Can we stop looking at recommendation letters and rely purely on "objective" measurements during the admission process? My question has different emphases from Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon?.

As we know, the letter of recommendations are heavily relied in the process of university/graduate school applications and job market. Sometimes it is considered the most important part of the application. Sometimes if a referee wants to strongly recommend someone, s/he may even directly makes a phone call to certain departments/professors.

However, as we know, the quality and importance of recommendation letters depends largely on the subjective opinions and the reputations of the referees. As a result, the system of recommendation letters sometimes encourages young scholars to spend more (and perhaps unnecessary) time using strategies to gain the favor of professional scholars (I believe there are clever ways for average students to "demonstrate" to the professors that they are strong...) or spend less time in communication to avoid bad opinions(if you can't show people that you are smart, then you'd better talk less and try not to show people that you are stupid).

Meanwhile, writing letters seems to be a heavy burden of professors. You might want to argue that this is part of their job, but shouldn't they be given more time on their research and teaching? I heard some professors write dozens of letters every year which costs them a lot of time (excluding the time for communication with applicants).

My question is, is the letter of recommendation really an indispensable part of academic application processes? Can "objective" things like GPA(well, "transcripts" or "courses and grades" might be a more accurate measurement), test and competition scores, publications alone provide enough information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of applicants?

Aside: I don't know much about the application of professional positions (postdoc and tenure-track positions). However, for university/graduate school applications, can we simply raise the difficulty of standard tests(for the information of those who think SAT and GRE general and even subject tests are too easy) to set the applicants apart from each other better? I heard in China, Ph.D. applicants need to take qualifying exams BEFORE being considered.

The problem, in my experience in mathematics in the U.S., is that neither GPA nor GRE test/reflect what is of interest for graduate work in mathematics. So, for example, making the GRE more difficult wouldn't help anything. The point is that the modes of thought, the methodologies, the world views, that are successful for undergrads or course-based Master's students are really quite different from what is needed to do a PhD.

Of course, human beings seem to have an impulse to automate things, or make them formulaic, so that GPA and GRE have a tremendous appeal. The fact (in my observation over a few decades) that these are not good predictors of success in math grad school in the U.S. (after the first year or so) does not deter many people, who'd like things to be that simple.

That is, I think it is inconveniently the case that it is impossible to make "exams" that gauge what astute grad-program admissions committees want to know.

For postdocs and further faculty positions: to my perception, it is significantly more oppressive to have to impress journal editors and referees (who have other interests) than to impress relatively senior people in one's field. That is, the assumption that making a positive impression on senior people is a burden is missing the point. Sure, yes, it is a natural feeling, much like the reaction of teenagers to the "oppression" of their parents, but I think that senior professional academics are more competent in their roles than parents may be, statistically. No, that does not guarantee lack of bias.

As far as I understand it, in the U.S., the game is that one needs to make a good impression for a while, but, then, at a certain point, one has tenure, and, in mathematics, if one has not planned finances to depend on huge external income from grants, one can exercise one's own judgement.

The abstract-economic conflict is that there are far more people who'd like such situations than there are situations. How to decide? ...

EDIT: in light of the original questioner's comments below: the premise that grades reflect the seriousness of a student I think more reflects the assumption about what "serious" means. E.g., it is possible to very scrupulously follow instructions, and to pay careful attention to what will optimize one's grade, without caring at all about the subject of a course. And, in many math courses, the "assigned problems" (from traditional textbooks) are substantially a caricature of what the subject truly is. Often, artificial makework, to fulfill the mythical need for "lots of problems". So I am not particularly interested in performance in regard to such.

There is also the implicit premise that "mathematics is obviously objective". In a certain sense, this is relatively true, but the question really should be about good mathematics. That is, (logical) correctness is not the highest virtue, by any means. And not all details are of equal significance, by far.

So, to my mind, capacity to see a larger picture and infer wise actions from it is a very important thing to cultivate, for professional mathematicians. The basic stuff, in undergrad and beginning grad courses (in the U.S.) is so standard that there are many sources, and anyone who's interested can learn it from those sources. In particular, I tell my students to not over-invest in drilling themselves on things that in real life are easy look-ups. Rather, the general "physical" sensibility and context of questions is what one needs to reflect upon... not standard stuff. Knowing what is standard and what is not, not the power to reproduce it on command, is the desired skill.

And, so, again, performance in usual coursework or GRE and such really tells nothing about the future sensibilities of a student. Letters from astute mentors/advisors have a chance to do so.


Repeating sections within the same paper I'm editing a PhD dissertation and found that the author reused sections of his paper such as Methodology in Chapter 1 and Chapter 4. It seems that his Chapter 1 is a synthesis of the succeeding 3 chapters, so parts from those chapters were just repeated in Chapter 1. Is this acceptable?

It likely depends on the field, and the norms at your particular institution. It is certainly common for dissertations to summarize portions of themselves (they are often 200-800+ pages, summaries are nice).

Based on your question, I wonder if you are concerned about self-plagiarism. I don't believe that this would rise to the level of self-plagiarism, as you are talking about a single document that is (usually) copyrighted by the author and will be published as a single document.

However, in my opinion, that is sloppy work. A good summary should be written to be concise and information dense, rather than an exact replication of other parts of the document. Instead of replicating, it may make sense for the student to reference the other chapters. For example "See Chapter III, Section [insert section] for a summary of [insert what is being summarized]".

Dissertations are already long enough, I don't believe that students need to draw them out through needless repetition.


Can a committee reject thesis after approving it Is it possible that thesis committee first signs off on a thesis and later discovers some weakness (not plagiarism or academic dishonesty, but weak sections or incomplete tables) and rejects it. I am talking about US and time gap may be a couple of years. The defects found in the thesis do not invalidate the main idea, but are more related to incomplete references and data tables.

There's no way to give a definitive answer without knowing your specific university's policies, but here's how it works in general:

If the degree has not yet been awarded, then the approval can presumably be reversed fairly easily.

If the degree has already been awarded, it can still be revoked if the university decides it should never have been awarded in the first place, but this would be rather dramatic.  It's not going to happen unless something is terribly wrong with the thesis.  In particular, you don't need to worry about this unless the problems are much worse than you have portrayed them as being.


Is it acceptable to graphically illustrate the steps of a research proposal? I am currently preparing a research proposal with limited number of pages. As a picture is worth a thousand words; I was wondering if a graphic illustration could be provided that could highlight the different steps involved in the project. Would providing such an illustration enhance the proposal? I never came across such illustrations. Any directions for the same?

We have used several graphics in a proposal:

to illustrate the problem to be solved
to illustrate extensions of the state-of-the-art,
to illustrate dependencies and relationships between several subprojects.

This was a large joint project (collaborative research centre) in computer science sponsored by DFG (German Research Foundation).
The application was successful, but I don't know whether the taste of reviewers for other disciplines or funding agencies differs.


what to do in 2 year gap before CS PhD I am currently an undergraduate student in computer science, rising senior.

I have had extensive research experiences throughout college at competitive universities and research companies (but no publications).

I do not feel prepared to pursue graduate school right after college (due to burnout, health concerns, and general need to prepare for PhD requirements such as recommendations, GRE, etc).

I also come from a low income family, and I would like to take a couple of years to save money, as well as improve my math skills and explore the subfield of CS I would really like to pursue in graduate school.

I know there is some debate surrounding the role of gap years in students’ will to pursue grad school, but I am certain this is the best choice for me.

I would like some advice on what sorts of roles to pursue post-college.

The answer to this question hasn’t been so straightforward for me because I have a couple of conditions that are especially relevant to my needs and aspirations:

  I want something that offers a competitive salary (80k-100k a year in the Boston area)
  I want to start working immediately after I graduate college
  Unfortunately, I do not have the option of pursuing an unrelated activity for the 2 year duration (like, say, backpacking in Europe or
  teaching in China) due to my financial circumstances
  I want to remain a competitive grad school applicant

I’ve considered a couple of options:

Working as a software engineer at a company

  Though I have limited experience in development (because every role
  I’ve ever had since the beginning of college has been
  research-oriented), I think I can use the coming year to update my
  engineering skills and land a role.

  Pro: This sort of role would likely offer a more competitive salary

  Con: I’m not sure it would make me more competitive candidate for
  graduate school

Working in research at a university or national laboratory

  Because I have extensive research experience from college, I think I
  have a good chance at landing a role like this.

  Pro: I think this would make me more competitive for graduate school

  Con: The salary would likely not be competitive

Working in research at a research company

  This would be the best option, but the hardest to land.

