How to format a citation in the abstract This is a follow on to Are citations in abstracts considered bad style? It is unclear to me how to format the citation. Are citations in the abstract covered by any style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, AMS, etc) and how do they depend on if a numeric system is being used versus an author-year type system?

I was not able to find any mention of references in the abstracts in APA, MLA, Chicago, ASA (both statistics and sociology). There is no indication of if they are allowed and if so, if new formatting is required. I have found a few style guides that do describe references in the abstract.

APS style says:

  References cited in the abstract must also be found in the Reference List, where the complete information for the reference is provided. However, in the abstract, these references are not cited by their reference number alone. Instead, the following form of citation is used: the entire author list with initials (in roman); the journal name (in italics); and the volume, page numbers, and year (in roman). The article title is omitted for the sake of brevity.

which is pretty thin in regards to a citation style

IEEE style says:

  Numbered reference citations are not allowed.

which might imply full text citations are allowed like APS, but it goes on to say

  The abstract must be self-contained, without abbreviations, footnotes, or references. It should be a microcosm of the full article.

AMS style seems to be the most complete:

  The abstract needs to be edited to
  remove
  or
  rewrite
  reference citations.
  Rewrite reference citations by placing the following information within
  brackets at the callout point. For journal article references, insert (in
  all lightface roman text) the journal abbreviation, volume, year, and
  page numbers, but not the article title. For book references, insert the
  title, publisher, location of publisher, and year. Only
  book titles
  appear
  in italics

it then gives three examples (article, book, and what looks like a book chapter).


What software can I use to poll my audience during presentation? I recently attended a lecture where the speaker used piece of software to interactively poll the audience and display the results. The particular solution was ResponseWare. What other solutions are available? Worth the money (if paid)? Pros and cons?

Please note, that I'm not interested in top 5 results of Google search.. I'd be more interested to hear personal experiences with specific software, both as a presenter or audience.

The Software Carpentry instructors do lots of presentations where they need/expect rapid, interactive feedback. They (especially Greg Wilson) have lots of experience of different ways of doing this. Note that their current method, that works extremely well, is to use different coloured sticky notes.

I haven't seen a technical solution that worked better; most are considerably worse. However, this is only practical for yes/no or multiple choice polls.


In the social sciences, is it easier to get a post doc than a PhD? I am completing a PhD in Global Studies in Germany, and would like to apply for a post doc in North America, especially Canada. However, I am not sure if there is funding for post docs in the social sciences. For international students is it easier to apply for a PhD than for a post doc?
 I have a publication in an edited book from a prestigious publisher, another in English in a peer reviewed journal published from Germany.

If you already have a PhD, the chances of being admitted into a second PhD program are quite low, I would imagine. Furthermore, I would not recommend such a strategy: the possibility of being labeled as a "perpetual student" could have negative ramifications on one's career.

That said, there is funding for post-doctoral associates in addition to graduate students, even in the social sciences; in particular, there are a number of fellowships that are designed specifically for postdoctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Of course, there is relatively more funding for PhD's than for postdoctoral associates.


My advisor wants to co-author a paper on my thesis work, but drags out the submission, claiming it isn't ready. Should I submit without him? I have just finished my PhD thesis defense in applied mathematics. My supervisor suggested me the initial problem. He was not an expert in the small area that I was working, and thus the assistance from he was minimal. As we had so many disagreements in the research direction, our relationship was rather uncomfortable. The good thing was that I finally got the problem solved, with assistance from some external experts.

After I finishing my PhD, I extracted a paper from my thesis. My supervisor insisted that he should be authored as we had discussion on most of the result, and if I submitted without his name, he would appeal to the journal editor. But on the other hand, he deliberately holds on to my paper. He keeps on saying the paper is not clear and is thus not ready for submission, but there is no revision comments from him for several months.

Should I submit the paper alone with only name? It seems each side is highly risky for me.

The first things that jump out at me from this question are these:

Why do you think that your advisor is dragging his feet?
Why do you think your advisor is incorrect about your paper not being clear?
What is the time schedule on which you expect to publish?

Now, this may in fact be the case, but in my experience, in most cases even graduating Ph.D. students are not very good at writing effective scientific papers.  Your writing here does not argue you are particularly different: I am not speaking of grammar (which is relatively minor), but the fact that you have made strong assertions without presenting supporting information or giving key pieces of contextual information.

I would thus guess, a priori, that your paper is indeed unclear and not yet ready for submission.  Moreover, I would guess that your frustration is coming not from your advisor "dragging feet," but from you feeling unclear on what steps you need to take in order to edit your paper into a state that he finds satisfactory.

