Writing papers in language X and translating to English vs. writing papers in English to begin with? I'm working with a group in China, and we were discussing the following question, which I would like to ask here too:

  Question:  Is it better to write a paper in Chinese, then translate it into English, than to write it in English to begin with?

Of course, this question is not limited to Chinese.

Both myself, and the (Chinese) professors in the group I work with felt rather strongly that writing in English to begin with is better.  However, we didn't manage to articulate any tangible reason as to why we feel this way (mostly just out of intuition).  Hopefully the group here can offer some meaningful insight one way or the other.

Note: I'm sure if I leave out the specific context, I'll receive a comment asking for it.  So, in our case, the context was students writing technical scientific research papers (in computer science).

As a non-native English speaker myself, I've faced similar situations during my PhD. Some pros/cons of writing not in English, and then translating.

Pros:

If you're working with people who don't speak English very well, it can make it easier for them to write in their native language first, so that they can focus on explaining the idea, rather than trying to find a correct vocabulary.
You might be able to publish the work twice: once for a Chinese-speaking conference (or journal) and another time in English.
If you plan to have this paper read by undergraduate students later on, then it might be easier for them to understand it if it's in their native language.

Cons:

This is a waste of time, since you're basically working on the same thing twice.
Translating is hard, in general, and speaking two languages does not necessarily make you a good translator. In practice, it might give a structure, but you might have to rewrite entirely each paragraph.
If you're working with people who aim at staying in academia, they they need to be able to write directly in English. It's hard in the beginning, but it gets much easier with time and practice.
It could make complicated any external collaboration (I've been collaborating with some people who write their papers in English, but their comments and ideas in another language, it was really frustrating).
It's probably a subjective perception, but I think that a paper is not only a technical idea, it should also be an interesting piece of work to read. It might be specific to CS (I don't have the same feeling when talking with people in maths), but I feel that we're already reading A LOT of papers (probably due to the multiplication of conferences/journals in CS), and at some point, it becomes harder to focus on those that are not pleasant to read. The best way to make your paper pleasant to read is to think it in English from the beginning.

Note that in the Cons, I assumed that you would translate the paper yourselves, and that you're not particularly trained for translating technical documents. Of course, that would be quite different if you were to delegate the translation to some professionals.


Can Budapest Semesters in Mathematics outset the disadvantage of not attending a prestigious undergraduate for top graduate programs in Mathematics? I am an international applicant from a less prestigious school. Although with help of my coursework and recommendations letter from my advisor and internship advisor I hope I can make to Budapest Semesters in Mathematics. I also hope to get a letter from those professors in Budapest. However I am skeptical of how can it help my application for top Math graduate schools. Will a A from the toughest courses and a letter help overturn the fact that I am attending less prestigious school ?

I have pretty significant anecdotal insight here.  I went to a very good but not quite top tier ( in math ) school and jointly majored in a humanities degree and a math degree.  I was active in the math department, but was not the top student.  I took maybe one or two graduate courses as an undergrad.  By my senior year I decided to focus more on math, but didn't think I would get in to a top tier graduate program ( and, for me, it wasn't worth it not to go to a top tier program.  Please keep in mind that this is not true for everyone and was a personal choice ).  I was confident, and received confirming feedback from professors, that I probably would not be able to achieve this goal with my background.

In my senior year I applied to several scholarships for graduating undergraduates, like Fulbright and Marshall scholarships, but did not succeed.  I then applied to and was accepted into BSM.  It's an excellent program, and I would say that it's an even better opportunity to learn a lot.  When I was there, academics was not 100% the goal for around half of the other students; for many of them it's the "study abroad" experience.  I do not mean to disparage them at all; this experience can be very important for personal growth and perhaps even more important than the academic experience.  I simply mean to point out that you're working with absolutely top tier educators and mathematicians who care very much about the program and if you're there for the academics then you have an opportunity work closely with them and have a lot of access.

I focused extremely hard both during the summer before BSM, and during my time in Budapest, working on a ( small ) independent research project and rounding out my background, while making sure that I excelled while in Budapest.  I can echo the other answer that the courses were quite difficult, probably closer to a graduate level than undergraduate ( although I probably took more advanced courses ).

Anyway, punchline of the story is that I got in to the top school of my choosing for graduate school.  I had recommendation letters from BSM professors and from professors from my undergraduate institution.  I don't know how they evaluated, but I believe that my strong grades from undergrad ( at a near top but not top school ), my activity in undergrad activities within the math department, and my performance and dedication ( eg. research ) in BSM were the major contributing factors.  Regarding the school I attended for graduate school, most students were high school olympiad medalists ( I didn't know what the olympiad was until college ) and/or putnam finalists ( I participated 3 years, never getting honorable mention, but scoring okay ).  I definitely felt like I was the "least" among them, but learned later many of them felt the same about themselves ( see "imposter syndrome").  There were a couple of top tier graduate programs that rejected me, so I'd say that the experience put me in the mix.

So, moral of the story for me is that it can absolutely help you.  It requires, however, a lot of effort and at least a pretty good background on top of that. I would also like to emphasize that I know many people that had amazing experiences and learned a ton at next tier and next next tier graduate programs, some of whom have successful academic careers.  The best of the best students in my graduate program got something out of being with those stratosphere level professors that, to be honest, I was not capable of.  My guess, although every story is different, is that you may have an even better experience at a next tier graduate school rather than top tier.


Is being publication oriented bad? I talked with a professor for possible thesis guidance and mentioned that I aim to publish papers at top venues as soon as possible. The Professor got somewhat offended and said publication is not an aim and that I should aim to be problem oriented.

Maybe true, but I did not understand why that prof got offended and felt so bad about publishing. Do you have any ideas?

The traditions of writing a monograph as a thesis vs. writing a thesis based on a number of papers/manuscripts and a cover paper to tie everything together vary between university systems (academic cultures). Because many aspects of academia including evaluations for positions and grants to a large extent is based on published papers, the latter system is gaining interest. In my country, Sweden, it has always (in modern times) been the norm. So in your case the reaction can be caused by one or both of tradition and local academic culture.

The professor has a good point in that the aim of writing a thesis should not primarily be to publish papers. Graduate school is about learning both practical and philosophical knowledge of how to conduct research properly with the aim to become a functioning research individual. At the same time, writing papers is a vital skill that must be included in such education so one does not preclude the other and my guess is that the response, hence, mostly is the result of tradition and culture rather than right or wrong. To be offended seems a bit over the top in terms of a reaction but I do not know the person to judge where such a reaction might originate.

I know of many who have defended a monograph but written and published papers on the material included in the thesis. A monograph allows inclusion of much more details on experiments and results than the paper format does. This can be seen as an advantage of the monograph. On the other hand, a thesis consisting of papers usually also contains a cover paper in which the same type of details can be included.

In the end the thesis you write will follow the local traditions or rules and my suggestion is to follow these but to aim to think about papers in parallel. Hopefully you will have an advisor that agrees.


What does recommended for acceptance mean? I applied to a computer science PhD program and received an email saying the department admissions committee has recommended me for acceptance to the program. What does it mean "recommended"? Isn't it the department making the decision?

Not always. At some universities (such as the one where I presently work, the official decision to admit a student is made at the dean's level, rather than the departmental level. In such cases, the department recommends admission; such recommendations are almost always accepted, unless something irregular has happened in the admissions process.


The title of a book is different in the catalogue and on the cover. How do I cite it? I would like to cite a chapter from a book which is listed in the catalogue as Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy (Wiley, 2014, edited by Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking), found here at the Wiley site and here on Amazon. I'm somewhat confused about how exactly to cite this book, since if you look at the cover...

... the title is different. To add to the confusion,

the book is listed under the catalogue title (Spectroscopy) in multiple library catalogues and most google search results,
but not everywhere, including WorldCat and several Wiley pages;
the citing articles on Google Scholar are split about 50/50 on both (with Google Scholar correctly recognizing both forms as citations to the same resource!),
some of them even switching sides;
the title page has the same title as the cover; and
each book chapter has a footer with the cover title (Physics).

My question is: how do I cite this book? Given that pretty much every rule of libraryness seems to have melted down, do I just choose whatever I find sexier and forget about it all?

List both. The official title is whatever is on the book, no matter what (so even including any typos and stuff). Still, it makes sense to mention the problem:

  Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy [also known as "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy"]. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.

Bear in mind that the title is the one listed inside (on the first sheet of paper), not on the cover (thanks Andrew for pointing this). Also, I would include the ISBN in this case, even if you don't include it for other book references. Either in a standard way as shown above, or in a note like the following; remember that rules for providing auxiliary information are quite loose and you can twist them to your needs:

  Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. [also known as: "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy". ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.]


Is it ok for PhD to come from same school as BA? If my ultimate goal is to obtain a tenured teaching position, is it more desirable to get a PhD from a different university than the one where I obtained my BA? What are the possible pros and cons?

The original university has a large philosophy department, which is also a factor for me.

