Aftermath of rightfully submitting a solo paper without my advisor's name After reading this question and this I haven't find my answer.

My advisor hasn't contributed to my work and I know that my work isn't significant and it won't publish in top journals. But I want to publish it without my advisor's name in a conference.

So my question is not about automatically coauthor my advisor or having high hopes on my individual work.

The Problem arise from here. We have to enroll in some seminar classes before starting to work on our thesis.
In one of those classes our teacher said:

"No matter what you do, you have to enlist your advisor's name in your papers because unless it would considered as a work with no supervisor and it can not be trusted."
"In interview we have for PhD students, if the person who is applying hasn't written the name of his suprevisor we doubt him. Either he is a genius or he is hiding something or he is too active in his field."
"In some companies and research labs everyone add the name of their fundraiser to show him their gratitude, so should we.".

So based on what I heard I'm going to face serious problems if I publish my work individually as a student. The question is:

Apart from being unethical including a name of person who didn't contribute to work as a coauthor, does it have any academic weight? I mean, does it value my work if I say I did it alone or it does not have any different until coauthor isn't a student.
Is it true that I am going to be accused as a not genuine person if I don't add my advisor's name? Because our teacher told us that he and his colleagues don't consider these kind of submitted papers trustworthy and genuine, so don't look at them carefully and mostly reject them on sight.

Edit:

Conclusion: Thank you all. I think my vision is more clear now. The right way is not the opposite of the wrong way. It means despite "spoon-fed" "a very distorted view", the right thing to do is not doing the opposite.

I decided to do my best to play as a team, because of its mentioned benefits, especially for my first paper. But if working as a team doesn't go well, there is no harm in solo publishing or getting some new advisers.

I don't think your problem is with your advisor. Your real problem is with teachers in classes who say things like:

  No matter what you do, you have to enlist your advisor's name in your
  papers because unless it would considered as a work with no supervisor
  and it can not be trusted."
  "In interview we have for PhD students, if the person who is applying
  hasn't written the name of his suprevisor we doubt him. Either he is a
  genius or he is hiding something or he is too active in his field."
  "In some companies and research labs everyone add the name of their
  fundraiser to show him their gratitude, so should we.".

In light of all the recent debate about whether we are too idealized and rosy in our views of academia, let me at least say this:

Whether or not this is common practice in the areas you work in, the problem here is the rationale being used to justify author inclusion. In no way is the decision being made based on some notion of contribution by the advisor (either financial or moral, or in any form). It's being based purely on a notion of patronage or bias.

The person making these claims has either a very distorted view of how authorship works, or is misleading new students in a terrible way.


Can you plagiarize a fact- or evidence-based, objective conclusion/claim? Suppose a secondary source proves that poverty was rampant in the Middle Ages by using a variety of primary sources (or statistics from other secondary sources). If years after reading this secondary source I decide I want to make the same claim (that poverty was common), would it be plagiarism to make this exact same statement using the exact same sources (supposing I actually noted and remembered them)?

In other words, can you plagiarize an objective fact or claim when it's backed up by concrete facts, regardless of whether or not someone else has made the same claim?

If that example above is too vague, let me paraphrase with a problem that I have encountered recently. I once read a source that said that Sultan Suleiman (who led an attack on Vienna hundreds of years ago) had his good and his bad qualities because he was ruthless in war yet was very chivalrous domestically. If I can't find this source again, can I just find other sources that talk about his ruthlessness and his chivalry, and then make the same conclusion?

My personal opinion is that yes, this is totally fine, because these conclusions are not the author's own voice, but rather what evidence shows to be a fact. If a source tried to make the claim that Suleiman had bipolar disorder, then this would have to be cited since this is not a fact but rather a subjective interpretation. However, an identical piecing together of "microfacts" to create "macrofacts" does not seem like something that could be categorized as plagiarism.

Notwithstanding, I'd like some second thoughts on this. Am I correct?

To answer this question, one need look no further than the dictionary, which defines “plagiarism” as

  the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own

What you are describing absolutely fits this definition. You read ideas that were published by another researcher some years ago, tying together some historical facts and drawing conclusions from them about Sultan Suleiman. Now you want to republish those exact same ideas in your own name (with immaterial differences in which sources you rely on to justify the exact same claims), without citing the source or even the fact that you read these ideas in an unnamed source you are now unable to locate.

Sure sounds like “passing off someone else’s ideas as your own” to me. So yes, of course it would be plagiarism. All those rationalizations about “not the author’s own voice”, “objective conclusions” and so forth, are just that - rationalizations. If you want to publish a paper, find something original to say, and don’t mislead your readers about the provenance of your ideas.


How can getting a masters hurt PhD admissions? TL;DR:

Find myself under-qualified for PhD programs but I'm afraid getting a MS degree will hurt my chances at a better PhD program.
U.S. based.

Longer background:

I graduated with a math degree in undergrad from a top liberal arts college.
Two years after graduating, working, and reading some textbooks and taking a course in my longtime interest, I decided I want learn / research Natural Language Processing (AI).
Downside: I've only taken one CS course during undergrad. I took a deep learning / natural language processing course this summer, and am taking a Data Structures/Algorithms class right now, but still I feel woefully underqualified for PhD programs.
Pros on Masters:

It will help me shore up the missing areas in my CS education.
It will let me know if CS is something I want to do for the rest of my life.

Cons on Masters:

Certainly two years gone.
I've heard that PhD programs often don't like MS applicants -- that they're held to a much higher standard, and that PhD programs may accept undergrads instead.
MS is a different ballgame from PhD programs.
Many MS programs are "cash cow" programs.

Pros on PhD's

I've published two math papers as an undergrad, and I enjoyed that experience a lot.
Being a professor has always been a long time dream of mine, however much it may be improbable.

Cons on PhD's:

I just don't think I'll get in having taken just 1 CS course in undergrad. If I do, it likely won't be a very good program.
I'll have committed to a PhD program even though I'm sure if I want to do this or not (which I may!! But I just don't have enough exposure to know).
I don't even know if I'll be sufficiently prepared to pass my quals.

TL;DR (after the background): Ultimately, I think I want to go to a PhD program. But I'm underprepared and want to scope out more and go to a MS program. But I'm afraid it'll hurt my chances for a better PhD program later.

If you graduated successfully from a good math program in the US, I doubt that you are under qualified for a typical doctoral program in the US. Things might be different in other places, but in the US, the normal path to a doctorate doesn't start with and MS. In fact, the early couple of years of such a program include a lot of coursework to give you the needed breadth to enable you to begin research. But programming knowledge along with algorithmics should be fine and your math background suggests you have an analytical way of thinking that isn't too different from that of most CS students.

My suggestion would be to apply to a few doctoral programs and see what feedback you get. I doubt that what you learn in the first couple of years there will close off future options in other fields if you decide it isn't for you. But I also doubt that getting a masters will lessen your chances for later getting a doctorate at the same or a different field.

There may be a couple of universities that favor their own students for admission to doctoral programs, but that is fairly rare. Perhaps the advice you got was from someone with experience at such a place. I don't know why Princeton comes to mind, and my information is very old, but I do associate Princeton with the idea of favoring their own.

Doctoral study normally consists of two major hurdles. You need to pass some qualifying exams and you need to write an acceptable thesis. The coursework is mostly (not all) to get you ready for the exams. But an MS in field also does that part.


Creativity of master students in developing new methods I am doing my PhD in data mining / artificial intelligence and am at the beginning of my second year. I have had three master students so far, whose performance varies quite a bit. The worst (he already finished) got a very clear, cut and dry task for his thesis and still did not mange to do it as expected. The best so far (close to the end of his thesis) had a very vague task, and still got pretty nice results. The third is in the middle of his thesis.

In each each case, the really creative ideas, the innovation if you will, always came from me. Currently I have this third student in the middle of his thesis who has quite a few ideas how to use existing techniques, but I get the impression he is not really able to invent his own. Possibly I am not creating a good environment?

My students seem to lack quite a bit in technical know-how (pragmatic aspects of programming), mathematical understanding and knowledge of existing machine-learning methods. This is understandable – the end of your master is by far not the end of learning and I am happy to help them by explaining those things to them. Still, I struggle a little with that, since this is a road blocker. This is just learning, and not yet creating.

Now I have new task that I would like to have solved and which would make a fine master-thesis topic. However, no solution exists for the problem yet and it is pretty challenging, requiring quite a bit of creativity. A more or less completely new algorithm is required.

My questions are:

Is there a point giving this task to a student or should I forget it and solve it myself?
More general: What creativity can I expect from master students to create new methods? Am I expecting too much?
How can I foster creativity in my students?

I categorise potential thesis topics into high-stake and low-stake ones:

For low-stake topics, I have a clear plan what should be done in which order – unless some unexpected obstacle occurs or something new and exciting is found.
The student still needs to apply their skills and knowledge to solve smaller problems along the way, but I do not expect any obstacles that I cannot solve with a day’s thinking myself.
Thus, I can always keep the thesis work from stalling due to this reason.