That is what I think you need to address in your plan to move forward.  Focus on one piece of the paper at a time, e.g., start with the abstract and ask for specific and concrete feedback on how it is problematic and how to improve it.  If you can meet regularly with your advisor and start learning the pattern of what is missing and what you need to do to improve it, then you can likely get the paper into a submittable state in a reasonable time.


Lecture slides before or after? I am trying to work out if I should release slides for my lectures before or after the actual lectures. I don't think the projectors for the lectures are very good, and I think it would also be nice for students to follow along and also get an idea of the structure of the lecture with slides they can download. On the other hand I'm concerned that having these slides may promote disengagement. The slides are a somewhat cut-down version of the full lecture and won't contain all the details that the live version possesses: this might make the lecture a bit harder to follow along with downloaded slides... but on the other hand it will be clear what details are not going to be included in the downloadable version (so whether or not students need to take notes on such would be clear at the time).

The two approaches are mutually exclusive, so I'm struggling to work out which is the preferred option.

Students generally prefer to have the lecture slides beforehand, and you should let them make their own decisions about whether having the slides out during class will help their ability to concentrate.

On my first day teaching a class, I posted the lecture notes after the lecture, and I immediately got several requests along the lines of "can you post the lecture notes beforehand instead."

If you want engagement from the students, you should earn it by being a better lecturer.  Don't try to demand the students' attention by giving them fewer learning tools.


Most efficient way of developing a comprehensive understanding of a field Are handbooks on a particular field you are interested in, the fastest and most comprehensive way of learning about that field. For instance, if I were interested in cognitive science would a book like "Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science" be the best way to go. Also, if there are multiple handbooks from different publishers which one should I pick?

The answer of course is "it depends" on the field, the handbook, your ability, and what exactly you need in terms of learning the field.

In general, I think you are better off getting an easier review article or a textbook.  But a handbook may have a lot of condensed information and be a sort of "encyclopedia" of the field.  But generally, it is written more for practitioners than for newbies.  It is not (usually) written exactly for your problem.

To evaluate handbooks, ask others opinions, look at Amazon reviews, and skim it in the library.


How did graduate schools come into existence? When did universities start to segregate their certifications into undergraduate degrees (bachelors) graduate programs (master's and doctorates)?  More importantly, why did this separation occur?  What prompted the need for separate levels of certification in academic settings?

Bachelor, master, doctor degrees are medieval European in origin. Wiki has a reasonable page on medieval universities. The primary need for these levels was the certification of who was allowed to teach and what they were allowed to teach in the university. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages being what it was was concerned with proper teaching to avoid passing along heresies (which universities got accused of from almost the beginning of their existence) which meant you needed a license to teach and to preach in those days.


Structure of a review paper with author's unpublished data I am wondering how to structure a review paper that contains a small portion of the authors' unpublished empirical research results. These unpublished data only account for maybe 2% of all the data cited in the review, and together with other's published data serve as evidence to some claims to be made. So should I introduce the detailed methodology of the empirical research in the manuscript or put it in the supplementary material? or do you have other recommended paper structure?

Introduction
Detailed review on the topic
Discussion
Conclusions
Supplementary material
Methodology of the empirical research

or

Introduction
Detailed review on the topic
Discussion
Conclusions
Methodology of the empirical research (use smaller font)

or

Introduction
Methodology of the empirical research
Detailed review on the topic
Discussion
Conclusions

Let's talk about three kinds of papers that are commonly distinguished:

Empirical paper with original primary research
Conceptual paper with no empirical primary research
Review paper that synthesizes empirical and conceptual papers in the literature

Despite my simplistic categorization into three types of paper, this might be better considered a triangular spectrum and any actual paper falls closer or farther from any of the three points. All empirical papers have some conceptual development and some literature review; all conceptual papers have some literature review (but rarely any original empirical analysis); all literature reviews have some conceptual development (but rarely any original empirical analysis).
Your question seems to ask about if it is acceptable to write a review paper that, contrary to the norm, includes a little bit of original primary research. I have a two-sided response to offer you.
On one hand, in principle, if you consider paper genres as a spectrum, then you can do anything that you want that meaningfully advances your arguments. If the original research supports your reasoning, then it could be reasonable to include it.
On the other hand, there are risks when you deviate from established scholarly genres. I see at least two concerns with what you are proposing to do:

