Supervisor ignoring me I have an issue with my Masters' dissertation. I was supposed to complete it for May, however when I submitted my proposal on February 24 but I had no reply about confirmation until I emailed my tutor multiple times and she only responded on March 20. So, because she took nearly a month to approve it, I have missed the chance to hand it in in May and graduate in July.

I have emailed my tutor with questions regarding the dissertation on April 19 and heard nothing back, I emailed her asking for an answer again on the 19th of May and still nothing. It is really hard because she is also the module organiser so I can’t email anyone else about this.

S,o not only did I miss may deadline and now need to hand it in in August, but I don’t know what’s going on exactly and also don’t get replies to my emails regarding the dissertation.

What would you suggest I do because clearly emails are out of the question and I am getting really frustrated. Because it’s a distance learning course, I can’t go to university to see her.

You should definitely follow up on unanswered emails before a whole month passes. Perhaps try calling her office directly to see if you can reach her. And if not, then contact the departmental admins to find out how you can. If your questions are related to substantive material and not the logistics of your module, then I'd suggest asking someone else in department who does work in your area.


What is the difference between the MBA and EMBA? Somewhere I found Executive MBA degree program. How this program is different from regular Master of business administration, and which one is better program?

Both MBA and EMBA are Master's of Business Administration programs whose learning objectives are identical.

MBA usually means full-time MBA, and EMBA is normally taught part-time (could be modular, evenings, weekends, etc).

However, there is a twist! There are two kinds of EMBA programs - just part-time versions of full-time MBA programs, which are geared for working professionals, and truly "executive" MBA programs, which seek to recruit senior executives and deliver their teaching globally, often in partnership with other leading business schools.

What's "better" depends on where you are in your career, what reasons you have for doing an MBA, and what mode of delivery works best for you in your current circumstances.


I regret publishing a sloppy conference paper I have published two conference papers at one conference in physics with two other authors and I am the first author in both articles. And I am currently in the second year of my PhD Thesis and these were my first published papers at all.

I have trouble with one of those articles and I am constantly thinking about it. The positive thing about this paper (as well as for the second) is, that it is very interesting for my scientific community and also for the authorities for decision making about a political charged topic. I used a fancy method and the results are good.

Firstly, I was satisfied with this paper. I thought it its "just" a conference paper and spending to much time for writing, wouldn't pay off, because this paper doesn't even count for my PhD-Thesis. So, all in all I was very happy with presenting it at this conference.

The bad thing is, that I was very stressed, when I wrote it. The statistical analysis took a long time and I had not much time, due to caring for my newborn child. I finished writing and correcting this paper (with the other authors) shortly before submitting it. After the reviewer mentioned a very small revision (a more detailed abstract, spelling error or a hint for a better literature reference), I recognized that three sentences within the results had to be changed and also two or three sentences within the discussion. I fixed it, showed it to my supervisor (I don't know how carefully he read it) and now it is published.

After reading it again after some time and very often, I found some mistakes, especially in the parts which I fixed lately after the revision. At first I didn't realized them, but after reading it again and again, I found more and more: A typo as well as at least three grammar mistakes, which are in my opinion not that bad and I only recognized them by reading it a lot (two of them are even in the abstract), but that doesn't makes it better (I don't have an eye for grammar). In the corrected sentences in the discussion I partially used wordings which are more common to say, but uncommon to write in science. Because its my first publication I was more focused on writing things correctly, but after asking other people, I now think, that it is not so handsome and sloppy. There are some other sloppy wordings in other parts of the paper, but I think its not that big of a problem due to the proofreaders didn't complain, but the sum of the mistakes makes me feel very bad about this paper.

Another point is the discussion: The results are great, but the discussion could have been way more precise with a better interpretation, less focus on repeating the results and a stronger focus on other literature. After rethinking it, I would have done it quite differently.

All in all I regret publishing this paper and I fear that I am in my scientific community now known for bad writing style. And another problem is, it is forever available by Google Search and it could have a significant negative influence on my career, because everybody who writes my name in Google search, will find it very easily. I think many people don't differentiate between conference papers and journal papers.

Has anybody been in a similar situation or can you give me any advice for dealing with it? I think an errata for grammar mistakes wouldn't be justifiable.

By the way: The second conference paper has got a better style.

There is one very easy answer to your problem.

Relax. Do nothing. It's fine.

Really. Your data is good, your results are interesting, people are reading your work, and you haven't found anything particularly wrong with your science. This is more than most of us can say about our first forays into publishing.

That being said, maybe you should work on how much you let small problems get to you if you want to survive in academia. If grammar errors and awkward formulations in a published paper already make you be unable to sleep, I worry that the real setbacks that characterise academic work (experiments that are not working out, unjustly rejected papers, dozens and dozens of faculty applications that you never hear back on, ...) will do to you.


Do admissions care how close a TOEFL score is to the minimum? I work with some students who will attend graduate school in the US. The schools they are applying for list minimum required TOEFL scores. Some have just reached the minimum scores required for admission to their schools of choice. Do admissions departments ever care about how close this number is to the minimum? In other words, will the students be at any greater advantage if they retake the test and get a higher score, or is the "score level met" simply a "met" or "not met" variable that goes into deciding whether or not the students are accepted?

The answer is "sometimes."

Some schools will not care what the score is, as long as you have the minimum requirement that they advertise publicly.

Some schools won't care, even if you don't have the minimum requirement (they may "waive" this requirement routinely).

Some schools will care: they may have one public requirement, and a higher (unpublicized) threshold that they really use in most cases. (Or: the school has one minimum and the department has a higher, unpublicized one.)

Some schools will care: the minimum is required to get your application looked at, but even if it is met they still consider the score in admissions decisions.


Popular software used in research is incorrectly reporting solution is optimal: what to do? I have an example demonstrating the solution produced by a popularly used software package is not the optimal solution, despite the software claiming that it is. Several recent papers published from my lab have used this software in their evaluations, and I know it is extensively used in the research community to solve optimization problems.

So I am unsure how to report this bug; it is a proprietary, closed-source software. As a first step, I could contact the software developer about the bug, although they don't seem to have a straightforward method to report bugs.

But a larger issue is that papers published with results based upon a buggy software could be compromised. What if the eventual fix causes the software to take much longer to execute, so that running on large instances is now infeasible?

I have told my advisor about the issue, but he does not seem very interested, possibly because of the potential ramifications.

I am currently working on a project where I could have used this software; I now don't trust it and have switched to a much less powerful open-source alternative. So I guess my question is: how should I handle this situation?

You should create a reproducible test case that demonstrates the flaw conclusively.  If you are that confident and the software is that widely used, it warrants publication in a technical journal. They key is to involve the company. Show them your test case and mention you have interest in publishing the result. Offer to collaborate with them on the publication. That way, they will be forced to either demonstrate you are wrong or admit you are right. In the latter case, they save face by admitting the problem. If they ignore you, press ahead.


How to format the name of an R package in thesis? In a thesis, when referring to an R package (a statistical software), how should I write it?

Should it be italicized/treated like a title?

Or just like any other word. The package name is not a "normal word" so it seems out of place to just write it like

"...using the R package XYZ."

You can do this by adding the following to your preamble. Something like this:

\newcommand{\pkg}[1]{{\normalfont\fontseries{b}\selectfont #1}}
\let\proglang=\textsf \let\code=\texttt
\begin{document}
Then you can refer to R as \proglang{R}, to a package
\pkg{packagename}, and to a function as \code{functionname}.
\end{document}


Article awaiting reviewer invitation 6 months after submission I submitted a paper to an internationally reputed journal. Two months after submission I was asked to suggest possible reviewers, which I did after a couple of days reflection. Since then it has been 4 months and the paper is still "awaiting reviewer invitation." I sent an email to the editor-in-chief as this was the only contact information given for queries. It has been almost two weeks without any reply. The day before yesterday I emailed the managing editor to know if the paper is under review or still awaiting reviewer invitation, but still I have received no reply from either editor.

How should I get in contact with the journal regarding my paper's review status?

If you feel your paper is strong, then I would send one last e-mail in a week or so stating that if there is no response, you will be compelled to withdraw from that journal and resubmit at their leading competitor.

Note that sometimes the e-mail queues at journals are broken. If you can find an alternate way to contact the editor, you may want to try it.


strategies to secure more independence in a postdoctoral position? I am soon to finish a long PhD, and am thinking about postdoctoral applications.

As a PhD student I did a lot of quality work and have some publications in respected journals/conferences. However, I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it. Also, while my work so far is primarily applied and methodological, I am interested in theoretical work. I do not want to continue doing the kind of work I have done so far.

I have a couple questions under the theme of the title:

Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?
Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?
If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?

More general question:

From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?

In my experience for students from mathematics and physics the answer to (2) is often "no". However, coming from an applied area wishing to do more theoretical work, the standards are unclear to me.