Such a thesis may produce a publishable result, usually if the student works efficiently and thoroughly.
High-stake topics (like developing a new method) involve a considerable amount of trial and error or a considerable creative leap.
In particular, I do not have a good solution to the problem in mind (otherwise it wouldn’t be a high-stake topic).
However, I have at least a few approaches in mind to ensure that the student has sufficient work to do.

It may happen that the student will spend their entire thesis pursuing dead ends and their thesis will be a catalogue of what they tried and what didn’t work.
The student may still get the best grade for their thesis, but it may be a very frustrating experience, and there is likely no further useful by-product from this thesis, such as a publication.
On the other hand, if the student succeeds, this usually means that their work is really useful or interesting and likely to be publishable.

I would never give such a topic to a student without informing them about the above risk (there always are some low-stake topics lying around; so they always have a choice).
Also, I would only offer such a topic to a student who shows at least some promise in terms of enthusiasm, discipline, history, knowledge, and intelligence (though it is often not possible to assess all of these factors).

Note that, while there technically is a grey area between the two, few thesis topics actually fall into it (at least in my field).

Now, why am I telling you all this?
If you want to provoke your students’ creativity, you need to give them high-stake topics that force them to brood over it for some time.
However, this does not work for every student, and students should not be exposed to such topics only with prior warning.
The latter is not only to allow them make an informed choice but also to prepare them for what is to come, should they take the challenge.

A few further notes and answer to your specific questions:

  Is there a point giving this task to a student or should I forget it and solve it myself?

Never rely on a thesis to produce anything.
Even promising students may turn out to be overconfident, lack discipline or stamina.
There simply is no feasible way to judge a student’s prospects for a thesis.
If this is important or promising, do it yourself.

  More general: What creativity can I expect from master students to create new methods? Am I expecting too much?

That’s hard to answer as it depends on what makes for a new method in your field.
In general the best I would expect is combining existing and adapting existing methods, not developing something new from scratch.

  How can I foster creativity in my students?

In my experience, to be creative about a given scientific problem requires:

Familiarity – give your students time and encourage them to familiarise themselves with the problem, investigate why established methods fail, etc.
At least in my field, this makes for a considerable portion of the thesis time.
Just writing down the problem and thinking very rarely works.
Inspiration – talk with them about the problem frequently; ask them questions about their approaches; encourage them to browse the literature.
Being open to failure – encourage your student to practice a lot of trial and error, and be clear that their is no shame in exploring dead ends.
Freedom and time – do not demand regular results from your students in a phase where they may need to reflect their results, failures, the literature, etc.
Make it clear to your students that their problems require such phases.


Sharing data (not a data set) with a research paper How to share data accompanying a research paper? I know there exist some places to share datasets, but sometimes I would like to share data that are not data set (e.g. experiment parameters, results, etc.), and add a pointer in the research paper to the online location of the data. The data size typically range from a few KB to a few MB, and the license is not an issue.

e.g. experiment parameters, results, etc.

In the past, I have shared this kind of data from a conference paper in any of a few ways:

Create an extended tech report version of the conference paper, that includes all that data in appendices. Refer to the tech report in the conference paper.
Put the data on a lab wiki, and include a link in the conference paper.
Put the data in a Github repository, and include a link in the conference paper.

I choose between those based on the nature of the data, i.e. which format seems most natural for it.

I've never used Figshare for this, but that would be another idea, (if you wanted a DOI for it, for example.) You can put any kind of "research output" there.


Ask clarifications to a professor of another university I am working at my thesis and I have some doubts about the application of a method explained in one of the books I read to learn about the topic.

Shall I write an email to the author (which is a university professor in another country) to ask for clarifications?

I already talked about my doubts to my advisor but he could not help me because he never work on this kind of topics.

Yes, you can certainly ask.  But here are some suggestions to increase your chances of getting a useful answer.

Before contacting the author, make a diligent effort to resolve the question for yourself.  Check other books or resources that you think might have the answer.  If there is someone else at your institution who is an expert in this area, consider asking them.  If there is an active StackExchange site for your field, consider asking there!
Put some effort into writing a question that clearly and concisely expresses what you are asking, and that can be easily understood and answered with a minimum of effort.  If the author can't understand what you are asking, or it is extremely long or complicated, she might not be willing to invest a lot of time trying to figure it out.  If you are unsure whether it is clear enough, or whether the English is understandable, consider asking someone (such as your advisor) to proofread it.  (You might read through Raymond and Moen's essay "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way".)
If you are asking about something that you think may be an error in the author's work, it is safer to express it as "I don't understand this" instead of "I think you are wrong".  It will be less embarrassing if they turn out to have been right.
Write in a way that makes it clear that you aren't asking a homework question or anything like that.
In general, your chances of getting a useful response are better if you are asking about a more specialized work that has relatively few readers.  If it's a lower-level, introductory, or extremely popular text, consider looking for help elsewhere.
Be patient.  Professors are usually very busy, and responding to questions about their books is usually among their lowest priorities.  I would give them at least 3-4 weeks; if no response by then, you could send one followup email.  If you don't get a response to that, then it's likely they are too busy to respond or not interested: stop emailing them, and look elsewhere for help.


Additional schooling and salary at private/public high school I have been told that private high schools would likely hire this candidate,

MSc/PhD in physics (but no teaching certificate or degree, just TA duties in undergrad and grad school),

and that public schools would likely hire this candidate,

BS/MSc in physics with teaching certificate/degree on top of TA duties

Is this oversimplification legitimate? Can a PhD get a job at a private high school without teaching certificate? Is the same possible at a public?

If a teaching certificate is indeed a prerequisite for both, what type of programs award these degrees/teaching certificates and are they quite expensive?

How does the salary (say in ... New England) compare between these two people? More specifically, how great is the increase in salary for a candidate with a PhD over an MSc at a private school, and similarly for a public school. What benefits (on-campus housing for private versus unions for public, etc) do each have?

Yes, it is an oversimplification overall. First, state laws vary about who can teach, and some laws apply to private schools as well. You may need certification or not to be hired, but in some places you will need to seek it afterwards. Most schools need to be certified by the state themselves, so the rules need to be followed.

Whether having been a TA or not may make little difference. What secondary school teachers do and what TAs do can be very different.

Nearly everywhere teachers need to do some kind of continuing education (to maintain certification). That might be in field, or it might be pedagogy, but it is usually a requirement. Having an advanced degree might alter the equation, but probably not erase the requirement.

Public schools aren't all unionized. Private schools don't all provide housing and few provide housing for everyone.

You probably don't need a doctorate anywhere in the US to be hired, but, some top secondary private schools value them.

Salary by region is probably a poor metric. If salaries are low, it is also likely that local living expenses are low as well. Some places excepted, of course, such as anywhere near the California Bay Area. But even New England isn't uniform. Boston is pretty expensive.

As for salary for an individual, the doctorate probably plays a relatively small part. The institution is looking for people who will serve their students well. Having a doctorate adds a bit of prestige to a school, but not necessarily an improvement in service to the students. They will look at the whole picture, as would any employer. Experience and letters of recommendation might weigh more than the degree.

But it is the complete picture and a judgement that you will fit in well that is more important than the degree.

After you are hired, your advance in salary depends little on the degrees you came in with. And most schools are constrained financially, both public and private.


Lord and Prof titles Someone has a title Lord and is a Professor.  How will I address a letter?  And what will the correct manner be after Dear?

Looking at this link, Professions, as provided by erstwhile editor in the comments to your question, the answer would be Professor Lord [Such-and-such]:

  If a professor is also a member of the peerage, or a knight or dame, the academic style and title may be combined as ‘Professor Lord Ryder’ or ‘Professor Dame Elizabeth Pulteney’. He/she may prefer to be known by title alone.


Is there a standard English translation of ausserordentlicher Professor? Of course the exact status of the title has changed in different places and times.

I mean it most specifically in the sense of Emmy Noether's title at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in 1923: nicht beamteter Außerordentlicher Professor.  But I doubt there is a standard translation for that specific situation.

My question is, as in the title, is there a current, standard English translation of the basic phrase Außerordentlicher Professor?

By a standard translation I mean one that is currently in widespread use, in contrast to one that I or another person thinks should be an accurate way to describe the position.

However, a look at the confusion of the English language Wikipedia Ranks in Germany convinces me there is none so I was in process of deleting this question when an answer appeared.  Now I will wait and see what happens,

First, the expression "außerordentlicher Professor" is no longer in current widespread use in Germany (although still understood; the exception is, as so often, Bavaria); a non-ordinary professor position is now usually referred to as "W2" (after the pay scale) or, in some states, "W3 ohne Leitungsfunktion". Most people who now hold such a position would translate it as "associate professor", although there are a number of significant differences between the positions that make this translation misleading in some regards.

