contribution to write another paper for a different journal/conference. This time you would be the main author and present your work as you see fit. Your co-authors can hardly refuse this to you after cutting your part.


Can I publish a paper which 1) proposes an idea and 2) proves that the idea doesn't work? I wonder if is it okay for a researcher to suggest a new technique in a field of research and prove that this new suggested technique is a bad suggestion and gives no or negative gain and publish his work as a research on bad idea? (I'm in computer science but my question is a general question about every other field.)

Of course if there is some believe and doubt in the field about the idea, the researcher can prove it is correct or not in a research and it would be totally a productive result. However, if the idea is totally new and he just wants to prove incorrectness for future researchers, is this type of research acceptable in academia?

If not, why?
What is wrong with proving some never-existing idea is not a good idea?

I read this and I want to know what the current academical approach about such a research result is and the reasons for it.

What is wrong with proving some never existing idea is not a good idea?

Ideas are easy to produce, but unfortunately only a tiny fraction of them are really useful. If you pick an idea at random, it's likely to be not a good idea, and in most cases it would be relatively easy to check it and see it. So, your referees and your editor may wonder why is it so important to publish this random negative result, particularly in competition with other ideas, which actually lead to improvements and positive results.

  why-science-needs-to-publish-negative-results

Some negative results are indeed worth publishing. For example, when you consider not a random idea, but a mainstream direction, which is believed to be superior all the time, and demonstrate that for a particular class of problems, or in particular setting, it does not work. So, your negative result essentially is an important warning that some popular and blindly trusted method is not yet well understood and should not be used as a silver bullet. Publishing such result can help preventing serious mistakes and hopefully start important discussion, eventually leading to improvement (or ban) of existing methodology.

Even in this case, you will need to do a good job convincing your referees and editor that this negative result is worth publishing, particularly if they are stand behind the idea you prove to be not good. Academia is very much influenced by the modern culture of success. It's much easier to become successful in academia when you talk about your success (however marginal and simple), rather when you produce negative results (however important and difficult).


Is it acceptable for a professor to ask post-doc student to babysit for free? Like the title says, I have a friend who is a post-doc and her professor is asking her and another post-doc to baby-sit for him.  He does not pay them, he simply expects them to baby-sit for free because they work for him.  It is not clear whether this happens during the day or in the evening, though by my understanding it makes little difference in academia.  It is also not clear just how common it is for him to ask, but apparently it is at least semi-regular.  To me this seems like an abuse of power and there should be rules against it.  Is this kind of thing normal?

Your friend's advisor has made a very unethical request because, as a supervisor, it makes it harder for the postdocs to feel like they can say no. And they should feel free to say no, since the request is not normally part of any university employment contract I've seen.

Now, if the request were at the workplace, incidental and of brief duration (something like "Could you watch her while I take this call from the doctor's office?", for instance), then it wouldn't be so problematic (although still less than ideal). But anything more than that—anything that involved a regular arrangement, or was of extended duration—should be handled as a separate business transaction, so as to avoid exactly the coercion problem that you've raised.


Realizing no one at my school does quite what I want to do In short: I'm three years into my Ph.D. program, have learned some things about what I seem to be good at and what not so much, and have realized I don't have as much in common with my advisor's research goals as I thought. We talked about me switching advisors, but discovered that anyone else at the university is an even worse match. I'm now facing the question of whether to:

Do what I'm good at, but with not much guidance from my advisor;
Do what my advisor works on, although this has not been very productive so far;
Switch universities, despite having 3 years getting to know my current institution.

Probably relevant is that my field often has very small groups; I'm currently my advisor's only student and had basically been working with just him. So I am not abandoning a large group project.
In slightly more detail: halfway through my first year I began working with my advisor, on a sort of toy project to 'test me out', I think. He does computational work and wanted to apply a new algorithm to a particular set of problems. My background is also heavily computational, so I could understand the algorithm very well, but I do not know much at all about the problems we were trying to apply it to. This became a continual sticking point. We worked on this for about a year and a half, and it turned out to be quite a bit trickier and slower than we thought. We never got any results, although often feeling like we were "just a few issues away". On my own, I was continuing to learn things about algorithmic problems in our field and wrote them up as notes.
Last summer I showed a couple of these notes to my advisor, and he said they might be interesting, but he didn't know much about those topics at all and couldn't give much feedback. He said -- quite reasonably -- that I should focus on our main project, as I should have real work to present by the end of my third year (roughly, this coming May, so maybe 9 months after he said this). I tried sending the notes to a couple of other contacts I had who would know about it, but they were both too busy to read them. I put them on the shelf.
Over winter break I chatted about my notes with a friend-of-a-friend who has a hobbyist's interest in the field, and he suggested just emailing the notes to a 'big name' in the field. Reluctantly I tried this with the first note and was quite surprised when the 'big name' got back with positive feedback encouraging me to publish. I uploaded the first note to arxiv and got good feedback via email. Upon this further encouragement, I spoke to my advisor and said I would like to pursue this type of work further. He agreed that we've been doing so well has not worked out well and that perhaps we should change projects, or maybe I look for a new advisor at my institution.
We've basically dropped the 1.5-year project, and are switching to a much simpler shorter problem to prove the algorithm. It will be a much less interesting thing in the end, but we want something to write given the work we've done. We looked around the university and found no one who actually knows anything about what I've written about. This is disappointing because it's a topic I want to pursue. There are other universities I could go to with people much more interested in my work. My second paper is almost done now, it resolves a well-studied open problem in the same subfield (so is generally something people are excited about), and is again something no one at my institution knows anything about. I'm quite lost on what to do moving forward.

Seek an external co-advisor who can give you the guidance you need.
A co-advising arrangement can be a win-win situation: your advisor would still have you as a graduated student under his belt, the co-advisor gets to be a co-author of the resulting papers, and you don't have to seek a new position and deal with the complexities of moving and changing your living circumstances halfway during your Ph.D.
Candidates for being a co-advisor are researchers that are enthusiastic about the research problem and possess the required expertise. Examples would be the "big name" researcher and some of the other people who gave you feedback.


What advantages and disadvantages should I consider in deciding whether to publish my academic book traditionally or self-publish? I am an amateur mathematician. I am writing a research monograph in the field of abstract mathematics (general topology, specifically).

Should I publish it traditionally or self-publish?