Many people refer to PhD programs accepting students from their BA programs as "academic incest." (The same term is used for hiring PhD students from the same program into the tenure track).  The reasons why doctoral programs generally don't want to commit academic incest are:

As with physical inbreeding, academic incest reduces the intellectual gene pool. You've already studied under a singular group of faculty for your BA, go to another program for your PhD to widen your intellectual horizons.
As with physical inbreeding, if your program is known for academic incest, it dissuades possible future candidates from applying -- or at minimum, feeling that you prioritize your 'own' over others.

There are clear reasons why a program might not want to be known for incestuous tendencies. However, the question is whether this hurts a candidate. Here, the risk/benefit analysis is a bit more murky.

Pros: If your program is indeed the best in X-Studies, why not remain at the best?

Cons: There is a risk that you might be seen as parochial -- that you only really know the intellectual currents at your single alma mater. To be honest, I'm not sure how significant a risk this is in terms of jobs although I would for the reasons of scholarly diversity above, still suggest that students not apply to their own PhD programs.

Fine print: Note that claims of the negative aspects of academic incest are much more pronounced (and pernicious) in the humanities and social sciences; and are much less common in the lab sciences. If there's only one university lab in the USA that does the type of gene splicing you want to do and you're continuing a project that you've done as an undergraduate, it'd be silly to think of going elsewhere.


How do you comment on rapid improvement in a student's performance? Sometimes, it can happen that a graduate student who is struggling on a project finally sees everything "click," and becomes far more productive. It might be due to a change in attitude, an improved work ethic, serendipitous success, or some combination of all of the above.

In writing recommendations, how do you comment on the student's rapid turnaround, without making the previous state of the work (in which the student was working, and clearly understood what needed to be done, but didn't have the results to show for it) seem like it was a weakness or liability on the part of the student. Given how real signs of weakness can cause problems for people reviewing the letters, how do you call attention to the fact that the student underwent such a startling transformation, while acknowledging the previous struggles and not harming the student's chances?

I agree with JeffE's comment -- this is an opportunity to show fantastic improvement, which looks great in a letter.  If the improvement really was because of "serendipitous success," it seems that it would be difficult to sustain, unless it happens that the groundbreaking work was so monumental that it is prize-worthy (and even then, chance favors only the prepared mind).

If I'm writing a positive letter (which is almost always the case--I'll try to convince a student that I'm not the correct person if I feel I won't be able to justify a strong letter), my goal is to convince the letter-reader that I'd hire/accept the person now, and why.  Something like the following might fit this case:

  I have been particularly impressed by X's recent work on her project, Nuclear Powered Time Travel via a Modified Consumer Vehicle.  Despite a frustrating set of circumstances that returned limited results in the early stages of the project, her hard work and persistence led to a breakthrough that she is currently preparing for submission to The Twin Paradox Journal, and will undoubtedly lead to further successful results.  Specifically, she was finally able to properly shield the flux-capacitor plutonium containment compartment in her design, reducing temporal errors by 99% and leading to far greater box office returns.

If the student's previous attitude, or struggles don't put her in a particularly good light, don't include them explicitly.  Again, it goes back to would I hire or accept the student now?  If you believe that by not including the specifics you're not being honest, then maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable with such a positive letter anyway.


Is the academic job market in developing / former Eastern Bloc countries welcoming towards young foreign researchers? Though I am at the very beginning of my PhD journey, I am somewhat disturbed by the apparent lack of tenured positions in the US and Western Europe, especially concerning the humanities. All these horror stories about eager graduates looking in vain for years make me wonder how to prepare for my future, apart from publishing vehemently etc. Teaching and research are my passions, and I am willing to make significant sacrifices with regard to my family life and salary expectations in order to stay in academia.

To be more specific, I am willing to move (almost) anywhere if it means I can continue on my chosen career path. In fact, it would probably be beneficial to see the world and interact with different cultures. I am thinking of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and CIS-countries, Southeast Asia and other regions which recently underwent an economic boom; if this also implies an expanding tertiary education, I imagine they may be more interested in hiring Western graduates from older/more reputable universities. Industrialisation and population growth almost necessarily mean a higher enrolment rate and new institutions, and the faculty may consider employing researchers from more distinguished places a valuable marketing tool, at least in the beginning.

According to your experience, is this assumption correct? Is it reasonable to look for academic positions outside the US and Europe? Is the administration more likely to welcome me among their ranks at such places, ceteris paribus? If so, do you have any special advise on the application process or on the difficulties I may encounter? Thank you.

ETA: Just to be clear, I am specifically referring to second- or even third-tier target institutions, not Tokyo University or Peking Uni, though I welcome all suggestions.

I have no firsthand experience on this, but based on what my friend told me and some educated guesses:

It's probably easier to find a job as a professor in these developing countries. My friend said that the qualifications as a postdoc in Singapore are sufficient to qualify as a full professor in Malaysia (both countries are in SEA, but Singapore is developed while Malaysia is developing).
Expect lower living standards. Again using Malaysia vs. Singapore as an example, you get a lot of conveniences in Singapore such as better lecture theaters, top-notch internet, nicer offices, and so on. This extends outside of academia: factors such as public transport, crime rate, and salary are all better in Singapore. On the flip side, Malaysia is generally cheaper, especially if you want to own a car.
Expect weaker students. Unfortunate but true, because all the best students leave for better universities elsewhere.
Expect less resources. You won't get as much money to create grand research plans, and the country might not be able to join big collaborations like the Large Hadron Collider. You might also have fewer opportunities to attend conferences or to meet other researchers (e.g. by visiting or have them visit).
Expect a significant cultural gap. These countries don't usually have English as a primary language. Some people might still speak it, but they are usually more comfortable with another language, and you might e.g. have students ask you about something, you explain it, and then they discuss your answer with each other in your presence in a language you don't understand. There are other cultural things such as how much responsibility a professor should have over his or her students (for example, Yoshiki Sakai committed suicide over the academic misconduct of his student even though he was cleared of misconduct). You can work around this, but it'll take time.
Finally, don't forget that your choices will affect your family as well. Finding a suitable school for your children, for example, can be a problem.

Edit: I talked to a senior lecturer in astronomy at a university in Malaysia. He found his job immediately after graduating with his PhD. He says he cold-mailed his CV to the various universities with physics departments in the country. One of them responded with an interview request which led to the job.

Clearly the job market is less competitive - I asked him who the lecturers are if fresh graduates are senior lecturers, and he said the lecturers are usually those with Masters degrees. In the West, it'd be virtually impossible to land such a position without multiple postdocs, let alone without a PhD degree.

Among other things: he said he's somehow supervising PhD students even though he's a fresh graduate himself (which doesn't make sense to him or me, but from his description it was forced onto him). He also said students are indeed weaker overall, but there are also good students.

On the flip side, he was critical about Malaysia's promotion system since there apparently was a requirement where you must publish two papers a year, which clearly emphasizes quantity over quality. Also, the university's canteen only had Malay food. If you work in the country, hope you like curry.


What is the best way to express my condolence to a professor? I am a Ph.D student at the university. Every student has a favourite professor same as mine. I really care about and our student-teacher relationship growing stronger day by day. My professor really cares about my professional/academic growth.

But a few days sooner I heard that the professor has been gone for an extended period of time.I am very confused and don't have any idea how to contact my professor.

Mistakenly I used google and I realized that my professor loses his loved once.
I feel really ashamed to break my professor privacy. I know that express condolence is the best way to support your close one who is under deep pain.

I am more worried about to disrespect our teacher-student relationship.
I am really confused. Can anyone guide me any positive way to handle this situation?

If you found this information online then it’s hardly an invasion of privacy (unless of course you hacked his email or something). I wouldn’t worry about that.

If there is a public announcement (an obituary) of a religious service (eg a wake or a shiv’a), you can probably attend as these things are usually open to the public for exactly people like you- distant relatives or acquaintances who wish to comfort the grieving family. For example, if they’re Jewish, it’s customary to bring some simple baked goods (say, cookies) since the family is hosting a seven-day event. I’m not familiar with grieving customs in other religions but that should be easy enough to find out. In these situations your professor would most likely greatly appreciate your presence and the gesture.

If there’s no public announcement then wait for the professor to come back to the university and try to catch them in person to offer your condolences. Again, the gesture would be greatly appreciated I believe.

My condolences...


Disclosing a proposal My PI forwarded to me the proposal of a project I have to work on. Recently, a new postdoc arrived and he is supposed to write a  proposal by himself. He asked me to forward the one I received from my PI. The issue is that I am not sure if I should disclose it without having explicitly PI's authorization. This person told me that PI was OK with it (but I wasn't  present at that meeting). Am I being too paranoid?.

My rationale behind this is that I shouldn't be forwarding something I didn't write to anyone unless the author says is fine with it. Besides, this is an ongoing project... In any case, I have already written to PI to have his authorization, but meanwhile, it is uncomfortable to deal with the other person. I would like to know your opinions about this. Thanks.

Tell the other student as many times as necessary that you just need the okay directly from the PI and then you'll be happy to forward it.