It is also a very different position from the one Emmy Noether held (which was unpaid, for a start). In fact, Emmy Noether's position was actually that of an "außerplanmäßiger Professor", a title given to tenured university assistants after their habilitation, which entails most of the academic, but very few of the administrative, rights of a university professor. (The "nicht beamtet" previously disambiguated the two positions; the title was renamed during the Nazi regime.) This position -- which no longer exists in the German system, and, confusingly, was called "außerordentlicher Professor" (and now "assoziierter Professor") in the Austrian system -- has no analogue outside the very hierarchical traditional German system. Hence there is no canonical translation; if pushed, I would translate it either as "tenured research assistant" or "lecturer" (if there is no danger of confusion with the UK title, which would give the wrong idea), both capturing (different) aspects of the position.

Especially in a historical work, I would therefore do exactly what the English wikipedia article on Emmy Noether does -- use the original German title and give a parenthetical explanation:

  the title of nicht beamteter ausserordentlicher Professor (an untenured professor
  with limited internal administrative rights and functions)


Putting research papers online I am doing research on a topic related to an authentication technique. For my own convenience (and for the others), I'm doing all my research and putting everything on a webpage which I'll host on my personal website. I am more organized when there's an anchor link which takes me from text to the bibliography and when everything is online.

It would be an added benefit and convenience if I can also put all the papers I refer to on the same website. Is it permissible to do so? For instance, I heard a professor even encourage putting the paper online (which was originally on arXiv. But then I actually paid for a paper from Springer, and I was wondering if I can use the same logic and just assume that it is legal to do so. My intention is only to aid myself and anyone else interested in my research to access the papers I referred to in my research.

It depends on the specific license the papers are under, but if you are talking about uploading the full text version of the article to your own website then most likely no it is not permissible to do this.

If they were your own papers, it is more likely that a journal allows you to do this, but still some will not and it is important to check the policies of the individual journals.

You could certainly put a bibliography on your own website though, and link to the journal articles from there, hosted at their original journals or preprints (DOI links would be a good way to do this).

As a practical matter, however, if you host these documents in some non-public place (like a private document or privately hosted password-protected site rather than a public web site), you are extremely unlikely to catch any grief. If they are public, however, you expose yourself.


How can I improve undergraduate students' writing skills? The fact: my students write badly. The source of the problem is, most likely, low quality primary and secondary education, with little emphasis on essays.
Long term solutions are beyond the scope of this question. My focus is on the short term, as a teacher of a course that asks for essays and reports. How can I help my students to improve their writing skills, even if just a little, during the course of a semester?
A potentially relevant fact: there is no awareness among students (and I would even say, among teachers) that good writing is important for their future.
Other context: I'm in a business department. My class has an average of 20 students. They come from high school. I'm new to the university so just getting to know the type of student.
This question (or its answers) seems focused on graduate students, with many examples from lab work or theses, which is not my case. This question is about us, academics. The focus here is on undergraduates who will not develop an academic career, but require such skill nonetheless, and unfortunately my university is not providing it, at least not systematically.

Several thoughts.

Give writing assignments (goes without saying). Probably more short
ones rather than fewer long ones.
Make sure students know that form matters as well as content. To
encourage students who start from a disadvantage, count improvement
as well as mastery.
Collect and critique first drafts before grading the final work.
Allow students to resubmit essays.
More problematical: have students critique each others' work before
submission. Those critiques could even be private, so that students
wouldn't be calling each other out before the teacher, only noting
when some argument was unclear to them.

Of course this will be time consuming for you and for them. To do it properly you may have to revise the course objectives to include work done to improve writing - at the expense of "more content".


Use of first person in a PhD Thesis Is there a non written rule to which person to use in the PhD thesis, 5 years of using "We" in the papers have brought me to the innate necessity to do it every time I describe something.

Recently, though, one of my lab-mates told me that I should use I, since it is your work, if the thesis were co-written, then it would be a different story.

Is there any standard in your universities, or do you have any preferred practice.

I generally avoid "I" in scientific texts altogether, though some authors are in fact using it if they are the sole author. I can't remember seeing it in a thesis though. In texts with a sole author, I usually understand "we" as meaning the author and the reader, and I'd suggest that it's fine to use it in places where it can have that meaning. For example something like "When substituting a by b, we get ..."

A generally useful advice would be to read into some of the theses written in your group, department, and university (in decreasing relevance), and see whether there is a common pattern.


Book series in bibliography? At one time I tried to be able to remember obscure journal abbreviations and the like, but recently I started favouring more bulky bibliography entries.

So I started wondering if it might be useful to include series and volume number of a book, e.g. Graduate Texts in Mathematics (GTM). Sometimes library shelves, book stores, publisher's sites, etc. are ordered by book series and often it helps to know the series and number to track down a book. Traditionally, the bibliography information for a book would be

  Takeuti, G. & Zaring, W.M., Introduction to Axiomatic Set Theory, Berlin: Springer, 1981.

with the title of the book in italics. But then journal names are also in italics, which could mean that book series should be as well (after all, some book series even have ISSN numbers, so how different are they really?). But then there is not really enough contrast between the book title and the series...

  Takeuti, G. & Zaring, W.M., Introduction to Axiomatic Set Theory, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 1, Berlin: Springer, 1981.

My questions are

Would it be good to include book series in a bibliography? If yes:
How should I style the book title and the book series?

(As apparent from the example book, my field is mathematics.)

It is generally quite difficult to provide too much bibliographic information, and this is no exception: while few will notice or care about the additional information, it will certainly do no harm.

As for how to format it: that depends on the publication venue.  Every publication style, however, has a standardized form for books that are part of a series (intended for those books where the series is important bibliographic information) and you simply need to comply with that standard.


Asking for "more" during office hours? In some good classes I've had, I've gone to office hours not because I'm confused, but because I just want "more". I like the teacher and just want to listen to them talk about whatever, even if it's not necessarily about the class. I can usually come up with a couple questions for an excuse to come by, but I wish I could just say "please teach me more".

How do you do that? I don't know how to ask that, or how to instigate it. I usually just try to ask questions but sometimes I honestly don't have many, or at least ones that couldn't be solved by using a book. Usually these classes are ones I like, and thus I try to keep on top of things.

I am not sure what you are looking for is possible. When I was first getting into research, there were plenty of people I thought just had amazing things to say, and great perspectives on so many topics.  Even after school and being in research, there are people I truly respect that have a unique perspective on much of academia.  The issue is, these people are usually respected by more than just one person, and as such, are extremely busy.  They are also the people who are invited as speakers to conferences, TED events, etc.

My suggestion is, if you are really interested in hearing more of their perspective regardless of it being a topic of your class, you can ask if they hold other classes in which they lecture.  Additionally, you can easily look their name on google to see if there are conferences they have given talks on (which is highly likely if they are a top academic).  If you can not find anything online, you could still ask them if they have talks available online in a respectable way, such as:

  I really enjoyed your explanation of topic x, it was a way I had not
  heard it explained before, do you have any online resources in which I
  could hear more of your thoughts on this?

If you are not interested in watching recorded talks, and only interested in one-on-one communication, I think you need to think more about the comments to your question by seeking more specific questions, or your real issue with wanting to hear the person speak.


What can I do if I want to publish my PhD thesis work as is, but my advisor wants months of additional work? I recently completed my PhD thesis with minor corrections and I presented most of the data in international conferences (posters and talks). Now I am focused on writing up the data for publication in a journal.

For the publication, 2 of 3 supervisors want me to change the direction of the analysis from data driven to theory-driven which will take several months and still might be rejected. They say the data is publishable as it is but that they want to fit the data to a theory that they are pursuing for other research grants (i.e. independently from me), and it may (or may not) lead to a better cited paper. I want to try to publish the data as it is, because that is what is in my thesis, I have presented these results before and they fit with my career interest.

I was wondering whether it is acceptable to push for publication how I want it, i.e. if we do not agree on this, who takes the lead decision? At the moment, I am in danger of not publishing this work because we cannot agree, but I don't feel this re-analysis is to do with the quality of my thesis work, and is more of a hidden agenda. My supervisors had involvement and that is not the issue. If I were still a PhD student, a re-analysis would likely happen (out of interest) but since I am a post-doc in another research group, I'm not keen on a re-analysis for the fun of it.

As usual, the first piece of advice I can offer is to talk to your graduate advisor to get his take. That said, it sounds like you're getting advice which will increase your chances of getting a paper accepted from people who have experience in the field.

Your theory that they're asking you to do work related to a "hidden agenda" seems a little far-fetched... when considering the extra analysis, writing it up, and publishing, you're looking probably 18 months into the future. Your committee is well aware of this. The likelihood of all that happening in any timeframe that would be beneficial to them is pretty darn small. Even more so, they have their own students who can work on their stuff. They wouldn't hang their hat on the chances that a graduate student who has already moved on will do some research that may or may not result in a publication. Long story short, I wouldn't worry too much about ulterior motives.