First of all, let me say that your choice of words really rings an alarm bell with me. The general impression is that you are very ready to be inhonest, and (in agreement with that) your default position seems to mistrust your future employer and you seem to expect suspicion as opposed to taking in the situation openly.

Now if someone does not trust me, a natural question for me is: why should I trust them? I would not want to work with someone with this attitude towards work. And moreover, I wouldn't want to have someone messing up the working atmosphere in my group.

(But don't worry: I'm not in the position to hire anyone.)

  Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?

I'd say it is even necessary to be honest, and it is most probably futile to try to get away with anything else. Academia is a small world, and phone, skype and email reach very far nowadays. Particularly if you say that your field is so small that you do not care to name it here.

  Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?

No. But you should have a positive reason to apply there.

  If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly

I'd say that you are expected to develop your own ideas in a postdoc position.

So: Yes, why not. I had interviews where we discussed openly how much own ideas would be possible, welcome, and what the bottomline of things-that-need-to-be-done-no-matter-what would be.

  From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?

I can ensure you that there are good mentors and leaders, including also mentors and leaders who are even good at teaching leadership in research. But such learning can only work if you trust your mentor. That in turn makes financial and intellectual dependence a non-issue. It may not be easy to find a good mentor. But on the other hand, you could also learn from someone who is not your direct supervisor. That way, you'd have the financial and intellectual freedom.

But: if you feel you need mentoring how to develop research questions, how can you feel ready to apply for a postdoc position?

  I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it.

How come? How could your supervisor prevent you from thinking your own thoughts and from having your own opinion and judging of what needs to be done and how? As a research professional, crititcal and independent thinking is one of your core tasks.

Remember: you were a professional already when you started the PhD. If that wasn't necessary, it would be appropriate for an apprentice to apply for a PhD position.
And if you had gone to work in industry instead of in academia, you'd aslo have been profesionally responsible for everything you do.


My research is on specific publications and their publishers. Should I include all articles mentioned in the bibliography? My dissertation is on magazine publishers. My primary source material includes magazines.
My query is, should I include all the articles mentioned in the bibliography? Or only those that I consider the main articles? Or only the magazine itself with the range of years that are included in the research?
The individual articles have all been referenced  in in the notes.
In the style guide it says: if an article is cited in the notes, then it can be omitted in the bibliography. One can include an article in the bibliography only if it’s central to an argument being made.
This does not really address my query, as central to the argument is the publication itself rather than individual articles. (As the response from my supervisors is not definitive  I'm asking for other valued opinion, thanks.)

Generally speaking
If you are referring to particular content of particular issues, you should cite them.
If you have a database of the contents of the magazines and you work with that, then ideally you publish the database, or in any case explain how you created the database and what was included. In that case you would cite the database, if published, or otherwise refer to it, but you would not cite specific articles unless you use their particular contents, as per the first paragraph.
What are the notes?
In your question you mention that individual articles have been referenced in the notes. Are these notes a part of the dissertation or something distinct?
If you dissertation is a collection of articles and these notes are the articles, for example, then you are presumably writing an introduction that ties them together. Then the introduction would cite whatever it mentions, but likely not very many individual magazine articles, as the details would be left to the research publications.
If you mean some kind of notes you have written for yourself and not to be published in any way, then they don't matter for the question of what to cite in the dissertation itself. The dissertation should stand by itself, without needing private information.


Is it ethical to ask a graduate student to help me with my paid external research? I have a part-time outside job in addition to being a full-time professor.  I'm struggling with performing an analysis that I believe a graduate student would be able to help me with.  I suspect the student would be happy to do so, both because  of having a nice demeanour and also they enjoy interesting problems and are also applying to PhD programs, so being able to state that they helped me with my research would be to their benefit.  I'm not able to easily get my outside employer to hire them as a consultant.  Would it be ethical for me to ask for their help with this problem?  If I did, should I offer to pay them out of my own pocket (outside salary)?  Should I insist on doing so?  I'm thinking it would take a few hours.  FWIW, I'm not their official advisor, although my colleagues and I share that role in practice.

FWIW, one of the two outside organizations involved in this project is a non-profit, for which some people volunteer the time.  (I'm being paid by a for-profit company to do work with a non-profit organization they support.)

UPDATE

After posting the question but before getting any replies, I emailed the student, asking them if they wanted to help, including a link to this question and cc'ing the director of the graduate program and the Provost, as a check on myself.

I just figured out the technical problem I was struggling with, so I no longer need help, and this question is moot.  I'll leave this question up, in case it's useful to future readers.

Before anything else, you need to be certain about the legal ground on which you stand:

Is the external work that you are doing bound by any sort of non-disclosure agreement or other agreement to which your interactions with the student would be subject?
Do the university's terms of employment for the student state anything that whether a student can work externally and under what conditions?

If it's clear from both sides, then if the student will be doing a non-trivial amount of consulting work, they should get paid just like you are getting paid.  Almost certainly, they should get paid by the company you are paid by, and not by you (unless you are doing your own work as an LLC or some such entity).  A good litmus test is: would I be doing this work for free?  Clearly, you aren't.

If it were five minutes of work, that might be different.  But if it's complex enough that you are struggling with it, it's likely to take hours, maybe many hours, and could impact your students progress in classes or other research projects.  In that case, pay is clearly deserved.


How to tell my co-advisor I am leaving for PhD? I am doing my master's and I am considering doing my PhD at a different institution. I asked my advisor for reference and he was fine with it. My co-advisor insisted on me staying. I tried to talk him multiple times to be able to leave on good terms before I started applying and he was very reluctant to me leaving. My discussions with him were not productive and every time he starts suggesting projects for me and tries to convince me to stay. Discussion gets heated when I say I want to leave my options open and ends that way. I have to say that he is a very good advisor, but that reason is not enough for me to stay.

I decided to apply without letting him know and I did. My advisor is now asking me to let my co-advisor know that I am applying, and that I owe him that. I am sure he will be very angry and another heated argument will start again. What to do in a such a situation?

Tell your co-advisor. If he doesn't react well, take your advisor with you and have a second meeting. Maybe they can work it out colleague to colleague rather than professor to student. Withholding a good letter of recommendation because you want a promising student to stay and work with you is extremely selfish and borderline misconduct.


Applying for long term visit during PhD I am a final year PhD student in string theory. I couldn't apply for post doc positions as I didn't have sufficient number of publications. Now since my thesis work is almost complete I am looking for some long term visits (around 2-3 months or more). Can someone suggest me if these type of programs are there in Europe and US. Also should I write to some professors directly..

Ok, lets look at the core issue here (in your and my mind at least): publications and future paths; and then your question.

Lectureship in the Horizon?: This is a touchy subject, and I'm sure academics get divided on this one. However this is a fact: how many postdoc students did you witness with a weak publications who could get a good lectureship position. So the conclusion here is you need good publications to survive and progress as an academic.

Postdoc Isn't the Holly Grail!: This is another one of those time wasting adventures of people who did not think right about their abilities. What environment are your looking for? If you are looking for a perfect environment so you can keep publishing new articles every couple of months; let me tell you it does not exist. Rather, your ability on writing your ideas and contributions are only in your hands. Now if for some very good reason you couldn't publish much during Ph.D. then your new postdoc position could be another story; however if you did your Ph.D the best you could and you still struggled to publish 3 good papers; then let me tell you do not waste your time and energy on doing a postdoc.

Conclusion on the first two points: If you know why you want to continue research after doing a Ph.D., you better understand the importance of publications. If not, you are just wasting your time.

Visiting a Group: Of course you can visit a professor and his/her research group; however two things here:

1.Who Do You Know?: If you know the professor then send him/her an email and request a visit. If not who your supervisor know, so you can go and visit? Other than that, unfortunately people simply ignore those emails.

2.What Will You Provide?: What will you provide to the group you want to visit. Are you going to a group lets say in Glasgow, just to see Glasgow or you want to go there to collaborate? What you want to provide to them? Will you create an unfriendly environment for them and moan about your Ph.D. thesis or you go there for research? You see what I'm trying to say here? This again goes back to the first point that people usually can visit another group, when the professor knows the person first hand or second hand but from the very good source.


Is it better to have just two good letters of recommendation, or two good letters and one bad letter, if three are expected? Some universities say that "The minimum number of letters of recommendation are 2 but we highly encourage 3". If I know that I can get 2 good letters of recommendation but they "highly encourage 3", should I send in a third?

Is it better to have 2 good letters or recommendation or 2 good and 1 bad letter?

Definitely, it's better to have two good letters.  A bad letter is a very, very bad thing.

They're not counting -- they're reading for understanding.