I would try to steer the PI away from okaying the forward.  It would be different if you already knew and trusted this individual.

The germ of an idea for a project can be very important.  This is your baby and I understand your wanting to protect it.

(You need not explain that to the other student.)


Which are the most popular cartoons on academia? I find self-criticism and irony are strong means to communicate genuinely and involve people who are not necessarily expert in a field.

As cartoons offer a quick yet poignant way to describe how academia works, I am wondering which cartoons on academia are the most popular. I am interested in particular on cartoons which may highlight the true spirit of academic life and academic hierarchy.

A simple Google search for "cartoon academia" yields 580,000 hits, with the first image posted being a New Yorker cartoon by David Sipress. Is such ranking correct?

xykademiqz

Not to be confused with

xkcd

Both very good. This is one of my favourites from xykademiqz:


Inviting a likely reviewer of a rejected manuscript as a co-author Researcher X is well known in area Y for the past five years. He finished his PhD about 4 years ago and now has over 1600 citations. In area Y, he has been the first author of all published survey and tutorial articles. Now someone (researcher A) writes a survey on area Y, narrowed down to a particular aspect in the same journals where Researcher X publishes. He submits his paper and got a rejection. Thus, A thinks the paper would highly benefit from researcher X's experience. The problem is there are strong indications that Researcher X is a reviewer of A's paper. Since A would like to resubmit to this journal, how could he write a convincing letter to Researcher X inviting him for co-authorship. For instance, does this look fine enough?

Dear Researcher X,

I am writing you with respect to my manuscript titled: 'My Title'. I will like to add more value to this paper to meet reputable journal G's standard. It is pertinent that I mention that the paper has been previously rejected from this journal with an opportunity for resubmission. I am thus requesting your assistance and co-authorship to improve on the quality of this manuscript.

I anticipate your response

Two points.

It's actually irrelevant, if X was the reviewer of the paper or not. If you want to ask them, do it. It does not matter, if X knows the paper already or not, but assume they don't.
I would appeal more to the professional interests of X in the mail. Like, "this paper focuses on the weight distribution of spherical cows in vacuum. My coauthors and I think the paper might benefit from your expertise on spherical horses in low gravity".


A staff member was rude to me in an email and made me look bad in front of other members of the staff. How should I handle this? Due to some unfortunate miscommunication, one of the staff members at a university felt like I did not meet one of my obligations.

The staff member sent me an extremely rude email that happened to include other members of the department who I happen to know personally. The fact that the email was extremely condescending makes it seem like the staff member was trying to make me look bad.

Several months ago I received an email outlining some obligations. About a week ago I received another email explaining that I did not have to do one of those obligations. (Fortunately, it turned out to be something that was relatively simple and could be done at any time.)

Because I did not think I had to do the obligation, I did not do it. If the staff member would have clarified what they said, I would have been more than happy to do it. It also turned out to be something extremely simple.

Instead of clarifying, they sent an email that said "I did your work for you" and "here is what I said several months ago to prove that you knew you had to do this" but did not mention where they said "you do not have to do this".

The email was extremely rude and condescending. I would have been able to let it go if they did not include the other members of the department in the email. Now I am not sure how to respond. My thought is that they just forgot that they said I did not have to do the obligation.

I am not sure how to handle this. I have ideas along the lines of asking for an apology, clarifying the situation and explaining that I felt they were extremely rude, or forwarding the entire email chain to higher members of the department.

If I do decide to ask for an apology or clarify the situation, I can't decide whether or not I should include higher members of the department or who in the department I should include.

It sounds as if your co-worker was extremely rude, and owes you an apology, but pointing those things out in so many words is rarely productive. Instead, I would use something like the following template with a reply-all:

  Hi John, there seems to have been some misunderstanding. From your
  email of January 28th (copy attached below), I understood that I was
  no longer required to feed the departmental axolotls - if I misunderstood this, could you please clarify what was intended?
  Anyway, thanks for fielding it on this occasion.

At that point, if your co-worker is a sensible person who was just having an off day, they will offer an apology without further prompting. If not, well, your other colleagues can form their own judgement based on the relevant facts.

edit:

re. whether it's better to respond to the CC list, or just in private: you certainly have a right of reply in the same venue, but whether it's advisable to exercise that right depends very much on circumstances.

If the alleged omission is sufficiently trivial ("you didn't wash up the teapot yesterday!") then "John" has already made themself look silly just by making a big deal about it, and it's not likely to harm your reputation, so I'd just let it go. The annoyance value to others from prolonging the thread outweighs any need for reputation control; cf. the old adage about wrestling with a pig.

At the other end of things, if leaving the allegation unanswered could harm your professional reputation ("you didn't label the poisons cabinet/feed the research animals/complete the grants proposal due next week"), and if "John"'s allegation might seem plausible to the recipients, then it becomes important to rebut it in the forum where it was made. You don't want a dozen co-workers believing that you're a menace to their health or their work.

Leaving aside your own reputation, it might be important to reply for other people's sake. People take their cues on acceptable behaviour from those around them, and bullies often bully more than one person; for either of those reasons, it can be beneficial to see bullying behaviour promptly challenged.

Because workplace culture varies so much, it might be wise to seek input from colleagues at your institution - they can probably tell you better than us whether people take your co-worker seriously.


Applying for a postdoc when you don't have all the necessary skills I have recently completed my PhD and now looking for a postdoc/research assistant position. I found a few positions that look attractive - but I don't have all the skills listed in the job ad. I have some and I know I can learn the rest quickly; I also know from talking to other postdocs that their current research is not related to their PhD projects.
The question is - should I apply for the jobs I'm not completely qualified for since it's normal to learn on the job, or is it a total waste of time? And how should I answer to selection criteria in this case?

Assuming you believe you can do the job and can make a compelling case in your application, yes you should apply. A person with the exact set of skills listed may not be available, in which case they will have to chose whomever they believe is the best fit of those who apply. Also, the skills you have may be beneficial for the position but may not have been thought of for the job ad.

In answering the selection criteria naturally emphasize the skills that you have which match the job ad. Additionally, highlight the skills which you have that are not listed but you believe would be beneficial and why. Finally, you can also make a case for why you can quickly (and independently) learn the additional skills that you do not already have.


How easy is it to game the altmetric score? The altmetric score is a summary of the online attention a publication has received. More tweets, hits and chatter makes a bigger score. But what does the popularity contest mean?

I've heard of researchers being officially judged by their Research Gate scores, but this one is new to me.

Have you ever tried to boost your altmetric score? Is it as easy as just posting a link? http://dx.doi.org/10.18352/lq.10289 Here's my two cents to help with the experiment.

Like any metric, there’s a potential for gaming of altmetrics:
  Anyone with enough time on their hands can artificially inflate the
  altmetrics for their research. That’s why altmetrics providers like
  Altmetric, PLOS and SSRN have measures in place to identify and correct for
  gaming. Don’t forget to look at the underlying qualitative data to see who
  has been talking about the research, and what they’ve been saying.

I conclude it is very easy to game the score.  Gaming is also easy to detect.  Gaming altmetrics is neither ethical nor useful.

https://www.altmetric.com/about-altmetrics/what-are-altmetrics/


Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition? Context: I intend to study mathematics and do research as a career. I am studying analysis and abstract algebra now and I shall begin my undergraduate studies shortly.

  Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition?

I have been told my friend that physics may lend one intuition into a few mathematical structures though I am not sure. I can only think of differential equations as an example. In particular, please tell me if physics can serve as a source of motivation and if it is crucial enough.

There's a range of applications for mathematics around many disciplines. In the XX century, physics was definitely the biggest consumer of mathematics, from the photoelectric effect and the black body spectrum in the early century through nuclear bombs and space exploration of the second half. The XXI century looks to shape around biology and life sciences.

Physics leans heavily on PDE, real and complex analysis. Some areas may require abstract algebra, but they could turn out to be somewhat exotic (quantum Hall effect and other solid state physics stuff), and you would need to study physics for about 5 years to get to understand what it is if you are starting from ground zero. (School physics IS ground zero, in my books.) Until you know what Green's function is, there may be little point approaching physics for you.
Economics leans heavily on real analysis and optimization. There's some use of abstract algebra, although again to get to the areas where it is really needed (welfare economics, may be some very abstract macro), you need to get very deep into grad school in economics.
There's quantitative biology, in which separate fields may require way separate math tools: ecology uses some PDEs, while protein structure is computation that could be using abstract algebra, too, to describe the spatial structures (where it overlaps somewhat with material science).
Computer science is another big obvious consumer of mathematics, and abstract algebra is very immediately used in various codes. If you want to have an immediate gratification from having learned simple groups, you can go ahead and figure out how the PGP algorithm works.


How are academic relations between mainland China and Taiwan? Both mainland China and Taiwan have internationally notable universities. How are the relations between their academic research communities?

Does getting involved (as a Westerner) with either of these research communities lead to political obstacles regarding the other?

