PhD in Statistics working in Physics I will be applying to PhD statistics programs this upcoming fall and really enjoy statistics. But, I also love physics (started as a physics major) and am wondering if there is opportunity post-PhD to work in a physics (or astronomy) department. I am aware of some programs (such as CMU) that do research in astrostatistics and some of those professors got PhD's in physics or astronomy, but did not know if it was possible to do the opposite.

I honestly cannot give a good reason why I ended up switching from physics to math, but do not take this as regretting it, I love math and especially statistics.

Statistics is pretty widely applicable, of course. Some parts of physics deal with large sets of data handled with statistics, I'm sure. It isn't my field, but one of the ways to discover things in large data sets (star maps, etc) is to look for statistical anomalies. I'm sure that, along the way, you would learn a lot of physics in some domain.

I once worked in math and computing with a geologist who was interested in wave action at the shore. We never went very far (and I was pretty unsophisticated then), but I realized I'd need to learn quite a bit about his domain to help with what he needed to study.

This sort of career could be carried on at a large university with a number of different disciplines represented or at a research institute focused on an area of physics that interests you. You might need to be able to make a case about how you would fit in, but everyone needs to do that anyway.


Can I instigate collaboration outside of my current research team, or is that bad etiquette? I recently finished my PhD and moved on to a postdoc research position in a semi-related subject area at a different University. I have an idea for a narritive review in my old subject area and I have some time to make a start on it before the current project gets really busy.

My issue is that I would like to invite my old PhD supervisor and another researcher from a third University, who we have collaborated with before, to co-author the paper with me as they are experts in the area that the review would cover. My current postdoc supervisor/line manager and other research colleague do not have any expertise in this subject area.

Is it ok to start writing the paper with my old colleagues without permission or notification of my current research team/boss? Or should I tell them that I am writing a paper with my old colleagues, without being able to offer them the chance to be involved? Not sure what the expectation is and don't want to annoy anyone at my (very new) job.

You should not start working on an independent project without telling your current supervisor. After all, he acquired the funding which pays your salary, so he needs to be on board with everything you do that takes up a significant amount of time. (Of course, I am not talking about asking for his permission every time you review a paper.)

Then again, as a postdoc (as compared to Ph.D. students), you are expected to start spreading your wings and collaborating with people outside your supervisor's immediate group. So chances are that your supervisor will be supportive, especially since you write that you have some time to kill.

But ask first; it's possible that your supervisor knows something that needs to be done before your project "really" starts.

This question is related (full disclosure: I answered there): Should postdocs work only on the projects they are hired for, or can they work with other people in the same research group on other projects?


Is it ethical to contribute to a workshop one is organizing? In computer science, workshops are often co-located with conferences. The workshop committee consists of roughly 3-5 chairs, who are organizing and chairing the workshop. Then there is a certain number (10+) of programm committee members. These are people who are responsible for reviewing submissions and spreading the word.

My question is: Is it okay if one of the chairs also submits a contribution to his/her own workshop or does this look weird?

I know, that for conferences this should be even stricter, but I am not sure if there is an established etiquette for this.

I've helped organize several minisymposia (MS) at conferences that are built entirely out of them, and it's basically expected that we submit to our own MS. Out of three MS organizers and 8-10 expected speaking slots, 2-3 will be from the organizers. A few workshops I've attended at more prestigious conferences have been similar. The conference wants its events to be full, and if the subevents are peer reviewed, especially double-blind, then there's no possible conflict of interest in my view. Even for single-blind review or no review (abstract-only submission) as long as you don't review your own work, there's no problem and self-submission is practically expected in the fields I publish in.


What are examples of experiments or studies where pre-registration would not be feasible? The incoming editor of Psychological Science mentions in an interview that pre-registration isn't feasible for all submissions to the journal:

  In instances in which preregistration is feasible... we will continue to encourage authors to take these steps. Yet we must be fully cognizant that in some areas of the broad discipline of psychological science, these actions may not be possible or may be ill-advised.

What are examples or types of experiments or studies (in psychology or elsewhere) where pre-registration wouldn't be possible or would be ill-advised?

Examples are areas where a study takes advantage of a sudden, unexpected event. For example, there have been studies about human memory related to unexpected tragedies. There was an idea that lots of Americans remembered exactly where they were when they found out that President Kennedy was shot. After the Challenger disaster, a study was done where they asked people where they were when they found out, and then asked them different amounts of time later (e.g. a year, 5 years and then ten years out), and they found that despite people being very certain of their memories, many people had recollections which changed drastically in the intervening time. Similar studies were done later for the Columbia disaster and 9/11. See summary [here], and 10 year followup to 9/11 [here]. These would  be extremely hard to preregister without substantial ethical problems; I suspect that most journals and the public would frown on psychologists deliberately causing large-scale national catastrophes in order to preregister their studies.

The World Trade Center attack also provides also an example from another field: Right after 9/11 airplanes were grounded throughout the US. Multiple studies used this as an opportunity to study the impact of airplanes on the atmosphere. See here.

Editorial remark: The set of studies where preregistration is not feasible is a very tiny fraction of all studies, and the fact that such studies do exist should not in general be taken as an argument against broad requirements for preregistration.


What texts describe a desired behavior when a personal conflict could affect a professional decision? In Academia, is there any legal text or chart commenting about the desired behavior when a personal conflict could affect a set of professional decision?

A rough example of such chart would be a text stating that "we, academics signing this chart, engage ourselves to avoid as much as possible to let our personal tastes to influence our professional decisions, or to delegate the decisions to others if we are not certain to be able to ignore our personal tastes.". Such a chart, published by an association of academics and adopted by some universities and/or academics, would not SOLVE all instances of such problems, but would at the very least express the collective will to discourage such instances. (In the same way that a chart signed by students that they won't copy on others nor share their solution does not solve all cheating instances, but clarifies what is considered acceptable or not.)

By "professional decision", I mean a decision that you take on behalf of an institution or group of person, for which your job is to make the best decision for this institution. By "personal taste", I mean anything which applies when taking decisions for one's personal life.
A neutral example would be a secretary having to make the "professional decision" of what food to order to department's celebration, and letting his "personal taste" influence his choice rather than his approximate knowledge of the tastes of the attendance.
Extreme examples would be of senior faculty members using their political position to punish or reward junior members according to their personal values, independently of their professional opinion.

Broader context:

It is only human to be biased against someone with whom one had some conflicts, and only civilized to try to overcome this bias in the context of professional decisions (where one represents the choices of a community, as opposed to personal choices such as with whom you share a meal). One can think of some (uncivilized?) cultures where one does not expect anyone to even attempt to fight this bias, and of some (civilized?) cultures where letting this bias affect professional decisions (e.g. community related) would be frowned upon and considered as an abuse of power or bullying.

It used to be my opinion that academia was civilized and that most academics agreed to such an unwritten rule. It is my experience in my current setting that not only do occurrences of such conflict seem more frequent than in my previous settings, they are also considered normal there, and far from frowned upon, most often considered as "business as usual" or worse, a display of intelligence and strength. I assume that such an attitude could exist in other cultures, from other third world countries to even the US. I am wondering if Academia, which forms an international culture of its own, already has or could have a chart to curb such behavior to a more productive/collaborative/civilized one.

Note that I am not asking if some people in Academia abuse the power that their responsibilities yield (there will be in most communities), nor am I asking for general opinions about specific countries, culture and research areas. Rather I am asking if there are some reference texts which describes the desired behavior in such situation.

While I am not aware of any formal universal code (there's not much formal universal anything in academia), the generally accepted scientific ethics is that a person with a known conflict of interest should not be involved in reviewing another's scientific work or proposal.

Most scientific organizations where this might apply have explicit policies to this end.  For example:

Grant reviewers for the US National Science Foundation are not allowed to be submitters to that same call for proposals, and must recuse themselves (i.e., leave the room) when there is discussion of any recent collaborator, co-author, or person from their institution.
Journals typically ask authors to name people with known conflicts of interest who should not be asked to review.  Reviewers are also asked to declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves, and editors are (occasionally) responsive to well-founded complaints of prejudice.
Conferences similarly ask reviewers to exclude themselves from any papers they have a conflict for, and prevent reviewers from seeing information about any paper they have a conflict of interest for.
Double-blind reviewing of any of these is intended to mitigate the effects of personal conflict, though it is often possible to identify an author anyway due to their topic and approach.

There is no responsibility to collaborate with a person you have a conflict with though, nor to ensure civil interactions at conferences, etc.

All of these systems are quite flawed, of course, and there are a lot of ways that personal conflict does leak into decisions, especially since in many cases it is difficult to distinguish from legitimate intellectual disagreement.


How should I respond to a worrying email from an ex student? I run a lab at an R1 university in the USA. Almost ten years ago I removed an undergraduate volunteer student from my laboratory group for harassing another student.

Today I received a multi-page, rambling, angry email from the student volunteer I removed. The email is disturbing, including references to drugs, illness, abuse, and depression. It ends in a way that could be construed as a threat, but is not a direct threat. It also does not contain any indication of intent to self-harm.