I reviewed a paper but was not informed of the decision -- is this common? I occasionally review articles for a prestigious but high-throughput journal. The most recent time, I went to check on the decision of the article, and saw that a decision of minor revision had been rendered but I was not informed. Is this a quiet way the editors have chosen to take me off of further reviewing a paper because they didn't like my review? I didn't even disagree with that decision particularly, but I had marked "another journal" for my recommendation.
In a previous encounter with this journal I was informed the journal had returned a decision of major revision, then the revision was never returned to the original reviewers, but rather was directly accepted by the editor and published 10 days later. Is this common too?
These may all be common practices at journals with more throughput than the specialized journals I am used to but they are new to me.

While most the journals that I have dealt with inform me of the editors' decision, I have found that a significant minority do not.
I've found this to be the case in fields with significantly different publication practices (e.g., computer science, biology), so I don't think it's field dependent. Likewise, there seems to be little consistency in which journals allow me to see other reviewers' comments and which do not.
My guess is that hiding review or decision information is some sort of attempt to increase editorial independence, e.g., allowing an editor to more freely decrease the weight given to an unfair Evil Reviewer #3.
I really do not like it, however, since seeing the editors' decision and the other reviews helps me simultaneously evaluate the quality of the journal and editor, which are also quite important to know (and sometimes give feedback on).


How to list a paper in your CV when having 1000 co-authors? This is a follow up to the question What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper?, I'm just curious.

Supposed I were the 900th co-author in a paper with 1000 authors. How should I list this paper in my CV? Obviously, I don't want to use 3 pages of my CV just to list the details of a single paper.

The quick answer might be to look up the CV of a CERN researcher...

From outside physics, when compiling institutional publication lists, I've occasionally dealt with a 100+ author entry (often a major report rather than a paper, but the same problem holds). As our motive for listing this is to note the local author(s), it's a similar situation to the CV.

In this case, I tend to do something like:

  Able, J., Anderson, M., Archer, C., [and 78 others, including Smith, Q.] (2015) A very tedious paper, J. Irrep. Res. 243(54)

or

  Able, J., Anderson, M., Archer, C., [et al, including Smith, Q.] (2015) A very tedious paper, J. Irrep. Res. 243(54)

where Q. Smith is the local author we care about. It's probably not a very theoretically sound citation style, but it seems to work!


When is it appropriate to consult with the publisher/editor prior to manuscript submission? Motivated by the answer written by @ÉbeIsaac to this question: Can I write a paper on a method that is novel but yields similar results compared to existing methods?

This participant wrote

  Also make sure you go through the Journal guidelines and consult with
  the publisher/editor prior to manuscript submission.

The part that I would like to understand better is consult with
the publisher/editor prior to manuscript submission.

My question:

When is it appropriate to consult with the publisher/editor prior to manuscript submission?

This really depends on factors such as the field, the reason for contact etc. In my experience it is usually appropriate to consult with the publisher/editor in two cases, when:

(1) you have a short question about something that is not answered in their submission guidelines, or;

(2) you would like to send them an abstract to determine whether they think the potential submission fits with their journal.


How should I control my nervousness, so as not to disturb my presentation on the day of a conference? My paper is successfully accepted in a very prestigious and reputable conference, to be presented orally in one of the presentation sessions. This is my first time that I am going to give such a talk in a large academic conference. My previous experiences are my presentations for my class projects and my bachelor's and master's thesis presentations. In my previous talks, I had reviewed my presentation slides more than five or six times before the presentation and had a bottle of water beside my laptop, but still I was too nervous.

I am a little nervous about giving a presentation talk in front of a large number of students and professors. I am sure that in the day of the presentation, I will be in trouble and my hands will start shaking and my voice will be vibrating when I am going to talk, because of my stress.

How should I decrease my stress on the day of my paper presentation and better control my nervousness in my presentation? My research paper is perfectly done; I don't want my nervousness ruin my first academic presentation in a conference and the huge research my co-authors and I have done in the research paper.

I don't want my nervousness ruin my first academic presentation in a conference and the huge research my co-authors and I have done in the research paper.

You being nervous will not ruin your research. Everybody knows that PhD students (or professors!) are often nervous when speaking at big conferences. No sane person will look at you being nervous, and hence deduct that your research has to be somehow faulty. Of course, everybody wants to be perceived "cool" in research talks, and it is certainly easier to do a great conference presentation when one is not too nervous (a little bit of tension helps, though). However, you should never forget that very little actual damage is being done if the audience sees that you are a bit nervous.

  How should I decrease my stress on the day of my paper presentation and better control my nervousness in my presentation?

The best remedy for being nervous are (1) knowing your material / presentation really well, and (2) having a lot of practice (not just for this specific presentation, but of presentations in general). You do not sound like you are very experienced giving talks, so some amount of nervousness is not troublesome at all. Prepare your talk early and do at least 2 to 3 test talks in your department, until you have convinced yourself that your talk is good.

You'll probably still be a bit nervous on the big day, but don't be too hard on yourself - a bit shaky hands are not going to be any problem.


Unable to present my accepted paper in conference. Can I now submit the paper to another conference? My one technical paper was recently accepted for one international conference.
But, unfortunately, I am not able to attend as the Conference dates are conflicting with my official assignments. I intimated the Conference about my inability to attend. On my request, the conference acknowledged that they will not publish my paper to their Journals/proceedings. (I have the full set of email communications with the conference secretariat.)

I wish to submit the same paper for an IEEE conference. Is there any issue? Please advise.

On my request, the conference acknowledged that they will not publish
  my paper to their Journals/proceedings. (I've the email transactions
  with the conference secretariat.)

Was the registration for the paper done, i.e. you had paid the registration fee? Was the camera ready version already submitted?

If you had not paid the fee already, then obviously they won't publish your work. In fact, they won't consider for scheduling the program as well. If you had already paid the fee and submitted the CR version, be safe and keep the email transactions with you for possible conflicts in future. However, AFAIK, many conferences don't publish the work unless the registered author presents the paper in the conference. Make sure this is the policy for this conference as well.

  I wish to submit the same paper for an IEEE conference. Is there any
  issue? Please advise.

If you think you are safe in the first question (above), then you could go ahead with submitting to another conference.

You can further view the following related questions in academia SE:

Would my paper be published if I missed the conference due to visa-related problems?
What to do if I can't get a visa to attend a conference that accepted my paper?
Etiquette when unable to attend a conference

BTW, I had a question, why did you submit the paper to the already-accepted conference at the first place if you were not sure about your attendance? I feel this is not a good sign.


My professor and chair of the department traced back a supposedly anonymus course evaluation to me. How to proceed? At my large American university, we have the opportunity to fill out course evaluations. They are not mandatory and are allegedly anonymous. I wrote a negative review for Dr. Smith's course. I stand behind what I wrote and it is all true, but it was scathing and lengthy (over 1500 words) since I listed in detail almost every thing I didn't like and why, with specific examples. If it matters, my main complaints were that I consider his class to be too easy, his standards were too low, and that he took a long time to grade our assignments.

I received an email from the chair of the department asking me to meet with him to discuss the evaluation. The content of my evaluation is all true, but I am embarrassed that my identity was revealed (or correctly assumed) since I would have been less harsh if I was aware the anonymity wasn't guaranteed. It wouldn't surprise me if they guessed I wrote the review, since I made by far the highest grade in the class and had actually complained about Dr. Smith in the middle of the semester to the chair since Dr. Smith allowed something unfair to happen during the midterm. (I was advised by other faculty to bring that specific complaint, so I hope it doesn't come off that I like to complain.)

What should I do and can anything negative happen to me over this?

Most probably nothing negative will come out of it.

And there is also the chance that they want your opinion, independent of the evaluation (i.e., they did not necessarily guess that it is YOU who wrote these comments but given the fact that you talked to the chair about these issues, then the chair wants to discuss these with you.)

True, it shouldn't have happened the way it happened (to make you think that the evaluations are eponymous or that they have guessed the writer behind these comments and want to talk to you about that)  but most probably the chair and professor would like to discuss the issues for potential improvement. Just politely explain all these issues and make some suggestions on how they could be resolved and it should be fine.


What are acceptable purposes in Statement of Purpose? I understand that honesty is the best policy, but is it a good idea to say "I have no clue" when the SOP explicitly asks me to describe my "intentions relative to graduate study and life beyond the University"?

Basically, I don't have any ten-year plan. The main reason I'm going to apply for the Program at the University is that the Degree can give me great resources and offer me better choices after graduation. (Other reasons include I have friends in that area and I love the weather in California, but I guess those don't count?) I haven't really considered my life beyond the University, though: Life is just too dynamic for me to answer questions like whether to stay in academia or to enter the industry at this point, and I don't want to eliminate any possibility as early as now.

On the other hand, I do have some long-term goals, but I don't have a detailed plan on how to realize them. I just keep them in mind when making decisions. However, these goals are probably too ambitious, bold, and maybe stupid to be used as an intention: I'm going to develop a framework to unify Statistics and Machine Learning, turning all current work into "miscellaneous earlier efforts" like Newton did!