The relationship between the Chinese and Taiwanese academic research communities are generally friendly from my personal experience (a family member of mine is a professor at a Taiwanese university, and has collaborations with Chinese universities).

As far as I know, getting involved in the research community does not get you into political obstacles as long as you are not doing research in politics (which the Chinese government might be more sensitive to).


Is it appropriate to drop by another university's professor's lecture to talk about research afterwards? There is a professor at a university different from the one I study in, who I like to do some research with. I emailed her and did not receive any answer even after sending a follow-up email (a week after the first email). I knew her class schedule, but not her office hours. I thought about going to where the class meets to talk to her after her lecture (introduce myself, try to remind her of the email and express my interest in working with her over and ask her to read my CV that I emailed to her, or arrange some time to meet me and discuss about possible opportunities) .

Since I am not a student at the institution where she works and given the nature of my inquiry and the fact that she didn't answer my emails, I thought this might not be appropriate. I wanted to ask your opinion on whether you think there is a way for me to go and talk to her without it being inappropriate. (I thought about emailing the TA of the class and asking about the office hours of the professor, but I doubt if that's any better.)

I would not appreciate that. I have a schedule, which means that after a lecture I may have a meeting, I may have an appointment with someone I am supervising, I may need to pick up my children from day-care, etc. etc. etc.

If you have emailed twice and not received an answer, then that is your answer... That is not very polite, but none of us are perfect.


What should a lecturer do when an international student plagiarises and the student claims it was unintentional? A student has plagiarised her assignment. The lecturer gave all students a lecture on plagiarism at the beginning of the semester. The student maintains she was absent that day but the university does not keep records on attendance. However a copy of the lecture is on BlackBoard. Her excuse is that she didn’t realise she was plagiarising.  As she is an overseas student a fail in a unit means she risks losing her visa.

What actions should the lecturer take?

If your institution keeps a record of academic misconduct, be sure this gets into the record.  If you don't do that, you enable serial cheating.

Do not allow a "do over."  The message you send is that there's no penalty for for misconduct, even if one gets caught.  Misconduct must have some irrecoverable penalty, however small.  It need not be a grade penalty; it could be extra work, but see below about setting a penalty.

Follow University policy if there is one.  If you have the opportunity to set the penalty, and I hope you do, consider the magnitude of the offense.  A single un-cited paragraph from a work listed in a bibliography is far less egregious than a substantial part of the work copied with no attempt at attribution.

It is not your problem that the student missed the plagiarism lecture.  Do not allow the student to make it your problem.

It is not your problem that the student might lose her visa.  Do not allow the student to make it your problem.


Is it in the best interest of supervisors that his/her students publish their research results in top journals? I am a math PhD student in a foreign country. When finishing my papers, my advisor (who is a big name in the field) always proposes me to submit them to a journal. The problem is that so far none of these have been top-tier journals. On the other hand, in my mind, there is no doubt that the results are good enough to be published in really good ones, and I have also confirmed this fact after giving talks at conferences. In addition, in one of these papers, he/she was signed as a corresponding author, even when I did 99% of the job. Why would someone do this to his/her student?

First of all, journal quality is not an objective thing (measures like acceptance rate and impact factor and so on really do not mean that much, and can be gamed).  There isn't necessarily universal agreement about which journals are "top-tier".  So consider the possibility that your supervisor simply has a different opinion about the reputation of these journals than you do.

The advisor does have a responsibility to give advice that they believe will be beneficial to students, including advice about where to publish.  (Of course, the student also has a responsibility to educate themselves about publication options as best they can, ask questions to try to understand the advisor's suggestions, and speak up if they disagree.)  I'm not sure what you mean about whether it is in the advisor's "best interest".  It is not like they will get paid more if you publish in Acta, but it does generally reflect well on an advisor if their students are successful.

But there is a serious trade-off of submitting to top journals: time to acceptance.  The peer review process in math is much slower than in many other fields, and top journals are very selective.  Even if your paper is "good enough" for a top journal, that doesn't mean that it will be accepted by the first one you submit to, and it may be under review for several months before being rejected.  Then you have to start over.  As a PhD student, you really want to have papers accepted before you begin to apply for postdocs or other jobs.  A paper that hasn't been accepted anywhere, even if it's an awesome paper, doesn't help your job prospects much, because there's no independent confirmation that it's awesome.

So at this particular stage of your career, it could be very sensible to submit your work to a less-than-top journal, even if you think it has a chance to be accepted somewhere better, because it's more important to get it accepted fast, without having to go through several submit/review/reject cycles with different journals.  This is something your advisor ought to take into account when suggesting journals.  But it's a balancing act between the considerations of "publish in the best possible place" and "get accepted on the first try", and you should of course speak up if you have a different opinion about how to balance those.

(If your advisor is a co-author, this same balancing act could apply to them as well.  For instance, they might have a promotion decision coming up, and they want to have the paper accepted somewhere before that happens.  Sometimes different authors may have conflicting needs in this regard, and they have to reach agreement somehow.  Personally I think that the needs of more junior authors, such as PhD students, ought to be weighted more heavily, but that is just me.)

I also want to comment on the "corresponding author" question.  People around the world seem to have different opinions about what it means to be corresponding author.  In my part of the world (US), it's my impression that being corresponding author only means what it says: this is the author who corresponded with the journal (sent in the submission, filled out the forms, etc), and who is the best person for a reader to reach if they have questions about the paper.  Around here, it doesn't carry any particular prestige, and it isn't meant to imply that "this person did most of the work".  So on that basis, I wouldn't say that there was anything wrong with your advisor being corresponding author.  (For one thing, your advisor probably has a more stable email address, since you are going to graduate before too long.)  There may be some benefit to being corresponding author as a student, just to get practice with the journal submission process, but it's not really a reputation benefit.

(If "corresponding author" has a different connotation among people in your part of the world, or more importantly, the part of the world where you intend to apply for postdocs, then the previous paragraph may not apply to you.)


As a PhD student in Germany, would I retain student status for tax purposes? I am currently pursuing my masters degree in computer science from TU Munich, and I would love to pursue my PhD soon after my graduation, but I am worried about the finances at the same time.

What I gather is I should be able to make a decent enough salary but what I do not understand clearly, is whether I would retain my student status during my PhD and enjoy reduced taxation?

With reduced taxation and few other student benefits, it could possibly mean I have a more stable financial situation.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that a CS grad student in the US makes more than a CS student in Germany. If you get a full TV-L position (100%), which many CS positions are, then your net pay after deductions starts at 25,000 € per year (roughly $34,000), and goes up from there. I know of very few US graduate students whose net income is that large—most of them may get that much as a gross salary, and are then responsible for paying taxes and health insurance out of that sum.

If you aren't trying to raise a family, or have exceptional financial circumstances, the graduate salary (it's a salary, not a stipend—as it usually is in the US) is probably more than sufficient to live anywhere in Germany. (Also, you receive full social benefits, including retirement and health insurance.)

So, salary considerations shouldn't be a significant part of your decision-making process—at least not in the sense of "can I afford to be a graduate student?" You can ask if that's a lifestyle you want to be living, compared to what's possible if you go into industry.


How much knowledge is expected of an MPhil applicant as compared to a PhD student, a postdoc or a research assistant? A related question asks about differences in required background knowledge between PhD students, postdocs and RAs. This question asks about differences in the required background knowledge between MPhil students and the former.

My understanding is that postdocs, research assistants, MPhil students and PhD students are mostly paid positions. Regardless, MPhil students and PhD students, like postdocs and research assistants, are expected to assist with the specific research that the professor is doing.

But, considering that both a MPhil studentship and a PhD studentship is the pursuit of a degree rather than the application of acquired knowledge from a degree, I would like to know how much background knowledge is expected of MPhil and PhD students at the time of applying.

How much is expected of background knowledge for an MPhil applicant?

How much is expected of background knowledge for an MPhil applicant?

This depends a lot on the domain and the institution, and MPhil doesn't exist in every country. So it's impossible to answer this question precisely, but I think one can broadly define the differences in terms of how operational the person is expected to be at producing research:

A postdoc is a professional researcher hired on a temporary basis. For all intents and purposes they must be able to carry out their research work on their own (i.e. produce research), under the direction of a PI.
A PhD student is training to become a researcher, and this training includes producing research. They are not expected to be autonomous in the production of research, their PhD advisor is here to train them. However they are supposed to have acquired the background knowledge and to be able to complete their knowledge in their specialized field on their own.
An MPhil student is at the initial stage of research training. They are expected to require more supervision and are not necessarily required to publish papers.
A research assistant is simply somebody hired to assist in research. They are not expected to produce research by themselves and might have a very limited knowledge of the research questions. For instance a software developer can be hired as research assistant in a physics project where they provide a service according to their skills. In general this is not a training position.


How can I improve my chance of getting a tenure-track position My job search (for tenure-track Assistant professor in Computer Science) last year failed miserably.  I submitted applications to about 10 US schools (top 30 -- top-100 quality).   In the end, I got only 1 on-campus interview, which I think I did well, but no job offer.