There are many benefits of self-publishing (e.g with Lulu) an academic work:

No need to tremble awaiting my book to be rejected by a peer review. No responses like "first publish in articles, only then make a book". I am in full control what I want to publish.
I don't pay the publisher 80-90% of my revenue. (This also may make AdWords marketing of my book profitable and thus I can do a rather huge advertisement of my book myself using AdWords. I suspect, this may over-perform traditional publishers in the number of sales.)
I am in a full control of my book. No forced need to change something, if an editor's opinion differs from my own.
No need to convert it to LaTeX, I can use my preferred software such as TeXmacs.
The book goes into Amazon and other distribution channels anyway.

I can pay a professional scientific editor to edit my book for paid, as a kind of business investment.

Peer review is intended to choose which books are published and which are not. I can do fine without peer review, allowing the buyers of my book to decide for themselves.

Well, a potential buyer may prefer books published by a big publisher, but it (in my opinion) can be well replaced with big red letters "Edited and checked for errors by professor XXX."

Drawbacks which I know:

It may not be as good for my academic carrier as traditional academic publishing. (It does not matter for me anyway, as I am not a professional academic.)
Not sure if my book goes into university libraries (please comment on this issue).

I've pointed many benefits of self-publishing. What are drawbacks (except of pointed by me)?

And one more specific question: Is the number of books sold if using a traditional publisher, likely to greatly overperform the number of books sold if self-publishing? If yes, why?

Should I publish it traditionally or self-publish?

Why do you want to publish at all?  You answered

  I write the book to store down my research results and to spread my new knowledge. To make money is not the main aim, but it would be nice.

Given that: the answer is that you should certainly not self-publish your work.  You can store your results and spread knowledge by having the material freely available on the internet, as I believe is already the case.  The arxiv is one nice place to put work, but it is not the only one: you could put in on github or any number of other repositories.  You can just put it on your own website and make sure that google indexes it.  That means that billions of people can access it at any time.

Let me be clear with you: you are not going to make money self-publishing works of mathematics that you have not been able to publish traditionally.  It is exceedingly rare for any mathematical text beyond the undergraduate level to make a profit that is worth the time taken to write it.  (Maybe a few of Serge Lang's books qualify; probably not.)  If you go self-publishing rather than traditional publishing, you will lose money, and what you're paying for is the vanity of being a published author.

The bar for interest by the mathematical community is much lower than the bar for the type of public interest needed to generate any real sales.  The thought that you have "My ideas are too bold for the mathematical community, so I need to take matters into my own hands; they don't know the value of my work as well as I do" is not only crankish but actually specifically damaging to you: it makes you ideal prey for predators of various kinds.  You told us in a previous question that you literally fell prey to a diploma mill and thereby lost money.  The same mindset that you have now is going to cost you more money in the future.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but this has been going on for several years now, so I feel I should be plain: no one in the world has found your work to be of significant mathematical value.  This means that, with probability slightly less than one, that your work does not have significant mathematical value.  But in the unlikely event that your work does have value, you're not doing what is necessary in order to show it.  Mathematical research is not about simply writing down structures that generalize other structures and proving results about them.  You have to solve old problems or pose new ones that are of interest to the community. Bold statements of superiority would be a positive thing if they are specific and factual: for your work to be "superior", it should solve at least one problem that others have posed.  If you've done that, please explain yourself properly and then your work can be published in the mathematical mainstream.  If you haven't: please start to be honest with yourself about the value of your work.  Your livelihood is at stake.


What should be done about conflicting invitations for graduate school interviews? I have received offers from a few graduate schools to interview in the coming months, but there are only so many February weekends available and two schools already have the same interview weekend. I accepted the first one when the invitation arrived, and now the second has arrived. Both are top choices in my book, so it's hard to drop one.

What can be done about conflicting interview dates for science grad school?

This happened to me when I was interviewing for graduate schools—two different schools offered only one weekend per year, and picked the same weekend. However, a number of students had the same problem, and contacted them. As a result, the departments in question agreed to "share" the weekend, with part of the time spent at one school, and then part at the other.

If the schools are not geographically close, and you have no way to split the weekend in such a manner, then you should contact the schools in question, to let them know that you have a scheduling conflict. In some cases—particularly if the department is large—they may be able to schedule you to visit on another date. To some extent, such a visit might be even more useful than the scheduled group visit, because you get to see what the department is actually like when they're not trying to impress everyone!


How do you track new papers in journals I am interested in the field of combinatorics and I would like to track new papers in journals on combinatorics (mainly the top of this list http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=2607).

How should I do that? For example, Journal on Graph Theory has email alert service but with some of the others I do not see such option.

How do you, personally, track new papers in your area?

You can try setting up one or more GoogleScholar alerts. You will get a mail if a new paper from your area of interest is added to Scholar. So please keep in mind that this only works for papers that do end up on scholar.

The alerts are not specific to any journal, but you can specify a set of keyword to search for. If you do not find another way this might be a workaround if you put some time into crafting your alerts. I use this to keep track of a very small but specific field (in Computer Sciences), so I do not know how it will scale up for your problem.

As far as I know it is not possible to set an alert a specific journal, but I have not put much research into this. It might be possible.


Can you cite a workshop or conference in a paper? Some time ago, I went to a workshop/conference on the specific topic in my field. It was a small event, with not proceedings published. I would like to discuss it in an upcoming paper, in order to state that:

  it was discussion with X and Y, spurred by the workshop on Z, which initiated this new direction of research.

in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due. Now, I could leave it in the text, or cite it as “private communication from X at Z”, or cite it directly in my references:

  Workshop on Z, Big City, Country (2012)

Journal style doesn't say anything of this, but generally calls for references with superscript numbers. So, what is the best option to cite a whole workshop/conference? (and not a specific presentation)

The issue here is that conversations are not normally "on the record." The point of a citation is verification: you are giving credit by citing the "original source" that you are using. Since you would not really be pointing them to material actually associated with the workshop, you should cite "Private Communication" with the involved individuals—although you could cite the event as the "location and date" fields for the communication.


Should I list my work as dissertation or conference paper? I have a dissertation under the supervision of my advisor. Then my university hosted a conference and we decided to make it a paper. The paper will soon publish on the conference's website, but it won't have peer-review. Should I list my work as a dissertation or a conference paper?