To clarify, I'm applying to both Masters and Ph.D. programs, because I don't really know what I'm after, so I'm just exploring different options and will take the best offered.

"I have no clue" is not going to get you far. The committee will probably interpret that you will not be very motivated, and motivation plays a big role in succeeding in study programs, especially if they include research.

You are also not expected to know exactly what you want to do the following ten years. From your question, you seem to know as much or as little about your future plans as the average applicant to graduate study, maybe even above average.

You are interested in the topic, and want to study further to learn more about it and have a better chance to make valuable contributions, either in academia or in industry. Say that.

You are not sure yet whether you want to continue in industry or academia, but you want to experience research in academia and be able to make a better informed decision afterwards. Say that if it is true.

You can mention your long-term goal, but make sure not to make it sound too ambitious/impossible to do. For example, I am interested in analyzing Machine Learning from a statistical point of view, with the aim to hopefully provide the community with a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is so powerful. Suit this to your own needs.

The fact that you have friends there and like the weather is in my opinion also worth mentioning, but without focusing on it. Mention it last, and only in one short sentence. Although this does not say anything about your ability to do research, it adds to your motivation to go there.

And just in case, do not copy-paste any of my sentences, but use them as a guide to come up with your own. This is about your motivation (not mine), and answers on StackExchange are public and easy to find.


Can I take a year off during a masters program? I am a second year part-time masters degree student at NYU, with a full time job. My life is pretty simple and boring in NY. I was looking for opportunities, and yesterday it happened. I was accepted as an "intern" for one of Hillary Clinton's organizations in some other state. And there is this other organization that will be financially supporting me for 6 month. Later, I am expected to get a part/full time job there. This is life time opportunity, big adventure, lots of sacrifice and commitment..

My question is: Can I take a year off during grad school in order to be able to work full time in some other state?

As Bill Barth suggests, you really need to check with your department and institutional policies. Every school, and often departments in the same school, can have very different policies.

The fact that you're a master's student, and therefore presumably enrolled in classes rather than actively conducting research, probably will make things easier, as leaves of absence are less disruptive during coursework than in research (for instance, it's harder to "postpone" a grant for a project to enable a student to take a semester or year off).


I found published results of my mentor to be wrong. How to tell her? For the last few days, I have been trying to reproduce things in a published paper (in quite a reputed journal) from my field. My postdoc mentor is the last author of the paper and the main work was carried out by her collaborators from a different institute and a first author is finishing his Ph.D.

When I saw the paper, I immediately got skeptical because they had missed some obvious things, so I rewrote all the code from scratch and, after a week's extensive checking and cross-checking, confirmed that their results are completely wrong. I told two of my trusted colleagues and they asked me to tell my mentor this. However, I am quite uncomfortable and confused about this.

The student who is the first author has based a big part of his later work on these results. This means that the later work by the student might also be completely wrong. My question is how to proceed from here? Can I ask my mentor to retract their paper? Or should I ask her permission to write a comment about the paper? If I do either of these (or something else which reveals that those results are wrong), would I be considered guilty of destroying the thesis of the first author guy?

I really appreciate any type of help in this matter. Thanks in advance.

Edit: All the answers and comments here are very helpful and I thank you all for them. However, I think I was slightly vague while asking. I very well understand that I could be certainly wrong. But the question is what do I do if I am not? In that case, what should be done? (As things stand, they have surely got at least one plot wrong because it directly goes against a famous fundamental theorem. I got this confirmed from a few people in the field.)

As a matter of fact, I believe there is no such thing as guilt or ruin
for other people's work when it comes to the academic aspect of the knowledge.
Actually, if you do not share this with your mentor in order to be fixed, you
may ruin many other further research...

I suggest you do this respectfully and carefully. You can go to your mentor and talk about this problem. You can show her your code and your understanding from the paper, then confirm whether or not you are right. Let her decide what she can do about this. There is also a slight chance you have made a technical mistake while investigating their work, so keep this in mind when you discuss the issue.


Is salary of a faculty member increased automatically year-by-year in the US and Canada? In the universities in the UK, Australia, NZ etc., the salaries of university faculty members increases automatically year-by-year in two ways: 1 to 1.5% increment for inflation correction, and by climbing in the salary level (e.g., lecturer level 5 to level 6, etc.: What is the average salary of assistant professor in New Zealand?).
Is the US salary system similar? Say, someone is hired at a university in the US as a tenure-track faculty member. Does this person get some annual salary increase till he\she gets the tenured? Or they have to wait till obtaining the tenure to get some pay raise?

It's a regular job, more or less like any other, and the way raises work is also the same.  When there is ample money, people get raises.  Sometimes everybody gets the same raise; other times, it's based on merit (or perceived merit, at least).  Which was it happens depend on the particular institution, the department, the recent history of raises--pretty much anything.

When you are promoted to a higher professorial rank, there is usually a prescribed step-up in salary.  It might be a fixed dollar amount or a percentage--again depending on the institution.  This is just like there is a raise associated with getting promoted at any other large employer.


M.Sc. after long 16 years in industry How hard is it to adapt to post-graduate studies after an academic pause of 16 years working in sort of relevant industry?

I graduated back in 1998 with B.Eng. in computer engineering, worked for 16 years in IT related jobs, and decided to go back to school this fall (2014).

Is it hard to be ready after such long academic pause?
Any particular skills I should work on while waiting for the program to start?

I graduated back in 1984 with a BSc in Computer Science. Went back for a MSc by research 25 years later, in 2009. Finished that in 2011, and now I'm doing my PhD.

Will you be doing an MSc by research? If you're the sort of person who likes learning things on your own, I'm sure you'll find it easy enough to adjust. Reading scientific papers is a skill that takes a while to learn. (Writing them, even more so!) You can use Google Scholar to search for papers in the are you're interested in. (Many articles will be behind paywalls, so you probably can't access them until you start, but many articles will be freely available.) Expect it to be tough going at first, so don't get discouraged. Also, I hope you like (or at least don't mind) writing, because in many fields an MSc thesis involves a lot of writing.

If you're doing an MSc by coursework, I don't have too much advice to offer.

Your experience in industry will help you a lot. You'll probably have more resiliency than your fellow students, due to your life experience. This will help you deal with stress. You'll probably find that teachers and students are asking for your real-world perspective, which is great for your self-confidence. Also, you probably have a very clear idea of why you're doing an MSc, which will help you stay focused.


Mistakes post publication I just discovered some mistake after the online publication? There are two mistakes- instead of figure S4A (supplementary figure), it says Figure S3A at two places. It's very embarrassing, should I write to the editor about this?

You should inform your coauthors, use this opportunity to search for other misprints and finally write to the editor.


How to use copyrighted images in an article? I have developed an educational software in which I make use of some copyrighted images, for example from Disney, and am now writing an article about it.

How should I reference or cite that those images are copyrighted? Should I put it on a footnote or just blur the images inside the article?

I would not like to have problems of an article rejection because of that.

The images are copyrighted. You are not allowed to put it in the article unless you obtain an explicit (and preferably written) permission by the copyright holder to use it there. If you obtained a permission to use it for research and you would like to consider it a permission to publish it in an article, you better consult a lawyer, but the odds are that you can't do that. As well, do not forget to check whether the journal's copyright transfer is not conflicting with the permission you obtain from the picture's copyright holder. You'll very likely need an exception from the Editor to be allowed to use the image.

To see that this is an issue, remember that the usage of the famous Lenna picture led to legal complaints raised by PlayBoy who is the copyright holder. They decided to cancel the complaints, but it was just their choice. (Source: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/lenna.shtml)


Do international politics, language, and local culture affect recognition of research degrees? Take a look at this subject-wise QS Ranking (CS/IT).

We see that Shanghai Jiao Tong University is sitting on the 46th place, Lomonosov Moscow in on the 49th place when Delft University is between 51 and 100 (probably 51st).

My hunch is that someone graduated from Delft University will be enjoying much more competitiveness in the job market (academia and industry) than someone graduated from Shanghai or Moscow.

I can think of two reasons:

Political factor: China and Russia have spats with the USA. Since, the rule based order is dominated by the West, there is a space for a recruiter in the West to be tempted to devalue the graduate from China or Russia.
Language & Culture: China and Russia are obscurer countries because of languages. Most people in Western countries know English better. Most of us don't know how are the learning environments like in China and Russia. Also, there is an undeniable preconception circulating in the air that Western countries are much more closer to each other in terms of understanding and hence their culture of education is much closer.

If I am not mistaken, if all factors are equal (like reputation of the supervisor, etc),

probably a degree from Warsaw would be much more competitive  in the West than that of India or Saudi Arabia even though Warsaw sits on a much lower position in the ranking chart.