Here is a quick summary of my qualifications:

ABD from a highly reputable university outside US (equivalent to, e.g., Toronto, EPFL)
10 papers, all in top conferences (5 first-authors)
4 recommendation letters (one from my advisor, 3 from other reputable researchers)
extensive internships in industry research labs
extensive TA experience
has experience in grant-writing (assisting my advisor)

I am really confident in my research accomplishments and research abilities. I also communicate reasonably well and speak/write English fluently.  Since I didn't get a whole lot useful feedback, what do you think are major holes in my profile?  I did some reflections and had the following in mind:

No Post-doc experience (is it really necessary in CS now?)
Never taught a course as an instructor (but I don't see many candidates have this in their resumes)
Degrees not from US
10 papers in top venues are still not enough
Research/Teaching Statement could be written better (perhaps, but I think mine read OK)

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Let me add two points to user3188445's excellent answer.

Landing a tenure-track faculty position in computer science, even during this current phase of rampant uncontrolled growth, is still very very hard.  As  user3188445 put it: There's just a lot of randomness in the hiring process.  In this respect, hiring junior faculty is no different from every inherently subjective selection process: undergraduate admission, graduate admission, paper acceptance, senior hiring, even tenure.

There is nothing you can do to absolutely guarantee that the dice fall in your favor, but you can change the distribution.  As one of my interviewers once said to me when I was looking for faculty positions, the variance is a function of the committee, but the expectation is a function of the applicant.

Apply widely

  I submitted applications to about 10 US schools

There's your biggest problem.  Only the very strongest PhD students have any chance of landing a tenure-track job with only 10 applications.  Each position receives dozens to hundreds of applicants; simple statistics imply that you should aim for a wider range of targets.  I'd suggest 40-50 as a more reasonable target.

Hiring protocols vary significantly between American universities.  Some departments practice targeted hiring, where every interview candidate must match a specific research area approved in advance by the dean.  Other departments practice broad-spectrum hiring; these departments can interview anyone they find sufficiently interesting, regardless of area.  Most departments lie somewhere in between these two extremes.  Restrictions can change during the hiring season.  Moreover, the position advertisement does not reveal the department's hiring constraints, or even necessarily preferences.  Some departments publish general ads ("all areas of computer science") even when their searches are targeted; others publish targeted ads even when their searches are broad.

In short, you cannot tell whether your application is in scope for a particular department from the advertisement.  For this reason, you should apply to every department that you might be interested in joining, no matter what their ad says.  The worst they can do is say no.

Quality > Quantity

My second point is one about perception and language: Your entire application package (including the identities of your references and their contents of their letters) should emphasize quality rather than quantity, impact rather than effort, excellence rather than busy-ness.  Even your own internal mental gauges should be calibrated to the strength and potential of your research, not the length of your CV.

At least one of the metrics we use to choose interview candidates is the question "Is this person likely to get tenure?"  The more you present yourself as someone who is already ready for tenure, the more your achievements shine on the metrics faculty use to judge each other, the better your chances will be.

  ABD from a highly reputable university outside US (equivalent to, e.g., Toronto, EPFL)

The number of non-American CS departments that your prospective American colleagues would rank in the same equivalence class as Toronto and EPFL is very small.  Are you sure?  Are you sure because Americans have told you so, or only because that's what everyone at your home institution says?

In any case, the reputation of your home institution is not as important as your personal reputation as a researcher.  (These are strongly correlated, but they are not the same.)

  10 papers, all in top conferences (5 first-authors)

That's certainly above-average productivity, but productivity is not the same as impact. Did your papers win awards?  Did they create any buzz?  Have they been cited?  Did they inspire follow-up work?  In short, were your papers actually good?  Sturgeon's Law applies even at the best conferences.  Do your external letters (see below) describe the novelty, quality, and impact of your work in specific and credible detail?  Are you, personally, known for this work, as opposed to your advisor?

  4 recommendation letters (one from my advisor, 3 from other reputable researchers)

"Reputable researchers" is too low a bar.  You need letters from recognized intellectual leaders in your field, including a significant fraction from outside your home institution.  As user3188445 points out, you especially need letters from people who are calibrated to the social norms (as some put it, "gushing") of American academic recommendation letters.

It's also important to have American references so that they can give you direct and brutally honest feedback about your application package from the point of view of your target audience.

  extensive internships in industry research labs

Were your internships successful?  Did they lead to publishable or patentable results?  Did they have significant impact within the company?  Did your internship sponsors write you strong recommendation letters?

  extensive TA experience

Unless you are aiming for undergraduate-only institutions or a teaching-only position, this is at most of secondary importance.  Your research matters first.

  experience in grant-writing (assisting my advisor)

Was the grant-writing experience successful?  Did you and your advisor actually get the grant(s)?


Is it okay to give students advice on managing academic work? My journey through academia has been a hard-fought battle against myself and all my worst traits. I'm now finishing my PhD and concurrently teaching courses in which I inevitably come across students who do things that remind me of my own mistakes. I find myself empathizing and trying to find bits of 'life wisdom' to impart, with the goal of being helpful.
I don't remember ever being on the receiving end of such an email. I'm also certain that my colleagues don't it, which, given that they're quite good at their jobs and I'm relatively new at this, makes me want to evaluate this tendency critically.
Here's an example:

Student missed a deadline for a makeup assignment. Class policy
(decided elsewhere) is that this forfeits their right to an exam
retake. So I send all the boilerplate emails, and they apologize,
saying that they didn't have the time or energy to get it done before
the deadline.
I totally get it, so I write back that I'm sorry, I understand it's
rough to play catch-up in these situations. Then I said that teachers
often have greater leeway to offer students who ask for extensions
before it's due, and that sending a quick email to a teacher explaining the situation upfront can be really helpful. I say that I
was totally oblivious to this fact when I was a student, so I try to
tell students this now.
Then, I explained that it was still really important to complete the
replacement assignment anyway, because it's easy to glance at it,
think you understand it, then realize during the test that there were
nuances in its application that you didn't actually understand.
Then I offered to look at the student's assignment if they could send
it within a few days, just to make sure there weren't any obvious
knowledge gaps.

It seemed reasonable as I was writing it, but afterwards I wonder if it's preachy and patronizing. Given that it's exactly the sort of advice I give my teenager on the regular, it makes me wonder if it's the sort of communication best left to their parents and not their teachers.

It's totally appropriate especially for first year students. Learning college level study skills is one of the crucial tasks of the first year.  Additionally, many students whose parents did not attend college (and even some who do have such parents) are totally unaware that they can do things such as attend office hours or email the professor if they need an extension or have a problem.  In fact the way you have structured this, you could even in the future think of developing such knowledge as a learning outcome.


Logistics of co-authorship for assisting business There is a business(sole proprietorship) which has collected a large amount of data relevant to a scientific (psychology) publication, and is providing access and helping implement unique meta-analysis of their data in assistance to the research.

Should I consider a co-authorship with this individual, and if so (given they themselves only previously had a bachelors degree in a different field and are unaffiliated with any university or large institution currently) what would be the proper format for their inclusion in the publication?

They have not been involved in previous publishing work as part of their business so they do not have a previous protocol for this. Their contributions could be considered to be worth more than an acknowledgement.

This may vary by field, though common sense suggests some general applicability. I'm in CS and will offer my personal experience.

You raise a couple of independent points.

Does their affiliation/experience matter? Not in the least IMHO. I saw a paper at a strong conference with a high school student as coauthor!

Do they merit coauthorship?
I'd say if they simply provided data, likely not, but you've already asserted they go beyond a simple acknowledgement. And you can certainly involve them enough going forward for there to be no question.

Seems to me you've answered your own question. But if you specify a field and someone in that field says no, you can't possibly publish if you aren't somehow credentialed, it's another story.

Good luck!


How to convince your PhD adviser about the research value of the topic? I'm already in the second year of my PhD studies and my advisor insists on pursuing a very vague track, in order to produce some results that may be publishable. The problem is that the topic itself was extensively studied in the past two decades and there's little maneuver space without overlapping with others' past ideas (it's in applied Computer Science). My adviser seems to be constrained by his grant committee to have a solution for the topic's problem using a certain kind of technique that will be outperformed by other, more specific algorithms right from the start. Although it has other benefits, they're not interesting for this particular topic (since they're not going to be used in any way).

To put it simple, how can you tell your advisor that what they want you to do is like killing flies with TNT and then have the denotation site rebuilt in order to get rid of those flies? (in an elegant way, of course).

I should mention that my advisor has a different area of expertise than the one chosen for my PhD program and often seems not to having the slightest hints on what state of the art means for that particular field and why it is important not to reiterate past methods and algorithms just because they can be applied in a slightly different field from the one they were initially proposed for.