  Pros: Likely offers a competitive salary, and will likely make me more
  competitive for graduate school

  Con: I don't think I can land a role like this easily after college, as they usually require at least a masters degree and favorably a PhD, with extensive research experience

I would just like some advice on this situation. Are there some other options I could consider? Is a software engineering role my best bet? If you've been in this situation and in this particular field, what has been your experience? What did you decide to do?

A software engineering position probably doesn't improve your competitiveness for graduate school, unless your graduate school wants you to code (which isn't a requirement for a PhD in computer science). Is coding something you'd be interested in? If so, then the software engineering route would be advantageous. Perhaps more importantly, the software engineering route will make you more competitive to a research company after graduate school.


What causes some students to be selectively impervious to supervision of their thesis writing? Background

In my academic surrounding, we follow the following approach for supervising the actual writing of a bachelor’s and master’s thesis:
Whenever the student has written something more than a page, they can give it to an advisor (PhD student, postdoc, or professor) and they will quickly receive extensive feedback. Later, they hand in entire chapters, and eventually their entire thesis will be criticised – before being submitted.

The idea of this is that the students can refine their writing step by step and learn by actually applying what they learnt from critique.
Also, they do not have to revise the entire thesis with respect to basic issues that can be spotted from one page of writing.
Finally, this process is less exhausting for the advisors, as they usually never have to read a mess of a thesis.

We make all of this clear to students in the very beginning of their thesis and usually later on.
Note that this is not compulsory: If a student does not wish to receive any feedback but just submit a thesis at the end, they are free to do so (though it usually doesn’t turn out well).

The problem

For nine out of ten students, the above works fine¹. The remainder follows the following scheme:

They hand in their writing as we suggest.
They listen to and seem to accept the critique and suggestions. In particular they get to keep their annotated writings and make notes themselves.
They do not amend their existing writing or change the way they write new material. Note that this includes very straightforward changes such as fixing typos.
They continue handing in revisions.
They seem to understand and accept it if we tell them that what they are doing is detrimental to them and annoying for us², but they still do not change anything.
They eventually hand in a mess of a thesis.

There are three striking aspects of this phenomenon:

If it happens, it is very consistent in the way it happens. The students in question do not deviate from the above scheme by stopping handing in their work or change their ways in light of criticism. I also have never observed an intermediate case between this and a normal supervision.
There is no apparent correlation (or anticorrelation) to the quality of the student’s scientific work, their work morale, language proficiency, or how well they respond to feedback on their scientific work. If it happens, it comes out of the blue. In particular, this also happened to students who were otherwise very motivated and delivered good scientific work.
This is independent of who is the student’s primary advisor, i.e., the person who first gets to criticise their writing.

These suggest to me that there is a common underlying cause of this problem that can be addressed.

Question

So far, we addressed the problem with typical procedures for badly performing students – i.e., we tell them that their behaviour is problematic and why, explain our general approach to supervising writing, ask them where the problem lies, etc. –, which has lead nowhere so far. Thus I am looking for alternative approaches.
While my ultimate goal is to prevent or mitigate the above problem, the first step to this is understanding it.
Thus I am asking:

What are possible reasons why students react like this?
Is this a known and ideally scientifically described phenomenon?

¹ or in rare cases doesn’t happen at all because of the student having general difficulties with supervision and working on a thesis project.
² in particular, if they make us read the same material with the same problems twice or have two advisors read the same material and tell them about the same problems, which they then ignore.

I recognize the problem from supervision (also at graduate level), and remember it from when I was a student myself - saw several fellow students who acted like this. I have no golden solution, but here is what I often find efficient.

Some people are poor at receiving criticism. There can be many reasons for that. One that is quite common is that the person receiving the criticism misunderstands criticism of their work as criticism of their person.

At some point we all needed to learn how to write a paper. Some people have a hard time understanding that they can't write a thesis, simply because they have not learned to yet, and that this is completely ok. This does not necessarily correlate with academic performance. You can have good students, who have simply not learned to write an understandable scientific text. And since they are used to acing everything, the fact that they get a lot of criticism, puts them in a place they are not used to. I must say, though, that I find this problem much more prevalent with students who are otherwise also not stellar. It is not surprising that there is a correlation between students who can't write a text, and students who are otherwise poor performers.

My (ours, I should say) attempt at a solution is to be very open with the students about this. Tell them that it is uncommon to have students who are good at writing from day one, and their first returned drafts will be red with ink. This does not mean that they are bad, it means that they are learning. Sometimes TA's needs to be reminded about this as well, in order to not take away the students' motivation.


Contacting Potential PhD Supervisor: Including grades I am starting to contact potential supervisors to do a PhD and I am wondering whether (and how) I should include my grades while contacting them. I am in the UK so there is no GPA standard (there is a GPA but it differs substantially between universities and can be very confusing). So far I have thought of including one of the following:

"Expecting a first class honours degree"
"... with an average of A"
"in the top 5% of my class"

The first two are probably more common but they only place me in the top 20%, I am in the top 5% however, but I feel a bit pretentious to say the third - or is it okay to do so? Is there a more suitable way of including this information?

I am including all my advanced (3rd and 4th year) courses in my CV (and not sending transcripts etc as I feel it would be spamming their inboxes to send loads of documents upon first contact) is that also okay?

By the way, the potential supervisors I am contacting are all over the world and therefore would be impossible to arrange meetings, otherwise I would have done so instead of relying on emails, but in this case, emails are the essential way of communicating with them which is why I am sort of being an overly perfectionist.

Thanks very much,

(An active A.SE member that chose to write this one anonymously.)

I'm a little confused -- you're contacting faculty when you have not yet applied to or been accepted into the program?  What is your purpose in contacting them?  In my experience, at the very beginning stage before you apply, you might contact a faculty member to talk about their interests and what you'd like to work on, to see if you'd be a good fit, what the research possibilities might be, and so on.  Including all your background information at this point would be inappropriate, in my opinion.


How does "Living review" style of publishing work There are journals like "Living reviews in Special Relativity' etc.... They claim that they keep the information up to date, but how does this kind of publishing process work?

The Living Reviews that I know

solicit articles from authors, rather than accept submissions
ask the authors to revisit and revise the articles to keep them up to date.
are online review articles only.

Other than that, they are "standard" journals and peer reviewed.

The revision history of articles can be seen explicitly on each article, as this example shows.

Whilst many reviews are written, few are revised to keep them up to date, and even fewer are revised more than once. From what I've heard the process is: editor hassles author to bring article up to date, author replies that not much has changed or that they don't have enough time right now, wait a year and repeat.


Paper recommender system Does anyone know a tool that gives paper recommendations based on a user defined list of papers?

For example, if I've read papers A, B and C, I would like to find all papers related to A, B and C sorted by relevance. In this list a paper that cites all A, B and C or that is cited by all 3 should rank higher than a paper that is related to just one of them.

EDIT: Some people suggested to use Google Scholar. The problem with Google Scholar is that it gives you papers related to just one article. If I have a base of 5 papers for my bibliography and I want to expand it, then I have to search for papers related to each of them individually and soon the number of options will become huge. I would prefer to have a smarter tool that analyze the links between the 5 papers and recommends articles related to all of them together. This would save a lot of time.

I'm not familiar with such a tool. But, if you reading an article on a scientific website such as http://www.sciencedirect.com/, a list of recommended or related papers will appear on the right hand side. Some of these recommended papers are very related, cited or been cited by the article you are reading. Google Scholar will list all papers that have cited a certain that too. I hope this helps.


Fun experiment on memory: for data of one subject (myself), is there a name for it? I'm doing a year experiment on memory and I'm the only subject. I will be done collecting data in 2 months. I've been using software to evaluate myself daily as I collect data.

Is there a name in the literature for such kind of experiments where you evaluate yourself?

(NOTE: I won't publish my results, it's only for fun and to have an educated guess of my progress in memorizing).

Self-experimentation refers to the special case of single-subject research in which the experimenter conducts the experiment on himself or herself.

(Source: Wikipedia)


How should the session chair introduce presentation titles which are ungrammatical? As a session chair recently, I was to introduce a talk where the title of the talk was ungrammatical (in both the abstract and talk slides), likely due to the presenter not being a native English speaker.  Two words should have been in plural when they were not, which became clear after reading the abstract.

I faced a dilemma:

read the corrected title, and possibly embarrass the speaker (possibly putting them off their talk), or
deliberately read the ungrammatical title.

I attempted a compromise: I acted casual, as if I wasn't reading the title word for word.