In a CV you try to organize your important personal information in a clear and useful way for others to see and gain a good perspective. In this case you have a thesis. It should clearly be listed so that it is clear it is one of the outcomes of your degree. It is commonplace for people to turn a thesis into papers but that usually involves rewriting the material substantially. Such papers will be listed under headings such as, for example, "Peer-reviewed articles", "Conference contributions", "Abstracts", etc. In your case you could add your article under a heading such as "Conference contributions", Non-reviewed articles" or "Other articles" (the later only makes sense if you have a heading "Peer-reviewed articles") and make sure it is clear that the heading also implies the articles are not peer reviewed.

If your article and your thesis is, in fact practically the same text with the same title, it would not be advisable to follow the guidelines outlined above. the reason is that it may seem to a reader of the CV as if you are trying to inflate your publication record. In that case you could perhaps make a note in the CV in conjunction with the thesis that it has also been published under the same name or to add it under a different heading but stating that the paper is the same as the thesis, thereby taking the possible edge of the double appearance.

In the end it is clearly not a problem to publish thesis material after a degree and still count both the thesis and the resulting article but the basic rule is that a specific text should not be counted twice. It would then essentially count as self-plagiarism. So just act responsibly and be open and honest about issues that can cause confusion or raise eye-brows.


Should I include papers that were published during first revision round of a literature review paper? I submitted a literature review manuscript to a journal in September. In January, I got the result of the first round of revision. The result was conditional acceptance with a number of corrections and questions. During the revision, some papers about the survey's subject were published. Should I include those papers? Otherwise, is there a chance that reviewers would keep the conditional acceptance status and ask me to include these papers?

I can answer from two perspectives:

What is necessary to get published in the journal currently considering your article? If the peer-reviewers didn't ask you to add the new articles, then there is no need to do so. They probably aren't aware of the articles---you are almost certainly more up-to-date on the literature than they are, which is why you are doing the literature review. In the worst-case scenario, if one of the peer-reviewers or editors later becomes aware of new publications before final publication, then they might ask you to add them, but I can't imagine that that could possibly be a reason for rejecting your article since they've already conditonally accepted it.
What should you do for the highest quality literature review publication? Of course you should add the new articles. To be as complete as possible in reviewing the literature, a literature review should include all relevant literature, even after the article is accepted all the way until final publication. However, I do understand the conflict between trying to do research perfectly properly versus the practical constraints of time, resources or energy (e.g. too much work too late in the game when you want to move onto other stuff). If for whatever reason you decide not to add the new articles that you are aware of, then at the very least you should explicitly mention in your article the end date (year and month) of your literature search or the date of the last included article, so that readers will clearly understand that there might exist some work published after that date that you explicitly state. That way, you can honestly state that you included all the work you are aware of up till the date you specified.

There's one more important consideration: although it probably doesn't matter for the journal peer-reviewers and editors (because they probably wouldn't know), it certainly does matter for your readers. In particular, it is highly likely that the authors of these recently published articles would be your potential readers, since, by definition, they do research in the area. Once they find out about your literature review published after their own work is published, they would probably get excited, expecting their work to be included. But if it isn't, supposedly because they just barely missed your inclusion cut-off date, they would likely be quite disappointed. It's not a good idea to disappoint your potential readers.

So, my final recommendation is that if it will take you only two or three hours to incorporate the newly published work (perhaps one hour to read each article, another hour or two to appropriately incorporate it into your review), then I think it is certainly worth the extra effort.


Median age at doctorate by field of study and country? This excellent answer to another question offers some statistics on median age of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities in 2009, across different disciplines.

However, we know that there is quite a bit of variation in PhD length internationally, as well as variation in the age at which students typically enter a doctoral program. So I would expect the age at doctorate to vary by country.

Is there any data available on median age at doctorate by field of study and by country?

NB: This is a reference-request question. As per the tag wiki excerpt, I am looking for answers that are backed up by a supporting document or citation (not opinions).

In my opinion, there are two approaches to answering this question. The first (which seems that the OP expects here) represents references to publications, containing global summary statistics on doctoral graduates across the indicators of interest, such as age, field of study and country. In this category, IMHO the most well-known and comprehensive is the Education at a Glance report by OECD. AFAIK, the latest such report is Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, which, along with supplementary materials (i.e., highlights), can be accessed in various formats from this page.

The second, open data, approach, which while not requested, I recommend to those wanting to perform their own statistical data analysis, which might be very interesting especially by combining the indicators of interest with other socio-technical and economical indicators, widely available from open data repositories. In particular, for this specific question / category, I would suggest analyzing the following two open data sets from OECD, which can/should be combined in order to perform needed analysis: Graduates by field of education and Graduates by age.


Publishing similar but much longer article "again" in different journal? I am about to submit a 3.000 words article. It needs to be submitted soon, and I will have to submit it, but I know that I could flesh this out much more, and arrive at something with around 7.000-10.000 words, if I had more time. However, the basic idea would remain the same. It would be much more detailed, but I would not be making a completely different point.

Could I publish the 3.000 words article in journal A (if accepted), and then later this year publish the 8.000 words version in journal B?

It depends on what you mean by "flesh out". If you mean "waffle a bit more, add some detail to the introduction and discussion" then the answer is an emphatic NO. If you mean "add some further analysis that uses the original manuscript as a starting point and explores a different, previously undiscussed angle", then the answer is a hesitant yes, but it begs the question of whether it would be more effectively presented as a single, comprehensive paper.


Does labor law apply to graduate students? As a former student employee, I was fairly ignorant of labor laws in general. But now as I am applying to graduate programs, given the increased demands and duties of graduate students: teaching, research, etc. I wonder if US labor laws still apply to student labor in general.

Given anecdotal stories of overstressed graduate students working well beyond a ‘planned’ 40 work week on a stipend that when calculated on a per hour basis may equate to less than minimum wage; and the types of work that students do: laboratory research, fieldwork, custodial, food service, etc. Surely there are protections in place to prevent abuse and overworking students of all types.

Graduate students fall into a gray area with respect to American labor law, because they are a bit of a hybrid between students and employees. At least for the first year or two, they are usually mostly taking classes, and doing some research, but the balance shifts more toward research in later years.

As for the number of hours worked:

  Research ideas don't wait until you punch in in the morning.

The expected workload completely depends on the culture of the lab. I knew of groups in my old department where there really were no "expected schedules," and other groups where the expectation was about 80 hours per week!