I believe you are rushing ahead of yourself. In popular areas as applied CS, all areas one way or another may be considered overcrowded. Take any hot topic right now and you are going to see multiple publications with incremental updates / improvements. Still, a new dataset or a new test case ignites new research and so-on. No CS problem may be considered entirely solved. The fastest algorithm may be impossible to use for some datasets, its preprocessing may not scale and slower algorithms may be more parallelizable and more attractive to use. New hardware (CUDA / multiprocessor chips) change the way we write algorithms and so-on. There is a not a single criteria for what is the "best" solution. Stil, this is something you cannot know just by a literature survey.

Have you actually implemented any of the previous solutions to get a grasp of their advantages / disadvantages? Will you be able tomorrow to implement on your src code the state-of-the-art in this suggested problem or you assume it is too perfect to improve (to avoid the trouble of actually doing the implementation). Have you asked /contacted any of the authors if they can provide datasets or binaries for their solutions? Have you actually created multiple datasets to test previous solutions (and yours)? Or is everything just in your head. If yes, you must get them out of your head and into your PC.

If you actually implemented a quick and dirty (1-2 months) implementation of your advisor's suggestion, get some insight of how it behaves and 100% confirmed that your results are much worse than state-of-the-art solutions then no one (including your advisor) will object to you changing direction (no one likes dead ends). But this time will not be wasted. You have learnt what went wrong, you improved your coding skills and you see the research area more clearly. Maybe then, you can even come up with a test-case where your solution is way better than previous works, you perhaps know how to combine this problem with other related sub-problems and you have a solution that works (although not optimally) to partially satisfy the grant's requirements.

So, out of the books / papers and start writing some code!! It is more fun after all.


Should I be an author on another PhD student's paper if I went to their meetings and gave advice? My PhD supervisor (in the field of artificial intelligence) invited me to several meetings with another PhD student. Since I have more knowledge than my supervisor in some topics, I made many suggestions about how this student could improve his methodology. In total, I went to 5 meetings of 3–4 hours each. I could have used this time to do my own research.

When the other student started to write his manuscript, I asked to be an author, since I had contributed directly to the research, but he felt I only deserved to appear in the acknowledgments. So I asked my supervisor to be on the paper and even volunteered to help writing it. My supervisor said “Don't worry about his paper, you have your own things to do, and he is not going to submit this work anytime soon”.

One week later, they submitted the paper to a major conference without my name on it. I felt really insulted that they used my time and skills with no credit to me.

I didn't actively do the research or help write the paper, but I felt I was supervising the student since I have the most experience on this topic. Many academics in my field get their names on papers by just giving suggestions.

What should I do? I am planning on taking it to the head of department.

Actually, I think you should relax and take your advisor's advice. Collaboration is a good thing, and it is a two-way street. You give a bit and you get a bit. I assume you got an acknowledgement in the paper for your help. I don't think it would be appropriate if you weren't. But authorship is a different thing.

You contributed ideas. Research seminars are often organized to give ideas to researchers but the members don't become co-authors in the normal case.

Congratulate your colleague and, as your advisor suggests, spend your effort on your own work, not raising an objection to someone else's.

But, it is good that you contributed ideas. Do that a lot and you will have a lot of people willing and happy to work with you. Occasionally you may need that help.

Pay it forward.


How to ignore a presenter's bad english? I recently attended an average international conference in Computer Science. This was the first time I actually attended an international conference.

The level of English that I heard during the talks ranged from average to extremely bad (ignoring the native speakers/people that lived a long time in an english speaking country).

I am not a native English speaker, and I do not expect other researchers in the same situation to be as fluent as a native speaker either. But I have worked hard to improve my accent and my elocution to a point where I feel very comfortable speaking the language without stuttering every two words or mispronouncing a lot of things.

As such, I felt extremely frustrated during the entire conference: a speaker with bad English would quickly annoy me, because I felt as if they did not work hard enough on their English elocution, which I believe is an inherent part of being a scientist (especially in Computer Science, where conferences are very common). Therefore, I ended up not being interest in the vast majority of the presentations, even if the subject might have sounded appealing.

How can one improve at looking (or rather, hearing) past the researcher's English, and focusing on their actual contribution?

So I'm a native English speaker, and I used to be kind of a snob about people whose spoken English was poor. I got over it. I remember the exact instant that I got over it, in fact. Here it is:

I was an undergraduate, and I visited a seminar on a subject that interested me but that I didn't know very much about.  The speaker at the seminar had an impenetrable Chinese accent, and I wasn't able to focus on the talk at all because I could barely understand him. "This is terrible," I thought. "No one can possibly be getting anything from this."

The talk ended and the speaker took questions. The first question was long, thoughtful, and detailed: the questioner was trying to related something from a slide early in the presentation to a slide from late in the presentation.  I did not understand the question because the gentleman who asked it had an impenetrable Polish accent.

After some back and forth, it became clear that the speaker thought the question was interesting but didn't know the answer.  But someone else in the audience did: a long, thoughtful answer that I did not understand because the answerer had an impenetrable Russian accent.

Then it hit me: everyone in the seminar room had just learned something interesting, except me, because I was distracted by being an English-language snob.  That was my problem, not theirs.

I eventually figured out to concentrate on what's maybe called "active listening": constantly rephrasing what the other person is saying into my own words, and inquiring occasionally whether I'm summarizing things correctly.
You might not like to interrupt someone with clarifying questions during a presentation.  Within reasonable limits, you should get over that --- if you're flummoxed about something, chances are that other people in the audience are confused about the same thing.
Active listening has helped me to deal with native English speakers just as much as with speakers of broken English, in fact. For instance, when you argue with someone, they have a lot more respect for you if you can correctly state their position before you take issue with it.

(The happy ending of the story is that the Russian and the Pole both ended up on my PhD committee --- good people, both of them, from whom I learned a great deal. No recollection of who the original seminar speaker was, though.)


How to work with relocation issues during phd? I have worked for 3years as phd researcher at universityin country A. Because of some critical family relocation issues, i had to move to my family in country B. My maximum research work is done but due to travel restrictions in country B, i can not go back to country A for longer period of time . What are thr possible options available?

That needs to be worked out with your advisor and the university. The worst outcome is that you have to abandon. But working remotely may be possible in many fields. You would need to establish a regular communication regimen with your professor, of course, and possibly also find local resources (Library, computing...) to enable you to continue. But with the research largely done it may be a simpler matter than you think.

Organizing a defense of the dissertation will be a challenge, but, with some expense, it might be arranged remotely. The university likely has AV facilities on its end to enable it.

It might not be easy, and it might cost you a bit of time, but, subject to restrictions imposed by the field (lab work, ...) it should be possible. But it will put some burden on your professor and the committee that they will need to agree to.


faculty position: personal statement in the cover letter of a job application I am applying for a position in a state where my spouse is. Would it be a good idea to mention this fact in the cover letter so that they know that I am really interested in the position? I just want to make sure that it doesn't go against me.

Thanks.

Yes.  Search committees are very sensitive to what are called "two-body problems".


How could I convince my PhD adviser that the method, which is provided by him to me, does not work? I'm a PhD student in the US in the middle of my third year. We use a method for some simulations that is initially provided to me by my PhD adviser, despite the fact that all other research groups, that do the same simulation as us, use different method, which is a way more powerful than ours. Our method has really known limitation which makes it really difficult to get correct results comparable to other research groups that use other method. In fact, I should say nobody really used our method for these kind of simulations before.

I did a complete literature review and it turns out except a few research groups, that my adviser believes their works are bogus, nobody really used our method for this problem to get the correct results. In fact, those papers, which are bogus in my PhD adviser's opinion, are done behind the limitation of our method and that's the origin of his belief. But the problem is: professional research groups use other method, which does not have this limitation at all and as a result their works look more different in terms of final results.

In fact, my PhD adviser wants the results of other research groups but with our method, which looks impossible to me due to my three years experience on both of these methods and my comprehensive literature review. But still my PhD adviser believes it should be doable by our method. By the way my PhD adviser does not have any paper in the field of my PhD thesis and also did not know anything about this topic before I started my PhD.

In my opinion, if nobody use our method to do this research, it does not mean people are fool or idiot that does not know how to use our method. In fact, if there is not much literature about the application of our method in this particular problem, it means our method is awful for these kind of simulations (it's already known more or less in the literature but some people like my PhD adviser does not want to believe...). The problem is even by knowing that this method does not work and if even wants to work, takes 10 times more time and computational resource in comparison to other research groups, my PhD adviser still insists on to use this method and not to switch to the conventional method that other known researchers use to address our research questions.

I tried in several ways by bringing up the literature review and the work of other people and my works during these three years, but my PhD adviser keeps telling that: "I don't believe in those papers!".

I mean how someone could believe that we are the smartest people in the world that are trying to solve a problem with a wrong tool but so many other people who worked in this field more than two decades are fool that used other method to address this problem?! My question is: How can I convince my PhD adviser that we are just using a wrong tool and that's it. If we want to get correct results similar to the literature we should use their method? I really appreciate any suggestion or recommendation.