Is it OK for the supervisor to expect half of grant money which student got through his help? My supervisor has told all his PhD students (more than 20) that from now on if a student gets grant then half of it must be given to group so that it could be used for the expenses for other students like conference travel. I have not applied for any grant and at the moment I am not planning to. I just want to know if this is ethical?

What I feel is that supervisors are there to supervise and it is their job. They are paid for it. If they want money, apply for grant by themselves, why expect money from a poor student?

Please not that the grant which the student gets is specifically for students. And supposed to be applied only by students themselves.

No, this is not o.k. Moreover, depending on the grant we are talking about, this instructor's request may even be illegal, but it most certainly is unethical. From what you write, it appears that in fact the request is illegal. I realize that this may be difficult, but you may want to discuss this issue with the department chair.


prospective English doctoral candidate: advice regarding weird relationship with potential advisor I recently got my BA in English from a top 10 university and am planning on re-applying to the same school's doctoral program this fall. (For personal reasons, I'm constrained to programs within a certain geographical area, so my application is rather nonnegotiable.)

I didn't do incredibly well during my first two years, and only started taking myself very seriously in the fall of my junior year. In my junior fall, I enrolled in a large lecture that I hardly (if ever) spoke in. I attended office hours only once, and I remember being really socially awkward/naive, but it's hard to judge the validity of my own memory in retrospect. It's likely that the professor doesn't remember the incident. He only graded one of my papers (the others were graded by the TA), which he returned with incredibly enthusiastic comments. I put an unbelievable amount of effort into it (likely significantly more than anyone else in the class), and my work was excellent.

The issue is this: because I had been a bit of a basket case during my first two years, I didn't really have anyone who could write me a good rec letter. In a horrible lapse of judgment, I emailed this professor that winter break, asking for a last minute rec letter for a summer program I had just found out about. I sounded kind of crazy/manic in the email, which went into unnecessary detail about the reasons why I was entreating this man I barely know to recommend me, and how eager I am to continue to do this work seriously. He sent a quick reply agreeing to write the letter, and I sent a quick "thank you."

Another mistake: I was so anxious about/humiliated by my behavior that I just...never followed up with him. I didn't send him a more formal thank you. I didn't update him on the status of the program (I didn't get in). I have literally never spoken to him since then.

Now, two years later, it turns out that my research interests have defined themselves such that, if I were to be accepted into this program, he would almost certainly be my advisor. He'll definitely be reading my application.

So the question is: how much of a problem do you anticipate this being? I truly have no idea. And do you think there's any way to rectify it? I'm an entirely different, more mature, levelheaded, reliable person now, and hopefully my application demonstrates this. But frankly, I was rude, oblivious, and crazy-sounding, and that impression of me is not at all the kind of person a department wants to trust with 5 years of funding. I feel like emailing some sort of short apology would also look crazy, because 1) what if he's forgotten about it? and 2) who thinks about this stuff two years later? On a less speculative level: should I mention him as someone I intend to work with in my letter, or should I avoid doing so? Thoughts of any kind would be much appreciated. It's largely silly and minute, but it's really eating at me and I do have to make some practical decisions about the content of my application.

If it helps: I believe the rest of my application is competitive for a top program (4.0 last two years, near perfect GRE verbal, rich cv)

I advise against sending an explanatory email. It will only make the waters murkier. An email can't correct what transpired. A better option is to meet with the professor in person to discuss your plans. This would give you a chance to demonstrate that you've changed and establish a new relationship with your professor. Don't spend time explaining your past failures. In your meeting, focus on what's positive in your record and your commitment to your new plans. Everyone screws up, you know. If this professor has the wisdom of his years and he sees a new spark in you, he will probably want to support you. Take a lesson from the past, forgive yourself for being human, and move on.


Should I put my h-index on my CV? I'm finishing my PhD and looking for postdoc jobs. I've published a decent number of papers (and also have a fair number of citations), and want to emphasize this on my CV.

Should I actually state my h-index on my CV? If so, is Google Scholar the easiest/best way to compute this?

2014.03.12 EDIT:
Thanks for the advice. I had originally planned to put my h-index at the head
of my list of publications (as a clickable link to my Google Scholar profile).

Based on the advice from many of you I will just omit this altogether for now.
My scholar profile is easy to find (for potential PIs who care about such
metrics), and not explicitly stating my h-index myself avoids any negative
connotations among those who object to the h-index or calculating it via Google
Scholar (e.g. Google includes self-citations, arXiv/non peer-reviewed papers
etc).

A range of statistics can be useful in providing a quick snapshot of your research productivity. Common statistics include: number of refereed journal publications; number of publications that meet a criteria such as you being first author or the journal being above a certain impact factor or on a discipline specific list of quality journals; h-index; total amount of grant funding; etc. These would supplement a complete list of your publications.

With regards to h-index, make sure you make clear what citation database you are using.

I know that some people on this site object to the bureaucratic reductionism that can result from using measures like h-indices, impact factors and the like. Nonetheless, just because they are imperfect, does not prevent them from being useful. Such measures should not replace actually reading your work to assess its quality, but they can be useful in getting a rough handle on the impact and status of your research.

In terms of anecdotes, I have read several promotion applications that have successfully incorporated a range of such summary statistics to make the case for promotion. h-index, total grant funding, total publications, average teaching scores are all evidence, albeit imperfect that decision makers who are often outside your area will use to decide how to allocate resources like jobs, promotions, etc.


Is there any reason not to crowdsource a subset of exam questions? We're considering incentivising students to submit questions for the final exam in a large grad class (> 200 students) as we feel like the process of designing a problem and a grading rubric encourages students to study the material to more depth.

Is this commonly done? What are the pros/cons in the literature, or that you can think of with implementing an exam where a few questions are generated by the class? What precautions should we be taking? What should we incentivise?

Is this commonly done?

I have no sources to answer this, but in my experience, no, it's not commonly done.

  What are the pros/cons [...] that you can think of with implementing an exam where a few questions are generated by the class?

I can see two main issues:

It's not clear to me how you want to handle the communication of the questions and how you plan to use them, but some or, possibly, many students will know the questions in advance before the final exam.
As pointed out by @trikeprof in a comment, students might perceive this as a lazy strategy. Furthermore, they might not like the idea of being assessed on the basis of questions formulated by their peers.

I think that the idea of having students designing questions is good, but those questions shouldn't be directly used in the final exam.

An alternative proposal could be that of assigning the design of a question as homework, with the additional agreement that good questions will be collected in a booklet of questions/exercises, with recognition of the authors.


What can I expect from a Skype interview for PhD admissions? I contacted a lecturer from my alma mater. He replied me a few days later that he had funding, explained me his project and application process and even attached a detailed research proposal. He asked me to skype with him.

In such case, please advise me what kinds of questions during interview can be asked.

This doesn't sound like an overly formal process as you're already known to the interviewer. However, in my institution at least, the process is becoming much more formal (person specifications, training for interviewers, etc.) and so there are definite areas that the interviewer will be trying to explore:

Do your skills match up with what you claim on your application? Expect specific questions on your application, particularly on relevant projects, or reports, or dissertations.
Can you communicate? Particularly, why do you want to do a PhD, why in this area, with this person, etc. This also covers language skills, if you're not a native speaker. Expect more general questions probing your motivation.
Can you link together different areas of knowledge? Show that your earlier studies have gone in and you can see where they're relevant to the PhD topic. Expect detailed questions on key techniques for this project, maybe linking back to courses you've taken (if they don't make the link, it's a strength when you explicitly do).
Do you know what you don't know? There's a lot to learn in a PhD and the best candidates will (a) know that, and (b) want to fix that themselves. Communicating what areas you need to improve, and how you want the supervisor to help you improve, can be a strength (provided it isn't key background for the PhD!). This is where you should show you've read the research proposal, and also the papers referred to in it: you don't need a detailed understanding of it all, but you should clearly show what you've understood, and how you'd go about learning what you haven't.
Evidence of problem-solving skills. Talking about projects, reports written, group work done. Show that you understood what you did (even if strongly directed), that you can communicate it clearly, and how you generated ideas.
Can you connect with the potential supervisor? This can be purely personal, and is the hardest thing to do in a Skype call. If possible, try and make it a conversation instead of a question and answer session. Also, try and prepare some questions to ask them, particularly around the research proposal.

As I noted at the top, if you're already known to the interviewer, and if there's no formal university process mandated by central administration, this could well be an informal chat. Even then, I'd make sure you've read the research proposal, and researched its background, so that you can genuinely talk, and not get a huge information dump.


Publishing research using outdated methods I'm currently an Economics MA student doing a referee report on a paper that employs a dated empirical method. This particular method was originally created in 1980 but then improved upon in 1998 by other researchers, after they had discovered certain issues with it.