That said, graduate students in my department worked a wide variety of different schedules. Some were night owls, who showed up around 10 or 11 at night, and stayed until 8 in the morning. Others were punctually showing up around 9 am and sticking around to 5 or 5:30 in the evening—and everything else imaginable.

Personally, there were days when I worked from 8:00 to 6:00 or so; other days around deadlines I might work until midnight; still other days I'd take a half-day or so.


Is doing a research internship during MSc. studies worth exceeding the standard period of study? Is doing a 3-6 months research internship during MSc. studies worth exceeding the standard period of study?

I am in my 3rd semester for my (course and thesis based) CS MSc. degree. The standard period of study is 4 semesters, but most students exceed it anyway by 1-3 semesters, judging by hearsay.

I have a good relationship with a professor, with whose research group. I will probably have published 2-3 conference papers in a few months.1 The professor would very well recommend me to some peers of theirs such that I could do a 3-6 months "research internship" at another lab in the same field.

Advantages

networking
strengthening my CV - I'd like to keep doing research later anyway, be it in academia or industrial research labs

Disadvantages

I will probably need 7-8 semesters, significantly exceeding 4.
As other labs are very close to ours, I could probably combine internship and thesis work. But my advisor already noted that in gneral time in internship >> time spent on MSc thesis there.
Instead, I could shorten my MSc studies to do a PhD soon afterwards (in Europe you usually need an MSc for starting a PhD)

I don't think the prolonged studies are a problem financially or from the side of the examination office. I much more fear that it could look bad on my CV having necessitated 7-8 instead of 4 semesters.

Does a research internship strengthen my academic CV enough to outweigh the disadvantages caused by overlong Master studies?

1 one paper got already accepted, another two are in progress.

This is a matter of balancing trade-offs and can be viewed in a variety of ways. While I won't go into all of the many ways, here are two ways that taking the internship could be perceived:

1) You were not able to commit to something you agreed to commit to at the start. Your leaving for a better opportunity may be interpreted by potential PhD supervisors as an inability to stick with a program.

2) You found an opportunity to build a new network of collaborators, gain new knowledge, experience, and perspective. You will also be making money, which can be used to make your life easier later on.

There are infinite ways to view the trade-offs, but only you can make that distinction.


Is this psychological abuse? Should I switch supervisors? I am in the third year of my four year PhD, which is funded by the department. My supervisor a week and a half ago called a meeting with me, after an email complaining about sending off an updated version of a manuscript to a conference without full approval. During the course of this meeting, when two others were present, he said a lot of things. However in this meeting he stated that I was on a "final warning" to be kicked out of the university (I had not received any previous warnings, and I'm not sure he has the capability to do this) and also his research group. He also said that he was engaging in a 'strategy of intimidation' so that I would be scared to make similar same mistakes in the future. I found this to be very worrying.
Following on from this he was especially nice via email, asking whether I would like to collaborate with a prestigious professor abroad. Indeed, the next day he spent 2 hours helping me prepare this manuscript, along with a postdoc.
This is part of a pattern of behaviour from this gentleman. Two months previously, after he said I shouldn't apply for IRB approval only weeks before, he had stated that I had committed severe ethical violations and that I should scrap the paper that I had worked on for the previous 7 months due to these violations. He also asked me whether I would like to go to jail for these violations.
Apart from this, my publication output has been relatively good. I got into a top journal in my field in my second year as first author.
I am very close to trying to switch supervisors and am just wondering, is this a stupid idea? Am I being overly sensitive? Is this psychological abuse?
Clarifications:

My aim here is not to raise a stink, I would be subtly switching supervisor, not reporting this to anyone, giving vague excuse of differences. I still have a lot of respect for the advisor as a scientist and fear of him.
If not clear enough in the initial question, part of my problem is that I was told not to go through the ethics process, then latterly reprimanded for not applying for ethics and committing unethical research. There may be a point here with regards to ethics in the first place.
I am thankful for some of the more hostile responses here, as they have made me aware of things that I may not have considered . Indeed they have made me aware of how this would be likely to be perceived. It has also made me slightly more cognizant of my own role in this.
I am a native speaker and have copied the quotes verbatim.

One final clarification:
Being asked too many questions here, will leave thread as is and not reply further. Thanks for all replies.

You write that your advisor said that you "committed severe ethical violations."  But you don't say anything about what specifically you did, whether the accusations are true, or how you responded to that accusation.  We simply cannot give you good advice without knowing more about these violations.  Honestly it sounds like you don't understand what the accusations were, which is extremely worrisome!
It's sadly common that there are advisors who are abusive bosses, but this is not one of those common situations!  Either your advisor is completely disconnected from reality and is making up ethical violations, or you are a serious danger to your research group because you commit bad ethical lapses and don't bother to understand what you did or how to avoid it in the future.


How detailed should my review of a very poorly-written manuscript be? My question has to do with whether my responsibilities as a reviewer also includes copyediting duties.

I am in the midst of reviewing a manuscript for a mid-tier applied health sciences journal.  While the topic is potentially important, the manuscript is poorly written and the methods used were simply inadequate to answer the research question.  The manuscript read like a first draft, rather than something that has undergone some degree of polishing and internal review before being sent out to the journal.  Given a manuscript laden with spelling and grammatical errors, awkward sentence construction, and incomplete ideas, how detailed should reviews be for very bad manuscripts?  Is it my job to "copyedit" (correct the grammar, spelling, etc.) the manuscript, or should my constructive criticism be focused on improving the big picture issues, such as:

Whether the authors convinced me that the study was timely or necessary. (No.)
Whether the methods were appropriate for the research question. (No.)
Whether the authors' conclusions were supported by the data they presented. (No.)

My annotated hard copy of the manuscript is full of comments in the margins about spelling errors and awkward sentences, which can be found every 2 or 3 sentences. I am of course more than happy to put in the review, but at the same time, I do not want to "embarrass" the authors by essentially saying that they do not know how to write.

I am curious to hear others' experiences with bad manuscripts and how they have handled them.

I view my job as a reviewer to be about triage and the "first order" issues with the manuscript.  Thus, for a very good manuscript, I will point out minor copy-editing issues, because those are the first-order issues remaining.  For a not-so-good manuscript, I will note if the manuscript needs language editing but focus on the scientific issues instead, because any specifics of copyediting are likely to be obsoleted in any case by the larger repairs that are necessary.