You are in your third PhD year and have done a thorough review of the state of the art. It seems your adviser cannot give you proper reasons for using the existing method and has no relevant papers in this field. This means you are the expert here. If you find the new method superior, then go ahead, implement it and use it. Of course, you have to invest time but eventually it will pay off as you can overcome certain limitations and your simulations will run faster. In the end it is your thesis and if you knowingly stick to a inferior method, you stay below what is possible.

Maybe you can even write a comparison of the two methods in terms of performance (if you are interested). If your adviser accepts the comparison result, then you can use your favourite method and get a first paper out of it.

If your adviser insists on using a method against all scientific proof, then it might be time for a change. Of course, a change of superviser or research group at this advanced stage of your PhD must be considered thoroughly and probably is the last resort.


Distributing published papers if I am the first author In some interviews for industry positions, I have been asked about my prior (applied math) research experience and to go into detail about the models I have constructed. After I gave him a high-level overview, the interviewer asked that I send him the paper so he can see some minute details. The paper is published in a Springer journal and costs 39.95 to see without journal subscription. My questions are

  As the first author of the paper, am I legally allowed I send him a downloaded version of the paper over email?
  If not, am I legally allowed to send my personal copy of the manuscript (i.e. the version I submitted to Springer)?

N.B. the paper is not on the arXiv.

Different publishers have different guidelines, but I think they all allow your first case. For example, Elsevier's author rights page states:

  Authors transfer copyright to the publisher as part of a journal publishing agreement, but have the right to:

  Share their article for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and Scholarly Sharing purposes, with a DOI link to the version of record on ScienceDirect (and with the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC- ND license for author manuscript versions)
  ...

If you're worried, I do recommend checking each publisher's page to verify your rights.


How does peer review assess the validity of experiments carried out? In a research paper scientific experiments are carried out and their results recorded.  Anybody can just fabricate experiment data saying they did an experiment and these were the results. The only way you'd know if it was true is if other non related people repeated the experiments and found the same data.
Does the peer review process ensure experimental data being reported is accurate and how so?

Does the peer review process ensure experimental data being reported is accurate and how so?

At very least, the peer review process is not designed to catch intentional fabrication because reviewers are only asked to read the manuscripts.
That being said, intentional fabrications sometimes get caught during the review process if reviewer go above and beyond the call of duty.
The real check on fabrication is replication, which usually happen after publication.


(undergraduate) my graduate student is extremely cutthroat I work in a lab in experimental psychology at a pretty prestigious research university. I have worked there for a while (this is currently my fourth semester) for about 8+ hours a week, entirely unpaid. I have worked on menial tasks (data entry), more theoretical things (experimental design for complex studies), and of course actually running participants. Despite doing all this and doing it well, I really get the feeling that my graduate student (in our lab, each undergrad is generally paired with a grad from the start) is definitely not aimed at my success.

For example, our PI told me that she would support me in my pursuit of an undergraduate research grant, but there was some miscommunication about what exactly I'd be writing it on, so she told me to consolidate my idea with my grad student's very similar idea and go from there. Grad and I met and she completely shot down everything I said (very odd, since the PI liked my idea and had told us to work together) and actually recommended I write the grant on her behalf for one of her studies that I had nothing to do with. When I pointed out that the grant was specifically for undergraduate-designed research and was not intended to be used for grad students, she gave me some weasel-y response about "that's how things are done." I didn't write the grant, because I didn't feel good about potentially taking away one of the few grants exclusively for undergrads from another undergrad who legitimately deserved it.

I wanted to apply to complete a thesis in our lab -- honestly, that was a large part of working so long and hard in just one lab. However, Grad told PI that I was having problems with communication and that I seemed "extremely stressed," prompting PI to ask me if I really thought a thesis was a good idea. The hilarious part about that is I had literally just had a meeting with Grad that week and told her I was having a great time in life, the semester was going well, etc.; in fact, Grad told me SHE was stressed lately, not the other way around. There have been no communication issues, except once I was late for a participant because a friend had a medical emergency. (The participant was still ran successfully, by the way, and this is 1 in literally dozens of participants I have ran with professionalism.)

I just am starting to feel paranoid she is out to get me, or at least to step on whoever she has to get to the top. I also was kind of expecting authorship of some kind since I have done SO MUCH on this one study (been working on it for 2 years now, from "PI and I were talking about this new idea..." to training other research assistants on the study because I know it so well) but as it draws to a close, I get the feeling that authorship isn't a thing that will happen for me. I feel I have legitimately done as much as she has, and it makes me a little angry that she will get authorship when she sits on her laptop and says "looks good" while I work with other new RAs and has never ran a single participant for her own study. This makes me feel like I could have had a better professional benefit from being in another lab, but as the deadline for formal application for Honors rapidly approaches, I feel absolutely stuck and frustrated.

Thoughts? Ideas? Am I losing my mind?

In reading over your description, a few things stick out to me as very problematic. My concern is not the past issues - but how you'll be able to handle future issues with people like this, because you will encounter people like this no matter where you go.

The first issue is that you do not seem to have a healthy line of communication with your PI. If the PI said, "hey, that's a good idea, write that up as a grant and talk with X for help", and X shot you down and suggested something that sounded unethical...things should not have stopped there!  Directly after you should bring it to the PI, with "I did what you asked/suggested and something odd happened. Do you have a moment to talk about it?" The goal is not "telling on" someone - it's clarifying with someone who is responsible for the work done in their group and has more experience than you. Perhaps you misunderstood the grant process, or perhaps they were trying to con you into getting them a grant in a way that was fraudulent. In either case, it's the PI's role to help you, by explaining the grant system or by revising their instructions to you (and now being aware that their grad student is acting 'funny').

The second issue is your description of that odd conversation you had about being supposedly "stressed"? That sounds like a textbook description of a method called "gaslighting", and yes - it's supposed to make you feel crazy. The point is you are supposed to go "wait, why would they say I'm stressed, I'm not stressed - am I? I didn't think I was stressed..." and then you get stressed, and  you start to doubt your own experience of reality. And you are supposed to start getting defensive and searching your memory for any time you screwed up to try to justify their behavior, and start talking about that one time even though no one asked about it to defend yourself, etc. See what happened there? You'll start to look and feel crazy, because no one sees the crazy nonsense you were attacked with. It's a tool of emotional abuse and manipulation. They are also seeking to do it by proxy and poisoning of the perceptions of others, which is a sign of further aggressiveness.

Add the ethically questionable 'flexibility' which appeared to have a self-serving bent to the use of multiple tools of aggression and manipulation, and you've got yourself a lot of red flags - enough to make me suspect you are dealing with someone with malignant personality tendencies. These people aren't fun to deal with and prolonged exposure is a danger to one's welfare and goals. Take this possibility seriously, and begin taking steps immediately to protect yourself.

The third concerning issue is authorship. This can feel like a difficult subject to discuss, but again this requires you talk with your PI. The relationship with this person is far, far more important than any jag-off grad student - your dealings with them is fundamentally important, as it is with any direct supervisor relationship. Authorship is not a reward for abstract merit or seniority - it's a question of "who directly and significantly contributed to this research effort", and you should not ever be a position of having worked on something for even weeks yet not getting proper acknowledgement - let alone years! Again, this is largely controlled by your PI and you must talk with them about it, not simply allow yourself to dwell in the feeling that maybe you are going to get screwed.

Overall, full and effective communication with your supervisor/mentor/PI is crucial here. If you have it, people like this get put down early and they are like cockroaches - once the light is on, they scatter, because you aren't in a position they can easily take advantage of. If you can't have that relationship with your PI, honestly the research they do doesn't matter. No matter what it looks like on paper, if the PI won't have a good opinion of you because your relationship is poor (due to a lack of communication and the resulting sabotage that becomes so easy for people to pull off), it's better that you spend your time elsewhere so you can have a good relationship and a good, solid reference.

So your task will be to talk with your PI and figure out what the issue is. If you can have a good relationship, authorship is dealt with fairly, you can bring future concerns of an important nature to him straight away, then so be it. You'll need to be careful of your issues with the grad student - don't think they'll just act like a reasonable person all of a sudden.

Once those issues are ironed out, then you can also decide whether or not you want to try out a different lab using your new found knowledge of how to handle things. When you've grown skilled in communication and relationship management with people like your PI, life goes much easier - and you'll find that people like the grad student you encountered seem to just be able to "smell" that their tricks won't work, and more often than not they just focus their attentions on easier prey. But without that core relationship building and communication, you'll be taken advantage of by every unethical and manipulative nutter you come across, and they'll swarm to you like a bunch of blood-thirsty mosquitoes.


Applying and requirements for a Phd program I am currently holding a diploma in computer science which is equivallent to a BSc. I have also finished my MAS (master of advanced studies) in economy, which was made up out of 5 CAS modules.

Now I would love to attend a doctoral program and research in the field of predictive modelling, machine learning and computational vision.

However my MAS diploma seems not to be enough to apply for a Phd program (except for DBA programs which only exists in the field of economy). Many (all?) programs require a MSc.