This got me thinking about how exactly those on the cutting edge of research seem to lag behind by over a decade (or more) in method and still manage to get published.

This is concerning because it shows that published researchers make mistakes and don't review all relevant research before publishing. I can imagine that in the hard sciences and medicine this would happen also, which is especially concerning knowing that those on the cutting edge could be decades behind in knowledge which has been around for a while.

Is this acceptable? If so, why?

What you call "an outdated method" another may call "the well-understood method".

In neuroscience, this is a very common occurrence. There are new techniques for analyzing different types of neural recordings coming out each month in a number of journals, and each one aims to improve on a specific aspect of a predecessor. Unfortunately, the new techniques are exactly that—new—and therefore untested against lots of data with different initial conditions. There are a good number of researchers who will simply ignore all the new techniques until people have developed them to a place of comfort. Even for those that do gain acceptance, they may not be appropriate for every type of analysis1.

I'm unfamiliar with your specific case, but I have seen similar concepts elsewhere in Econ, where older published techniques remain highly popular because (1) they're well-understood and (2) the new techniques were created to fix problems that not present in all databases, or not relevant for a given analysis. The old fogies sometimes do have something to offer.

1 In one case, a technique called DCM became widely popular in a very short period of time, and consequently was very quickly becoming widely misused. It got so bad that the authors actually published a paper titled "Ten simple rules for dynamic causal modeling" with the goal of educating researchers how to use the technique. (Biomed researchers in general don't have a great track record of performing world-class data analysis, but thats a separate story...)


How to continually email references without annoying them? I am beginning to realize that I may need to suddenly bombard my referees with several emails. They have both confirmed that they would be references.

Firstly, I would like to know whether the school I’m applying to has sent them the form yet that they need to fill out. They should have, but I’m not sure if they did. The application is due January 31st.

Secondly, I sent one of my referees a document of the tasks I worked on during my undergraduate research project to help with the reference. I had a meeting with him last week and he asked me to send this to him. I did yesterday morning and still haven’t heard back. He usually replies very quickly. Should I confirm he received it?

Thirdly, The internal scholarship just opened up and I just found out I need a couple of references for this (it’s only one application). This reference form is nearly identical to one of the other ones I asked them to fill out. I would like to ask them for this reference as well (it’s due at the very beginning of March).

Lastly, assuming they don’t send in their references until right up until the deadline, I will also need to eventually send them a follow up email to make sure they send them in.

I feel like a huge burden emailing them as they are extremely busy (they work with the government in addition to being a professor). How should I go about sending these emails?

People who have agreed to be your referees know you will be applying to various things (or should do: you should have given them a reasonable outline of your plans). The number of different things they need to do is not so important. What matters is the total time it will take them. If they have three references to write at once, they can copy/paste it across, having got into 'writing your reference' mode just once. If you time requests such that they have to keep coming back to it, that will take much more time and effort for them.

So, do your best to group any reference requests into as few blocks as possible. That means you need to plan ahead about your applications, and ask for some well ahead of time, so they can be done along with references for places with earlier deadlines. As a bonus, this also massively reduces the 'night before the deadline' worry.

Personally I would scrub round the 'did you send it?' email. If it's after the deadline, there's not a lot you can do about it either way. If the place you are applying is very strict on the deadline (ie including references), make sure you have told your referees that. Unless you know they are particularly unreliable (in which case you probably want to take a different approach anyway), they will not mess things up for you except in an emergency. Some places will accept references slightly after the deadline, and the nicer ones would let you know that not all your references have arrived, so you can give the referees a poke. Also, if you've given them things in a neat block, there's a good chance they will let you know they've sent the references by themselves.


How to address situtations where the effort to avoid plagiarism results in less effective communication? I have been contemplating this topic because of something that happened a number of years ago. Do you have any suggestions on alternative ways to handle the following case:

A student in one of my community college classes (Introduction to Public Speaking) wrote a moving self-introduction for his “icebreaker” speech.  The student was a homeless person who had resolved to become a college graduate and his brief autobiographic speech offered the class a rather poignant insight into what it actually meant to be homeless.

The following year that same student was in another of my COMM classes and the students were required to deliver a persuasive speech based on one of the three classic rhetorical modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, or logos. The aforementioned student’s speech topic attempted to persuade his classmates to help the homeless by appealing to their emotions. A great deal of his speech was clearly “lifted” verbatim from his icebreaker text. To his credit his speech introduction did include the following sentence: “Last year I wrote a speech describing what it means to be homeless and today I would like to revisit that topic.” and he also correctly cited his own speech in the written outline.

When a student just re-uses all or most of a speech without acknowledging the prior work I consider that self-plagiarism. When a student copies verbatim text but gives clear attribution I consider that a lazy effort. However, in this case the precise phrasing and constructions used by the student had such strong emotional appeal I would be hard-pressed to find any way to revise the speech without lessening its impact.

Imagine having Martin Luther King in your speech class and requiring him to rewrite his "I Have A Dream" speech without using any repetitive phrases.

In this case his grade was based on the 2nd speech alone without factoring in the 1st speech in any way. However I did follow up and educate the student on the subject of self-plagiarism (amazing how few students are aware of this concept) and cautioned him to be avoid or at the least to be extremely careful when re-using his work.

Considering this particular student's overall performance I am fine with his specific work and the grade he received for this project. However I wonder what I would do if a similar case happened again and felt it would make a good question here. It relates somewhat to the opposite scenario in which a student desperately trying to avoid plagiarism contorts the phrasing of a source into an awkward and ineffective communication.

In the one case the underlying question is:
Do you ignore or mitigate the duplication of the (correctly attributed) source to respect the effectiveness of the wording?

In the other case the question is:
Do you ignore or mitigate the horrible wording in order to respect the avoidance of duplication?

Let's split this into two different cases:

Is re-using a speech self-plagiarism?
Is re-using a speech appropriate in that specific classroom context?

Addressing the first question, the reason why self-plagiarism is an issue is that there is an expectation of novelty in scientific communication: re-using text from a previous manuscript is thus "cheating."  There is no such expectation of novelty in speeches.  It is thus just fine to re-use content in a talk, and there is not even any requirement to acknowledge that one has given the same talk elsewhere.  Consider, for example, a person doing faculty interviews and giving the same talk at different places: this is perfectly normal, acceptable, and even desirable.  Now, if you give the same talk to the same audience multiple times, they'll probably get bored and stop inviting you to talk, because you don't have anything new to say.  Similarly, because talks are often tied to manuscripts, e.g., at conferences, it will necessarily be the case that they contain much new material.  Still, these are byproducts of the nature of the communication, not ethical principals.

Now, to the second question: should the student have re-used the same speech in class?  Here, I would say that it depends greatly on the educational goal of the class.  If the goal is to workshop particular aspects of the content or delivery of a speech, then I think that it would be fine, since you can work on new aspects of a speech even if it is not new (or even yours!): for example, you might want to work on delivery and oration, and even just quoting Martin Luther King could be just fine for that.  If, on the other hand, the goal is to learn how to create a speech, then it's failing to satisfy the educational objectives of the class.  To take the analogy: even if Martin Luther King's best speech was "I have a dream," it shouldn't mean it's the only speech he can ever give.  I wouldn't call it self-plagiarism, since novelty is not the default expectation in speeches, but it would be failing to follow instructions.  Not knowing the exact nature and instructions of your class, however, I'm not sure which category it falls into.


Can I recreate/redesign a peer reviewed journal article findings (giving proper credits to author, journal)into powerpoint and sell it? Can I recreate/redesign a peer reviewed journal article findings (giving proper credits to author, journal) into powerpoint slide and sell it for profit?

Probably not, but that depends on the copyright holder and on any license that is attached to the work. If there is no license at all, then the answer would be no. But even some permissive licenses have a no commercial use clause. If so, again, no.

And note that copyright law isn't universal. It varies from country to country.

And note, again, that it is the words (expression) that is normally covered by copyright, not the underlying ideas. Anyone can write about ideas.

But, another issue is how you would be looked upon if you do this. Some things that are, strictly speaking, legal, are still frowned upon.


Using an English or French presentation to a French talk? I'll be defending my Ph.D. this October. I submitted my dissertation in English and prepared an English presentation, but my supervisor along with the jury members surprised me by saying the defense speech cannot be in English and must be in French (“since we are from a country that has the second language is French”). Actually, they don’t mind an English report. In fact, they are very proud of the report.

So my question is, what would be suitable in this situation, keep the presentation in English and talk in French, or, I will change the presentation to French since I talk in French?

I would put the presentation into French, for two basic reasons:

just to make sure that when you glance at the screen any word triggers a train of thought in French
the audience also has the French ppt to look at matching what they hear from you.

I understand that the thesis is in English, but they won't necessarily open that until after depending on the questions - which they have probably already prepared...