Is it weird to ask a professor you don't know if your potential project is already being worked on? I am a graduate student in physics who has an idea for a project which I believe to be sound. It is outside my advisor's area of expertise, but I am reasonably familiar with the field. My main concern with this project is how obvious of an extension of recent work it appears to be, and I suspect that someone out there has likely thought of a similar idea and is currently working on it as well. Would it be inappropriate to email a professor who's more well-versed in the field and ask if they're aware of anyone who has begun working on a similar project?

Would it be inappropriate to email a professor who's more well-versed in the field and ask if they're aware of anyone who has begun working on a similar project?

Absolutely not, I'd say. I've emailed several professors from different schools, textbook authors, and other people. While you may not get a reply (that's ok!) it takes zero effort to write and the pay off can be large. You're not going to offend someone by sending a nicely worded email inquiring about their field. If they don't care to answer they won't. So why not?


Where do PhD scholars get data to test their thesis on? For example PhD scholars working on ML/AI algorithms need a lot of data to train and test their research. Research on distributed systems might require terabytes of data to test.

Where do these scholars get so much data i.e. the scale which is only produced in big companies?

The question is very vague. For some fields such as linguistics/language there are huge open-access research corpuses available such as the British National Corpus, maintained by academic or charitable organisations. For some things, e.g. images, you can also use open, permissively-licenced sources like Wikimedia Commons, which offers a lot of APIs for searching and processing; the Internet Archive has a huge collection of video, texts, audio, etc. For some subjects it is possible to use internet searches or other archives. Many commercial entities will have large databases and research project are often done in conjunction with a commercial partner, as mentioned in a comment. You can also purchase data, but that will probably require a commercial partner to pay for it.


My supervisor is too involved, what should I do? Most PhD students I know have the problem that their supervisor is not involved enough. I have a different problem, my supervisor is too involved.

He wants to be a co author on all three of my PhD papers, and to get them published.

I know that this sounds great, but I do not want to free ride on my supervisors work, I want it to be my own, and I want to be proud of it. Regardless of whether it is published or not. A publication is a bonus, not the end game for me.

I spent half my phd working on what I intended to be my job market paper (the paper I show to employers that best showcases my skills). My supervisor made some suggestions here and there, but nothing substantial. I am now getting ready to submit my paper to a journal and my supervisor has rewritten my entire paper without permission and wants me to sign off on this. He has justified it by saying it has a better shot of being published in its new form. I feel very uncomfortable about this, it is in effect no longer my paper. I thought he would make suggestions and I would fix the paper myself.

He is too involved in other ways too. When I settle on a research question, he throws methodology and research design at me, before I have a chance to think about the topic myself and come to my own conclusions, and then encourages me to do it his way and not explore my way.

Is this normal behaviour from a supervisor?
I have to talk to him about this, but I am unsure how to bring it up and what to say. Do you have any advice?

I need at least one paper where I am the sole author, is it appropriate to mention this to my supervisor, without offending him or his position? He will try to put his name on all my papers.

I do not want to come across ungrateful, I am very happy for his help, and I will be the first to admit that I need help. But all I want is a chance to learn from my mistakes and be given opportunities to grow, I will never be a successful researcher if I cannot exercise this. Unfortunately, I feel like my supervisors research assistant instead of a PhD student.

I am really struggling to continue on the course, and I appreciate any comments you may have.

The first part (rewriting your text) is quite frequent. Believe it or not, most PhD students are terrible writers and though a good adviser would patiently go over the paper with a student pointing out the presentation flaws and asking the student to fix them himself (take my word for it, you do not want to get that list from the reviewer after the paper has been submitted), I know many people who lost their patience in that respect eons ago and other people who give up after 6 months of modifications and still do the job themselves.

So, the first question to ask is "How well was your paper written in the first place?". If not too well, there is a chance that you should be merely grateful for the revision and stop at there.

The second point is "throwing his ideas at you". Here the question is "How fast are you coming with workable ideas of your own?" Giving a PhD student the solution together with the problem is a terrible idea, insisting that the student do things your way and your way only is even more terrible, but giving him no suggestions after 6 months of no progress is also not good.

The third question is whether the supervisor should be a co-author. Unfortunately, your post is somewhat self-contradictory on this point: compare

  My supervisor made some suggestions here and there, but nothing substantial.

with

  he throws methodology and research design at me, before I have a chance to think about the topic myself and come to my own conclusions, and then encourages me to do it his way and not explore my way.

So was that particular paper done his way or your way? In the first case, IMHO, it is his choice whether he should become a co-author or not though you may still drop a hint that "the job market is tough and having a single author paper is a nearly must to land at the place you want to go to", in the second case it should be yours even if he rewrote the whole thing and you have all moral rights to insist on a single authorship if it is important to you. How exactly to do it without offending him I don't know (different people need different approaches), but judging from the tone of your post, you have had arguments with your adviser before, so you should know better than I what upsets him and what makes him cooperative.

So, alas, the only things I can tell you are the usual "Look into the mirror and try to figure out what exactly you see there before making final judgements" and "Hold your ground but use your common sense and pay attention to the reaction to your words when insisting on something". I should confess that I often fail on both accounts myself, but I'm in a different position than you. Let's see if other people can come up with some better advice :-).


How to ask a professor if s/he is interested in being a coauthor on a paper? I'm an undergraduate at an American university. I have been working with a collaborator (at a different university) on a paper for the last few months. I recently set up a meeting to discuss the work with a professor at my institution who is an expert in one of the topics related to this work. In the meeting he clarified a lot of my ideas.

The discussion was only an hour or so, but as of now I do think at least one of his suggestions will make its way into the final paper. Thus, it seems clear that he should be an author. I'm wondering, what is the typical way that this subject is brought up? Should I just ask him at the next meeting, "Would you be interested in being a coauthor?" Is that the typical way this conversation goes? This is the first paper I've worked on where the authorship hasn't been determined at the very beginning, so I really have no idea how this works.

Should I just ask him at the next meeting, "Would you be interested in being a coauthor?" Is that the typical way this conversation goes?

In short, yes. "I think you contributed valuable ideas to the paper. Would you like to be a coauthor?" would also do. If he rejects, you can insist, say, two more times for politeness reasons, and if he still rejects, go on without him. But also be prepared for an answer "it is too early to speak about my contribution; I did not do too much yet". The deal is: you would be trying to make him work on a paper (via writing, discussions, or by providing ideas) and would offer him a place among the coauthors commensurate with the contribution.