Were this person a student, there exists university services to help and check their situation, but they are no longer a student. They do live in the same city I do.

Am I correct that my university is in no way involved at this point?
Do I have any duty to attempt to help?  If so, is there a way to do so that does not engage the individual directly (which I hesitate to do)?
Beyond a police restraining order, is there any action I might take to insulate myself and my significant other from any negative actions this individual might take?

Campus police is in charge of keeping everyone on campus safe -- both from other members of the university as well as people outside the university. They're your first point of contact, and if the email can be construed as a threat, then they should take it seriously. If they think that they require help from outside, they will refer the matter to the city police. City police will, for example, be in charge of restraining orders that relate to your home, your SO, and everything else you do outside campus.

As for helping: As humans, we want to and should. At the same time, I don't think that you have a moral obligation, and certainly no legal one. The person is no longer under your supervision or care, nor do you really have any way to connect to the person: They're clearly not interested in listening to you.


How to phrase follow-up email to professor to find out whether funding has come through regarding potential graduate school project? I am attempting to find a researcher to work with for graduate school. Fortunately I found one with very similar interests to mine. I have been in contact with him since August, where I spoke with him over the phone. He said, unfortunately, he does not have a project that I could work on (that is in my interest) at the moment, but he is waiting to hear back from a funding comittee. He told me to email him to check in again in October. I did and we exchanged a few emails, where he said that he had still not heard back and for me to check in again mid-November. I am about to email him again.

My question is: how should I phrase what I say in the email so as to not sound "greedy"?

(i.e., I do not want to say something that sounds like "hey did you find out about the research project yet?"). I know I have emailed him about this before, but I feel like my email came off as that the first time. Plus, I do not want to copy and paste what I sent him last time.

Don't overthink it, he did ask you to email him. Keep your email short (one or two lines). Wait until mid-end November and reply to the previous email with something like "Hi Dr. Lastname, I'm still interested in the ___ project and just wanted to follow up with your previous email from October to see if you have any update about the research project and funding. Regards, aspire94"


Should Professors use COVID as Discussion Board Material? I am not a professor, but I work at a Community College. I work with students directly (basically a tutor) and someone asked me a question that I didn't know how to respond: Is it appropriate for professors to use COVID as a topic in their online discussion boards?
Obviously, the whole COVID situation can provide professors an ample supply of material directly related to the content of the course. If you study math, then you can look at different data and statistics about it. If you study economics, then you can look at the economic impact and response. If you study sociology, you can look at it through a sociological lens. Basically, every subject has the potential to use COVID in their class. At my community college, all of the online professors require weekly discussion board posts, as a way to keep the students talking and engaged with each other. It appears that most professors are making their discussion board posts COVID related. But issues can arise when a student has high anxiety or stress about their quarantine. Basically, the student I was working with said something along the lines of "I have been in quarantine for 5 months already, COVID is all over the news and social media, I read about it and listen to it 24/7. I'm tired of it. I don't want it waved in my face from all of my professors trying to get me to discuss it even more. I'm having a tough time as it is, why are they making me re-live it?"
Should professors use COVID as a real world example of their material? Or should they be more sensitive to possible student issues of quarantine?
I wasn't sure what to tag...I tagged health-issues more for mental health issues. I couldn't find a tag for discussion boards or online forums for classes.
EDIT: I am based in the U.S. if that helps shape any thoughts/answers. And now after reading the accepted answer, it makes me worry about this particular student I have. She had to write a discussion board post and the professor said "write about 3 examples of xyz as it relates to the COVID pandemic. Keep this dscussion post in mind later this week when I give you your first paper assignment." So now I am afraid she will have to write about something COVID related for a 5 page paper. Would it be acceptable for her to ask for a different assignment, since she has high anxiety about anything COVID related? (she is very high risk since she is older and has had previous lung surgery. She literally has not left her house since March, so I know the topic compounds her mental health difficulties).

I think I would avoid using COVID-19 as an example except in situations that are most directly relevant (those involving viral biology or epidemiology, for example), for exactly the reason your student raised.
At the same time, I wouldn't say it is inappropriate, just that it is quite a saturated topic for many people right now. It's also definitely appropriate to open forums for students to converse about managing aspects of the pandemic, especially in their experience as students, on topics like social isolation, remote learning, etc.
I would also encourage students to relate topics to COVID by their choice when there are most open-ended assignments, while also allowing them to use different cases.
Usually there is some benefit for relating content to current events to make the content more salient, but I do think this is a time where there is a bit of overload. Ordinarily, you would do this to make a bridge, where students are now thinking about the material in a relevant-to-them way. With COVID, there is enough going on that instead they might be distracted by other thoughts about COVID (including anxieties about themselves or others being infected, loved ones who are currently sick or have died, general uncertainty and impacts of measures to reduce spread, etc), unrelated to the course material, so you lose the benefits.


Bibliography format with multiple citations from same book? (APA) I'm writing a paper where I've included multiple citations from a book, each citation is not a direct quote from the text but rather a in-text citation.
According to APA guidelines, these citations should be at the end of the paraphrased text such as:

  My text here blob blob blob (Rubin, 2013).

Since these citations do not include page numbers (direct quotes do, according to APA guidelines) and I have three (so far) when I insert a bibliography with Word these look like this:

  Rubin, K. S. (2013). Essential SCRUM. Ann Arbor, United States of America: Addison Wesley.
  Rubin, K. S. (2013). Essential SCRUM. Ann Arbor, United States of America: Addison Wesley.
  Rubin, K. S. (2013). Essential SCRUM. Ann Arbor, United States of America: Addison Wesley.

So, my question is: Is it okay to have these duplicate entries in the list of references/bibliography at the end of the document or should I add the page number to both in-text citations and references, even though they're not direct quotes within the document but in-text citations instead. I hope that makes sense.

Normally duplicates are avoided. Also, your duplicates do not have a page reference and are therefore useless in this respect.

Whether or not you have to specify the page number, I would personally check with your supervisor to avoid misunderstandings.


What should I do when teaching maths for unmotivated undergraduate students? After completing my Phd in an area in pure Maths and going back to my country, I got a job as a math lecturer at a university, where maths is not the main subject for students there. Maths is like school swimming subject that every student at my university has to learn before moving on to other subjects.

I usually teach 35 hours/week. That sounds a bit crazy for many people, but it is normal here when you are living in a small country with a big population. I love doing reaseach. Spending time quitely, reading papers of other mathematicians, taking note, enjoying the findings, these were what I used to have during my Phd in support from a scholarship.

The problem is that, I am now teaching students who are really unmotivated. It is understandable because maths is not their main concern.  Even though Maths here is quite basic, for example calculus or linear algebra, it seems that it is a big deal for them. The students always feel like they are forced to learn unnecessary, difficult stuff. So their reaction is to almost ignore the subject. They go to class, sleep or talk, and let whatever happens to their exams for the future. It is quite stressful to teach these students. I admit that many maths stuff like, surface integrals or Green formula, are really hard to teach  for this kind of students. Because they don't like to hear or know how should a theorem be true. On the other hand, if you just tell them that well! this is a theorem, let's imagine it was true and use it. Then the situation isn't better either. Of course, I am not in a position to determine what I have to teach, what not. All the given content in a subject should be taught for students during the course.

These things are bothering me and take me a lot of time. The students may complain if they don't like me. So I should focus on my teaching duty. However, it is killing me since I cannot have time for my reserach. At the end of the day, I am exhausted and feel guity because I have done nothing.

My question: do we have any way or tricks to teach unmotivated students to make them feel easy, feel smart, so they don't complain, but in the same time we don't spend total energy for the teaching? If I run my work properly, I still have time and mental energy for my reaseach.

Any suggestions, even small, would extremely be appreciated.

Start each session with a quiz.  Have students exchange papers to grade.  Have full hour tests every 1-2 weeks.  Do lots of in class exercises that students work on.  (Put the animals to work.)

Emphasize calculations and problem solving.  Not theorems.

Emphasize efficiency in terms of grading exams.

Follow the text closely and spend minimal time on your lecture prep.


English Bachelor of Computer Science - Germany I've googled so much for English Bachelor of Computer Science in Germany and I just found Jacobs University which teaches Computer Science in English. Though Germany is a place I would like to study, I am open minded for other places.

I checked Bachelor's portal, and setting Germany as a country and English as language, it gives me a full list of universities, but unfortunately when visiting the course site it's always set as taught language: German or 50% German and 50% English.

Other than Bachelor's Portal, is there anywhere else I could search for? Any good links I could be making use of?

You can try out the Hochschulkompass (Higher Education Compass) of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (German Rectors' Conference).

Searching for international programs granted with a Bachelor degree in Informatik (computer science is mostly called that in Germany) ends with 13 results. Maybe you can find a fitting study program for you there.


How to acknowledge contributions of anonymous referee in new paper? I'm in mathematics, just in case that matters.

I submitted a manuscript to a journal, and got an extensive referee report from referee X. After sending the revision, the paper got rejected, so I sent it to a second journal where it got accepted.