Also, anytime I have to listen to one language and read a second (and I have a DUT to go with my BEng Hons) I always change to comparing the errors in expression / translation and loose the real message.

So, go with French ppt & language and BEST OF LUCK - you will be fine.

Autrement dit : Bonne chance Chef !!


What does first authorship really mean? In my field (theoretical computer science), authors of any paper are always listed alphabetically; our papers don't have "first authors".  (Well... hardly ever.)  In most other disciplines, at least within science and engineering, the ordering of authors is a signal about their relative contributions to the paper, with the first author indicating the most significant contributor.  Hiring and promotion committees do give extra weight to "first-author papers" (and sometimes have to be reminded that not all areas have them).  As an outsider, I find this practice confusing.

What does first authorship actually mean in your discipline? I understand vaguely that the first author is supposed to be the one who "did the most work", but what counts as "work" in this comparison?  Does "most" mean "more than all the other coauthors together" or just "more than any other coauthor"?  What happens when the comparison is unclear?   How often is "did the most work" the actual truth, versus a cover story for a more complex political decision?

I realize that the precise answer is different for every paper.  I'm looking for general guidelines for how an outsider (like me) should interpret first authorship in your field.  Pointers to guidelines from journals or professional societies would be especially helpful.

Please give only one answer per discipline.

Pure Mathematics: All authors are assumed to have contributed equally and are listed alphabetically.  The American Mathematical Society has put out a statement to this effect.


Will taking basic courses missed during undergraduate now as a non-degree student help for my PhD applications? I am an international master student and I have an unconventional background. I want to apply for PhD programs in field X, which is closely related to my degree now, but not exactly. I missed some basic courses during my undergraduate in field X and I want to show that I have the knowledge covered in those courses.
One way to do it is to take those courses now but due to language problems I can't. Another way seems to be to get a good grade on upper level courses. But it is not really an ideal application and also I am not sure I can get good grades. So I decided to take those basic courses as a non-degree student somewhere after I graduate.
One thing that concerns me is that most of the schools I want to apply for PhD set their deadlines in December, while I don't know if my transcript will show that I am doing these basic courses. Even if it shows, no grades would be in there. I can't wait till the next year due to personal reasons, so I am afraid it isn't worth the money and time to do a non-degree study.
So the questions are, can taking courses as a non-degree student really increase my chances of success, and how would the selection committee view students who have taken courses in this way?

For undergraduate students (or current masters students) applying to graduate school, it's normal that an entire year of their classes are not yet complete at the time grad school applications are submitted (and at a minimum an entire semester). That's usually the time in which students are taking the highest-level classes relevant to their major. Transcripts in my experience always show current enrollment as well as completed courses, even for registered courses that haven't started yet.
If you think you have some weaknesses in coursework areas, then it's definitely better to be able to show you are taking those classes now in some way, even if you don't have grades yet. It's also (and maybe this is a controversial opinion?) sometimes useful to take courses to just, you know, learn something, rather than just increasing admission probability by some unknown percentage point.


Missed April 15th deadline to accept grad school offer. What can I do? I missed the April 15th deadline to accept my grad school offer and wanted to accept it. It is now April 16th and I got an email saying they have withdrawn my consideration, is there anything I can do, anyone I can contact to accept the offer they extended to me even though it is now after April 15th?

You have nothing to lose by reaching out -- the sooner the better. The best person would be a professor who recruited you (wants you in their group) or informed you of the offer. But I would also reach out to:

Any administrator who contacted you
Any other professors you are interested in working for
Whichever faculty member in the department is in charge of graduate admissions

The email doesn't need to be long, but it is important. Just apologize and say that it was a mistake, but you had intended to accept the offer. Unless they are looking for an excuse to retract the offer, there is a good chance they still want you. They may see missing this deadline as a bad sign; however, being proative and apologizing for your mistake will make it more likely that they forgive it. Follow up and reach out to new people if you don't get a response.

P.S. Bryan Krause makes an important point in the comments about programs that have wait lists:

  The biggest issue is that any program with a wait list is likely to go to those applicants as soon as possible, which is the fairest thing to those applicants. They may not have a funding slot for you if someone from that list accepts, and they may feel they should give them priority over you[.]


How to manage the structure of a masters thesis and what mistakes to look out for? I'm writing my master thesis at the moment in the area of cyber/computer security.
However, I'm having real trouble in keeping a good structure in the thesis.

What I mean with structure is that my supervisor has commented on several occasions that the order of subjects should be changed and that some parts should be switched or explained in less/more detail.

Although my supervisor has been incredibly helpful and has provided good pointers, I was wondering if the community here could give some ideas on:

How to keep the structure of a thesis in line and what mistakes to look out for?

Other answers have suggested outlines, but even with such an outline it's not always clear what is the best order to discuss everything (whether it's the choice of section or ordering within a section).

One approach I have seen used is to print out the whole document, cut out each paragraph, and pin them on a pinboard. Then it's easy to adjust the order of the whole document until the whole thing is coherent. You'll probably want to have a pencil on hand while doing this, because you'll need to adjust the text a bit to fit the order.


Should the personal/research statement be technical? Related: Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose

I know I must describe my past and current research in my personal/research statement or statement of purpose. But do I use technical terms?

I was given the advice that since the people reading my statement are mathematicians (I am applying to US for applied mathematics), they should know what I am talking about.

Although I am applying to applied mathematics, it would also be nice to hear from other fields (biology, computer science, engineering etc) about this.

At least in computer science: Yes, but.

What admissions committees are looking for in your application is strong evidence of research potential.  One of the indicators of research potential is the ability to write about your chosen field in its native language; not just technical terms, but their proper usage and context.  In particular, if you are describing your past research results, or a particular future research problem, you should describe it just as any professional researcher would.

However, there is technical language and technical language, and you want the former.  The vast majority of your statements should be understandable to a general audience of (in your case) applied mathematicians, not just to experts in your chosen subsubsubfield.  For the really technical details, cite the literature or point to your own work on your web page.  (The ability to effectively explain your research to non-experts, demonstrated knowledge of the literature, and willingness to embarrass yourself in public by posting your work to the web are also strong indicators of research potential.)


How to grade a student software project? Situation

Students have three weeks to write a little application (UI, some logic, event handling, persist data to a file). They are given one page with some requirements (input). They are supposed to hand in a compilable and running application (output). No software documentation required.

Question

How would you grade a software project? What criteria would you use? Can you give examples?

Idea

There are a few areas that seem important to me.

Are all the given requirements implemented?
Is error handling implemented or does the application crash when the user inputs invalid data?
Does the user interface look good, is it usable?
Is the code well structured?

Each class in a separate file
Small methods which do one single task
Public methods are documented

Can I save the data, quit the application, restart it again, and all the data is reloaded?

Those criteria are very vague, I know. For each of the above criteria, I don't know when to give an A and when to give an F. Any suggestions to improve the criteria and any suggestions on how to grade it?

My policy, my 2 cents:

Part of the grading corresponds to the expectation of the "customer". if this project is considered as an actual development project in industry, does it deserves that the customer is paying its full price. For instance, I will give 10 points (over 20) for that criteria. If the software fulfil all the requirements then the student is awarded the 10 points, otherwise he/she starts losing some of the points.
Part of the grading is for the quality of the code (structure, naming of variable, algorithmic aspects, etc.). I give 5 points at max here.
The rest is for the tasks around the code: modeling, UML stuff, reports, etc. The last 5 points can be found here.


Asking professors in other Universities for comments on research If you are working on an individual research paper with the help of your advisor (e.g. M.Sc Thesis), what is the academic convention on asking for comments from other professors? For example, if your paper closely relates to a paper written by an author who is in another University, and hence might also be of interest to this author, would it be acceptable to mail him a copy and ask for his thoughts on the work, or could this be considered disrespectful towards ones own advisor?

It would be best to involve your advisor. I would advise against requesting comments from other professors without discussing it first.

It may be useful to approach your advisor and show them the work of the other professor to get their thoughts on the matter. They may agree, but they may also not wish to; mailing a copy without discussion would probably be interpreted as being disrespectful.

One thing to consider however is that the other professor may not offer comments on your paper. It may be that they struggle to find the time to peer review journal articles (which is pretty much a work obligation), so they may simply not have the time to offer comments on your work.

If you are hoping that mailing your paper may lead to the possibility of landing a PhD place, then you should consider sending your paper. However only do this following a discussion with your advisor, or after you have completed your thesis and received the award.


How to properly use paid participation survey in my research? My field of study is business communication and I tried to gather responses for my survey by contacting target audience by email directly, however response rates were next to 0%. Now I'm considering using paid participation survey service to gather information I need (which is possible with some screening).

1) How to include "paid participation survey" explanation in my methodology section? (Should I mention paid participation at all?)