Question: How should the session chair introduce presentation titles which are ungrammatical?

I'm just wondering what's the best solution in this situation (or perhaps what I did "on the fly" was the best).

I would not know any reason that forces chairs to read the title of the talk.
On the contrary, even with grammatically correct titles, it feels rather lazy and unnatural to me.
Also there is a certain kind of speaker who will read their title, no matter what you do.
This is a little bit less awkward, if you haven’t read the title already.

Hence, if I am sufficiently comfortable with the subject (which I think I should be when chairing), I would always attempt to paraphrase the title.
For example, suppose your title is:

  How should the session chair introduce presentation title which ungrammatical?

Then I could introduce you with:

  The first speaker is Rebecca J. Stones, who investigated ungrammatical presentation titles and will talk about how chairs should introduce them.


Advisor not responding to emails, conference fee deadline approaching TL;DR:: My advisor, who is in charge of paying a conference paper registration fee, is nonresponsive and the deadline is approaching. What can I do?
I am working part-time in a research institute, which is running mostly from home-office right now.
Together with a professor and my institute supervisor we wrote a conference paper that was accepted in peer review, and the next deadline for the final submission is drawing close.
My advisor is the one responsible for the funding, and I talked to him (voice chat) about paying the registration fee. Afterwards, I have emailed him about other issues as well, for example me needing to get permission to enter the institute for paper-related things (need to update a plot etc.). I have not heard from him since around 3 weeks. He may very well be on vacation, but has not set up an away-message. He may or may not have forgotten about the deadline.
Question: How can I handle the registration fee deadline, without knowing whether my advisor will take care of it in time?
I see some options here:

Wait and do nothing about it, the problem might resolve itself
Escalate the problem and email either the professor, a higher-up or a different institute advisor who may know which steps to take
Pay the fee myself and hope it will be covered by the institute later

Note that in theory I could afford to temporarily cover the fee, but generally I would like to avoid it.

This question may very well be overly cautious but raising money from the institute may take some time.
I am aware of this related question about withdrawal due to funding, but I do not want to withdraw the paper.

Many conference organizers are well aware of how "organized" some advisors / faculty / university accounting departments are.
Contact them and if you can provide evidence that it will "eventually" be paid then they will usually accept that.


Recommendation Letter for grad school without academic connections I have recently developed an interest in a hot topic of computer science and I would like to pursue a master's degree in that topic.
Looking at the available grad school programs and their admissions process they all (very understandably) require recommendation letters.

The issue is that I graduated 6 years ago and not expecting to ever need a recommendation letter for further academic development I have not kept any connections with previous professors. I could try to contact some of them who I had a good relationship with back then, but I believe the most I would get now is either a rejection or a run of the mill "This student was punctual and had good grades" type of letter.

In the past 6 years I have served in the army for a year and worked in the industry for the next 5. I believe I have a good chance of getting a good recommendation letter from past and current managers.

My question is this. Do I absolutely need recommendation letters from professors in order to get a place at a grad school program or is anybody who I have worked under a good reference?
How do admissions committees look upon recommendation letters by non academics?

I am not looking for a career in academia. I want to apply the knowledge I will get in the industry. (And I intend to put this in my motivation letter)

If it makes any difference I am interested in European universities

This is the sort of question that can only be answered correctly by an individual university. Some will interpret such rules very strictly, others not so much. You can, of course, inquire directly with either the admissions office or an individual academic department, giving your situation. The feedback you get should guide you and help you avoid some of the frustration.

However, as you do that, you can also try to re-establish the relationships you once had, in person if possible. You may be surprised and some of the people may remember you and wish to help. This reestablishment of old relationships is a good thing in any case and people may be able to guide you further.

The comment of user Stella Biderman about industry letters is also correct and will help in most cases.

Another avenue that might be open to you, however, is to actually approach a faculty member at one of the universities you would like to attend. You can most likely learn their office hours from an administration office. Show up, perhaps having first sent a letter stating that you will, and talk about what you would like to do. If you can interest them in you, they might be able to ease your way.

Faculty members are busy of course, so make any such meeting at their convenience and be ready to state your goals and make your case succinctly. Again, you are likely to get further advice, rather than a brush-off.

In general, I think that unusual situations don't fare well unless unusual measures are taken. If you just meld into the crowd you won't get any "special" consideration.

There are likely a lot of others in similar situations. Find a way to stand out a bit from the crowd.


Should licensed code be acknowledged in Thesis When some function library licensed under BSD is used in simulations, should it be acknowledged in Bachelors/Masters Thesis, which have no length restrictions?

In this particular case the functions are implementations of commonly known algorithms like k-nearest neighbors, A* and such. Similarly how MATLAB/Python standard libraries are seldom acknowledged, should the third party code that does not contribute theoretically be not acknowledged?

EDIT: In OR, code and the implementation is often left off. But I do not know whether it would be unethical to not cite it in a case where the algorithms used are bread and butter, without any contribution. For the journals these would not be mentioned, but the Thesis has no length restrictions, so there is no similar reason not to.

Generally in a thesis or in an academic paper in my field (numerical modeling, engineering) people try to mention which languages and library they have used to implement an algorithm or a method. If you use a commonly known algorithm which was implemented in a library (whatever the license of that library is) I think it would be most appropriate to mention which implementation of the library is used in your methodology section.

The are numerous reasons for this. First it gives credit to the people who wrote the library. You will often see on library website a paper to cite which is the "defining paper" of the library. It is good to acknowledge that. Second, if there were to be a bug found in the future in the library or some limitation, this could then be easily traced back to your results to justify surprising results. Thus it is more rigorous to state which implementation and which version you are using.

In all cases, I believe that crucial libraries that implement complex algorithmic elements should be acknowledged in the methodology section, along with the library version and a reference to it if such a reference exist.


Can I remind a professor that I submitted a "good" essay in her class? (LOR request) I would like to ask my former professor for a reference, I'm not sure how to formulate it and am worried the professor won't remember me. I submitted a good essay in her class though (got an A).

Can I write:

  Dear Professor,

  I studied with you 2 years ago, I don't know if you
  remember. In any case, I submitted a good essay in your class and
  wanted to ask you for a letter of recommendation?

A better outline might be somehting like:

  Dear Professor Smith,

  I am planning to apply to Teleportation programme at the University of
  Wonderland for my graduate studies. They require two reference
  letters, and your area of interest is related to the programme I am
  applying to.

  Would you please be kind enough to write a letter of recommendation?

  I have taken your course Introduction to Supernatural Incidents (ISI
  101) in 2016 - 2017 Fall semester, and you have noted that one of my
  assignments were outstanding.

Keep in mind that if you suspect that the professor wouldn't even remember you, it is better not to ask that professor for a letter of recommendation, because chances are they are going to write a mediocre letter.

Why did I pick this outline

Because first of all, the reason for you writing a mail should be explained at the first sentence. An avarage professor mailbox receives around 100 mails per day. Thus, they decide whether or not to read the full mail in a few seconds.

The actual reason for such mail is your application for graduate studies, and you give solid reasons for the letter of recommendation. Note that in your outline, the letter of recommendation is just mentioned. It seems like you wanted to remind the professor that you were his student, and handed in a good essay.

Another reason is, the punctiation and language. Although overly-formal emails are not good, using a proper language helps.

To sum up, the professor wants to know three things very clearly, and as soon as possible:

Why are you writing this mail?
What do you want from me?
Why would I grant your wish?


Are there accepted criteria to define an author's institutional affiliation? I ask this question because there are institutions that pay authors an honorarium to add the institution as an additional affiliation when the authors publish, even when those authors do not have any kind of contract or appointment with the institution, nor do research or teach there. This is clearly a way to game the system and increase the number of publications accounted to that institution. This is evidently not ethical, but I do not know if there are any stated policies or regulations on this practice. The end result is that a university that does do not provide funding or resources for research will have the same number of publications as the university that does conduct and foster research.

This is pretty old, but I will provide an answer to an increasingly relevant question. Affiliation is understood to be where the major part of the work was done. If this is not the author's current primary employment, then those details should be included in the contact details and/or acknowledgements. Any paid affiliation is unethical. Surprisingly, I did not find any reference to this "creative affiliation" in the COPE standards https://publicationethics.org/.

Many publishers include a statement about what to do if affiliation changes during the publication process - i.e. how to credit the institution where the work was begun and the institution where the publication was finalized. For example "Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address." from Elsevier Guidelines for Authors (https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-archaeological-science/0305-4403/guide-for-authors, but they all include this). It seems that what the OP describes is so unethical that no one has addressed it explicitly (yet).