Is my perception correct?

Do international politics, language, and local culture affect recognition of research degrees like the way I described?

Your question is based on the wrong premise:

  My hunch is that someone graduated from Delft University will be enjoying much more competitiveness in the job market (academia and industry) than someone graduated from Shanghai or Moscow.

What you are confusing is (i) the competitiveness of an individual applicant for a position, with (ii) the ranking of a university they graduated from.

The ranking of their alma mater is one factor that affects the competitiveness of an applicant, but it is only one of a very large number of certainly not even the most important one. Among the many other factors are (i) previous work experience and results, (ii) familiarity with the language and culture of the hiring institution, (iii) the strength of the university from which the applicant graduates in the area for which the applicant is seeking a job, and many other factors.

Ranking is really fairly low on the list of criteria hiring committees look at.


Citing old or new papers of same work? Often researchers publish their work incrementally. Abstractly speaking, let's say, in 2010 the researcher publishes version 1.0 of his algorithm/system/framework. Two years later, he publishes an improved version 2.0 of the same algorithm/system/framework.

If I want to cite his work, should I

a) cite his oldest work (advantage: typically, older works have more citations),

b) cite his newest work (advantage: my readers will be directed to the most uptodate version of the author's work), or

c) cite both?

You might cite both by saying "Idea X, originally developed in [1] and extended in [2], shows that ..."


What could/do applicants usually ask professors, and how does this reflect in a statement of purpose? When applying for PhD programs (or MPhil or MS) that require only a statement of purpose and not a research proposal, I was advised to first check if some faculty members (or is one good enough?) in the university have the same research interests as I do. I remember reading or hearing something like, it may be helpful to read up on the research that those faculty members have done and possibly contact some of those faculty members, and then incorporate the reading and contacting in the statement of purpose.

So what could I ask those faculty members? What I think:

  Hello Prof/Dr ___ .I'm interested in applying in your univ and am interested in X. Can I ask more about what you research? This is my background (I'm from blah blah blah. I have a master's, but it's in applied not pure math. I've done some self-study blah blah blah). Do you think I am a good fit for the university? Would you consider taking me on as a PhD student? Do you think I am better suited for MS/MPhil than a PhD?

And then how do I incorporate the e-mails in my statement of purpose?

Can I ask more about what you research?

Don’t be so vague. You can find out for yourself what a professor is researching by reading some of their most recent publications. Think about the papers carefully and try and ask a pertinent question, for example:

  I was reading your paper X and have a question about Theorem Y. Is it related to Lemma Z as described in paper Q?

  Do you think I am a good fit for the university?

Instead of asking what the professor thinks, I would emphasise why I know I’m a good fit for that university. If you don’t like the look of the department, why bother contacting them in the first place?

  Would you consider taking me on as a PhD student?

I prefer “Will you be taking on a PhD student next year?”, although this may be just a cultural/ politeness thing.

  Do you think I am better suited for MS/MPhil than a PhD?

Again, I feel this is something you need to decide before contacting them. Look closely at the program requirements and think critically about your own skills and knowledge and where you will fit best. If you’re still in doubt, contact the admissions tutor with this question, not a potential supervisor.

Many of the PhDs I’ve been applying for lately strongly encourage inclusion of a potential supervisor's name in the statement of purpose, so they can direct the application to the relevant person. You could include a mention of the professor you contacted in the following way:

  My research interests lie in the field of pure maths, and more specifically how Lemma Z can be applied to Theorem Y. I would like to work with Professor A in research group B.

All of this is based on my own experience of applying to UK physics PhDs (which I am still in the process of doing).


Graduate school Conditional Acceptance I was conditionally accepted to an MSCS program. My conditions are: Must maintain a 3.2 GPA and Complete 2 specific classes with a B or higher. I have till the spring semester to complete those conditions. I'm very likely to make a C in one of those conditional courses I'm required to make a B or higher in. I was wondering how those are conditions are generally evaluated?

Edit- And it rounded to a B, but thank you for the responses!

In the universities I've been affiliated, conditions are strictly enforced. If you fail to meet the condition, then the offer is withdrawn. You can appeal the withdrawal, but an appeal will be granted only insofar as procedural irregularities were judged to have taken place. The conditions itself can't be appealed.

I do not know enough about your personal circumstances to comment on the issue of repeating a course. However, it seems to me that repeating a course means that you won't be available to accept the offer and most offers are time-bound.

Good luck to you.


GPA weightage for changing fields in higher studies Currently pursuing my 3rd year of  BTech in electronics and communication engineering, I plan on pursuing an Integrated PhD / PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics due to my deep interest and passion for th field.
I have relevant research experience in the same, good GRE scores and LORs.
My question is that due to the change in my study field, how much weightage will my engineering GPA have on my application? If it is average, will it be a drawback?
Thanks for your help.

A good GPA, etc, will give evidence that you work hard. That won't be an issue in the new field. But the admissions process/committee will need some assurance that you have the necessary prerequisite courses and knowledge in that new field or can quickly pick that up. That will weigh more heavily, perhaps. So, other things, such as the indicated research, and letters will be helpful.


What facts constitutes as citation-worthy If I were to state a fact that is simply a part of a field, do I need to cite a scientific article that supports this? Like, let's say I write something like this:

"... tryptamine being a monoamine protein in the body, involved in the regulation of serotonergic, dopaminergic and glutamatergic systems in the brain."

Do I need to cite this? Is there anything one can remember to guide oneself in situations where one wonders whether to cite or not?
(I'm writing a treatise, which has been defined to me at least, as  a text type somewhere between an essay and a scientific article)

Generally speaking commonly known facts, such as things that appear in encyclopedias or even undergraduate text books don't need to be cited unless quoted.
But that doesn't mean "known" to everyone. If they are common knowledge among experts, for example, then no citation is needed.
If you quote or closely paraphrase something from a source, then you should cite that source.
But it is probably better to err on the side of over citation than under and citations can also sometimes help the reader, depending on the audience. A


PhD after industry. Is it reasonable? I am a 31 years old software engineer at a big technology company in Silicon Valley. I have a master's degree in computer science and moved into working full time right at the time of my graduation. During those ~6 years in industry, I always tried to work a few hours during the day on my personal passion which is studying mathematics. Ultimately, every time I want to study a specific topic, I made so little progress because of my full-time job that I got frustrated. I figured just a few weeks ago that something needed to change and I should pursue my passion, which is research, and then got into my head that I must do a PhD. Now, the principal reason of doing a PhD for me is to be able to work full-time on maths. Something I am dreaming about, just thinking about it makes me very happy. On the other hand, at the same time, I know that I am taking a major pay cut (from 6 to 5 figures), and my lifestyle will dramatically change.

EDIT :
Question has been put on hold so I will try to narrow down my questioning to a specific concern.

Considering that I have no demonstrable research experience, no real recommendations by academia people ( 7 years out of college, my teachers will likely had forgot about me ), no good grades in my masters ( average ), and a degree in computer science vs a math one, is it really possible to get accepted in a pure math phD program ?

Note : the only math experience I had is high school ( grade 18/20 ) and my personal experience ( which is not demonstrable )

I did my PhD in my fifties, after a computer science industry career. I am also a permanent resident alien. I can see two problems you are going to have that I avoided:

I didn't start my PhD until after I had my retirement fund saved up, so my standard of living did not change.
I continued in computer science, so my industry experience helped. I could read current computer science papers without too much difficulty.

One approach to the standard of living issue is to rehearse by trying to live for a year at a graduate student spending rate. That will let you find out if you can do it, and build up your investments with the money you are not spending.

The biggest problem I see is the transition to Mathematics. You could perhaps use the Mathematics GRE subject test to evaluate where you are relative to what you will be expected to know. You might do better doing a computer science PhD but specializing in theory. There are some fine open problems, including the great P=NP question.


Is there any research on the prevalence of academic theft? Some — perhaps many — academics seem to be very careful in keeping unpublished work secret.  It is not difficult to find anecdotes where academic ideas are stolen, such as in this post by @Markus.  Others, such as @NateEldredge in this post write that It seems to be pretty common for people starting out in academia to overestimate the risks of people stealing their work.  Personally, I'm rather at the other end of the spectrum, and I don't feel afraid that my ideas would be stolen.  Perhaps I'm naïve.

Is there any research on the question: how common is academic theft, really?  Such as surveys of people having experienced (or committed!) such theft according to an appropriate definition, possibly compared to peoples' perception as to the risks.  It would be interesting to see if there are some facts to refer to.  Perhaps it is field dependent?

(By academic theft, I am not talking about plagiarism, but rather about stealing research ideas before anything is published)

Is there any research on the question: how common is academic theft, really? Such as surveys of people having experienced (or committed!) such theft according to an appropriate definition, possibly compared to peoples perception as to the risks.