2) Is it normal/generally accepted to use paid surveys in Academia, because articles I read on my field never mentioned it?

I'm not very familiar with paid participation surveys, but anyway the first step is always to seek approval by the ethics committee in your institution. They might require  modifications in your methodology if they find some issues, and their approval will ensure that your study complies with minimal ethical standards.

In a publication you should definitely mention that participants were paid, since this is an important information about how the data was obtained. In general you should always explain the details about the recruitment method. Typically it could be a paragraph at the beginning of a "data" section, I'm not aware of any strict standard about this.

I've seen many cases where participants are offered a gift voucher of some kind, so I'd say it's quite common to compensate participants. There are also many studies which use crowdsourcing platforms where participants are paid for their time. I assume that it's also common in clinical trials but I'm not in the medical domain myself.


Citing information from table in a review paper in a review paper, there is a topic which I need so much, the Author reviews information from sources A, B, C and D. Then he summarizes it in a table. my question is can I cite information from the table and refer to the author as the source of information or should I go to the original sources and cite from ?? Note: the table has no references.

Not clear.

To make life easiest on your readers, cite the review paper. Then they can find everything in one place.

You should try to track down the original sources just to check that the review paper is correct - particularly since you need that material "so much" and the review paper has no references. You may then want to cite those sources too, depending on what you find there that's not in the review paper. If you can't find an original source you should probably say so.


Can I write a referee report too fast? As a math postdoc, I received my first invitation to referee a journal article today, and I accepted the invitation. I've already read a preprint of the submitted article (which has been available on arXiv for a few months and coincides with the submitted version) in great detail some time ago and therefore I already have to say a lot about the article's content and presentation. I was given two months to write a report.
My question, which might be stupid, is now:
Can I write the report "too fast"?
Or, more precisely:

Does it make a bad impression to the editor if I submit the report too fast (say after a week or two)? Since the editor is an influential and important person in the field, I don't want him to think of me as a bad referee, but I fear that he might think "The report came in so fast that the referee clearly did not put much effort into it. I'll better not ask him next time".

Even if I've read the article before, is it better to "let it sink" for some more time and not rashly send the report to the editor? At what point should I feel confident that the report is ready?

Update: Thanks everyone for the good advice! I sent the report after around 10 days, and it was really appreciated by the editor!

Fast is great! Just be warned that it means editors will like you and send you more requests so you’ll have to learn to say no.  If you also say “no” quickly and suggest alternatives, then you’ll still leave a good impression with the editors.


Particular tone or rhythm in academic presentations I always wonder whether there are some particular rhythms (or tones) people use while presenting their work. It seems many people I have seen talking have some particular style and they repeat that through out the talk.

Personally, I feel very uncomfortable while giving a talk although my English is not that bad. Thought this type of rhythm might help me dealing with this "uneasiness". Looking for your advice..

Everybody has to find their own style and "voice."  Perhaps in some people, that might come out in a sort of rhythm or tone.  In my own talks, when I am comfortable and happy with my material, I often settle into certain characteristic pattens of emphasis and pause, fast and slow. Watching people give good talks and studying their style can be a useful tool for figuring out how you relate to various tactics, and perhaps give you more comfort in their diversity, by showing that you do not have to strictly conform to any particular pattern. Your "voice," when you find it, however, will be uniquely your own.


What is the equivalent degree of a Diploma in Information Technology from India? After my 10th grade I joined a polytechnic college for a specialization in Infomation Technology (Diploma in Information Technology). Now, I am in my final year of under-graduate studies (Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology), and I want to pursue my graduate studies from the United States of America.

One of the universities that I am applying to did not offer the option of “Diploma in Information Technology” in their online application form. After doing some research I found out that:

  In India, a diploma is a specific academic award usually earned in professional/vocational courses, e.g., Engineering, Pharmacy, Design, etc. In such cases, a diploma is specific in rank than a Bachelor's degree of that discipline but equivalent to general degree in that discipline, e.g., Diploma in Engineering of Electronics Engineering is rated differently than Bachelor of Technology in Electronics Engineering but is equivalent to Bachelor of Science in Electronics.

If so, then what is the equivalent degree of a Diploma in Information Technology in India? Is it Bachelor of Science in Information Technology?

It's not "equivalent" to any US degree.The US educational system is sufficiently different that no such equivalent degree exists in the US.

If an online application doesn't have your specific credentials as an option, choose "Other" and specify. Don't invent equivalencies.


Where to find journals or other publications for my work? I have written papers on the topic of network security.  Now I am trying to find a place to publish one of them.  Is there a list of publications by topic, somewhere?  If I come across such a list, how can I determine the reputation of the various publications?

When you want to figure out where to publish something do the following:

Figure out what journals the articles you cite are published in. Try there.
If that doesn't work, look at the other outlets that the authors of those papers also publish in. Then try there.


Use of external resources as teaching aids I am teaching a course in calculus.  Things are generally going quite well, but since this is the first course I've ever taught I'm certainly not doing a perfect job.  As a result, I sometimes come across lecture topics that don't go so well, either because:

I didn't do a good job of explaining in lecture, typically because I made a mistake or glossed over something or
The concept itself is just difficult, and requires a lot more time to understand than I can devote in lecture.

In these situations, I make sure that I communicate to the class that there was an issue, and I often look for or create resources like video lectures or supplementary documents that clarify things.

If I want to be 100% sure that the message I deliver is in agreement with how I'm teaching the course, I make the material myself.   For instance, if there are multiple, conflicting definitions of the same term, I tend to make my own material and post it for the class in order to ensure that my definitions are consistent throughout my entire course.  I've done this several times and my resources are well received.

However, there are resources out there that are just clearly better than anything I can whip up, at least in the time I have.  Khan Academy is particularly fantastic and has great videos, activities, etc.  Rather than re-invent the wheel, I will provide links to these resources when the topic is either not critical or where the resource aligns very well with how I've taught the concept in class.  I always make sure to properly give credit and do not take credit myself for things I did not create.

I'm not sure why, but somehow this feels like "cheating". I'm also concerned that it will be perceived as laziness on my part by the students.  So the questions:

Is this cheating? Should I be making my own material, in order to 100% guarantee that what my students see is consistent with how I'm teaching it?
If not, is there anything I should be doing to ensure that students understand that these resources are just one part of the course, and shouldn't be exclusively relied on?

Giving an extra resource from another properly referenced and acknowledged source gives an explanation with a different flavour - I do this and so do my colleagues - do all students use or appreciate - no but some do, so it's worth it. Best of luck you have a good attitude.


How common is it in papers to contain copied paragraphs from previous papers? How common is for good and high quality research papers to contain 1 or 2 paragraphs of copy paste from previous papers of the same researcher?

Is this common or it's a red flag of low quality research?

Edit: 2 papers from the same researcher tackle different problems. To solve each of these problems some sub methods are used. On paper A sub methods 1, 2 and 3 are used. On paper B sub methods 3, 4 and 5 are used.

Sub method 3 is copy pasted (exact same explanation) on both papers A and B. The newer paper (B) makes no reference to paper A. The papers have nothing in common, aside from using this sub method.

As a user of papers I strongly prefer copy-paste to rewrite for the sake of rewrite. It takes a lot longer to see if there are any differences in the method between the papers if the descriptions use different words.

That said, it seems to me that the later published paper should reference the earlier one.


Tenure-track application: how important is the area of preference? I'm applying for tenure-track positions in mathematics in the US, and I'm seeing some ads with a specified area of preference, which says "preference will be given to the candidates in area XXX".

Is it worth it to apply even if I'm not in these areas? Do the applications even get looked at? I would like to hear from people who have served on hiring committees.

The short answer is that it varies.  In some cases an institution might be quite willing to consider a strong applicant who is outside of the preferred area of specialization, while in other cases it may be very important to the institution and they'll only take someone outside of the preferred area if there are no reasonable applicants in the preferred area.

The one thing that you can be sure of is that there will almost certainly be a substantial number of applicants who are in the preferred area.   You won't get the job unless (1) the department is willing to hire outside of the preferred area and (2) you're a stronger candidate than all of the other candidates who are in the preferred area.  That's a pretty high bar.

My own experience on hiring committees for positions in applied mathematics is that a large fraction (maybe half) of the applications come from candidates who aren't in the desired area.  As a search committee member, I look at their applications and drop them from consideration with no more than a minute or two of consideration because we've always had plenty of good candidates in our area of interest.


When picking a journal for my research should I value the publisher's reputation over the journal's impact factor? I'm in the process of selecting an appropriate journal for my article. I short-listed a few journals based on topic coverage, IF and speed of the review process.

I am confused: should I select a journal with higher IF (2.3) published by a non-reputable publisher (MDPI) or should I publish in a journal with low IF (1.2) published by a reputable publisher (IEEE)?

By reputation I mean the reputable publisher (IEEE) is specialized in my area of research and non reputable (MDPI) is an Open Access publisher.