Am I conveying disrespect if I omit my gender pronoun from a conference nametag? Situation

I have an academic conference coming up, and on the registration site we are instructed to optionally enter a personal gender pronoun (PGP) to appear on our name tags. To enter it or not to enter it?

Thoughts

My personal view is the following: if someone does include a PGP on their tag, then I understand that they'd like me to know something about their identity in order to respectfully converse with/about them. In the case that that person does use an non-standard pronoun (if that's the right terminology), then this offers them what is already privileged to those whose gender is aligned with societal assumptions (e.g. a white male who identifies as a man and uses the PGP "he/his", like me) to not have to make their identity a point of conversation at the outset of any interaction. So, I respect and appreciate that the organizing committee is being progressive and inclusive in this sense.

As for myself, I don't have any desire to include my PGP on the name tag. I simply don't have a very strong sense of identity, and don't think of the self in those terms. I realize that there is a painfully obvious response to this; I don't have to worry about it because I already conform to societal assumptions about gender anyway. I have the privilege of knowing that no one is going to call me "she" by accident. But, if I ask myself if I would strongly object if someone did... I dunno, I suppose I'd prefer that didn't happen.

We can look at another dimension of identity, ethnicity, to try and isolate exactly what I'm saying. I'm Italian, which means I have dark skin and hair. Fairly often in life I've encountered people who make the false assumption that I'm actually Mexican or middle eastern. I may correct them if it was appropriate to do so, but really I've never been offended or uncomfortable by it; I simply don't care enough about identity. If there was an optional field for filling in your ethnicity on a conference nametag, I wouldn't have any desire to complete that either, even though I do know that mine is often mistaken.

A potential flaw with this analogy is that gender is ubiquitous in conversation. The same is not true of ethnicity necessarily. Still, all I mean is that I don't feel compelled to broadcast anything about my identity as a pretext to interaction. If someone wants to learn about who I am, they can speak to me. It wouldn't make me more comfortable to walk around knowing that information about my identity can be obtained on sight (be it gender or anything else).

Note:

I do not want to be misunderstood as attempting to assert my beliefs onto others. Even though I don't put strong value in identity, I'm not saying that identity is objectively not valuable; I respect that to some people identity is of enormous value, and I appreciate that those people put their PGP on their name tag so that I can treat them the way they'd like to be treated.

Question

Now, my real question is not necessarily about the agreeableness of the position I've described above (though I'm happy to discuss it). Rather, I'd like to ask if the act of omitting the PGP from the name tag itself, even if well motivated/justified, is inadvertently signaling any disrespect. At the last one of these conferences, the vast majority of people did include the PGP. Now, I don't feel compelled to conform for conformity's sake, but I also don't want to give the false impression that I'm a proponent of gender binarism.

It seems to me that the way to signal respect is, quite simply, by literally respecting people’s choice as to how they wish to present themselves to the world. So I’d advise you to take care to refer to people using their preferred pronoun as they chose to list it on their name tag (or using common sense if no pronoun is indicated). And don’t insult or think ill of anyone for making a choice that you disagree with regarding their pronoun, or regarding a choice not to list a pronoun for that matter.

While this advice may seem too obvious to be helpful, my point is that you are also entitled to the same respect that I just advised you to accord others. When you fill that form, you are choosing how you wish to present yourself to the world. Any choice that you make is 100% legitimate and deserves to be respected, including not wanting to list a pronoun. You don’t owe anyone a reason or an explanation of what (if anything) you are trying to “signal”. And anyone who professes to support other people’s rights to choose a pronoun to describe themselves, by extension supports your right to describe yourself however you choose to. Thus, I don’t see how any such person can take offense to your decision without being inconsistent and somewhat of a hypocrite. It doesn’t mean there aren’t such people who would find a way to imbue your action with a meaning it doesn’t have and take offense, but if there are I’m pretty sure you can safely ignore them, or, better yet, if challenged by them you can easily (and in a friendly way, I suggest) explain to them why they are misguided to be offended.

Edit: To address some of what’s been said in the comments and other answers, here are a couple more thoughts that occurred to me:

Someone (@vaelus) said my answer sidesteps the question since it focuses on whether people should be offended, but “doesn't advise on how likely it actually is for people to be offended.” That is correct. The reason why I chose to focus on this aspect is that there are situations where any action we take is likely to offend or annoy someone. Arguably most of life is like that, since the world unfortunately has many unreasonable people. Here too, I expect that some people will likely be annoyed also by the inclusion of pronouns on name tags, and might specifically be annoyed with OP if they were to take the action of including one. So it’s a Catch 22, damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t sort of situation. Therefore in my opinion the correct way to make decisions about tricky dilemmas like this is to base your actions on logic, and to be at peace with your own choices and be prepared to defend them if challenged. “Will people be offended?” is simply the wrong question to ask.
A lot of people are focusing on what OP will be “signaling” with each of the various choices that are available to them. And yet I find it amusing and interesting that almost everyone with an opinion is reading the “signal” a bit differently from everyone else. So, if the signal is such that 10 people look at it and each one is “reading” a different meaning into it (and appearing pretty confident that their reading is the correct one) isn’t that a sign that there actually isn’t any signal there to interpret, or that if there is then it is an extremely weak one at best? (Moreover, this is after we read OP’s very detailed explanation of what their opinion actually is! No signal is even necessary in this case.) So again, I think the focus on the signal is misguided. As @vladhagen said in another answer, the pronoun field is optional, and optional means precisely that. The only signal that not including a pronoun legitimately sends is “I chose to exercise my right not to include a pronoun.”


What is meaning of rolling deadline of grad school application in US? I am applying for US grad schools and not finding a deadline on the website of certain schools. Instead, those websites say rolling deadline. I am confused what is meant by rolling deadline. Does it mean that applications are reviewed in the order they are received? If so, I am guessing this 'first come first serve' method would be unfair to a good applicant who apply relatively late and decisions are already made.

When there is a "rolling deadline" of any kind there is usually a "date of full consideration", or at least the earliest date the program will begin reviewing applications. Then the program will review applications as they come in, extending offers daily/weekly.

The program will continue to accept applications until a final close day is reached, or until they have filled all their available seats - whichever comes first. This is on contrast to programs that do not view any applications of any kind until the application date has passed, and then all applications are reviewed at once.

If you apply early to such a program, you may still be declined/rejected. However if you wait until too late then indeed if all seats are taken and the program is closed then you miss out on being considered, regardless of how good an applicant you were.

In such a system you are generally best to get in your application as close to the first review date when applications open. In the job world this is analogous to job postings that list "until position is filled", and basically work the same way.


Getting PhD opportunities abroad in my thirties I'm a math student in a Latin American country and I'm 31 years old. Next year I'll be starting my PhD, here, in my country. I have to say that the complete program, equivalent to a Bachelor plus Master, took me 7/8 years to complete. This was partly because I've taught a lot, working as a TA(paid positions won by contest).

My final dissertation included no original work, maybe the exposition of the topics, but no new results nor published work. Nevertheless , I'd call myself a pretty decent student. I usually recieve encouraging feedback from professors and I also have a very high GPA.

Recently, I've been considering the possibility of doing my PhD abroad, in a good school if possible, not necessarily top ranked. I wonder what my chances are of being able to do that. Are my expectations real or am I too weak for such things? Also, I think that it might be possible to get some short research/collaboration stays, say a semester or so, within the context of my PhD here. How possible is this for someone with my background?

One last possibility is switching schools in the middle of the PhD. Like, starting here, doing some progress and then moving elsewhere. I know two students who did that but they had great backgrounds. Is this possible for someone like me? I mean keeping it real, assuming decent PhD work but not assuming an extraordinary output.

It is not easy to answer your question, since it is not clear what is your goal (e.g. what you mean by a "good" school), and what is your current situation (e.g. research expertise and area).

If by a "good" school you mean a University in US or Western Europe, then you probably know that there is a really strong competition there. You should carefully evaluate your personal strengths and play on them if you want to be admitted. Your current age will not be seen as disadvantage (but perhaps will not be seen as advantage either). However, you slow progress through your degrees may raise questions. Your potential supervisors want to choose a candidate who is likely to complete the project in time. You had to spend a lot of time doing TA's in your country, which slowed your progress - how can you ensure this will not happen with your PhD program?