Putting dataset in CV In my field (linguistics) sometimes datasets are important and scholars tend to include them in their CV. I want to know how to include my dataset in my CV?

This is the approach I have in mind: Uploading dataset in Harvard Dataverse and include the DoI in CV with the following style:

XXX dataset, The most important dataset in linguistics, DOI:XXXXXXXXXX

How does it look? Please share your thoughts on it.

From the Harvard Dataset users guide:

  Download Citation

  You can find the citation for the dataset at the top of the dataset
  page in a blue box. Additionally, there is a Download Citation button
  that offers the option to download the citation as EndNote XML or RIS
  Format.

So if you go that route just upload your data and click that button.


Is it acceptable to decline to review a paper due to lack of familiarity? I have recently started my PhD studies. My advisor, as member of a program committee, has delegated a the review of a conference paper to me. This is my second peer review.

Since I have not done research in the area of this paper, I find it very hard to review. Not only does it require much effort for me to grasp the content. First and foremost, I do not think that being able to understand the content of a paper is sufficient for reviewing it. Ideally, reviewing would mean judging the paper for its scientific merit as a peer, considering content, presentation, relevance and relation to other work in the area. Especially the latter aspects I feel unable to judge.

I consider declining to review, but this seems like a drastic step with conflict potential. Certainly, there is an incentive to formally complete the assignment and write a review of little value to the authors, the venue and the scientific community in general. Would it be acceptable or prudent to decline?

Yes.  It is much better to decline as soon as you realise you're not up to the review, than to write a useless review.

Normally, you first get an abstract based on which you accept or decline.  If you accept, the editor may be annoyed if you decline based on seeing the manuscript, but sometimes it's inevitable; only so much can be judged from the abstract.  If you do decline, however, you should let the editor know as soon as possible.

I recently read a publicly reviewed paper where both reviews clearly did not really understand the topic, but still handed in a review.  To me it was quite clear that the paper needed a statistician, which neither of the reviewers were.  One reviewer didn't get much further than pointing out that the introduction was too long, with not a single comment on 10 pages of detailed description of advanced statistical methods.  When reading the reviews, I found it a bit embarrassing that the peer review was so clearly insufficient, and the paper virtually got published without proper peer review.

I know someone who accepted his very first paper review, only to discover when he received the manuscript that it had 130 pages.  He returned it to the editor.


Is success due to hard work sustainable in academic research? I am a physics master's student hoping to pursue physics research by doing PhD, post-doc, etc., following the standard path. To put it straight, how far can sheer hard work take one in academia until it becomes impractical and affects one's personal life?(in terms of research quality and quantity)

To anyone who is interested to know why I ask this, please read further:

Since high school, I have been working super hard to succeed and have managed to reach my goals and actually do things which I didn't think was possible(personally) a few years back. I am in one of the best places in my country to study physics, have (what I consider) good grades and some great research experience through which I  even got to travel to different country. However, this has been mainly due to my hard work and my professors/guides  looking at my hard work doing favors by giving great recommendations, calling up other professors for me to work with etc. I have almost consistently put in at-least 10hours per day(including weekends) since my high school and there is literally no way I would achieve any of this without putting in this much time.

Until a few years back I thought this is the way but now I starting to reconsider. I am starting to believe this is impractical in the long run in research where I put in over 12hours of hard work with moderate intelligence. I have seen some of my classmates who are obscenely smart and the only way I can even come close to their level(in terms of grades) is by sitting in library the whole day. I do not know how far this hard work can take me and even if I it does is it practical. But if I stop putting this much work my grades will definitely go down and I would be letting down my professors. But to do well I feel like I have to put more effort the more I go forward.

I can't say whether 10-12 hours per day is right for you, but caution you to consider your health. If it suffers, then everything will suffer.

But "intelligence" alone is overrated. The path to Intelligence, actually, runs through Hard Work.

I once got the results of an IQ test (I hope they don't do this any more). The printed results said that I was a bit above average, but not outstanding. They recommended that I set my goals at community college rather than university as I'd be more likely to succeed with more limited goals.

About fifteen years later I earned my PhD in mathematics. So much for prediction.

More about me. When I was young I was pretty smart but was disengaged from school. My life was elsewhere. I saw no point whatever in school. It was in the second or third year of secondary school that I had what I considered my first positive educational experience. But then, I started to work. And I worked hard.

But, you need to use the hard work to seek insight into what you are studying. The work, itself, isn't enough. But the insight is very unlikely to come to most people without the hard work.

Again, though, don't neglect the wider picture. Get enough sleep. Get enough exercise. Seek feedback on what you do from those who know more. Find a mentor (or three). Ask a lot of questions. Take a lot of notes.

And don't try to work past the point of frustration. The work will be very inefficient. Take a break for a bit. Then come back to it.


How likely is it that a UK or EU PhD in STEM has to be self funded? I am an EU citizen interested in pursuing a physics PhD in either a UK university or an European one. It looks like PhD fees for UK universities are so much higher than EU universities, so my issue resides more with UK universities.

How likely is it for a physics PhD to be self funded? Do most PhDs get funded by the university or other third party funding? Are there any statistics on this since on average, £20,000 a year for 4 years is not an option for me if I have to pay these fees myself.

Any thoughts on this?

Here's the thing: Doing a PhD - perhaps not in every single discipline, but certainly almost always in STEM - is a form of employment. You would be a junior researcher, with a measure of independence and a measure of supervision, and with bosses, a department and a university to answer to. You'll need to be on campus most of the week (albeit with the possibility of remote work depending on specifics); you may be required to teach if the university needs you to; you will be subject to all rules and regulations the senior academic staff is subject to, etc.

In those EU states where this is recognized, an "self-funded STEM PhD" is like "volunteer work"; universities can't rely on its existence, and if they want PhD's they have to shell out the money to pay them their wages. Not that you make a lot of money, but it's something. There are sometimes collective labor agreements which govern PhD employment.

In other states - including, AFAICR, the UK - PhD candidates are not recognized as employees. In those states, self-funded PhD are more of a recognized option, but still obviously very rare, as few people can afford to do full-time volunteer work for years.

And thus...

  How likely is it for a physics phd to be self funded?

Very-to-extremely unlikely.

  Do most PHDs get funded by the university or other third party funding?