First, there is a concern about scholarly rigour. Presumably, almost all of the articles in your review are peer-reviewed. That is, they have been evaluated and approved by editorial committees with invited expert reviewers that are independent of the study authors. Thus, their reports should be given greater credibility. However, that is not the case of your original empirical research. It is your original work that has not passed scholarly peer review, yet you are offering it as evidence on par--or even with more weight--than published, peer-reviewed work. What you should do is to let your original empirical work pass peer review first before including it in a review of the literature. It is awkward mixing unscrutinized evidence (your original empirical work) with scrutinized work.
Second, I began with three common genres of work. The advantage of writing according to common genres is that peer-reviewers and editors know what to expect and know how to evaluate that kind of work. When you break from convention, you risk the high possibility that peer-reviewers and editors would not know how to properly evaluate your work. So, some might evaluate it as an empirical paper (where it would be considered far too light), whereas some might evaluate it as a review paper (where they would object to the original empirical work). You might be willing to take this risk, but you should not be surprised if peer-reviewers and editors have a hard time understanding what you are trying to do because of your break from convention.

Overall, I recommend one of two paths:

Do not include your empirical research in the review paper at all. If you say it only supports what the literature already says, then it adds little meaningful. In that case, it is not worth the risks of breaking from convention. But if your empirical research is substantial and meaningful, then you can submit it for peer review for publication as an independent article.
If you feel that the empirical research is not sufficient to be published as an independent article (or it is not worth your time trying to do that), yet it does add something meaningful to your review paper, then place it entirely in an appendix to the review paper. You are free to refer to it in the review as evidence, but the fact that you are placing it in an appendix meakes it clear that you do not give it the same weight as the independently peer reviewed work that you review.


How to ethically approach publishing research with conflict of interest? I have an opportunity to participate in a contest with a nontrivial monetary prize, which can be summarized as "Describe in details a secure way to do X using technology Y and provide an explanation of why you think it is secure." The contest does not require a grant of any exclusive rights for the work, hence I am free to use my work elsewhere too, e.g. to publish it. Clearly earning money from the contest and getting a publication sounds nice, but can it be done in an ethically sound way?
The tricky thing is that it is debated in the literature whether doing X using technology Y is a good or a terrible idea from the security point of view. While I intend to do my best to present a balanced point of view including the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed solution, I recognize the obvious conflict of interest, and, hence, that despite my attempts to be unbiased when I rewrite the paper for a journal, it is unlikely that it will become completely unbiased. In general I want to avoid doing anything that might be considered unethical with respect to reviewers or readers of the paper.
What is the best ethical way to handle the situation?

FYI: this is not duplicate to:

Can I Publish Research if I work for the company?, which addresses issues specific to the interaction with the employer on the right to publish (not an issue here), and issues specific to ethical control required for studies on human subjects (not an issue here since this is IT).
Clear explanation of Conflict of Interest with examples in journal articles asks for the explanation of what CoI means and examples of it in papers, and receives "Potential conflicts of interest" paragraphs in the acknowledgments section of the papers in response. While I recognize the need to include such paragraph in case of the publication, it seems to me that such paragraph may not be the only thing I would need to consider.

Unless I'm missing something, I don't really see the conflict. Write the paper when the time comes and submit it. If an editor or reviewer thinks you have a biased viewpoint that incorrectly impacts on what you have to say, they will probably catch it and reject the paper. But, I think a biased outcome is different from a conflict of interest.
And your comment suggests that if you don't develop the methodology you won't be in the running for the prize in any case.
For full disclosure you can include a statement in the paper (or to the editor) that "This paper was (awarded top prize)/(a finalist)/(submitted)/(soundly rejected)/(disparaged from the podium) at the 87th annual underwater basket weaving festival of doing Y to achieve X securely". Whatever best describes the history of the work.


How to prevent an idea / innovation from being stolen or plagiarised I have come up with an innovation to obtain linear motion without using any external source of energy. The idea arose from a paper I wrote on an alternative model of magnetism. I have built and tested the innovation and have written a paper describing it, which I wish to submit for publication.

My worry is that considering the novelty of the idea, it may get stolen or plagiarized. How do I prevent this from happening?

If you have an invention, patent it. It's an expensive and long process though. But it may be dangerous to publish the paper first. Your patent could possibly be denied if the paper is deemed "prior art". This varies by jurisdiction, of course. Keep it as a trade secret until you file the patent.

You can't actually "prevent" plagiarism. You can only try to reveal it.

If you publish the paper without obtaining patent on the "invention", then people are free to use the idea. They just can't legally violate your copyright nor morally plagiarize the paper. But, ideas are free to use.

If the idea is valid and novel, you might be able to partner with some company to exploit it. Don't reveal it, however, without non-disclosure agreements in place first.