Another important factor is your research field and research expertise. You don't have published papers, which is usually a disadvantage for PhD admissions. You will have to provide a sample of your academic writing - do you already have it? What about your research area (educational background) - is it modern and currently developing with a huge demand for specialists, or is it classical, well-established, and producing a lot of unemployed PhD's every year?

Lastly, your consider jumping a ship in a middle of your PhD program. How do you think you current School will like it? They invested resources in someone, who took them and left them for a better place. If the only reason for doing this is your personal comfort, then the decision you consider is (in my opinion) very non-ethical. I would not personally consider hiring someone as a PhD candidate if I am not sure they are committed to work to completion. Please, realise that our resources (time and money) in academia are extremely tight - don't waste them for your own joy.


Citing yourself on slides when your lastname consists of multiple words When citing a paper that you coauthored on a slide it is common to abbreviate your name to just the first letter of your last name, or your initials. So John Doe would become D or JD.

My last name consists of multiple words like 'van der Broek'. Should I then abbreviate it to 'vdB' or just 'B'?

It's an informal convention, so I think the answer is as much a matter of personal style as anything else.  I would most expect "vdB", but if someone used "B", I wouldn't be confused by that.


Transferring Computer Science graduate school I have been admitted to University of Texas at Dallas for Master's in Computer Science program and have joined in Spring. Although, I want to have second opinion and was wondering if it's possible to transfer my school. I have some queries in the same regard:-

Do I need to apply from scratch to the new school that I intend to apply into?
Are the credits, that I gain in this term, transferable to the new school?

Any help would be really appreciated.

It isn't usually possible to "transfer" to another school, but you could always apply to a different program and terminate your current program. In this case, to answer your questions:

Yes, you will need to apply to any new schools you'd like to consider. They are independent institutions, so they need to evaluate you according to their own standards.
You will have to ask the school you apply to how they will take transfer credits. There is often a credit limit, and you might need to take an exam or by some other method prove your competency.

Note that you may need to provide reasoning for why you are switching programs when you apply to an alternate program. It may be harder to get into a program given this -- schools may not want to take a risk on a student that quickly exited out of another program.


How to generate credible research in a non-academic setting How is research normally done in corporate settings or other settings outside of an academic environment? More importantly how do you get the research to be given credit to you by those in the academic community?

For most people, doing good research requires some level of collaboration. Perhaps a lot, perhaps only a little. But you almost certainly need an environment (physical or virtual) in which you can bounce ideas off of others and get some feedback on whether they seem worthwhile to pursue. Many minds are more powerful than one (unlike cooks).
Some organizations like Google and IBM Research provide this collaborative atmosphere and have many opportunities to gain perspective and share ideas. They will have research "groups", just as a university has groups and seminars. Even in an R1 university in the US, the coffee room can be a most valuable asset.
If you are in academia, but at a small Liberal Arts College in the US, it can be hard to find enough people locally to share ideas with. So you have to cast a wider net to find people interested in the same things you are. One way, perhaps, is to have visitors come to talk to students and give you an opportunity to share ideas.
If you are still a graduate student it is a good time to start to build a collaborative network. You can draw on that of your professor(s) but also among students in the same sub-fields. Conferences are also a good way to do this, provided that you are willing to be outgoing with your peers. Having "business cards" with contact information is good in such environments, though "tapping phones" is probably the modern equivalent.
Another thing that helps you write the papers that makes you "credible" is to make sure that you don't get stuck on individual problems. Your collaborators can help, but so can a simple notebook of research ideas that you develop over time. If one project seems to be blocked, perhaps all you need is to spend some effort on another to "free up" the blocked synapses. Sometimes pushing too hard on a problem just results in spinning the mental wheels. Have a way to take break, either a productive one or, perhaps some aerobic activity.


Is research output determined by your type of institution more than your skill? I've often thought it was strange that one's value as a scholar is determined largely on the basis of one's research, yet one's ability to perform "good" (in quantitative and qualitative terms) research is based largely on the type of institution where one works.

Consider the following scenario: Scholar A gets a job at an R1 straight out of grad school. Scholar A therefore has a light teaching load, generous sabbatical, a large research budget and so on. As a result, Scholar A goes on to publish prolifically in top journals. Scholar A's professional profile rises. The university that hired him pats itself on the back for having made the right bet in hiring him, since, of course, he turned out to be a "top" scholar.

Scholar B, meanwhile, attended the same graduate institution as Scholar A, and wrote a dissertation that was deemed equally meritorious. Due to the vicissitudes of the academic job market, however, Scholar B ends up with a first job at a teaching-focused college rather than an R1. Saddled with a 3/3 teaching load and few opportunities for internal research funding or protected research time, Scholar B publishes little, and most of what he does publish is in second-tier journals. Even if he is a great teacher, he remains unheard of within his field, since status is determined mostly on the basis of research. Consequently, people who look at Scholar B's academic record ten or twenty years after his Ph.D. confidently conclude that he is a mediocre scholar, who would never have been fit for an R1 that hires top scholars.

This would seem unfair. Scholar B might have been just as productive research-wise as Scholar A, had the former had the good fortune of working at an institution that facilitated an aggressive research agenda. But Scholar B ends up being deemed "not very smart" because he produces little research.

In other words, it has always seemed to me that scholarly success is in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The R1s that pride themselves on hiring "top" scholars don't actually pick or attract the right people as much as they create the conditions that allow one to turn into a top scholar (in a world where, again, that status is based mostly on your research).

I happen to be a tenured faculty member at an R1 university, with a publication record that I am quite proud of. But I'd be lying to myself if I said that I would have published as much -- and earned the reputation I have in my field -- if I'd spent the years since my Ph.D. working in a more teaching-heavy place.

I'm also in the humanities. I'm not sure whether the trend I describe above exists in the sciences.

Is research output determined by your type of institution more than your skill?

Almost definitely. It doesn't matter how much skill you have if you do not actually use the skill. There, however, are people at R1s who do not have the needed skills to be successful researchers.

Your comments like

  Consequently, people who look at Scholar B's academic record ten or twenty years after his Ph.D. confidently conclude that he is a mediocre scholar, who would never have been fit for an R1 that hires top scholars.

and

  But Scholar B ends up being deemed "not very smart" because he produces little research.

are not universally true. I don't know many people who judge intelligence (i.e., smartness) based on research output. In my field we often have to evaluate how people who chose to work in industry will be able to fit into an R1 environment.


Who draws the good diagrams for the motivation of an article I see some papers (more specific Magazine, Tutorial, and state-of-the-art papers) contain good illustration to highlight the motivation of the article. It's not about simple flow chart or block diagram with notations, however, some extra effort that makes a paper more exciting. Is there any professional team (e.g., journal's editorial team) to make these type of illustration or do the authors themselves draw it? I feel that art and science are not really far apart, rather they are combined.

The illustrations that are included inside a journal article are essentially always created by the authors.  This may entail getting somebody else to do the actual graphics work, if none of the authors are skilled in that area, but the design concept is created by the authors.

In some higher-end journals, some articles may be specially highlighted (with graphics about them appearing on the cover, for example).  In these cases, the graphics are typically produced (or at least heavily edited) by the journal's design staff.  The authors are involved in decided how best to illustrate their work, but the journal professionals create the actual images.


Is it ethical to extract my contributions from a multidisciplinary collaboration ( & exclude my co-authors work )?) I worked on a big report with a bunch of people (published online as an agency report). Can I extract my data and analysis from the report, expand on it, exclude what everyone else did, and publish separately in a journal? One of the Co-authors was also the Co-PI and did a lot of editing, plus brought in funds but I feel that co-pI did not contribute substantially to what I will extract for my journal article.

Usually large collaborations have some ground rules for who can publish on what with who as the authors.  Make sure that you're not bound by those rules first.

Second, think whether you have anything to gain.  Is this second paper going to really further your career if it damages your reputation among this group?  What if none of these people or their postdocs and grad students ever want to Co-PI with you again?  If you're asking whether your behavior is OK then you must have some feeling that it is not.

The only reasonable thing to do is to ask all the people involved.  It's not like you're risking them learning something about your project that you want to keep secret because you're already collaborating.  The standard thing is to contact them with your paper idea and ask whether they think they contributed substantially and want to be a co-author.


How to cite a method that has a huge history of contributors? I’m finishing my first paper, and am struggling with the citations a bit.

I have used a particular implementation of an algorithm.
The citation of those who thought of this particular variation and implementation of the algorithm is clear, but should I also include the creators of the original idea, and not just the implementation that I use?