Later, I got a note from the editor of the first journal saying that referee X found a way to improve my results, and the editor gave me a pdf file from referee X outlining his/her ideas. Unfortunately, since my manuscript had already been accepted for publication I could not change it at this point.

Nevertheless, the improvement that referee X suggested is significant enough to merit another paper. I asked the editor to pass on an invitation to referee X to work on a joint paper with me, but the editor refused, saying that he didn't want to violate referee anonymity.

I think the paper needs to be written, but I feel it would be strange for me to write a single-author paper when the most significant idea does not originate with me. (Referee X only gave me a vague sketch of the idea, there are things that still have to be worked out. I still have to do a lot of work, but the most important insight would be referee X's). I suppose I'm just going to write a few paragraphs in the introduction explaining the situation. I was wondering if there would be another way to handle the issue.

From my understanding of the details of the situation, the editor is not acting well in refusing to pass along your invitation to the referee.  Doing so does not violate anonymity in any way (I am confident that the review process was not "double blind" -- i.e., the referee knows the author's identity -- in my experience, no mathematics papers are reviewed in this way.)  Maybe what the editor is thinking is that in order to accept your offer the referee would have to violate anonymity.

However, is this an ethical issue?  I have always held it to be the case that a referee can disclose her identity to an author at any time, and I have done this more than once as a referee.  I can vaguely see some ethical problems which might arise if this process of referee-self-disclosure were very widespread, but it seems like a bit of a stretch.  I would be very interested if someone can explain to me why this is a real concern.

Against the highly nebulous previous paragraph one must balance the ethical issue that academic ideas are not gifts that one person can freely bestow upon another.  I wrote the previous sentence in full awareness of the fact that mathematics in practice does have some degree of noblesse oblige: one often encounters very eminent and senior mathematicians giving ideas away to younger / less experienced / less eminent mathematicians without wanting anything in return: in mathematics we are inculcated to have a view that certain contributions are "below our level" and thus not worth taking credit for.  That is fine if "not taking credit" means not becoming an author on a paper.  But if it means not disclosing your contribution at all -- with the consequence that the begifted junior mathematician gets "too much credit" for work that had a significant component that was not his own -- well, that is hardly a victimless crime in our current highly competitive job-market.  In fact it seems to be a form of plagiarism.

[The situation brings to mind Karl Iagnemma's short story "Zilkowski's Theorem".  This was anthologized in the Best American Short Stories of 2002.  Remarkably, this was only one of two short stories in that anthology in which the main character was a practitioner of the mathematical sciences.  The other is Leonard Michaels's "Nachmann from Los Angeles".  Both were excellent!]

Perhaps you should write back to the editor to express these ethical concerns.  Getting the editor-in-chief of the journal involved (if this is not already the editor you are dealing with) is also a good idea at this point.

If you really don't know the identity of the author, then you need to indicate clearly the circumstances in whatever paper you write.  You may also want to make it known in your circles that you would very much like to know the identity of the mathematician who helped you write your next paper.  Depending upon how small / tightly knit your particular subcommunity is, you may have more or less luck with that, but it's certainly worth a try.


How to properly credit other people when writing a text book? In many textbooks, authors usually write about other people's research results without the type of detailed and extensive citations typically seen in a research paper.

Often times without any credit to the original researchers/authors.

In fact, the type of "neutral" tone used when authors talk about recent research areas makes it seems as if those areas have existed for hundreds of years.

  For example, consider the sentence, "Xtacking is a type of 3D NAND with higher bit density and faster time-to-market." Xtacking was invented in 2018, and no authors
  is attributed.

I think this is more or less an accepted convention. And I understanding that having an excessive amount of citations will hinder readability.

However, I wonder what is the most acceptable way to credit the original authors when talking about results in a textbook context.

Generally speaking, textbooks have the same responsibility to cite their sources as any other type of scholarly work. The one reasonable exception I can think of is a textbook about a very old and established subject like calculus, linear algebra etc. It is already sufficiently well-documented who deserves credit for these old ideas.

One slight difference in how the responsibility for citing sources is interpreted for textbooks as opposed to research publications is that the ideas in a textbook are not by default assumed to be the author’s. Thus, if an author fails to cite their sources, their readers will probably assume that this is due to sloppiness or laziness on the author’s part, may be annoyed by it or in an extreme case might even consider it a mildly unethical thing to do, but will likely not regard it as a form of plagiarism, unless the author phrased their words in an obviously misleading way to create the impression that the idea they are writing about is their own.

In other words, not giving detailed sources in a textbook is definitely bad practice, but may not get you into the same kind of trouble as it would in other contexts.

As for how to include the citations, it’s true that including them in the body of the text (especially if you also want to add a discussion with more details about the contributions of different authors) can be tedious. One common method, which I used in my book and I have seen used in many other places, is to add endnotes at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book.


Can I use any book as a source? I am writing a research paper (graduate level) on eating disorders. Many books have been written on this topic, ranging from pop culture type to scholarly works.

How do I know if a book is sufficiently reliable to use as a source in my paper? Am I looking for an author with a Masters degree? With clinical experience? With personal experience? Certain publishers? Or does anything go?

No field that I am aware of has a list of "officially approved sources". So there is nothing which formally forbids you from using a specific source.

However, your work will be judged based on not just its own qualities, but also the sources you use, and how you use them. Quoting a source just because it has a good, concise definition of a term is no big deal. But that same source might not be a good source for facts and numbers. Your average "pop culture" book will not document how those numbers were obtained.

Now for your specific case, I understand that the topic is eating orders, and not the public perception of eating orders or a similar meta-topic. In that case, you will likely be using academic definitions of your terms. So even if the pop literature would offer some concise, readable definitions of particular terms, they would likely not be the definitions used in the other sources that you will be quoting. So be consistent, and use the definitions from the academic sources.


If the editor handling my paper is a retired professor, then would it be fine for me to inquire about my paper status? I have a paper under review at a journal for 2.5 months.

Given: 1) it is a short paper taking only two pages, 2) I know that the editor handling this paper is a retired professor, and 3) I have submitted several short papers (the number of pages is < 5) to this journal and all of them were handled by this editor. Yet according to the past events, 1 month is the longest for a first decision. Then if it is fine for me to send a polite, short email to inquire about my paper status in order to "remind" the editor?

The time frame to a point where a question can or indeed should be sent varies depending on the typical time for that journal, or of similar journals in your field. To me 2.5 months does not sound too long, a decision after one month sounds very quick if I consider a normal set of reviewers also should make their evaluations in that period.

If you think sufficient (relative to what you perceive as "normal") time has passed you can certainly send a short e-mail asking for information. If you have an excuse for asking, in addition of just wanting to know, your mail is far less likely to be perceived as "pushy". But, regardless, editors will get hit by such mails fairly regularly and despite some of them or the bulk of them being a source of irritation at times, the question is not strange by any means. It is all down to the tone of the mail.

The fact that the editor is retired should not affect any aspect of the review procedure so I do not see any reason to take that fact into consideration. The journal must appreciate the work the editor is doing, otherwise the editor would likely not be there.


Upcoming PhD interview I applied for some PhD's in differential geometry in the UK, and I was offered an interview this coming Wednesday and they said this in the confirmation email:

"The interview will be conducted by insert prof name and myself and
should last around 30 minutes
In the interview we will ask about relevant courses you have taken, we will
explore your knowledge and understanding of these courses, and we will
discuss your motivation in applying for the insert department name PhD. We will also ask
some technical mathematical questions about topics you have covered."

Any clues what I should expect and how I should prepare? How much can they rip me apart in 30 mins?

It’s also worth noting that I did my undergrad in theoretical physics; would this imply that the technical questions refer to undergraduate questions or to the Masters programme I’m currently enrolled in (which allows me to study both pure and applied maths)?

Furthermore would the relevant courses taken mean the ones I’m attending currently for my Masters programme (given I did submit a list of the courses I attended last term and the ones I’m attending this term) or, again, would it refer to stuff I have independently studied in my undergraduate, which was a point I mentioned in my application?

Any clues what I should expect and how I should prepare? How much can
  they rip me apart in 30 mins?

My number one tip: don't go into it expecting to be ripped apart, they're academics, not leopards! :)

Seriously, though, every PhD interview I had (UK, cosmology, three years ago) was very friendly and relatively informal. Some were more informal than others, and I think it's no coincidence that I accepted the offer from the place where I had the most relaxed interview experience. Remember that not only are the interviewers looking to see if you're a good fit, you need to find out if the department is a good fit for you. I highly recommend talking to their current PhD students if you get a chance!

Since they say in their email that they will ask about relevant courses, think about which of the courses you've taken are most in line with the PhD project(s) you're applying for. The technical questions I was asked were all closely related to cosmology, even though I'd taken courses on solid state physics, electromagnetic theory, a whole bunch of solar physics courses... you get the picture. At the time I didn't have a strong cosmology background so I didn't know the answers to quite a lot of things, but I used my general physics knowledge to try and reason things through, explained what I was thinking and was honest when I didn't know the answer. They're not expecting you to know everything about your topic of interest already, they're far more interested in seeing how you think and communicate.