See the related articles:

  De Vries, Raymond, Melissa S. Anderson, and Brian C. Martinson. "Normal misbehavior: Scientists talk about the ethics of research." Journal of empirical research on human research ethics: JERHRE 1.1 (2006): 43.

and

  Martinson, Brian C., Melissa S. Anderson, and Raymond De Vries. "Scientists behaving badly." Nature 435.7043 (2005): 737-738.

Among a sample of 3,247 NIH-funded scientists in the United States, asked about the behavior "Using another's ideas without permission or giving due credit":

1.4% said they themselves have engaged in this behavior within the last three years
45.7% agreed with the statement, "I have observed or had other direct evidence of this behavior among my professional colleagues including postdoctoral associates, within the last three years."

Please read the article for methodology, limitations, etc.


Should I include code in my research paper? My paper is about a specific application of blockchain. I've developed a basic prototype for it and so far, I've described it in detail, and put screencaps of the interface for it. Should I also include actual code of relating to different parts of the application?

Depends on the field and journal - check other papers in the same journal on how they do it. In my field (Bioinformatics) we usually do not put code into the paper but provide the full source code via the department web-page and/or git.


Is it normal to be stopped from doing experiments for months due to "equipment malfunctioning" during masters? I am currently doing a medical science research masters with a difficult supervisor. Due to two incidents of equipment malfunctions (equipment that I am using), I was stopped from doing any experiments for more than three months in total. During the three months I did almost nothing. Over the entire 6 months that I have been here, I have only had one month during which I was able to generate any sufficient results (the other months I was learning the technique).  My supervisor rejected my proposal to switch to a new technique or use a different equipment set-up. What worries me is that I won't be able to gather sufficient results to write my thesis by July (which is the deadline), and I haven't even started my masters project.

I am wondering whether anybody else has similarly experienced this situation before and whether this is normal during your PhD i.e. doing absolutely nothing for 3 months or more due to the excuse of "equipment faults"? Do you just switch to a different experiment or part of the project which utilize different techniques? Could somebody please help me understand why my supervisor is doing this - is this normal for labs which lack funding?

What should I do? Should I make a formal complaint to the university about my masters supervisor? If I do so, I am afraid that the animosity between me and my supervisor will be beyond repair and he will not support me at all in finishing in time for the deadline. If it keeps on like this, I won't get enough results to sufficiently write the project thesis.

In experimental sciences, such incidents are unfortunately common.  I do a lot of work in synthetic biology, for example, and it's not unusual to have a lab run into serious equipment or materials problems that significantly delay the work of the lab.  For example, one lab I was working with had a critical machine start producing strange results and it took a couple of months, several corrupted experiments, more than one technician visit, and also a change of protocols in order to debug it.

If the lab you are in is actively working to fix the equipment issues, and it is just taking a long time, that would not be unusual.  If they are not but are just neglecting it, then that is a very bad sign and you need to talk to the people who run your program to find out what to do.

In either case, you should make arrangements, either with your advisor or with the program heads, about how to adjust expectations given the equipment problems. Equipment issues should not be your problem or delay your graduation at a Masters level (Ph.D. is a different matter).


Where to upload conference posters and how to share them? When presenting a scientific poster at a conference, I am often asked by colleagues if they can get a copy of the poster. Often, I have DIN A4 prints ready (quite hard to read...) and I am also happy to share them via email, if somebody is interested.

It would all be much easier if I could just upload the poster to some open repository where it is archived such that I just need to share a link.

Neither arXiv seems to be the right place for it, nor figshare. Is there some open repository for scientific posters which I missed so far?

I don't know of any open repository that hosts research posters. But, some conferences do upload a pdf copy of all accepted posters to their website so you can check the venue where you presented your work to see if they offer something similar.

Another option which I see all the time is uploading the poster to your personal website or the website associated with your research group or lab. These websites always have a publications link that usually includes a subsection for poster publications.


Are technical questions common in post-doc interviews? I have in the next few days an interview for a post doc with a top UK university. The interview is on Skype, directly with the PI, in applied computer science.

I am preparing for that interview and I have a question. In your experience, how common are technical topic-related questions, like the description of a well-known family of methods, or of certain papers?

When hiring a person for a technical position (including a post-doc), any employer will want to have some confidence in the degree of technical proficiency of the applicant.

If the PI already knows you (e.g., through interactions at conferences), then they might not feel a need to ask technical questions. Likewise, if the PI has a strong relationship with your advisor and is willing to take a recommendation on trust, they might not ask technical questions. In pretty much every other case, you should expect some degree of probing to determine your technical competence.

What form that will take, however, is completely unpredictable. Evaluating technical skill in a short interview is a notoriously difficult problem, and people have lots of different idiosyncratic approaches to the issue. As a result, I would advise the following in terms of preparation:

Do not treat this like cramming for an exam. Do not do any study or review of core technical materials. Either you have the skills and competence that they are looking for or you do not.
Make sure you are familiar with the work of the PI and their lab, and think carefully about how your skills and background fit with their current directions (though you might get surprised by the PI moving in a new direction).
Make sure you are prepared to talk about your own work, your skills and background, and what you want to get out of this postdoc.
Get a good night's sleep and do whatever else you need to do to relax and be in a good and confident place personally.

Finally, remember that the goal of this interview is not to get yourself a job, but rather for both you and the PI to figure out whether you and the job are a good fit for one another. Make sure that in the discussion you are also prepare to look for the things that will help you be satisfied with this position as well.

Good luck!


Where do academics obtain HTML website templates with no attribution? I have noticed that most .edu domains have a very "academic" looking simple HTML websites (Do academics look down on well-designed academic websites?) for professors and departments. My graduate school follows a template for the main department website and the professors and graduate students upload their own HTML websites on their sub domains.

I was recently tasked with uploading a simple HTML website for our group's research page. I have created websites before but my advisor asked me to put in minimal effort as I am busy writing research papers right now and should not be spending a whole lot of time playing with HTML and CSS.

I have noticed that a lot of professors have the same minimalist design of HTML websites. I know professors are pressed for time and so will adopt a minimalist HTML template and tweak it.

My question is: are there known resources where free simple HTML templates are available that require no attribution? I found several HTML templates that require attribution (linking back) to original designer and I would like to avoid that as I need something very simple that I can tweak.

I understand that professors might be writing the HTML from scratch. But if someone knows of a template I could use, that would be great.

When I was looking for a CSS style for my personal academic website, I got a recommendation to use Twitter Bootstrap. Then, I bascially ripped only the style out of it, but acknowledged them in the page footer.

As I just checked, you can directly link to their style without copying it locally and the code is licensed under an MIT license.


Should you justify or left-align text when writing? I've written a 5,000 word essay on a topic of my choosing.

While reading through my writing, my teacher suggested I justify my text, as opposed to left-aligning it, as this looks neater.

I agree, finding it looks much better; however, after looking around, many people stated that the justification of text makes it much harder to read. Also, most of the sources I consulted, as part of research, used left-aligned text.

Is it just a subjective matter, or is there a standard?

Look for the specification and implement it.

In your particular case, your teacher specified that she prefers justifying, so you should act accordingly, since she is the one who will grade your essay.

Later in your academic career, you may come into situations where the format is specified by an institution rather than an individual person, for example, a journal or a funding agency.


Is it possible to add a co-author in conference paper? I presented an abstract in an international conference. Now the conference has already announced news about publishing articles in proceeding of the conference. At this point, i would like to know whether it is possible to add a co-author to my manuscript before sending to the journal? It is worth noting that the co-author has already proposed some ideas to add them to my paper.

The likely answer is yes, but it is the conference committee that makes the rules here. You need to seek advice from them.

Alternatively, and maybe a better path, is to just do it and submit the paper with the appropriate authors. If the committee has a problem with it they will tell you, but I doubt that would occur.

But you say abstract in one place and manuscript in another. I'm assuming that the abstract was just a placeholder for what was to come. Acceptance wasn't based on the authors, but on the content of the abstract. Most conferences want to publish and promote the highest quality work. That would probably outweigh other considerations. But they may want to just publish the abstract, in which case they might judge it differently.

But they make the rules. We don't.


Making a standalone publication out of the English translation of a paper I came across two venerable and valuable papers that are not so well-known in their community of interest. One of them is a short technical report, both concern mathematical and physical matters, for what matters. The publications are some 60-year old, and the authors have possibly passed away. These articles are written in no lingua franca. I would be quite inclined to translate them into English and revive their relevance.

My gratification would be to provide as accurate a translation as possible, so I don't intendedly aim to add anything of my own. Yet, I would like to have these translations published so that the documents are clearly recognisable (a DOI would be nice) and widely accessible. I would also want that my effort is acknowledged, for personal recognition and as a validated item in my track record: a footnote would do.

Were this original research, the natural destination would have been a paper in a scientific journal. But it clearly isn't.