In the case of genetic algorithms, seems like a tower where quite a lot of people have worked on (see Wikipedia for a short history), and it isn’t really clear who put the first or most important stone. Most people cite the work of J. Holland who popularized it, but that also doesn’t really feel right, since I wouldn’t give credit to all the others. On the other hand I don’t want to spend half a page repeating the history of the idea, citing 15 papers or so.

Some options that crossed my mind:

Is it enough to refer to the name of the idea (of which the detailed history is quite accessible such in the example)?
A huge list of citations [5,6,7,8,...,20].
Referring to a source that has a nice overview of the history.

What would you advise?

To cite a body of work large enough to have generated textbooks or comprehensive review papers, you should cite a good recent textbook or comprehensive review paper.
You may not need to, however, depending on why and how you are using the algorithm.
The key is to provide the reader with everything they need to know about why you chose that algorithm and the significance of the choice.

In this case, if your work is focused on genetic algorithms and/or their applications, then you should position it within the comprehensive space of genetic algorithms work.  You would then cite both the textbook/review sources and the more specific "nearby" pieces to compare it to.

In the other hand, if your work is focused on an application, it's its more just about needing some tool and you happened to find genetic algorithms promising, then you don't need the comprehensive references because that's not the point.  Instead,
if you chose Algorithm X for particular reasons, then you should explain why you didn't pick competitor Algorithms Y, Z, and W (citing each). If you just chose Algorithm X because you thought that probably any algorithm would likely do, then be clear about that fact and don't worry about positioning it within a larger field, because honestly you haven't.


How many papers per week does a professor typically read? I'm curious as to how many papers one would need to read per week, in order to keep up with the latest research in a particular field. For example, how many papers on average would a typical tenured professor read in a week?

I am aware the answer might vary a lot between different fields, so perhaps answers could give a range or try to break it down by disciplines.

There is no typical, even within a field, because different professors tend to find different "niches" in how they relate to the literature, and the depth with which they read papers.

I have known some professors who establish themselves as the "scholars" of a department and deeply read dozens of papers per week.  I have known other professors who rarely read anything, because they focus on construction of new gizmos instead, pick up their knowledge of the field through conferences, and make their collaborators and postdocs fill in the "related work" section of their papers.

Likewise, it's a mistake to think that "read a paper" has a single definition. At one extreme, sometimes one wants to spend a great deal of time working through the contents of a paper. At the other extreme there are times one just wants to check the "headline" conclusion and see if it can help you with your problem or not.

Bottom line: there is no good answer to your question besides "it depends".


What is the rationale for having references before the article text? Certain journals (for example, Optics Express) place the references of papers in between the abstract and the article text:

How common is this practice? Is there some specific design reason for this? As a casual reader, I find it disconcerting and annoying, and tend to see it as another barrier between googling the paper and actually getting at the text. However, I understand there may be other workflows for which this is useful. Can anyone point out possible justifications for this practice?

Usually the article consists of three or four parts. Introduction, main text which is your original research and conclusion. There may also be an appendix.
So, usually most of the citations are from the introduction because you mainly talk about the prevosly done researches there. So, when I read the introduction I have to constantly go back and forth to check the citations, but if the citations are located nearby the introduction, it is more convenient.

I read sceintific articles a lot and I can say that this is not a common practice in physics. I can't talk about the articles in other fields.


Listing talks given at home institution on CV I've given many talks at my home institution, at the undergraduate and graduate colloquiums, and in a few seminars. The list is getting quite long.

Is it appropriate to list many talks given at my home institution? Does it reflect badly on me?

First of all, it's great that this list is becoming long!  It's good to be taking every opportunity you can as a student to practice presentations, and many students try to avoid this rather than embrace it.

Now, as for what to include in the C.V.: while in principle you can include anything, in practice you want the C.V. to convey "here are all of the things I've done that I think are significant".  Thus, it's not the question of home institution per se, but the significance of the talk venue that matters.  For example: if you were invited to give a talk in a seminar series where most of the other speakers come from other institutions, that's nearly as significant as giving a talk elsewhere.  Giving a required talk in the internal graduate colloquium matters much less.

I would recommend keeping some evidence of the fact that you are giving many presentations on your C.V.  To keep it from feeling like filler, however, you can compress the "unimportant" talks into a single bullet point, like "NN presentations in internal meetings, seminars, and colloquiums."  That conveys the information without feeling spammy.  Once you've built up a significant record of giving talks at external venues like conferences and other institutions, then you can drop that bullet point as being assumed.


Can supplementary materials be used in different manuscripts? Can the same supplementary materials be used in different manuscripts?

For example, hdy201491x2.docx in
this article
contains a table showing "Detailed hit frequencies (%) of the in silico analysis of the F479/R888 primer set for Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota."

The same table appears as
mbt212162-sup-0002-tables1.docx in this other article.

From the point of view of originality, I would say that supplementary materials can be used in different manuscripts.

Indeed, supplementary materials is usually brought along the article/chapter to present a data set, as in your example, so it's like archival material, rather than its analysis/interpretation that is carried out in the article itself.

As a result, the same set of supplementary materials might be reproduced and used in different articles, but analysed in different and bringing to different conclusions.


Does it have a bad effect on my career if I publish in Frontiers journals? Recently, one of my articles has been accepted in Frontiers. At first, I thought, Frontiers' journals are reputable and they acted like a reputable journal by just assigning an associate editor and then 2 reviewers to take care of my article. Last month, they sent the reviewers' comments. It was easy overall for both reviewers' comments. I sent the revised version and it got accepted. You know, Frontiers show the name of reviewers after that article is accepted. I checked the profile and research interests of both reviewers, but unfortunately none of them had any interest or published materials in the field of my article. Even one of them was from a really distant major that I study, which makes me think that their comments were easy cause they did not have any expertise in this field. Right now, I have a really bad feeling about it and want to know does it have any bad effect on me when someone looks at my article and see it got reviewed by some people without knowledge about this field? Any suggestion or recommendation is appreciated.

Update

I used financial hardship ground to withdraw my article from publishing and thanks to not paying their publishing fee as well as not approving the proof version of article and not transferring copyright to Frontiers, it seems they accepted to withdraw my article. In fact, they act pretty much like a predatory journal. I checked several published or accepted articles in that particular journal: "Frontiers in Materials" and indeed it seems there is no connection between peer-reviewers background and the reviewed articles. Also, the interesting thing, which I'm not sure how to interpret, is that usually the peer-reviewers of their articles are from same country or even same university as authors that might introduce high chance of conflict of interests... Anyway, I have a plan to submit it in a more prestigious journal in my field (definitely not OA).

The short answer is, you shouldn't be too worried, but you should make some deliberate choices with your next submissions.
As @BryanKrause mentions, the quality of Frontiers in depends on the specific journal. Some have better editors than others, who will/are able to recruit better reviewers, and therefore a better review/editorial process. I have heard Frontiers in Neuroscience maintains higher standards.
Frontiers seems to revolve around 'special issues', so you will always need to considder who the specific editors of the issue are. I have noticed in some cases, these special issues are used to create an 'easy' venue for a specific community to generate papers out of a workshop or symposium. In other cases, the special issues can be considered quite serious.
Overall, Frontiers in, and the open-access publishing model in general, is very young. They are also trying out some rather radical ideas for the review process. Many people will be skeptical for a while, regardless of the quality. Some will embrace it, and also have a better opinion of others who embrace it. My expectation is that in the long term, Frontiers (or some other open-access journals) will win out, but this will take some time.
As a consequence, I'd say it is unfortunate if you published your best work in a Frontiers in which isn't of the best quality. But if you have other publications in more established venues, it is unlikely to count against you with a future hiring committee. My advice is to make sure your next paper or two are in very established journals, after which it is up to you if you want to push the open-access model more again.


How many hours do PhD students work as a TA (total)? How many hours do you work as a graduate teaching assistant and what is the breakdown? (This might include actual teaching hours, office hours, grading, tutoring center hours, etc).

I am in a Statistics PhD program and am receiving support (tuition plus a stipend). My department has assigned me a full 20 hours. I understand that the support is technically for 20 hours of work, but my understanding was that this was rarely assigned in full having talked to friends at other schools and in other departments within my school. Still, I'd like to hear from a wider pool of people.

Here is my assignment:
one recitation, 40 students (1 hour)
grading for recitation (2 hours)
weekly section meeting (1 hour)
prep for recitation (1-2 hours)
office hours (4 hours)
tutoring center (10 hours)

The worst part is that I wasn't allowed to choose my own office hours (and why do I need 4 for a one-hour recitation) or the tutoring center hours, which include evening hours. I highly regret choosing this program. The other program that I wanted to go to assigns two recitations (1 hour each) and ONE office hour, plus grading.