However, the majority of all the interviews I had focused on the research I was doing for my Master's dissertation. I talked about my work in detail, as well as the relevant literature. I think my ability to discuss the basic ideas in a very recent paper that was relevant to my project (and also why I didn't completely agree with it) left a good impression with the panel. If you've done any kind of research project or dissertation before, expect to spend a lot of the interview talking about it, so make sure you know it inside out.

In summary:

Look forward to the interview as a chance to discuss your subject with experts, and to look around a new department.
Be prepared to stand at the whiteboard and explain your work and thinking (practice doing this with a friend if you haven't done it before, good communication is key).
Know your subject well and have a good idea of the relevant literature to the projects you're applying for.

Good luck!


Is it appropriate to ask a professor how I may be able to improve my letter of recommendation? Background
I graduated with a BS in math about a year and a half ago from a not well known school and with a less than stellar academic record. I did not go to graduate school (I was not accepted). Since then, I have improved my mathematical ability considerably, but I have not kept in touch with my professors. I can demonstrate this improvement in many ways, the most obvious of which is by referring to my subject GRE score.
Given that I was a mediocre student, I assume that my professors' letters of recommendation did not paint me in as positive of a light as they would have if they knew me now.
I am now interested in applying to graduate school again but this time I would like to secure stronger letters of recommendation.
Question
Is it appropriate to ask a professor the following question:

"Is there any way I can demonstrate my current mathematical ability
and thereby improve your letter of recommendation for me?"

If so, how should I ask this question?
Further Considerations
If the answer to the above question is "Yes", then for at least two of the professors, I can suggest showing them my typed solutions to every question (save the trivial ones) in the textbook used for their class. These classes were both upper level classes (second level Linear Algebra and second level Real Analysis). With the last professor, I can demonstrate knowledge of Calculus of Variations (a subject that this professor is interested in) as well as Functional Analysis. Should this be my approach?

I think it is okay to ask the question.  However, I do not think you should suggest that professors read your solutions since they are likely very busy.

You may do better to tell the professors what you have been working on, including your GRE score, and then ask them if there is anything else you can do to prepare yourself for graduate school.  Then follow their suggestions.  Essentially it is the same question, but I think it could show you are a "deep learner" rather than a "strategic learner" who only cares about the letter.


Publication dates: accepted date, version of record online, issue online – which one to use? I have seen the other questions regarding which publication date to use, and it seems clear to use what the publisher uses.  But what if the publisher provides several dates such as the following?

Issue online: 25 January 2016
Version of record online: 25 October 2015
Accepted manuscript online: 7 October 2015

I find these definitions confusing. Which data should be used as the official publication year? What does version of record online even mean; is it important?

A journal citation looks like

  Last, F. M., & Last, F. M. (Year Published). Article title. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. Pages.

Since it refers to a specific volume and issue, you should use the date that issue was published. (For your example, that is 25 January 2016.)


Doing part of my PhD remotely in Europe while working full time? my US company offered me the prospect of doing my PhD (in public health, public policy, international development or something similar) at a European university while retaining my employment. They would also pay for the PhD. My thesis would be based on a research project I was already going to pursue in my work. I already have a Masters in Economics. Would a university be okay if I only worked out of the university for the first and the 2nd and 3rd year was finishing my research in the USA? Thanks!

You would need to check that with both the university and with any supervisor/advisor you would have. I'm pretty sure that such relationships do occur, even if not common. But being less the norm, you need to work out the details.

In some ways the supervisor might be the bigger block than the university. It might take a trip to Europe to finalize any such arrangements. But you first need to determine if they would even consider such a situation. The answers will vary.


My department is splitting. Should I be on one side or get a joint appointment? I am a tenure track assistant professor in the "Department of X and Y" which is a single department for now.  Though my PhD is in X only, I now teach classes in both areas.  My research is mostly in the field of X, and my tenure committee consists of researchers in X.

These two areas have a significant salary imbalance.  The starting salary of assistant professor in Y is close to the salary of full professors in X.

This department is about to be split into "Department of X" and "Department of Y", and I sense that this may not be a very happy divorce.  I am now approached by the future Dept. of Y to be involved.  I can see 3 options:

Stay in Dept. of X and forget about Y.
Stay in Dept. of X and get a courtesy appointment from Dept. of Y.
Get an joint appointment.
Move to Dept. of Y completely

How should I evaluate my options?

My feeling, so far, is that option (1) should be the safe option.  I may loose most of my students, but likely stay out of trouble. Option (2) means I teach for both departments, which may not make sense, as I will be getting my salary from Dept. of X (much lower) and do half of the job in Dept. Y.  My teaching and service in Dept. Y will also not contribute to my tenure case.  Option (3) makes more sense financially and can potentially broaden my research area, but it may be impossible to keep two department chairs happy (especially when there are conflicts between the two).

Are there other factors I should be considering?

Update: Option (4), moving to Dept. of Y completely, is not an offer that is currently on the table. It is unlikely to ever be there, as I don't have a PhD in Y.

As in comments, for sure avoid getting yourself in the cross-hairs of political fights, as a tenure-track person.

Next, indeed, having mixed allegiances is not a good thing when you come up for tenure.

Possibly "being interdisciplinary" is a good thing, depending entirely on departmental politics. I've seen it go both ways (in my U.S. R1 univ): evidence of not being a real mathematician [sic], or, alternatively, being one of a new breed of mathematician.


Interview strategies for faculty positions - to focus on their research or your own? What's the best approach for talking to faculty that are in distant/unrelated areas during a campus visit for a faculty position?

Is it preferable to show that you are interested in their research and open-minded about learning new things by asking them about their research, or to try to focus on your own research and the expertise that you offer?

When you have a meeting with a "distant" potential colleague, you should let the interviewer determine the initial flow of the interview. The important thing is to not spend too much time trying to figure out if this is just for information, or if you're being "tested" in some way. (The answer is, yes, you're probably being tested.)

Sometimes, the interviewer will want to talk about his research, to see if you are willing to think about new ideas, and how to fit them into your work. Sometimes, they will want to talk about your research, to see how well you can explain your ideas and work to people outside of your field. And other times it will fall somewhere in between these two extremes.


Is it possible to upload expository papers to arXiv? I would like to know if arXiv allows authors to upload expository papers (for example, a paper in which the author explains a specific topic). If this is the case, how should those papers be written? And will they be automatically moved to the General Mathematics section?

The official line appears to be that:

  arXiv accepts only submissions in the form of an article that would be refereeable by a conventional publication venue. This excludes [...] reports that do not contain original or substantive research [...]

That said, I see expository and survey papers appear there all the time, and nobody seems to mind.  I think if your expository paper is of a quality that you would consider submitting to an appropriate journal (there are many that publish expository papers) or lecture notes series, then it's fine for arXiv.  If it's just your course notes on the fundamental theorem of calculus, don't do it.

I don't see why they should be moved to "General Mathematics"; they should be categorized with the topic that the paper is about.


Is it possible to get a PhD through government/industry/military lab, and if it is, what is the process? Is it possible to apply for a PhD through a government or a military research laboratory?

If so what would be the process? Is the qualifying exam required? How is that scheduled? How about course work?

In the US, you cannot have your PhD degree awarded by a government or military  laboratory, and similarly industrial labs generally cannot award degrees, either.

However, having worked at several government labs, I can confirm that it is possible to be a grad student and do your thesis research at a government lab. Usually this is done under a co-advising arrangement within an existing collaboration (Prof. X at university A works with Dr. Y at lab B), or under a cross-affiliation (Prof. X has a joint appointment at both university A and lab B).

More specific details differ too much depending on the university and department's regulations, as well as those of the lab in which you're interested in working, so you'd need to ask them specifically. However, it is also worth noting that many graduate departments still have a "residency requirement" on the books—which states that you must spend some number of semesters actually registered as a student at the university before receiving a PhD.


What is the best way to provide an erratum to the public until the journal publishes it, or if it does not? I published an article in a Springer journal. I consider it to be the basis of all my future research. An editor introduced errors right before publication without asking me and now the article, as it was published Online First, cannot be modified. The EiC offered to publish an erratum with my article two issues from now. He is going to have to find out whether Springer publishes online errata. (Do they?) In the meantime, or if the erratum is never published online, what can be done to make the public aware that that is not a correct version of the article? Would you publish a link to the article with your own erratum in your personal website?

Publish a technical report / preprint without the error.


Discussing finances with advisor: Am I being selfish? I have a bit of a quandary. I applied for a fellowship to send me to a foreign country for two months. They will give me a stipend, and pay for all of my other expenses. In the event I don't receive this fellowship, my advisor said she would fund me the whole summer using her discretionary funds. I would go on this trip and make it back exactly one month before classes start: would it be selfish for me, in the event I get this fellowship, to ask her to also fund me for that last month while I'm back and doing work?

The thing is, the fellowship stipend is about as much as I would make during the whole summer working here, so I would be making more money than I would normally make over the entire summer. Perhaps I am overthinking this.