Another way to see which is reputable or not, besides the impact factor, is the Editorial Board. Which of these journals have, in your opinion, the strongest Ed.B. (measured by expertise/fame etc). Journals with stronger Ed.B. will guarantee better visibility of your result and, probably, more technical/specialized review process.

You should also know that IF is, sometimes, artificial in the sense that it does not capture the exact quality of the journal. In my field, TCS, there are many highly ranked journals (for example Combinatorica) the impact factor of which is less than many mediocre journals. But does it mean anything? No.

Also, more specialized journals (and hence with lower IF, although that's not always the case) have better visibility on your own field. Submitting your paper in a general purpose journal includes the risk of your paper getting "lost" in otehr unrelated, or borderline related, papers which means high risk of being overlooked by potential readers. You might say that this can be solved by posting it on ArXiv but I found out many interesting papers for my research the way I described above.

At the end of the day, nobody is scrutinizing IF: what matters is how reputable and well known the journal is and how easy or hard is to publish there.


What is the academic degree of medical school graduate after 6 years of study, plus 1 year intern? What is the equivalent of medical degrees to Bachelor, Master and PhD?
Calculating points for Canadian Express Entry program. On education section, they have only these degrees - Bachelor, Master, PhD. Not sure which is the correct for Doctor of Medicine.

Huh. According to this table (PDF), an entry-to-practice degree that requires licensure is credited the same as a master's level, 23 points.

  University-level credential at the Master’s level OR an
  entry-to-practice professional degree. CIC only accepts as an
  entry-to-practice professional degree, those degrees issued in
  relation to an occupation listed at NOC Skill level A and for which
  licensing by a provincial regulatory body is required.

This section includes:

various master's, medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, podiatry, chiropractic medicine, optometry, law, and pharmacy.


Ownership of a PhD Student's Research I am a PhD student in theoretical computer science. It is my understanding that if I work on a paper without my PhD advisor (which is common in my research area) and without any lab resources then that work is my own, and I can submit the paper where I choose. In particular, my advisor cannot force me to add them as a co-author if they have not contributed to the paper either intellectually or in the form of resources. Is this the most widely held view among scientists? What if the PhD student is an RA for 20 hours a week?

If your advisor hasn’t contributed anything to the paper intellectually then they can’t ethically put their name on a paper they didn’t contribute to. That has nothing to do with funding or RAships.

That said, what I described above is the ideal. Students are often under pressure to do what advisors say. Authorship is best discussed directly and if you have any issues you should speak with your advisor and establish standards in your group.


Citing a citation from a paper? So, I have a sentence in a paper I'm writing that looks like this:

  This result was first discovered by Person X (PaperX 1915).

The issue is, the paper I cite, let's call it Paper X, written by Person X, is in German, and I have not read it. I know that the result is there, because another paper, let's say Paper Y, also cited Paper X and stated that this result was there.

Do I need to cite Paper Y as well as Paper X, since it is where I found the citation and the result? Or is this not necessary, as the information which I am repeating from Paper Y is information that they themselves repeat from Paper X, which I cite?

You are correct, there is a format for this.  See http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-another-source.aspx


What quantitive metrics would reviewers in order to be presented as candidates for peer review? I am looking for ideas and suggestions on when someone would have enough experience and expertise to be presented as a potential peer review candidate.

I am specifically looking at using review history data as a source and keywords search to search that source. So a solution could be related to attributing keywords. But don't let that lead you too much, this is just my current thinking.

The configuration of such a process of when does someone becomes worth showing as an expert of candidate is main area I would like suggestions and idea on.

If I had to find peer reviewer for a field I have no knowledge of, but a lot of data, I would first come up with a citation graph and look at all papers near to the paper that should be refereed.

If I had a list of reputable journals, I would filter that paper list by this list. The resulting paper list can be scanned for authors. Now you can compare key words of the important papers of the authors to the key words of the paper. This allows you to come up with a list of persons that may be "experts".


If a paper is accepted as a poster, must you attend the conference? I know that submitting a paper to a conference implies a promise to present the paper if it's accepted. However, I have seen conferences where a paper that you submit could be accepted as a poster instead. I have a limited travel budget (who doesn't?), and I would rather not travel just for a poster presentation, so I haven't submitted anything to that type of conference.

However, now I'm wondering: If you submit a paper, and it's accepted as a poster, would it be perceived poorly if you decide not to present the poster? (Of course, if you do that, your abstract wouldn't appear in any proceedings.)

EDIT: By "decide not to present the poster", I mean withdrawing it. I certainly wouldn't plan on being a no-show!

A paper submitted to a conference can be accepted either as an oral talk, a poster talk, or a short demo/industry track, with variations (small talks, long talks, plenary talks, e-posters, etc.). In some fields, the poster is considered less important, and will not be published as a paper in proceedings. In others, they have the same importance.

Conferences have two main purposes (I forgot about vacations in paradise places):

present your paper, either talk or poster,
attend other talks/posters, meet people.

To me, "submitting a paper to a conference implies a moral obligation for one of the authors to present the talk or the poster, if the paper is accepted". If one does not attend, the submission should be withdrawed, for different potential reasons:

you (and your co-authors) do not need, or cannot afford a poster presentation,
the conference program is not good enough for your purposes,
you should not fool attendees with papers that will not be presented.

In the conferences I do summit to, both oral and poster are considered even. I now do:

prefer posters when I present, as I have more time (1h-2h vs 15 min-20 min) to present, to talk with attendees, adapt to their background,
prefer attend to posters than to orals, except when I spot a specific point for a given talk.

Plus, I do bring along with me small copies of the poster, copies of papers that are related to the work at hand, that I can offer to attendees. Reminder of the root: a "publication" means: make a research "public". Posters are a good vector for that, and bring you more feedback (very few questions asked in traditional oral sessions). Sometimes, somebody who cannot attend your allotted slot can propose a specific meeting. I should admit I even went to a person presenting a poster, to ask him about her/his previous work.

In those conferences, poster chairs spot "no shows": poster panels without posters, posters without presenters, posters with a presenter who is not a co-author.

  Example: No-show papers are defined as papers submitted by
  authors who subsequently did not present the paper in-person (no
  videos, no remote cast) at the technical meeting. Presentations by
  proxies are not allowed, unless explicitly approved before the
  conference by the technical co-chairs. No-show papers that were not
  withdrawn and were published in the Proceedings must be identified as
  "No-Show" in the files submitted to IEEE for further publication (IEEE
  Xplore). No-shows will not be available on IEEE Xplore or other public
  access IEEE forums. IEEE will maintain an archive of no-shows.

Authors of "no show" are sometimes blacklisted, and can be banned of publications in the scientific organization places (future conferences, even journals) for a couple of years.

So it will be perceived poorly if you do not warn the organizers and withdraw the paper, is unethical to other attendees,  and involves consequences for you and your co-authors.


Prospective PhD contacts potential supervisor but receives no answer after 2-3 emails, what to do? Say a prospective PhD has a high reply rate (90-95%) to first contact emails with potential superviors. He/She has a well thought out e-mail, but a particular professor (here: USA) that is in the top preferences does not reply after two to three e-mails that were sent within a time frame of three months. I also followed the instructions on the professor personal website in the section "prospective PhD students". The student has already contacted some of the advisor students and has received positive feedback about the professor.

Should the student just give up and move on? Should the student keep trying?

Aside from the obvious "I have too many incoming e-mails to answer" or "I am out in the field", what could create a no response behavior from the professor?

I have seen the simplistic answer "move on, bad advisor, doesn't have time, etc". But this seems a contradiction in this case. The PhD students like the professor and say he/she is personable and no e-mail response after a few well written emails.

To try to make a clear point: there is a range of opinions about how to respond to "cold calls" from people I don't know, etc. I myself find it easy to make a one-or-two-sentence response politely thanking an inquirer for their interest, but (if so...) that I "have no open positions in my group at this time" or whatever is suitable. For me, although I get a good number of these of various sorts, it takes less than 5 minutes a day, and I take the viewpoint that it is a good professional-social gesture to make that quick response (perhaps more worthwhile than yelling over the phone at phone-solicitors on old no-caller-id phones).

At the same time, at the other end, I know many people who take the viewpoint that sending them email no more obligates them to a response than do credit-card offers and other advertisements. And, indeed, given the ease with which we can mass-email, even with customizations, this is a fair, not unethical, not harsh reaction. Perhaps if my in-mails of this sort reached 10+ per day, I'd give up "trying to be polite", but my own current scale of "spam on behalf of earnest beginner in the business" is pretty low, so I can easily afford to be (superficially) "gracious" enough to respond.

In case people don't reply, I'm afraid you can't hold it against them, even while we admit that it would be great if they did respond, ... because there just isn't a general social principle that demands a response to all possible inquiries one may receive. Yes, it'd be nice, but it is simply not required.