I look forward to hearing your input. Even if you've graduated, if you remember any of your past teaching assignments, I'd appreciate hearing it.

So are you saying you will only be TAing for 10 hours weekly? And you are unhappy about that?

This work load depends on the university. Some schools are notorious for loading graduate students with lots of TA work. Where I went to school, I had to TA for 20 hours full.

So if you are only required to work for 10 hours (and are getting paid for 20), if I were you, I wouldn't complain about it. -:)


What does it mean by a "research university"? For example, University of Maryland, Baltimore County is said to be a research university. (Same thing for Rice University, for example.)

Are there "non-research universities" also? What is the difference?

In the US, the Carnegie classification is used to describe different kinds of academic institutions. The system  changed in 2005, but under the previous incarnation, universities that had significant research components were called "R1" universities. Under the new system, universities with research components are called "RU/H" or "RU/VH" (Research University/(V)ery (H)igh research). It's most likely that the term 'research university' is an indirect reference to this.

Update: The Carnegie classification has many categories of institution: only three of them are predominantly research-focused. So there are many more "non-research" institutions than there are research institutions.


Is reuse of "internal" results considered self-plagiarism if used in a later publication? This is a little bit different from the case of reusing boilerplate text.

Say one has done a series of experiments (either real or "virtual") to produce a set of results. Because the results are inconclusive as to the cause of certain effects, an additional, much larger set of experiments were performed under a series of different conditions to complete the "factorial matrix" of possibilities (all possible states of factor X crossed with all possible states of factor Y).

However, because the original results are valid, and represent unique "cells" in the factorial matrix, is it necessary to rerun the experiments for a future publication, or is it just a matter of obtaining journal permission for the re-use of figures and tables associated with the presentation of the data? As an example, am I violating copyright if I add a new set of curves to a figure which contains the same data as before?

I ask in part because there was just today a retraction based on reuse of figures, and I'd rather not run afoul of guidelines.

From my experience, researchers are free to re-use a given dataset as many times as they want in numerous publications. I've been involved in single datasets (which, admittedly, took years to build) that generated dozens of papers, and that is by no means a unique scenario. My understanding is that researchers are to refrain from publishing an identical analysis on an identical dataset in different papers. If you're using a single dataset for multiple analyses, there's no need to re-generate the data.


Bachelor thesis without a research question I have been asked to provide feedback regarding a paper a friend of mine has written. I sometimes read scientific research in my free time and I am yet to come across anything similar to what that friend has produced. I don't think I can provide any meaningful feedback as I am not sure how to approach this thesis.

This thesis has no defining research question that it is trying to answer. The aforementioned friend of mine wrote his bachelors thesis to merely inform the reader about the subject. As such, no meaningful conclusions were made. The conclusion section of the paper only contains a short summary of previous chapters. That friend of mine studies in Finland. The subject of this paper is Cyber Security.

Is that friend of mine doing something wrong? If not, could you perhaps point me into the direction of similar research so that I can use that as a baseline to provide feedback?

I can't be sure, but from your description it seems like this thesis does not include original research, and that is what troubles you. Instead of original research, it sounds like your friend may have produced a survey or review of a particular area, which informs the reader about the body of work in that area. (See this answer to Difference between research paper and scientific paper).

A bachelors thesis may or may not be expected to include original research. Your friend should ask his or her thesis advisor to clarify the expectations in their department.


Can I report the same study twice but with different authors? I successfully defended my dissertation in November. Through the process, my chair (member A) was a terrific cheerleader. My second committee member (member B) was encouraging in a more specific,academic manner. At times, only because of Member B's feedback, I advanced in the dissertation process. Committee Member B broached the notion about co-authoring my study. Two days later, Member A called to discuss possible authorship opportunities. I have not given a firm answer. Is it possible to write two articles in separate journals with two different authors using the same study(not the same article)? How does one handle this issue?

There is a general prohibition on publishing the same work twice, whether with different co-authors or not.
One option is just to add both of them on same paper.  Put yourself as first author.  After that, it's other people riding the sled.  Most people understand the main contribution is first author.
Potentially there is some way to carve the study into different pieces and do different papers with each person without violating (1).  Or maybe give one of them some later co-authorship (say on a review or followup study).  I wouldn't go through too many contortions though just for the purpose of doing separate co-authorships.  Divide your overall work as you think it makes most sense to the reader and most benefit to you.  Then figure out what coauthors are deserved where.
Also consider to use the "acknowledgements section" if a contribution was made but you do not think it rises to coauthorship.
Finally, I would make sure that A knows about what B is asking for.  They may be buddies/colluders or rivals or whatever. But he can advise you. I bet he says go with (2).


Are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy? Effectively as per the questions title, are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy? From what I have seen, most are intended for first year students (i.e. those with no more than twelve months of study), after candidacy has been achieved, or are finishing fellowships for the last semester of work. For example, the Hertz Foundation says the following:

  We generally do not award fellowships to students who are already
  beyond their first year of graduate study except in cases of
  "exceptional leverage".  Such awards are very rare—only three have
  been made in the past 10 years. (Leverage here means what difference
  the award of the Hertz Fellowship is likely to make in the kind,
  quality, and/or personal creativity of the student's graduate
  research.)

Which seems to be a fairly common theme. As such, I'm looking for answers in two parts:

Are there open grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy?
Are there field specific ones (computational social science or computational science & engineering) that may apply?

Yes. Several of the fellowship and scholarship mentioned in a previous question (Options other than the NSF for PhD level grants?) are open to non-first year graduate students.

For example, The EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship,  The Ford Foundation through the National Academies, NSA Fellowships, Google Research, and The Data Incubator all allow people to apply past the first year.

The NSA, Google Research, and Data Incubators Fellowships all target computer science. "The Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students." The EPA Fellowships target environmental science, which could include computational science applied to studying the environment.

Edit note November 2019: The EPA no longer offers their fellowship program.


Contributing to a software project vs double blind review We have added a new experimental feature to an existing software project (e.g. on GitHub), and we would like to publish a paper about it. However, we want to publish it in a venue which uses double-blind review. What is the correct method of anonymization in this case?
I see several ways which all seem to have major issues:

cite the project, clearly state which part is our contribution,
include it as a supplementary material anonymizing our contribution
-> the issue here is that the reviewers will either already know the software project (and then likely know that such a feature has been
added), or they will not know about it, look at it, and likely find out
that this feature has been added, breaking anonymity. This seems to
be the best solution to me, however, since the rules for anonymity
tend to be quite strict, we are not sure whether this would be
acceptable.

anonymize the whole project -> this is basically
(self)-plagiarism (especially if there are  already papers published
about the original project).

do not include the implementation, only the results -> this
makes it less reproducible, and more difficult for the referees to
review. Also it might be still good to cite the original project, with the drawbacks of (1).

This would not be a problem for a normal peer review (not double blind), or if the project is completely original (there are several questions on this site about this case).

I think you should submit the article to the venue of your choice, with a note to the editor/administrator explaining that although your names will not be on the paper when it goes out for review, a reviewer in your field could easily deduce your identity from the references to public software.
In double blind refereeing the onus on blindess is shared. You don't say who you are, and the referees don't try to find out. The fact that they might be able to identify you from something in your work is not necessarily your problem.


Thesis writing: context or literature review? I am currently attempting to write up my doctoral thesis, which covers a couple of domains. It's heavily involved in farming data, but the PhD itself is in computer science. Naturally I start the thesis with the introduction, which talks about the problem definition etc. However, the following step is proving problematic.

It seems typical for a literature review to come after the introduction, but a literature review of... what? In order to ground the research the context must be discussed, and the research surrounding that context. This seems particularly important when the examiners are unlikely to be familiar with the farming context that the research is based. However, this leaves me with a structural problem. It seems odd to go from talking about terms relating to dairy farming, and research about cattle, to talking about particular algorithms.

Moving from one domain to an entirely different one within the same chapter seems conceptually jarring. "... and that concludes the discussion on milk yields. Machine learning has a lot of uses in industrial fields and the focus of much current research...."

I haven't heard of a separate chapter for research context and literature reviews on techniques though... is this something which is "done"?

I was bothered by that as well when I wrote both my MSc thesis and my PhD dissertation. I get the impression that it is considered acceptable to have a selection of unrelated topics in the literature review without any context to tie them together. The reader will see the context for a topic when it is referenced later in your thesis. At least, many of the theses and dissertations I read were structured like that.