What you are getting paid when you are not working for your university should not matter. Taking it to a (albeit artificial and ridiculous) extreme, if a top programmer in industry, with a salary of 100k$/year joins a doctoral program in June, would you consider that his salary from January to May is enough so you can not pay him for a couple of years? In my view (and some jurisdictions too), working for free is very close to slavery, and should be avoided when possible.

So, absolutely, you can go ahead and ask her if she will fund you. Your situation is good in the way that if she says no you will have a backup.

With this said, I can understand if she refuses. If it is a single, non continued project, it is not as efficient to hire a person for one month as for three, and if you are not going to do it, she may use the funds to hire someone else for the full time. If you are going to continue doing your usual work during that month, there is not so much difference between being there one or three months, and your case is stronger.

As an extra, during your fellowship, you will probably learn a bunch of new things, so you are an extra asset for your group. You can also offer to give a few seminars on what you have learned in partial exchange for the funding.


Can I get a Master's in Economics with a Bachelor's in Mathematics? I am going to receive a Bachelor's of Science in Applied Mathematics soon. I found out facilitating medical environments is what I found interesting after volunteering at a hospital for two years and getting to meet an administrator and a medical actuary.

I have ZERO background in Economics, minus basic Macro and Microeconomics AP credit that I still remember. I can program really well, and I'm a very, very strong mathematician. I have 4 total undergraduate publications in Numerical Solutions to PDEs (1), Set theory (1), and Mathematical Models in Ecology (2) using differential equations. Although none are economics per se, friends who I have talked to say that economics is highly mathematical and involves rigorous programming, so these tools will serve me well.

I have a 3.98 GPA in Mathematics, have relevant tutoring experience on a campus math help center, etc. Is a graduate degree in healthcare economics or even an MPH with a focus in healthcare economics viable with an undergradaute degree in mathematics?

Mathematics is a good undergraduate major for a prospective economics grad student. And I suspect that you could gain admission to (and succeed in) a master's program somewhere with the background you already have. But graduate programs in economics do generally expect that you've taken at least some upper-division economics courses, so you would be a much stronger candidate for a master's program (or even a PhD program) with a bit more preparation.

For example, here's what UConn (where I earned my MA) has to say about application to graduate programs in economics http://econ.uconn.edu/grad/apply/faqs/:

  Do I need to be an economics major to apply?
  No, though some economics background is preferred. Students with little or no economics training, however, will usually only be considered for admission to the master’s program and, if admitted, will generally be required to take some undergraduate economics courses before beginning graduate study.

So, I think the answer to your question is "yes" for at least some values of "master's in economics". Completing intermediate level microeconomics and macroeconomics (or, if you can only take one, micro) would probably improve your chances of acceptance, though, not to mention giving you a better idea whether this is something you want to spend a year or two on.

From your description of your interests, though, it sounds to me as though a MPH is a better fit for you.


Career options after teaching oriented position How commonly do professors at predominantly undergraduate institutions transition to different lines of work? What do they wind up doing?

I have a PhD in mechanical engineering and I focus on mathematical modeling in biology. I'm currently a postdoc looking at working at a predominantly undergraduate institution in the US. I love teaching, I just want to know what my alternatives would be in a few years if I wanted to go in a different direction.

If you have experience with any kind of programming (I'm guessing you do!), you could join the throngs of people who used to teach or do research but are now doing any number of things involving programming computers.


PhD application question: "Why do you want to join my research group?" Whenever somebody asks me "why are you interested in joining my research group", I find myself helpless. What are the usual points or aspects I should talk about in reply of this question?

Essentially, what the potential advisor is asking you to show is that you've "done your homework" before applying. Why do you want to apply to Prof. X's group? What is it about their research that is attractive to you? Why do you think you'd fit in to the group? If you just send a generic email that inquires about positions and don't have an outstanding CV and transcript, you're not going to get very far. However, if you make it clear that you've looked into the group and can explain why you're interested, you'll have a better chance of getting a response.


Is it okay to work on colleagues' ideas after they leave academia? I've just discovered that a former colleague is now working on some research ideas that I developed and laid the groundwork for now that I have left academia following failure to obtain funding. I'm happy that the work is being done, but feel that it would have been courteous to let me know that they were doing so. Are either of us in the wrong here?

History:
I did my PhD and a 3-year postdoc in a UK lab where we were expected to act very independently. As such I developed my own line of research during my PhD but didn't have time to publish the results until after I'd completed. I wanted to keep working on that line of work, so wrote a grant proposal with my supervisor, who acted as PI (I was named postdoc) which we were awarded.

During the postdoc, for complicated reasons, I developed another strand of independent research, with some guidance from a research fellow in the lab.

This strand then formed the basis of a large fellowship proposal that I was nearly awarded, but ultimately was unsuccessful. The fellow in the lab (who had a proleptic lectureship) acted as the academic host for the proposal.

Following a number of unsuccessful fellowship proposals, I undertook another postdoc for a year, then decided to take a different job and am now a software engineer at another UK university.

Situation: I've recently seen on twitter that the fellow who I had been working with (now lecturer) is now working on the project that I had proposed for my unsuccessful fellowship bid. We've had little contact in the intervening time and they've made no attempt to discuss this with me.

I know that it's kind of clear that I'm following a different path, and I'm happy to be doing so. But I'm a little upset that they wouldn't even send me an email to say "Hey, remember the stuff you came up with, well we got some money to do it etc.."

Am I wrong to be upset by this?

It's a small field, and my experience of my 7 or so years working in the area was that we all tried to be collegiate and courteous and not step on each others' toes. So this seems a little out of sorts.

I don't think there's anything to be done about this, but it has got under my skin for someone I trusted to have no qualms about using ideas I worked to develop whilst I had to leave the field to find work.

Is it okay to work on colleagues' ideas after they leave academia?

I'm going to be blunt: yes, absolutely yes. What is the other option? That the progress of humanity should be stifled because you didn't get a job?
Ideas do not belong to anyone. The way I read it, you did not even come up with the idea independently, but "with some guidance from a research fellow in the lab". Look at it from the fellow perspective: they helped someone develop a research proposal, the person didn't get a job and the grant wasn't awarded, the person left academia, and (correct me if I'm wrong) made no effort to keep in touch with the fellow and/or work on the topic again. What is the fellow supposed to do now? Trash the idea, waste all the time spent helping the other person?
This happens all the time of academia. Supervisor helps a student/postdoc develop a research proposal, the proposal fails, the student/postdoc leaves academia. Now what? Is the idea not good anymore? There's no reason not to continue working on it.
Now let's answer your apparent actual question:

I know that it's kind of clear that I'm following a different path, and I'm happy to be doing so. But I'm a little upset that they wouldn't even send me an email to say "Hey, remember the stuff you came up with, well we got some money to do it etc.."
Am I wrong to be upset by this?

I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong to feel something. But if the question is "did the fellow act reasonably", I would lean on yes. It depends what your relationship was, but based on what you've told us, the idea has been developed a long time ago (several unsuccessful fellowship proposals + a year of postdoc + since whenever you took the software engineering job, as far as I can tell), and it's not clear you kept in touch with the fellow. What is clear though is that you're not working on the idea anymore. At some point it becomes fair game.

I don't think there's anything to be done about this, but it has got under my skin for someone I trusted to have no qualms about using ideas I worked to develop whilst I had to leave the field to find work.

Academia and life in general is not just. Yes, it's unjust that you were unsuccessful and had to quit when you proposed this idea, but the other person is apparently successfully working on it. But this other person cannot change what happened or give you the job. I don't know you or your situation, but it sounds more like you're upset about having had to leave academia more than at your colleague.


Why do we pay to present at conferences? I recently presented at a conference abroad (my first one), and the entry fee was $50 USD. Now, as this was my first conference, the concept of paying to present at a conference is still a foreign one to me. I can't really wrap my head around submitting an abstract, it getting accepted and then paying to present about the work mentioned in it. So my question is fairly straightforward. What is the purpose of a presenter paying for a conference? Isn't it for the greater good not to have barriers for showcasing research?

Edit: I see this question has generated of a lot of discussion. Let me explain some of my reasoning in choosing the accepted answer. In the region I am from (the Caribbean), due to economic hardships finding the money to pay for conferences deters many young scientists from even thinking about attending. The conferences themselves generate a fairly significant audience from graduate students, faulty members and the general public wishing to understand the scientific concepts presented (all of whom enter for free). I can't help but think how much more productive  the scientific activity in the region would be if  the people wanting to present didn't have to pay. Many of you are saying that $50 USD is nothing, but are neglecting the various exchange rates it takes to obtain said money. At an exchange rate of 121 to 1, $50 USD could buy me food for 2-3 weeks in my home country. I asked this question without any mention of these things because, in the most general sense, paying for conferences seems, to me, to only provide barriers to sharing results and boosting academic (read scientific) activity, and I wanted to have an idea of what others thought about a (somewhat one dimensional) version of this idea.

It costs a lot of money to put conferences on.  Generally, the fees are to help cover this.

In many fields, the majority of people attending are also presenting.  If they didn't charge people to present, they wouldn't be able to generate enough revenue from attendees to make it work.