Questions

Is the only way to get there attending to another master program to get my MSc?
Are there Phd programs I can apply to that only require a MAS that I just havent found yet?
Is there some equivalent to a DBA but in the field of computational science?

Thanks in advance

Consider programs outside your country, which may have different requirements.  For instance in the US, it is still very normal to NOT have a masters prior to starting the Ph.D. (only have a bachelors).

P.s.  Very hard to help you with a country-specific issue if you won't tell us the country!


Can I mention multiple faculty members in my SOP? I'm applying for PhD and thesis masters programs in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In one of the schools, there is a specific faculty member I'm extremely interested in working with. However, admission into her lab is really competitive. Realistically, my odds of getting in are mediocre at best.

At the same university, there is another faculty member who I share some interests with. I have also done research in his lab as an undergrad, and I know for a fact that he has millions in funding and more or less accepts any grad student who applies because he can afford to. He's definitely not ideal, but I'd be okay with doing my masters with him and then finding somewhere better for my PhD.

Finally, there's a third faculty member whose work is also pretty interesting. His research interests align fairly well with mine, but admission into his lab is also extremely competitive.

If I mention all three professors in my SOP, does it affect my chances of getting into the competitive labs? Obviously, if I only mention one name, it makes it look like I'm a lot more passionate about her work specifically. I was hoping for a way to maximize my chances of getting into the first prof's lab while still retaining the second and third prof as a back up. I was hoping for some advice on how I can phrase my SOP to accomplish this.

I'm in a program (and went to a program) where students are admitted to the program, not a lab.

When considering students, I'm actually quite nervous about those who only mention a single professor they're interested in working with, as that's not a particularly robust "plan". What if they don't get tenure, or are recruited elsewhere? What if they have a personal emergency? What if they just don't have funding for a student right now? What if it turns out you just have wildly incompatible working habits (this happened to me)?

I'm going to echo Buffy's suggestion - don't try to write your SOP as the optimal solution to a game whose rules you don't know. Write about your interests in the program, and how that applies to one or more specific faculty members.


Graduate Admissions - applying math phd without outside experience I am currently a senior in a somewhat big state school.

I am going to apply phd next semester for 2018 fall, looking forward to attend top 25.

My gpa is 3.86/4.00.
Havent took GREs, but i think I will do them just fine.

But heres the thing: Whenever I see posts from one who made it into top 25, most of them had at least one REU and had taken a few grad courses.
 None of them I have done, nor will I because next semester will be my last semester.
I am really worried that this lack of experience would make me less competitive for top 25.
How much would this lack of experience (REU or grad courses) make me less competitive for application?

One more question, actually I am going to take seminar class next semester. After first few lectures, each one of us will prepare for presentation about assigned textbook chapters. Does this class count as a research experience?
I know this question could be answered most clearly by my prof. I just want to listen your opinions.
Thanks for your comments in advance.

REUs probably don't matter all that much. Presenting textbook chapters will not count as research experience, although depending on the material it might count as evidence that you can learn advanced material on your own. So definitely get a letter from that prof if you do a good job.

From what little you've said, you're probably only semi-competitive for a top 25 school, and probably not competitive at all for a top ten school even with stellar GREs. But there are a lot of factors in play. For example, not having taken grad-level courses is OK if you have a good undergrad math major. And outstanding letters go a long way.

As far as going to a top 25 school is concerned, people get way too obsessed with rankings. There are about fifty R1 programs in the US, and whether you go to the 20th or the 50th matters a lot less than what kind of work you do once you're there. The ranking is also not a reflection at all of the quality of the education you'll get, it only tells you in a very rough sense about the research quality of the faculty and the average talent level of the students. But the important word there is "rough."


In a journal, what's the difference between an "article" and a "monograph"? This journal issue has contents that are grouped as "article" or "monographic section". What's the difference between these two sections?

I checked the dictionary definition of monograph: "a highly detailed and thoroughly documented study or paper written about a limited area of a subject or field of inquiry", but can't we say the same about the regular articles in this journal? Why do some texts get classified in "article" and some in "monographic section"? To make it more confusing there is also a "Miscellaneous" section in that issue, and I have no idea why it was considered so versus the other texts.

The word monograph is derived from "mono" and "grapho", so the implied literal meaning is "writing on a single subject". Monographic sections are thus sections linked by a single theme, and often only have invited contributions. In the specific journal issue, the theme appears to be related to monuments/architecture from the Almohad Caliphate.

A journal that is clearer about what they mean with monographic sections is
Kriterion Journal of Philosophy:

  Monographic sections are small collections of original research papers on a specific topic, with an introductory part, that are, in contradistinction to special issues, published as part of a regular issue together with other articles.


Is there a citation network crawler [tool] for building a bibliography? Is there a service/software where I can feed a bibliography, say in BibTex format, and I get all “Cited By” references as a response? In other words, is there an automated “Cited By” crawler?

Background:

I'm currently hunting down case reports about a rare disease, because I need more cases for a dataset (yes, about medicine).

At the moment, I am filling up my Zotero Library by manually walking through Google Scholar's "Cited By" feature. The first day of doing so was expectedly productive. Within a few hours, the article count went up very fast. But right now, each "Cited By" page yields one or two new articles and I have about 114 articles to go. That, in itself is great, because it tells me that I might have visited most articles within the citation network. However, towards this end, I need double-check for duplicates all the time and it's very time consuming. I find myself scrolling through entries, or searching, checking whether I might already have added a paper, or not.

This is so tedious.

The very reason to continue simply is the occasional discovery of a new cluster of case reports that were not referenced by the previous one—and I really need a larger number of cases for the analysis.

I wonder whether I should stop here and look at — Mendeley — PubMed etc.

but I'm not sure whether this would cut time or assure the coverage of most of the citation networks.

Suggestions, very welcomed.

This can certainly get tedious, and searching in both directions (i.e., using the "cited by" entries) is certainly the way to go.  That said, if you start at your university library, especially a medical library, you will have access to tools that are tailor-made to do medical searches, like Medline.

If you're having issues, by all means, go talk to a librarian.  Their job is to help people like you get their jobs done.  They absolutely love to do it, and they're usually very good at it.

To put things in perspective, though, 15 years ago the only way to do what you're trying to do is to wade through hard copies of the Scientific Citation Index and photocopy the articles after finding them in the Medical library stacks. (i.e., -- we used to walk thirty miles to and from work, uphill both ways!)


How to be sure services and researches offered by the University are not becoming cases of unfair competition? I work in Italy on a research group working on the conservation of cultural heritage analyzing artworks. I had some discussion with my lab on what job or project the university shouldn't accept to avoid overlapping with the private market as unfair competition.

For instance, in my field, many papers are written as a case study where artworks are analyzed by the laboratory with conventional techniques and procedures and the results are published. In fact, there are small companies and freelancers that provided the same service and I think this is a case where the university might be guilty of unfair competition because it offers the same service for free. Of course some times there isn't the money to perform the service while the artwork could benefit from this research for their conservation so this practice sometimes could have a positive impact on the society.

I am aware that in this specific case we are not committing any crime but I wanted to reason about the role of the university.
Are there any guidelines, or law related to the role of the university and what is considered unfair competition? Where I can ask for clarification?

This is not restricted to my particular field because I've found the same problems also dealing with other disciplines.

I think your assumption that the university and private evaluators "offer the same service" is flawed. A private analysis will be delivered to a client and not to the general public. Being private, it may give some competitive advantage and so has monetary value. The university, on the other hand provides an information "service" to the general public so that all can benefit.

To "forbid" the university from doing some sort of research so that the possible results could be locked up for private rather than general benefit seems to be a pernicious idea.

And, the "service" of the university isn't actually free (as in beer). Resources go in to it that are paid in a variety of ways, sometimes from public monies since the public benefits. But the information it provides is free (as in speech).

But for your question about law, note that laws vary from place to place, and not all laws are wise.


Double blinded review but the appendix contains author's name Before submitting a review for a manuscript, I noticed the appendix possibly contains an author name, but I don't know him/her. My file explorer automatically shows files' metadata, including author name.

The review should be double blinded. Should I inform the editor?

When in doubt: yes.  Let them know when and how you found this potentially compromising information.  Especially if you think this may impact your objectivity (e.g. "I don't recognize this name, so I'm not going to trust him as much and may/will be more critical than I otherwise would"). But even if you think your evaluation will be unaltered, you should let the editor know.  They need to be the one to decide if the review process can still meet the necessary criteria, if the authors should be notified and asked to alter the file to eliminate the metadata, etc.

In your case it sounds like you did the entire review under appropriate double blinding, fully unaware of the authors while making the evaluation, and then at the very end of the process you gleaned a potential clue about the author name. If so, then the editor may accept that no actual problem has arisen, and may simply try to take steps to ensure such metadata is no longer visible to reviewers.

Things get more complicated if there are multiple reviewers for this paper: it now becomes possible that one or more of them saw this data early in the process, and it potentially compromised their review, but yet this went unacknowledged. This makes it all the more important to inform the editor.