This depends on the state in the EU, the university and even the individual researcher, there is no general answer. Also, it sometimes happens that you're funded by the university for some parts your PhD and by a third-party source for other parts - or even that, at the same time, both the university and one (or more) third parties fund your employment (or "stipend"). Finally, third-party funding sources sometime get pooled at the departmental or university level, so that "university-funded" can mean money from different sources.

  £20,000 a year for 4 years is not an option for me if I have to pay these fees myself.

Indeed it is not, and please don't try to do this kind of volunteer work, because you'd be hurting your fellow PhDs by legitimizing such a practice.


Do German universities have "ethics boards"? In many questions on this site, I see the suggestion to contact one's university's "ethics board" (or "ethics committee" or similar) to decide in the case of disputes related to research or general ethics. A few examples of many:

"Of course, before deciding any course of action, consider consulting the ethics board at your institution."
"You would be well within your rights to object to the professor about the content of the assignment (...), or failing that, to the university's ethics board."
"When in doubt, consult with your ethics board and the journal you plan to publish with."

It seems that the authors of the respective answers usually take it for granted that the university has such an "ethics board".

I have studied computer science for six years at a German university, and then kept working at another German university for a bit more than five years while getting my doctorate. Especially while working there, I have been heavily involved in teaching, and I was regularly in touch with groups from various other German and also international universities while doing my research. Yet, in my real-life university experience, in no situation have I ever heard of anything remotely reminiscent of an "ethics board".

Therefore, I am interested in the following set of interrelated questions:

Do German (or maybe European, in general) universities have anything resembling an "ethics board"?
Is there a body that regularly resolves ethical disputes (or is the ethics angle maybe not that focused because German universities also have nothing called "honor code" or an "ethics policy" (which I see mentioned on this site, too) that could be used as an objective basis for deciding in the case of disputes)?
Or is all of this nonsense, and it is just that the nomenclature is so radically different that I do not see the analogy to certain boards and offices that I am well acquainted with in the German universities I have been to?

There is the notion of Ethikkommission (searching for it you will find many hits).

However, this is in my understanding mainly concerned with ethical questions related to research activities, in the sense of question whether a particular research activity is legitimate or if there are ethical or moral concerns against it (rather than academic conduct or misconduct).  To interact with it  is quiet widespread and routine in the life sciences, I think.  In other disciplines it is by and large a non-subject.
For the second quote you link to it could be relevant.

As far as other subjects go  I am not sure if there is a uniform naming or legal regulations, but typically universities will have things like:

Datenschutzbeauftragte or a Datenschutzkommission for issues related to handling of personal data and alike.
Gleichstellungsbeauftragte or a Kommission fûr Chancengleicheit  for questions related to equal opportunities and discrimination.
Behindertenbeauftragte for concerns of persons with special needs.
Kommission zur Untersuchung von Vorwürfen wissenschaftlichen Fehlverhaltens for investigations of scientific misconduct.

Instead of a Kommission it could also be an Ausschuss, or some other variation.

At a university level such committees are often attached to the Senat, but they can exist on lower levels, too.


Is it bad practice to use examples from textbooks in your in-class teaching? When preparing lectures on problem solving related topics for undergraduate, I sometimes wonder if it is a bad practice to use examples from the textbooks. Will students think the instructor is lazy and merely follows steps written in the textbook? If it does create negative impression, does it make it a little better if we go through one or two  problems after explaining an example from the textbook?

Personally, I think that the source of an example doesn't matter half so much as the quality of the example.  If you've got a really good example that came from a textbook, then that's just as OK as having a really good example that came from another professor or one that you made up yourself.

The question, to me, is whether you've made the example your own.  If you've taken the time and effort to really understand the example, then when you present it, you will not present it exactly the same way that it was presented in the textbook.  Your own understanding of the material and personal style will color the presentation, marking it with commentary, pacing, and choices of emphasis, all of this together giving your own "voice" to the presentation.  I think that students recognize when somebody is presenting material in this way, even if they don't know how to name it as that.  They may or may not like your style, but they certainly will not think you are merely following steps from the textbook.

Likewise, I think that there is no reason to hide where you've gotten an example, particularly if you give your reasons, e.g., "this example we're going to work is one from the textbook that gives a very nice illustration of the consequences of Kirchhoff's Law." In fact, giving credit to your sources is a good way to inculcate more of the culture of academic honest in students by example, as well as an aid to students who might want to go over the example again with the textbook.


Probability of acceptance when editor requests "major revisions" but one reviewer recommended "full rejection" I recently received reviews on a paper that I submitted to an Elsevier journal, with 2 reviewers. One had some minor comments and recommended minor revisions, while the second reviewer recommended full rejection and was very vehement about it.

The second reviewer's concerns were basically that he believes that one of the databases used in the paper (which is used in many other studies published in this journal) is completely invalid, but to back up their claim they posted links to a bunch of blog articles. Overall though, they were very disparaging of the paper in almost every possible way because of that.

The editor gave the paper a "major revision" decision. While I feel like we can respond to the comments, it doesn't look like the second reviewer would be convinced regardless of what we respond if he believes that database is invalid. I've also read that if a paper gets a "full reject" recommendation from even one reviewer, the probability of it being accepted is basically zero regardless of what the other reviewers say.

Any thoughts on how to proceed?

I have successfully revised a paper with a reject from one reviewer, through a major revision, into an accepted article. It is definitely possible. I would write your best revision and include a very strongly (but politely and professionally) constructed and worded cover letter directly addressing the reviewer's points including the fact that using blog posts as counter evidence is outside the norms of the field. If the reviewer can point to peer-reviewed academic publications that support their negative points, then that might be sufficient evidence to reject the article, but otherwise, that evidence isn't very strong.


How to bring one's PhD research to another university? I was talking about a probable research topic that I got in mind for following a Phd in Computer Science to one of my past Lecturers. This professor told me that I should make a research proposal and see what happens with the evaluating committee. The research proposal was made and it got finally accepted. Now the issue is that this university, in which they accepted my proposal is not so well known worldwide. So I would like to apply to another more renewed university with the same topic, I think that could help me better in my academic career. What should I do? It is unethically to move to another university with my research idea? maybe my past professor could feel like betrayed?

Thanks

You are free to take your idea wherever you would like. You cannot take your professor's project proposal to another university without her permission.

The professor at your school seeing this as a "betrayal" is a separate issue. A good advisor will of course want a good student to stick around. A good mentor will want what's best for the student—regardless of what's in the mentor's best interests as a potential advisor.