Note that $50 is very cheap for an academic conference--in my experience, most cost hundreds of dollars. Even then, in many cases the conference fees don't cover the whole cost of the conference, and the difference has to be made up with sponsorship or from other sources.


How can I confirm that the format of the paper is correct? I am a new PhD student. I have been in school for more than a year. But I basically never met my mentor. I can only find a way to post the paper. Now, I am preparing to submit a paper to a conference. But I haven't submitted a paper before. I want to know if I use the Latex template given by the conference party to write a paper, how can I confirm that the format is correct. For example, the requirements of the paper are:

This is the requirement of this conference. Its Latex template can be found here. https://www.microarch.org/micro54/
Initially, I thought that this template should have all the relevant parameters set, but it is not.
For example, Space between columns 0.25in. When I compared the pdf file generated by the template with the papers of previous years, I found that this parameter in the template was not set.
I didn’t find the font and margin settings in this template. What should I do?

Reviewing will be double blind (no author list); therefore, please do
not include any author names on any submitted documents except in the
space provided on the submission form.

Declare all the authors of the paper upfront

The above two paragraphs are all requirements given in the template. Does this require the author to be written in front of the paper or is it forbidden to write?
Thanks

The double blind refereeing instructions mean that the text of the paper should have nothing in the LaTeX    \author{} macro. All the authors should be listed only on the web form you fill out when you submit the paper.
For help setting the proper margins and other formatting constants, ask at tex.stackexchange.com.
Although you have never "met" your mentor, they should probably know about this submission and should be able to help you with it.


How to prepare effectively for teaching a graduate course? Next year, I will be teaching a graduate-level course about an advanced topic for the first time (in a West European university, in science). I'm a lecturer and this is the first time I will teach such an advanced topic. This will also be the first time that I will teach something completely alone (usually there are teaching assistants, or colleagues who teach the same course at the same time, etc).

How do I prepare effectively for such a thing? The level of the students is usually excellent and I don't want to disappoint. The course is rather intensive, over a few weeks, so there is not much room for error.

I assume that you have something like a syllabus for the course, listing the topics that the students are expected to master. If you don't have even that then you need to obtain one, either from some prof who taught the course in the past, or by developing one yourself, perhaps by using a similar course syllabus as a guide. It needn't be terribly detailed at this stage, but needs a list of topics to be mastered. Secondary topics can be omitted, but noted.

The next thing to focus on in the development of any course is what will be the student learning activities throughout the course. This is actually the most important thing. Choose projects, exercises, exams, or whatever, that will guarantee mastery of the key topics if done well. Lay the timeline of the course by laying out the sequence and duration of each of these activities. Make these things activities not just readings.

With that done you can start to think about what you need to do to make it possible for the students to succeed in their activities. This might be lecture or it might be classroom activities (labs), etc. As you do this you can fill in secondary topics, realizing that you may have to forgo some of them if the students need more on the main ideas, but you will at least have some extra material to insert as needed, depending on how the course progresses.

Find a way to get some anonymous feedback from your students along the way. One easy way is to invite students to submit (anonymous) questions and comments to you on index cards at the beginning or end of each face to face session. These questions should help you determine if the pace you have set for the course is right or not. Be prepared to make adjustments based on what they write. Find a way for the questions to get answered, perhaps in class, and perhaps in some electronic medium, even a mailing list.

Note that the teaching philosophy behind this answer is that it is much more important what the student does in a course than what the professor does. Likewise, the feedback from students is very useful to a new teacher.

Note that if the course is being taught for the first time, as happens in some fields, then some parts of this are more work than otherwise. Syllabus preparation will likely take longer. But in such situations, it is especially important to keep quite a lot of flexibility in the schedule and in the grading/marking scheme so that students wind up with a good experience: hard but not impossible.


Can a rejected paper with no resubmission allowed be resubmitted to the same journal after changing content and heading of the paper? I got rejection from IEEE WCL with no resubmission allowed. Thereafter, I improved the paper significantly with addition of more analysis spending 8+ months on the paper. Can/Should I submit my paper to IEEE WCL with different headings? Do such journals have repositories to recognize that a rejected paper has been resubmitted?
This question is a bit different from Should I resubmit a rejected paper to the same journal? because IEEE WCL specifically uses the terms "Reject (resubmission allowed/not-allowed).

Someone at the journal will make a judgement as to whether it is in fact an improved version of the same paper, or if enough has changed that it's a different paper.
This is a judgement that can only be made by someone in your field who understands your work.  We cannot judge this, and the judgement cannot be made using some automatic rules.
If you think it can reasonably be considered a different paper and do submit to the same journal, you should be up front with them and tell them in the submission letter that your new paper incorporates the work from the old paper, which was rejected without giving you an opportunity to resubmit.  Then the editors can decide for themselves whether to consider the paper or not.
If you don't think it is really a different paper, you should not waste your time or that of the editors.
What you definitely should NOT do is submit without mentioning the old paper.  The journal might consider this an unethical attempt to resubmit a rejected paper and ban you.  In this case, you might not be allowed to submit anything to the journal (or possibly any IEEE journal) for a period of several years.
For my research, there are always at least one or two other journals which are roughly equivalent to any given journal (if for no reason other than that each journal's editors have somewhere to submit their work) so there is really no reason to try resubmitting.  I realize this may be different in other areas.


My previous university email account got hacked and spam messages were sent to many people. What should I do? I am having serious trouble with my previous university email account (Office365), provided by the university where I finished my master’s studies last year (I am currently pursuing a PhD at another university in a different country). The account is still active but I am no longer using it to send any email, although I have been receiving messages for alumni.
A few days ago, for a reason I still do not understand, a blank Teams meeting invitation was sent FROM my account to multiple professors and faculty members. The account seems to be hacked. I noticed it today when I received a notification saying that one of the recipients “rejected” the invitation. I am very confused and embarrassed.
I successfully cancelled the Teams meeting (which was automatically added to my calendar), but then, I logged out of that account (just to check my other account), and now I can no longer log into it again.
I am going to contact the university for technical support, but here is my question: Should I send an apology email to the recipients of the invitation? I want to apologize, but it’s been more than half a year since I graduated, and I no longer get in touch with any of them. And more than half of them are the ones with whom I interacted only once during my studies (e.g. to ask for an internship opportunity), and they probably do not even remember/recognize me. Also, except for the one who rejected the invitation, none has reacted to it in any way, so I am assuming that they haven’t yet seen the invitation or simply ignored it, noticing that it was mistakenly sent.
Would it be appropriate for me to send them an apology email? Or would that just end up bothering them, given that they are all busy and keep receiving numerous emails every day?
Any advice or suggestions are highly appreciated.

Contact tech support and let them know what happened. They can probably clean it up appropriately. The apology message might be better if it comes from them. In any case, ask them for advice.
Perhaps you need to pay more attention to passwords and watch out for phishing attacks.


After long time without, three review invitations in two weeks. Coincidence, or do editors share lists of helpful reviewer names? Being early in my academic career, I don't yet get many paper reviews.  Until recently, I had reviewed two papers in two years, and rejected one invitation to review.  My last review was completed some 10 months ago.

Two weeks ago, I agreed to review a paper.  Since then, I have received two more invitations.  In total, in the past two weeks, I have received as many invitations to review as in the two years prior to that.  All are from different editors, but the latest request is from a journal for which I reviewed 2 weeks ago, and comes 2 days after submitting a review to a different journal.

Although I have not calculated the probability, I guess it is unlikely that the sudden string of reviews is a coincidence.  I have the impression that accepting and quickly submitting a helpful review has caused the additional review invitations.  Which brings me to the question.

Do editors within the same journal typically share with each other names of people who have written helpful reviews in the (recent) past?  How about editors of different journals, that may or may not have the same publisher?

The journal editor (in chief) may not, but boards of editors have overlap and word does often spread that "X@Y is prompt, conscientious and fair."

Or it could be random entropy.

I wouldn't give it much thought. At best, you are being thought of as a good reviewer. At worst, it's a random quirk.  Choose the interpretation that makes you happiest.

--
p.s. If you're feeling overwhelmed, it's entirely ok to tell a journal that you have to decline. Respond as soon as you can so that they can move on. Quick declinations (and referrals to potential other reviewers when possible) are also signs of good, conscientious colleagues. And I'm a strong believer that the good karma from these unrenumerated acts of conscientiousness will help in the long run.


International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSNs) in References (APA style)? Question

When, if ever, do you include an ISSN in a references entry; and if you do, then in what form to comply with APA style?

Background

International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSNs) are used to uniquely identify serial publications, and the numbers can be helpful in distinguishing between publications that have the same or similar titles.

I am editing a dissertation and don't know how to advise the author about when, whether, or how to include an ISSN in a reference.

As best I can deduce from perusing the APA Manual 6th edition and searching the apastyle blog, there are no circumstances where you include an ISSN.

But is that so? If it helps, the author of the paper included this entry:

Getkin, K. (2009). Reforming or changing educational leadership. The Journal for Quality and Participation, 32(2), 15-19. ISSN 10409602.

Note: I posted a question about this on the apastyle blog in December 2018 and followed up in January. No one seems willing to tackle the question ...)