However, I myself was not happy with this approach. The problem was especially bothersome to me, because my dissertation pulled together ideas from a broad range of disciplines. So here are some of the techniques I used to "set the stage". These are just ideas; you don't need to do all of these.

In the introduction, include a few sentences mentioning that you will be drawing on ideas from fields X, Y, and Z.
Include a topic map that illustrates how the ideas relate to each other. Below is an example from my MSc thesis. My advisors were a little wary of this "weird diagram" at first, but they warmed to it. Later they asked for a similar diagram in my PhD thesis.
Try to arrange the topics in your literature review in some sort of logical order, and add sentences that provide a segue from one topic to the next. For example, at the end of a section on cognition and before a section on evolution, I wrote "The next section presents a framework for analysing cognition within the context of evolution."


What affiliation is appropriate to list for journal publication? On journals for example this one, I am required to provide "the department and institution to which the work should be attributed" on the title page.

What does attributing the work to an institution mean?

For my situation, I am a student at University of A, but I was approached by a researcher at Hospital B to finish the project, i.e. we are at two different institutions and labs. The project is mostly developing a signal processing algorithm and there was no particular funding source.

Sorry if this is a silly question as this is my first time submitting a paper myself.

The main purpose of listing your affiliation is to give some context for the work:

Speaking very generally, intellectual property is shared between the author (who understands and can reproduce the work) and the affiliation (which paid for it), so it's important to list both.
Being affiliated with a well-known research group will lend credibility to your work; the quality of the paper will also reflect on the group.
Universities, hospitals, private companies, and the military have different priorities; listing the affiliation can clarify any biases.

As for knowing who to list, the main question is who is paying you? Who is paying for the research equipment, and your mentorship?

If it is the university or hospital, you should list them. You may need to list them both if they are both paying for you in some capacity. Note that if you are receiving salary, all your work may belong to the university, even work which you do on your own initiative and separately from your normal responsibilities.
If you are doing this for a class at the university, you should probably list the university (Whether you have an obligation to do this is a more interesting question). You may also want to add the instructor of the class as a co-author of the paper.
If you are using your personal equipment and are not receiving any salary for this work (not even a graduate student stipend), and are not receiving mentorship, then you have no obligation to list anyone, though you may want to list the university just to get more credibility.

The other thing to consider is that you are presumably using the hospital's data and transitioning to their system.

If someone from the hospital is a co-author, then great.
If not, you should probably acknowledge the hospital, or add them as an affiliation for yourself.


Why do universities fund Ph.D. students in the sciences? I was recently accepted into an applied math Ph.D. here in the U.S., and being the 1st in my family to graduate from university, I had a hard time explaining to them why my university will be spending close to 50k on me per year (stipend, tuition, health insurance, fees).

I know that I will be working for the university as a TA, and that perhaps that will go towards covering some of the costs outlined previously, however, it hardly seems to justify the full expenditure.

A good question. Why would the school make this investment (which could be closer to $100K/year)?

As pointed out, if you are TAing/grading/teaching, you are providing services that the school charges undergraduates for.
The funding of a university is not entirely like that of a business. Some of the money is a direct investment in purely academic pursuits, especially that from grants. Educating people and doing basic research is part of what that money is allocated for.
Averaged over all the graduate students, the direct value that they provide to the university in terms of research which goes on to get grants/prestige/donations/patents is substantial.
There is a non-trivial chance that you will become a wealthy donor to the school.


How to receive email notifications of newly accepted papers in a specified set of journals? Is there some way of arranging that I receive emails whenever selected academic economics journals of interest to me, perhaps published by different publishers, post online a newly accepted paper?

I have never heard of that. But you can setup an alert on Google scholar and get notifications when publications appear that match your search query or keywords.


Do citation counts explode like news in social networks and when did this start? From facebook/youtube it is known that if a video/post gets a distinct amount of likes, at some point the overall like number of this video is going to explode due to a network and avalanche effect.

I was recently wondering while thinking about bibliographic metrics like h-index, how much  such effects apply in 21st academic publishing and also up to which decade (before internet existed, before strong networks in internet existed) this effect might also retroactive have pushed for instance publications of the 95-00 more than 90-95 years, also the real impact actually was not much higher. Probably this effect can be identified in time by looking when number of worldwide citations exploded, although the number of researchers just grew steadily.

Is the bibliopgraphic science investigating such questions? Any books or review papers I could read. I'm especially wondering which open source data sources there are to tackle such questions, if there are. Best I could google is this:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bibliometrix/vignettes/bibliometrix-vignette.html

I'm asking as I'm wondering which citation count is actually necessary in some fields to see if a paper really had an impact on the community, didn't penetrate it, was mediocre. This will depend on community size and field. But I'm wondering how to estimate it, kind of Fermi-problem.

This seems like a naive view of citations. They aren't "likes" or even recommendations to read a paper. They reference things that actually support and form a background for a new work.

So, if citations suddenly explode within a field, and people are working honestly and not just gaming the system, then that field must be pretty hot with a lot of actual research going on.

And gaming the system outside a small working community is pretty hard since a lot of people need to cooperate.

But some fields are indeed hot for a while, with a lot of research, hence citations. But then they cool. Some future discovery may heat them up again and the cycle repeats. An a fresh discovery can often lead to new ways of looking at a problem and that, alone, will generate new ideas and new papers and new citations.

But a small citation count doesn't necessarily mean that a paper is unimportant. It may be incredibly important, but only to a small set of researchers. On the other hand, a less seminal paper might have a high count if it appears in a popular field.

And a there are a lot of people who aren't drawn to popular fields, thinking they will be just a face in the mob.

But research in general is hard. Facebook requires little actual intellectual effort. A paper in Nature requires quite a lot.

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ~~Albert Einstein


Asked to draft own recommendation letter for faculty application I am applying to faculty positions and two of the people I asked to be my references requested me to draft the recommendation letter.  I am in a STEM field. Is this common practice even when applying for faculty positions?  Should I take it as a really bad sign and try to find other references for the next application I submit?

Writing one draft is daunting enough, but writing two seems even more difficult. I do not know how much the draft will get edited in the end, and I also worry that the two letters might end up looking too similar.  At this point I do wish I had asked someone else, but I do not think I can retract my request.

How can I distinguish the two drafts I write? An obvious thing to take into account is how these two people know me (which will distinguish them). I can also try to introduce differences in tone and style, but doing so feels just wrong.  Yet not doing this risks that it will show through that both were written by the same person.  This is of course assuming that the referees will make only few edits.  Unfortunately I do not know what they will do with the drafts.  If they take the approach form @BrianGPeterson's answer, then there shouldn't be a problem. But I was not asked for a general description of myself or the position. I was asked for a draft.

I request that the students I am to write recommendations for, including recommendations to faculty positions, provide me with an executive summary of the position they are applying for, and a bullet list of the strengths which they would like me to highlight that they feel would be relevant for that position.

I do not ask them to write the letter for me, just to give me enough input to help write an effective letter.


Which is better: to achieve my master degree in usual time or use extra time to prepare myself for a PhD? I am currently a master student at UFMG, a university in Brazil. I am at my last semester (out of 4) and, due to the pandemics, it was given to us the possibility to extend our study for one semester.
Here goes some details: I'm studying Homotopy Type Theory (HoTT), I have a scholarship, I'm  a bachelor in Physics, my grades are OK, I have completed my credits and the only thing remaining to get my master degree is to finish a dissertation. I have attended to graduate courses such as Advanced Algebra, Complex Analysis, Algebraic Topology and some others less relevant ones.
I can finish everything in the usual time if I want to, but I really would like to use the extra time given to us to read more interesting stuff, attend to some extra advanced classes, prepare myself a little bit more to engage in a PhD.
The thing is: what do you think is, in general, more valuable in regards to a PhD admission process, to finish all my duties in the usual time or to have some extra advanced classes in my transcript?
For instance, my department will offer a course on Homotopy Theory, which is quite relevant for the area I am currently studying (HoTT).
Thank you.

I suppose it might vary between different countries, and I have no idea how things work in Brazil. Here in Europe, extra classes would probably have some value, while the fact that you finished earlier - not so much. If you could start some actual research activity it would also be quite helpful in your application.
Another aspect is that when applying for a PhD you might need reference letters from established academics, and maybe you could use this extra time to impress someone and make sure the letter you'll get will be stronger.
Of course, all this neglect the financial aspect of this decision, but since you mention you have a scholarship, maybe this won't be a problem for you.