I have probed the publisher of one of these articles, who have showed the least interest in making any room for a translation, even at zero cost.

I am struggling figuring out a way to achieve these aims. Is there any institution or virtual place hosting/publishing these kind of intellectual products? Any other ideas?

If the copyright has not expired yet (varies by country but generally around 70-100 years after the death of the author), then it is illegal for you to publish a translation without prior authorization. You need to find out who the copyright holder is and ask for permission.

The journal may have acquired rights to publish a translation, otherwise you may need to find their child(ren, and figure out which of them would legally be the copyright holder now) to get authorization. It's likely to be an intractable problem.


How to tell my PhD supervisors I want to publish without them? I have had poor supervision from both my supervisors, but one in particular. Overall, neither provided me much intellectual support while I was doing my thesis in psychology. Early on, they were a little helpful when I was recruiting for participants - they attended my ethics panel meeting and made edits to my ethics application. I hardly ever saw them or met with them to discuss ideas (like once a year). The analysis of my thesis was a sole endeavour. I received minor feedback with respect to paragraph structuring, spelling errors and grammar in the write up of my thesis. No substantial feedback that helped me with my analysis, theoretical arguments or conclusions.

Additionally, I have felt unsupported from a morale point of point. My main supervisor's communication towards me has been disrespectful and belittling. For example, she has embarrassed me in front of colleagues by implying that I overestimate my capacities on more than one occasion.
Now that I have finished my thesis and have passed examination, both my supervisors are keen for me to publish and have asked to catch up to discuss manuscripts.

I'm at two minds now. I don't want to give them intellectual credit for the work I did on my own. Yet, I also don't want to break down the decent relationship I have with my secondary supervisor. I have relied on this secondary supervisor to provide me with a good reference that ultimately won me  prestigious position at a university. So I feel a sense of obligation towards her. The two supervisors work closely together so I couldn't possibly imagine having one included as a co-author and not the other - it would be extremely awkward and not really accepted.

The other thing that's playing on my mind is my inexperience with publishing. I haven't published a paper in years and feel trepidation about venturing out on my own. The reports I received from examiners were very positive and both said that my thesis was well written and publishable. But I still feel unsure about how to proceed and would benefit from practical guidance.

Any advice on how I should proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: To clarify, the supervisors have requested we work together on translating thesis chapters into publications. Not new research.

Based on your account, I am surmising that you have already completed your PhD thesis, and obtained an academic position independent of your former supervisors (well done!). That being the case, you are under no obligation (whether legal, pragmatic, or ethical) whatsoever to involve your former supervisors in publication plans for work to which they did not make an author-level contribution. If you feel that (and, now that you are a Doctor of Philosophy, you should have some confidence in your academic judgement) you will advance scholarship more effectively by publishing alone or with different collaborators, you should have no qualms about doing so.

By the way, in my humanities field (in which sole-authored publications are the norm), it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to publish without your PhD supervisor while still a student. I have two excellent supervisors, but it has never occurred to any of us to pursue a joint publication. In fact, funnily enough, I have recently completed a sole-authored book-chapter for a collected volume in which my principal supervisor just happens to also be writing his own sole-authored book-chapter (on a different topic, although relevant enough that I actually cite a few ideas from his chapter in mine).


What is the work load of a journal reviewing editor? I was wandering what was the work load of a journal reviewing editor? More precisely, if someone would like to apply for such a position, how much time is required to do the job correctly?

I am of course aware that it might highly depend on the type of journal and/or field of research, but I would like to have some general feedback / experiences / advices.

Thanks to all!

You are correct in that the total time will first of all vary between journals and fields but also slightly over time. I am chief editor of an international journal in the environmental sciences. The time each reviewing editor spends on a paper with our journal can be broken down as follows:

Must scan the paper upon receiving it for assigning reviewers (probably takes an hour, maybe less)
Assign reviewers (does not take much time but can be drawn out over time when reviewers decline to review)
Read reviews carefully and provide authors with guidelines on what to focus on (probably takes a few hours)
Carefully check the revisions and decide on the faith of the paper (takes a couple of hours at least depending on extent of revisions)
If the paper goes to major revisions you need to go through steps 2-4 again
If the paper is accepted then spend maybe 15 minutes to half an hour formulating a suggestion for final decision (depends on what might need to be written)

This can be summed up for one paper as probably more than half a day. Then the question is how many papers you are requested to handle per month/year etc. You can then easily multiply by the number of papers to get a reasonable idea of the total time you will need to spend.

To add to this, you will need to act whenever a paper arrives, so you are expected to be more or less on call all year. Most journals have systems for indicating when editors are away but that only works for assigning new papers; if you have started the process you will have to see it through ... and keep chasing late reviews and delayed revisions.

So although I cannot give you an idea of workload, you have some tools to figure out what will be involved. Knowing the number of papers you are expected to handle is the most important statistic to figure out. Then depending on your field, you may have a sense of whether my estimates for scanning and reading materials are reasonable. I am sure they will vary depending on discipline.


How to deal with self-plagiarism or re-publishing of previous work in literature review paper? I am writing a systematic literature review and the problem is that in my subject there are multiple cases of previous work re-publishing or self-plagiarism: the same authors write multiple (2-3) papers on the same topic with almost no changes. I wonder how to deal with it. I am reviewing a theoretical models, so I cannot simply decide whether the paper describes the same or different experiments. The duplicated papers usually differ in some minor ways. I would like to create a graph of how my chosen topic was developed in time by plotting different papers and their citations and which model was based on which previous one. But I don't know how to deal with this kind of duplicate papers. Merge them into single, first paper? Plot all of them as a derivative models? Or maybe I should somehow graphically mark the papers which describe the same content?

Since you do not want to address the matter of duplicate or multiple publication (I prefer those terms; I dislike the dubious notion of "self-plagiarism"), I will focus only on the matter of handling the existence of such works in the literature other than choosing to ignore some of the publications.

What you describe seems similar to a concern that comes up in meta-analysis (a statistical approach to literature reviews). For the statistics underlying meta-analysis to work, an important statistical assumption is that each publication being analyzed is independent of each other so that each publication counts as a distinct piece of evidence. But this assumption is violated if two or more studies were conducted on the same dataset (which might involve the same group of authors, but not necessarily so, especially if the dataset is public). There are different ways for handling the resulting statistical problems, but they generally involve giving each of the non-independent studies a lower weight so that altogether they would have around the same weight in the overall meta-analysis as any one independent study.

Following this principle, if you have a case of non-independent studies (that is, your case of duplicate publications), you could weight them in some way as just one study. I cannot recommend how best to do this without knowing in-depth the nature of your study, the nature of the duplication, the extent of overlap, etc. You would need to consider your particular situation and then decide how best to represent these duplicate publications as one data point (whether that means taking an average of results, the first publication, the last publication, the most highly cited result, or whatever representation you think most appropriate).

In your final analysis, it might be a good idea to present and compare two sets of results, as is sometimes done in meta-analysis: one set treats each duplicate as an independent study, and then another analysis uses your chosen aggregation approach to group all the duplicates as one piece of evidence. That way, you could see if the duplicate publications sway the overall evidence significantly or not, which is valuable to see.


As a lecturer, can I use the same problems used in another course in my own course? I will be teaching a new course for the first time.
Fortunately,
I found a massive open online course (MOOC) on edX
which is similar to the course that I want to teach.
However, the difficulty of the MOOC is significantly higher than
the level of the students at my institution.
Consequently, I will be teaching
4 basic topics which I will develop own my own,
in addition to 4 topics which I will adapt from the MOOC.

For the 4 topics which are covered both in the MOOC and my course,
I am thinking of using some of the same or similar material
(e.g., ideas + slides + assignments) from the MOOC.
There are two advantage's of this approach:
It will lessen my workload,
but also reduce the chance that something will go wrong.

Are there any (copyright / ethical / other) issues with this?

Edited in response to comments

[Karl] claims that "There's surely nothing wrong with borrowing some problems like you say in your original question, but just using a complete existing course is very low. How big do you think the chances are you will have time next year to put more work into it?"

I have edited my question to make it more clear that
I am adapting the existing MOOC rather than copying wholesale.
However, is there a problem with using very similar material
for the topics which are covered in both the MOOC and my course?
Brian Borchers
mentioned one potential problem which is
"that students can find solutions to the problems in the MOOC and submit them in response to your assignments. Mixing up the sources of your questions is one way to stop this kind of cheating."

To complete the assignments,
I will ask the students to submit both the code as well as the answers.
I could also change some of the problem parameters
so the answers are not found directly in the MOOC.

Check if the MOOC has a license assigned to it. If it is for example Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) you are allowed to use the questions as long as you give a reference to the original creator. You don't need to ask the MOOC in this case. CC-BY-NC (non-commercial) might be a difficult case, because you teach this course as a business and earn money for it.
A second option is to directly ask the MOOC creators.
Adapting the question significantly is a third option, as long as you don't copy directly texts from the original question and just base it on the general idea this would be fine.