Since the ISSN refers to the journal, it isn't a very precise identifier for a publication in the journal. I'd highly recomment to use the DOI instead, if availble. This is becoming more and more a common convention in science. Listing the ISSN is in contrast relatively rare.


Do universities know that you have re-applied Do universities know that you are a re-applicant who applied to the same program last year? Do they keep that database? And if they do, does that hurt your chances? (Specific to universities in the US and the UK)

Do universities know that you are a re-applicant who applied to the
  same program last year?

Yes, they do. Moreover, many universities directly ask are you a re-applicant in application forms.


Publishing a review in a peer-reviewed Wiki vs a traditional journal? The topic of Wikipedia contribution has come up before, but I am interested in the community's opinion on peer-reviewed wiki publishing (e.g., Scholarpedia). I would like to know if there is any advantage for a PhD student to publish in such an online venue versus the traditional journal publication for review content. The advantages I see to the wiki approach is free of charge publication, open access for all, not necessarily being limited by character limits. However, the disadvantages I see could be the citation being completely ignored by the intended audience and therefore missing out on the benefits of scientific communication and the possible loss of accompanying reputation for the publication. I would also worry these publications would be ignored or minimized by future supervisors and review committees.

Scholarpedia has adapted many of the processes of a peer-reviewed journal.  However, it is still a kind of encyclopedia and not a research journal at all.  Note that I'm not making any kind of judgment or evaluation in the previous sentence: the main page of the site reads

  Welcome to Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia,
  where knowledge is curated by communities of experts.

So you seem to be asking: "Should I publish my paper in an encyclopedia rather than a research journal?"  I think that's a kind of strange question: have you really written something which lies ambiguously between a research paper and an encyclopedia article?

The above is not a rhetorical question: please let us know!

It is also possible that I have fixated too much on "scholarpedia" and it is not the type wiki publication that you really intended.  If so, please let us know.  It would be helpful to give at least one specific example of the kind of "peer-reviewed wiki" you have in mind as a plausible alternative to a research journal.

Added: @MHH has helpfully clarified that the OP is probably talking about a review paper, or what in my field would be called a "survey paper".  (The word "review" was also used at least twice in a different sense in the OP's question, and that was enough to confuse me.)  I must begin by admitting that review/survey papers are rare in my field (mathematics), and that they would be written by PhD students is almost unprecedented.  So I am almost at the point of wanting to delete my answer for lack of understanding and relevant expertise.

However, let me first try this:
it seems to me that a review paper should be published in a research journal if it contains original research: i.e., some kind of synthesis, analysis, new perspectives, helpful simplifications, and so forth are being added.  Of course "original research" is exactly what is not wanted in an encyclopedia article, although I don't see why this would necessarily be the case for all peer-reviewed wikis.  So going more from general academic common sense than specific insight (i.e., caveat emptor), I would say that this should be the deciding factor between publishing a survey paper in a research journal or in a wiki.  Let me further say that most or all of the advantages cited by publication in a wiki can be achieved by publishing in certain kinds of research journals: "free of charge publication, open access for all" certainly.  Many electronic journals do not advertise hard "character limits", but of course there must be some kind of upper bound must exist, right?  No one wants a 5000 page survey of the literature.


When can I withdraw a paper accepted by a conference? I recently got my paper accepted by a "look-descent" conference (indexed by  ACM, a leading association in CS). Now, I am considering to withdraw the paper for some considerations, yet, need to know first if that would be fair?

The problem is that i didn't got individual reviews but only a summary from the PC. The review summary looks general and doesn't make me feel
my paper had been seriously reviewed by a peer.
When I asked for review details, which should be available on the submission platform, the PC said they would be available after the registration. What
is weird also is that the registration is due after one week of acceptance notification only, and the paper will automatically be rejected if not registered by the deadline. The registration fee is expensive (more than twice) compared to what is usual in my home country (the conference is in the same country).

NB: I made sure the conference CFP is not fake!

Is it fair to withdraw the paper and what should I write to
 notify the PC?

Since conferences websites doesn't tell that,
it would be beneficial to know in which cases one can
withdraw an accepted paper?

The registration fee being too expensive is not an extreme excuse. You could just inform the chair that you are not able to pay such fee.

Since you did not sign any documents, you have no legal responsibilities.

However, not informing them would make them get into a scrape. I don't think it is ethical.


How to apply for teaching jobs with no formal teaching experience? I'd like to make a career change and go into teaching; for financial reasons (I had to care for my elderly parents, etc.) I've been in marketing for 15 years but my true talents lie in writing and teaching.

I've taught several seminars and worked as a college tutor and teaching assistant, run many volunteer writing workshops, and have many publications in literary journals, and a new book coming out this June by a reputable publisher.  I received my MFA in honors and all of my seminar reviews are extremely positive.

I'm just not sure how to apply when every teaching job posting I find lists "at least two years" of college teaching experience as a prerequisite.  At this point I'd even teach a semester free of charge if someone would give me a chance!

You said that your true interest is writing and teaching. If this is the case, then it is justified to join a teaching job.

For this, you already have fair amount of experience such as teaching in seminars and workshops. You might have received some amount of formal appreciation such as a certificate or any written document. This could be added as an experience certificate. You also mentioned that you were TAing for few times. That is a nice experience, which adds to your profile.

When the criterion says "at least 2 years", just mention the above points as follows (or something similar to it):

Teaching experiences:

Talk on "Title 1" in the International Conference on ABCD
Taught "Title 2" in the International Workshop on DCBA
Teaching Assistant (From -- To) at the University of Alphabets


What are effective strategies to work through 'drafting fatigue'? Similar to my previous question "Strategies to overcome “academic-apathy” in the final stages of the PhD?", one thing I am noticing as I am drafting papers and the thesis, I seem to becoming overcome by 'drafting fatigue' - where things that usually don't bother me, for example:

Punctuation and grammar fixups
especially when my supervisor (advisor) suggests a change, I make the change, then he suggests changing it back on the next draft.
wanting to add additional figures

and all things like this.  After the 2nd draft, I find I am getting 'over it' (for want of a better term).  So, this leads to my question - what practical effective strategies are there to overcome this 'drafting fatigue'?

Having similar experiences, the only approach I have found effective is to leave it alone for an extended period (week to a month typically - with fresher eyes the longer I wait). You can dig into another project for that amount of time, so it isn't wasted doing nothing.

The bullet points jive with my experience as well, e.g. reading the same draft over and over again makes one less likely to see grammer mistakes, minor supervisor input is annoying, and you always want to do alittle more (like add in another figure).

For copy-editing sometimes I will ask my wife or a friend for a look over, which is nice because it gives you alittle respite from the draft as well.


How is the H-Index of a journal related to its grouping in SJR? How is the H-Index of a journal related to its grouping in SJR?

I was searching for journals for submitting my first manuscript.

I came across this site https://www.scimagojr.com which very well lists the journals and also groups them into four groups Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4.

I have the following two questions:

I found instances where a journal with low H-Index got grouped in Q2 and a journal with higher H-Index got grouped in Q4.How is this possible?
Is this grouping of SJR well-defined?Is it more prestigious to publish in Q1 than in Q2?Is Q1 journal considered to be of higher value than Q2?

This is somewhat related to my previous question How are journals evaluated?

They are different indices, measuring quite different things, and shouldn't be expected to be highly correlated.

The H-index is simply the number h of articles that have received at least h citations.
The Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) only considers documents published in the journal in the last three years, and weights them depending on the prestige of the journals the citing papers were published in. The idea is that a citation is "worth more" if it's from (what SJR determines to be) a highly prestigious journal. (Interestingly, the prestige factors are determined self-consistently, using an algorithm like Google's PageRank.)

  I found instances where a journal with low H-Index got grouped in Q2 and a journal with higher H-Index got grouped in Q4. How is this possible?

The H-index is strongly linked to the number of papers the journal publishes, see this answer. Hence, it's quite possible for a small selective journal to get a low H-index, but high SJR ranking. Conversely, a large journal with lower standards is likely to eventually publish enough highly cited papers to achieve a high H-index.

  Is this grouping of SJR well-defined?Is it more prestigious to publish in Q1 than in Q2?Is Q1 journal considered to be of higher value than Q2?

It's well-defined in the sense that there's an objective algorithm to calculate it, and it seems to do a decent job at capturing the trends in the fields I'm familiar with. A Q1 journal will generally be more prestigious than a Q3/Q4 one, but there might be exceptions, especially as any measure can be and will be gamed. However, if there's say one journal just above the Q1/Q2 cutoff, and one just below it, I wouldn't take Scimago's word for it. While it's useful as a rough guide, it ultimately, like most rankings, is no substitute for experience. Look where leaders in your field publish, where the papers you read are published, and discuss journal quality with colleagues or mentors.


What is the average teaching load for tenure faculty in mathematics? I am interested in Math, specifically pure Math, in the USA. I will be on the job market soon for a tenure track position and mathjobs ads usually do not specify the teaching load.

What is the average teaching load of tenured faculty (in pure math say) at a research university? (and let's say we are talking about faculty members who are still very much research active)

I've met faculty who teaches 1+1 (or even 0+0...), 2+1 or even 2+2. But I don't have a good general picture of how much teaching is done (partly because I haven't studied in the US).