So, my advice is just to talk to the professor and let him know that you'd like to apply at other universities as well. (It's your right to do so, of course.) Ask if the professor would be willing to write letters supporting you. If the professor isn't supportive of this, you'll have your answer. (And if the professor is not supportive, then do not get letters of recommendation from that professor!)


What’s included in a press kit for a research project? I work at a research lab. During a periodic review, the board asked us to add a press kit related to our research. I surveyed a bunch of similar projects and found a huge array of content referred to as “press kits”.

Is there best practice for what’s included in research group press kits?

Before you suggest I ask the board, I should tell you that we nodded sagely when they delivered their advice from on high and didn’t have the gall to seem unsure. Any tips appreciated! The next review is coming up!

1. What is a press kit?

A press kit is usually a collection of information and resources that can be used by reporters and publishers. The idea behind a press kit is to make the reporter's job super easy. They are not experts in the field and require help translating your research approach and outcomes to something the layman reading their publication can understand.

2. Research press kit contents

Press kits usually include photos, graphs, and summaries of your work, in everyday language. It is a mini article with all the basics and explanations required for someone to take and write an accurate article on your work. The more effort you put in to clearly write your summary and link it to non expert concepts the better. The degree to which you need to simplify it heavily depends on the publication's audience, so often a few variants are produced for a press kit that is to be widely distributed.

3. Motivation

It is simple really, the more visibility your research receives the more likely it will be used, cited, or attract funding and the better it is for your university's reputation and visibility.


Typos in Statement of Purpose of PhD application. I am an International student, I applied to universities in US for PhD in High Energy Physics (theory). I just realized that I have made a couple of typos in my statement of purpose/writing sample. To be more specific, I repeated a word (like "year year" instead of "year") in two places. Due to anxiety of waiting to hear from universities, I am worried about all the factors that come into play. How much of a negative impact will this have on my application ?

P.S. - I have done graduate level courses in quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics. I have one publication in JHEP and decent GRE scores.

How significant a typo is rests largely on the purpose and the level of competition. If you were being considered for a prestigious fellowship, typos in the statement of purpose could and have been used as reasons to screen people out of the competition (because there were too many strong candidates).

For traditional admissions, on the other hand, while such sloppiness cannot help you, it's not normally severe enough issue to disqualify you, unless the typos become so numerous that they interrupt the flow of the writing.


How to get good recommendations in online courses? I'm going to be starting a master's program soon that is all online. I have taken some online courses before at a community college, and the interaction with professors was rather limited. I'll be starting at a university soon, and I'm hoping that aspect will improve. But my question is, how can I create good relationships with professors online that will allow me to get meaningful recommendation letters?

In order for me to want to write a student a good letter of recommendation, I typically want to see two things:

mastery of the material (at least enough to earn an A- or better in the course)
engagement with the material

Most often (2) comes through asking me good questions in office hours, although in one case that I recall, I was really impressed with the student's final paper.  Although she already had the top grade in the course, she went above and beyond on the final paper.  I wrote her a glowing letter of rec, and she ended up winning at least one scholarship.

Now to answer your question, I suggest that you approach a web-based course similarly.  Obviously, work hard to do well in the course.  But also make an effort to get to know the instructor a bit.  Many web-based courses have some type of office hours (perhaps a scheduled chat-room time).  Whatever format you have available, take advantage of it (possibly this could be only a forum; not ideal, but still workable).  Take time to think of good questions about the material, and ask them in office hours.  If you have the chance, let the instructor get to know you a bit, too.  It's much easier for your instructor to write a letter of rec for you if they know you well enough to have something to say.


Ways to display extra-curricular/independent learning I am a mathematics student and have been extensively reading textbooks cover-to-cover in my own time.  Thus, my transcript does not say that I have (for example) taken differential geometry, even though I know diffgeo as well, if not better, than if I took the course.

How would you suggest that I display such efforts so that grad schools can be aware that I am more knowledgeable than my transcript might suggest?

Thanks!

I faced this exact problem when I was applying to grad schools. Here are three ways that worked for me (in order of importance):

Include this information in your statement of purpose.
I do not recommend going through a laundry list of all the books you have read, however, I would mention the new topics that you are familiar with, how you have been learning them (independent study), and how you are looking to continue furthering your knowledge (which is presumably by study at the university you’re applying to).
Have your letter writers vouch for your independent study.
Most universities require letters of recommendation as part of your application. It is a good idea to choose letter writers who can speak to your different strengths, and I think it would be beneficial to have at least one of them who is familiar with all of your self-study. I met with my professors who agreed to write letters for me so that we could talk about my application and preparation for grad school. One professor asked me specifically to prepare a list of topics I’d studied independently so that he could write about it in his letter to the university.
Contact professors at the schools where you want to apply.
Getting professors familiar with your background can be helpful so that they can point you to even more resources for self-study, and they may also be helpful when going through the application review process. There is no guarantee this will influence your application, however, it possibly has some bearing on it, and it more importantly will help you become better at self-study regardless.


Is it inappropriate to explain why I really want to live where the university is located in my job talk? I am preparing to give a job talk for
an on-campus interview for a tenure-track assistant professor position.
The university is located in city X.
I really want a job in city X
because I have many relatives living in city X,
and my parents also live a few hours by plane from city X,
and I feel that city X is a good place for my wife and I to raise our kids.

I would like to spend one slide and a minute near the end of my job talk
in order to explain why I really want to live in city X.
Would this strengthen my case,
or would this be seen by the faculty as "too much information?"

Just to put what's already in the comments into an answer:

Yes, you should convey the information you've told us to the hiring faculty.  If you've gotten a campus interview for a faculty position, they are already extremely interested and satisfied with your on-paper qualifications.  Final decisions are often strongly motivated by who they think will take the offer and who they think will stick around, happily and productively, in the job.  You list several things that would earn you lots of points on that score, and since the hiring faculty cannot and should not ask too many questions about your personal life, the way to make that information known is to tell them so explicitly.

However,

No, you should not put that information in as a slide.  Your talk should be about your professional work.  Throwing in "I'd like it here!  Hire me!!" while people are listening to your work is jarring and shows (I think) just a soupçon of poor judgment.  I assume that your on-campus interview is structured so that anyone who is involved in hiring you has multiple opportunities to talk to you outside of the context of your job talk.  If so, then I wouldn't even bring it up at all in your talk, except possibly as an ice-breaker at the beginning or a parting shot at the very end.