How can a proof question be asked online? Let us consider a quiz question whose answer is a proof. For instance, a question in mathematics, such as prove that for every natural number $n$ the quantity $n^3-n$ is even.

How could such a question be implemented in a computer interface so that the computer can check the proof for correctness?

A simple, yet unreasonable way would be to have a multiple choice format for the question, where every choice was one way of proving the relationship, but I guess the shortcomings of this are obvious...

I have experimented with a system that provides students with a collection of phrases/formulae from which they can drag and drop a selection to construct a proof.  I think that this is a promising approach but there are still a large number of different ways in which students can get the answer wrong, and an even larger number of ways that they can construct an answer that cannot be parsed as something meaningful.  If you simply reject such answers without comprehensible feedback then you will just make the students hate you.  So you have to write a large amount of code that tries to analyse all possible answers and explain what (if anything) is wrong with them.  The logic is quite complex and I am not sure how well the students would understand the explanations.  I hope to return to these experiments at some point but at the moment I am not teaching anything for which they would be useful.


General guidelines for how to include a figure in a scientific paper? I am supervising a project by a group of students
who are quite new to academic/scientific writing.
I have now read a draft of their report,
and noticed the following errors in regards to how they use figures:

The meaning of the y-axis is shown in the title,
rather than as a y-axis label.
The x-axis label is shown on the right of the x-axis tick values.
The legend contains information that should be in the y-axis label,
e.g., Policy 1 inventory level, Policy 2 inventory level.
The figures are placed in the middle of the text
without a figure number and a caption.

My question is:
Is there is a good reference or set of guidelines
which I could pass to the students
to help them to learn how to properly include figures in their report?

Though the question refers to "including" graphs, the issues seem to be matters of labelling and presentation, which are part of graph design as a whole. The following are "the principles of graph construction" from William S. Cleveland's excellent if dated "The Elements of Graphing Data" (Wadsworth, 1985).

CLEAR VISION:

Make the data stand out. Avoid superfluity.
Use visually prominent graphical elements to show the data.
Use a pair of scale lines for each variable. Make the data region the interior of the rectangle formed by the scale lines. Put tick marks outside the data region.
Do not clutter the data region.
Do not overdo the number of tick marks.
Use a reference line when there is an important value that must be seen across the entire graph, but do not let the line interfere with the data.
Do not allow data labels in the data region to interfere with the quantitative data or to clutter the graph.
Avoid putting notes, keys, and markers in the data region. Put keys and markers just outside the data region and put notes in the legend or in the text.
Overlapping plotting symbols must be visually distinguishable.
Superposed data sets must be readily visually discriminated.
Visual clarity must be preserved under reduction and reproduction.

CLEAR UNDERSTANDING:

Put major conclusions into graphical form. Make legends comprehensive and informative.
Error bars should be clearly explained.
When logarithms of a variable are graphed, the scale label should correspond to the tick mark labels.
Proofread graphs.
Strive for clarity.

SCALES:

Choose the range of the tick marks to include or nearly include the range of the data.
Subject to the constraints that scales have, choose the scales so that the data fill up as much of the data region as possible.
It is sometimes helpful to use the pair of scale lines for a variable to show two different scales.
Choose appropriate scales when graphs are compared.
Do not insist that zero always be included on a scale showing magnitude.
Showing data on a logarithmic scale can improve resolution.
Use a scale break only when necessary. If a break cannot be avoided, use a full scale break. Do not connect numerical values on two sides of a break.

GENERAL STRATEGY:

A large amount of quantitative information can be packed into a small region.
Graphing data should be an iterative, experimental process.
Graph data two or more times when it is needed.
Many useful graphs require careful, detailed study.


How do I add in an already existing GPA into my cumulative GPA? I have a GPA from a single school and I want to add it into my cumulative GPA.

A cumulative GPA is the final GPA from a single university, college, or school, not from all of them.

While it may be tempting to "raise" the GPA from a particular university by incorporating better results from another school, you will also be lowering the GPA from the school where you did better.

Admissions officers or committees are interested in how you did at each separate school, particularly if you can show increasing cumulative GPAs over time.

  Generally, students' computation or renormalization of their own GPAs
  is viewed as at-best-irrelevant by most interested parties, or, worse,
  as deception or manipulation. Let your transcripts speak for
  themselves. - paul garrett


"Challenging" Teaching Experiences for Math Grad Students? I am currently a graduate student, who will (hopefully!) graduate in the next year (or two . . .).  I have slowly come to realize that I enjoy teaching, and consequently want to do more of it!  My main reasons are:

to gain experience
to bolster my CV
to learn to be a better teacher

That last point is particularly important to me, because I feel I have received insufficient training in how to teach mathematics well.

Now, I have done the usual TA thing.  For the past year, I have also been an adjunct instructor at a local four-year college, so I pretty much know what it's like to be "fully responsible" for a course.  What I am looking for are challenging opportunities which allow me to do some–or all–of the following:

teach fairly sophisticated math to bright high school students / undergraduates
engage them in innovative thinking/research
be consistently mentored/evaluated throughout the duration of this experience

Again, the last point is rather important to me.  So my question is:

  Do such programs exist?

I am sure they do, but when Googling, I invariably come up with graduate summer schools, or "local" opportunities. (By "local" here, I mean those which are only eligible to students in that particular school's graduate program.) So I am hoping someone (or several people) here know more about it than Google does.

I know that most opportunities for this summer have probably already expired, but I want to stress I am not only focused on summer sessions.  In particular, I would gladly forego my usual TA appointment for a semester, to be a part of a more difficult and rewarding experience somewhere else.

Thanks in advance.

PS - This is my first question here, so feel free to edit my tags appropriately.

One possibility is to get involved with a program like Learning Unlimited (full disclosure: a few of my friends are heavily involved in running it).

I've also heard (through the grapevine) that a short while back AoPS may be looking for instructors. I don't know whether the position is still/was ever available.


Who determines whether or not a professor receives tenure? Does the department determine it, or does the president determine tenure after the department recommends it? Or does the process go through both ways?

And how does this vary from institution to institution?

Here's how it works at my university.  There are several layers of votes; I've seen faculty turned down at almost every level.  Once a negative vote is taken at any level, it is essentially impossible for the candidate to recover without an official appeal.  (The appeals process is complicated.)  On the other hand, I know of negative decisions that were successfully appealed at almost every level.

April: the candidate submits their CV and other supporting materials.
May: The department's promotion committee makes a go/no-go decision about whether to pursue the tenure case.  A very small number of negative decisions are made here, but only in truly egregious cases.
May: The department head chooses a subcommittee of three or four faculty from the promotions and tenure committee to shepherd the case through the department.
June: The department solicits recommendation letters, some from people proposed by the candidate, but a majority from people chosen independently by the subcommittee.
August: The subcommittee writes an internal evaluation of the candidate's research/teaching/service accomplishments/potential.
September: The subcommittee presents the complete case (candidate's CV and statements, internal evaluations, and recommendation letters) to the complete departmental committee.  The committee votes whether to recommend tenure.  Most negative decisions are made here.  Having a positive recommendation turned down at a higher level is fairly embarrassing for the department; it indicates that either the department did not do a thorough evaluation or (worse) tried to hide or excuse an obvious gap in the candidate's record.  So this level tends to be the most stringent.
October: The department head writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the department's vote, and forwards the complete package to the dean.
November-December: The college promotions committee does its own evaluation of the candidate and votes whether to recommend tenure.  Evaluations are more likely to be based on measures of reputation and impact (reflected in publication record, citation patterns, funding history, and recommendation letters) than on actual quality of research.  Faculty in the candidate's department are recused from any discussion.  Some negative decisions are made here.
January: The dean writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the committee's vote, and forwards the complete package to the provost.
February-April: The campus promotions committee does its own evaluation of the candidate (mostly, but not entirely, focusing on whether proper procedures have been followed) and votes whether to recommend tenure.  Faculty in the candidate's college are recused from any discussion.    A very small number of negative decisions are made here.  Negative decisions at this level are more likely to involve problems with teaching (or raw politics) than with research, since measures of research quality and impact vary so wildly across campus.
May: The provost writes a one-page letter summarizing the case and the committee's recommendation and forwards the complete package to the chancellor and university president.  The provost also informs the candidate of the committee's recommendation.  Officially, this is the first news that the candidate receives about their case.
July: The chancellor and the president rubber-stamp the provost's recommendations, and then pass them up to the board of trustees, who rubber-stamp them again.  (Officially, I think any of these three can overrule any recommendation for promotion, but I've never seen it happen, and it would probably cause a faculty revolt.)

Yes, the whole process really takes 15 months.