In mathematics departments at U.S. research universities, typical teaching loads are 1+2 or 2+2, with 1+2 being common at fancier or better funded schools.  See this chart for some data; I don't know how accurate it is, but it looks approximately right to me.  1+1 is not absolutely unheard of, but it is very rare.  Of course what counts as a "research university" is unclear, and some places that consider themselves research universities may have 2+3 loads, but I don't think any of the more prestigious research universities have 2+3.

Of course there are a lot of other factors that come into teaching load.  How much flexibility is there in the course assignments?  How does the teaching credit differ between huge lecture courses and small graduate seminars?  How many people (if any) get a reduced teaching load?  Does the department allow faculty to buy out of teaching using grant funds?  Without answers to questions like these, a numerical comparison of teaching loads only tells you so much.  What I'd recommend is that you apply for every job you might plausibly want, and then once you start to get interviews or offers you can look into the teaching conditions at these schools in detail.


Word limitation in journal paper I'm writing a manuscript for a journal that has a word limitation for papers:

  Papers should be no longer than about 6500 words to include Figures,
  Tables and References.

I am not totally sure, does it mean that Figures, Tables and References are not included in this limitation or does it mean that the entire paper must not exceed 6500 words?

Update:
Following your recommendations, I contacted the editors:
References are included in the 6500 words, words in tables and figures are not.
My references comprise about 1000 words, so now I have to shorten all other parts, which is not easy.

The wording here makes me think that the 6500 word count includes figures, tables, and references, as "to include" seems like a synonym for "including". However, it is always, always good to ask for clarification, especially when the wording, as in this case, leaves room for interpretation. I would email or otherwise contact the journal editor and ask for clarification. Contact information for the journal you linked in the comments can I believe be found here.


Is it a good idea to join SIGGRAPH without a degree? I needed to cancel my studies in the last semester due to finances. I mod computer games, love 3D-modelling, did a little bit in graphics-programming. I absolutely love the field. I am currently in a retraining as an IT specialist for application development, but is that enough to join SIGGRAPH?
I want to know, if I am just being too enthusiastic. I found SIGGRAPH in 2013 and have followed it since and watched basically every video from them on YouTube. Some of the content I have no problem following. The advanced level goes over my head. I want to get my foot in the industry, I want to connect with others. I want to visit the conference ... but maybe I should keep my head down.
Could somebody please give me an advice or an opinion?

Students get a special rate when they join ACM and/or its SIGs (special interest groups). You get the Communications as part ACM membership. You can also join any of several special interest groups such as SIGGRAPH. There is some cost for that even for students. But you get their publications, either electronically (cheap) or in printed form (less cheap). There are, I think, special prices for conference attendance at the annual conference for members.
The special deals don't apply to non-students, of course. Most academics in CS are likely to be ACM members and those interested in graphics are likely SIGGRAPH members.
It probably isn't essential to do this, depending on how connected you want to be to that community over time. But the publications are interesting if you are interested in the topic, and the conference(s) are great for career building. SIGGraph is a huge event.
Some universities, however, have local "chapters" of ACM and they may have additional local activities for members.
ACM and SIG members can also subscribe to the ACM digital library which gives you access to just about everything ACM has published since some early date (and they are digitizing the old stuff). But a local university library can probably get you access to that as well, though they might require some affiliation with the university.


What is the best way to design a paper questionnaire to support scanning and converting to raw data? When surveying my students for various reasons (which have nothing to do with my institution which does not care about, nor fund, any of my "research"), I find that online surveys get a very low response rate. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can get up to 50% of students to respond (sometimes only 10%). However, if I hand questionnaires out during class time I can usually get 80-90% completion rates.

The problem comes that I end up with hundreds of paper surveys and keying them into a computer takes hours. There must be a better way.

I am actually looking for two pieces:

How can I design the paper survey to best support scanning and having a computer convert the scan into raw data which I can then explore
What kind of software can do the scanning and conversion (I realize this might be a question for softwarerecs.SE)

For point 2, I usually use multiple choice or Likert-type scales so full OCR is not required.

Are there standards for questionnaire design which support this process?

I can offer some help with scanning paper questionnaires as this is something I've done in a previous job. But, first, I would suggest it's quite involved so you may want to at least revisit improving your 'digital' response rate first.

Audience response devices

One option may be to allow the students to use 'clickers' to respond to questions. I would recommend having no more than 10 questions that can be answered on a multiple choice or Likert scale, which fits your requirements. Our department use something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response
We've found that about 10 questions can be answered in about 10 minutes.

Re-consider your online/digital surveys

If clickers aren't suitable - for example because the students are not physically situated together - you could consider reviewing your digital survey, purely because it's significantly easier to obtain data from responses. To improve response rates, I tried to follow these rules of thumb:

No matrices, ever.
No more than three questions per page.
No more than six pages.

Obviously this is going to vary depending on how much detail you need, but these reminded me to keep the questions light.

Scanning paper surveys

So, with all that in mind if you still need the paper copy route, here goes. To make it worthwhile you need:

a scanner designed for automatic throughput. That is, a single sheet personal/small office scanner is not going to speed things up for you if you have to manually change ~200 sheets. Something like this Fujitsu ScanSnap might do the trick.
Software that recognises marks. I used Eyes and Hands, which is deprecated and has been superceded by ReadSoft as far as I can tell. ReadSoft can recommend a compatible scanner.
There are some requirements about how you set your paper questionnaire up, and this needs to be precise. Therefore I recommend something like QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.
You need four recognition marks for each page, one for each corner. I often found a character from the header or text ok for the left hand side, but on the right hand side if text wasn't justified I needed to manually add some marks.
You need to lay our tick or text boxes quite clearly. For example, it's quite common to see tables without any padding used for response boxes on paper surveys but you need a gap between them for the scanning software to recognise them unambiguously.

With these basic requirements you can set up a survey to be automatically scanned and entered in to a spreadsheet or database.

Clearly this is quite involved so you may be able to find a company who can do this for your commercially. Some market research or survey companies might be able to do the heavy lifting for you.


Difference between good and not so good university? Here is my analysis for a theoretical subject like Math:
(Also assume I am super-smart which I am not):

I assume the stipend would be the same. So will the facility.
There is a change that a good university has a more accomplished professor. But since this is research, I can always go and meet him. Also, many schools allow having a guide from outside the university.
From my experience, the elite university always has a difficult curriculum along with some really book-smart students. So I would be really tensed to pass the exam and hence my research would suffer (Note here I am making a distinction between book-smart students and research smart students which in my opinion are not always same).
University brand is a definite thing. I don't know how crucial this would be after PhD. I for sure know that for undergrad, getting a high paying job was directly proportional to the brand of the university he/she graduated from.
Less pressure as people would assume I am not smart (because of mid-level university) and hence I could excel without any performance pressure except for the one which is required to keep the stipend going.

I would like to have some feedback from the current grad student regarding the validity of my reasoning. Feel free to add your own explanation as well.

NOTE: Not so good doesn't mean a bad university, it just means a mid-table university and good university means universities like MIT, Caltech etc.

This post is far too broad to be answered, but I can give some anecdotes.

In my experience, there are no "bad" universities provided that you go to a university that has some kind of national standing.  Sure, you can go to the Back Alley University of Cat Medicine and Mathematics, but I don't think that's what you're getting at.  More likely you're talking about whether you should go to a university that has national or international standing (like MIT) compared to one that might have decent regional standing but that isn't a national research powerhouse in your field.

Where you do your grad studies should depend on many things.  The status of the university is perhaps one of those things but is certainly not at the top of the list, especially for PhD.  You should instead be looking at individual researchers.  Do they do the research you are interested in?  Do they regularly publish? Regularly attend conferences?  Then go and meet with them or speak to them via email about mutually relevant research opportunities.  Determine if this is someone who can teach you to become a good researcher in the field.

Your research credibility depends on the problems you solve and the contributions you make.  An excellent school does not make an excellent researcher just by virtue of having them attend the school.

So, what does a top tier university really offer?  First, it tends to attract top tier talent and lots of funding to go along with it. Second, it is highly competitive, so you will be surrounded by other students of presumably high quality.  Third, yes, you get a bit of the brand to go with it.

What does a smaller university really offer?  Assuming you chose your advisor right (hard problem!) then you will probably get the same quality or higher training to become a researcher yourself, compared to going to a big school.  The problems you are working on might not be ground breaking but will always be interesting and relevant - research doesn't care where you study, it cares what you do.

Finally, it depends so strongly on your field which university is the best.  Speaking about my home province of Ontario, Canada, we certainly have some universities that are considered to be top-tier, probably world class, but only in certain fields.  There is a smaller (but still highly regarded) university whose past is rooted in agricultural research and, despite being a smaller university is extremely highly regarded in that field, probably best in the province for it.  However, it is certainly not a world class hub in, say, human computer interaction.  They wouldn't compete with MIT's media lab there, but that's not to say that someone interested in HCI couldn't make a huge impact going there.