Much of this requires a lawyer, of course.


Can [edit: or should] a scientist's h-index decrease in the case highly cited publications are retracted? I am at the moment preparing a workshop unit dealing with 'digital publication'. While writing down my script I noticed that I usually tell the participants that a scientist's h-index cannot decrease. Now I am wondering what happens in the hypothetical case that highly cited papers are retracted due to scientific misconduct or something similar. So my question is: Does or can a scientist's h-index decrease in the case highly cited publications are retracted?

Just to clarify my motivation to pose this question a little bit. The class/workshop I am conductiong deals with information literacy in the sciences. My participants haven't usually dealt with research(er) evaluation and the like. They may have heard about the existence of the JIF or the h-index but that is where things normally end. So in my presentation I explain how these indices are calculated and that they are often used to evaluate scientific effort. I also address the issues and shortcomings of this latter use.

I just checked some of retraction watch's most highly cited retracted papers and noticed that they are still listed in Web of Science and also being cited to this day. I see that this fact defeats my question as retractions are still being counted, at least in this data source. So maybe I should have posed it more philosophically like "As the h-index is used in researcher evaluation, shouldn't it decrease if highly cited papers are retracted?" ...

Thanks to everyone answering and commenting!

The h-index is defined mathematically based on the number of publications and citations. So the only question is what data source you are using to calculate the h-index. If that source removes publications and citation counts upon retraction, the answer is yes, the h-index can decrease.

However, since this is source-based, you could even get occasional decreases due to other factors. Since many of these systems are automatic, you sometimes see incorrect publication associations and citation counts that can be later corrected, causing the h-index to decrease (I've seen this happening in Google Scholar).

I fail to see why this is interesting, though. Isn't this just like saying the number of publications and citations an author has can only increase, except in special circumstances such as retractions etc.?


Does copying facts from Wikipedia, with attribution, constitute plagiarism? I had an assignment where I had to create a web-based advertisement for a Computer that was created in the 1970 era or earlier. In my advertisement, I copied facts from Wikipedia such as "Output consisted of a row of lights", "The machine was programmed in pure machine code using an array of buttons and switches.", "The 8-bit machine offered 256 bytes of memory, implemented on Intel's type 1404 silicon gate MOS shift registers." And I cited my sources at the bottom of the site. Does this constitute plagiarism since I have copied facts and not opinions, and cited my sources?

Thank you!

I'll assume the quotation marks were used in the advertisement.  Since you represented the text as coming from the reference, and provided the reference, it's not plagiarism.

That doesn't mean it's necessarily okay.

If the purpose of the assignment was to practice writing advertisement text, then you didn't do that and didn't complete the assignment.

If the purpose of the assignment was to practice graphical design, you might have done that, and the text might be okay.

In any case, ask your instructor what they want you to do before you submit your assignment.


Dissertation tribute/acknowledgement I've recently completed my dissertation and would like to know the correct way to add a few words of tribute to a late family member.
I'm aware of adding an acknowledgements section, but I am not too sure that it would be right. From a little research I have found that the acknowledgment section thanks everyone who has helped you whilst you have been researching and writing your dissertation.

I would like to know if anybody has any information or examples on this.

There are absolutely ways to do this.

First, if you feel like they genuinely helped in some way, the acknowledgements section is perfectly appropriate - this need not necessarily be serious. For example, I ended up thanking my mother-in-law for spending some time talking to me about how certain aspects of what she does work, along with Stack Overflow and the folks who make Dr. Pepper.

Many thesis documents also include a dedication, which is much more personal. For example, mine read:

  To my parents, for teaching me to ask questions, and to $WIFE for seeing this through with patience, love and understanding.


Do the results of evaluating cutting-edge methods in an industrial setting constitute new knowledge? For example, suppose a new programming language is invented and some research regarding it is published, containing small, "toy" examples of its application. Suppose then that someone else takes this language and evaluates it in a real industrial case study, and reports on its usefulness and/or shortcomings.

My question about this second report is twofold:

Is it novel research (I suspect it probably is)
Would this kind of work be appropriate for a PhD thesis?

Science focuses on the acquisition of new knowledge.
"Does this really work outside the lab?" is a valid question on which to acquire knowledge.  Industry usage of a method often requires changes in scale and context which pose fundamentally new challenges to overcome.

Not all industrial evaluations, however, would be meaningful science.  The distinction is whether the information acquired by the evaluation constitutes a contribution to human knowledge or if it is just a recommendation for a decision by the company.

For example, I saw a talk yesterday which included future work to evaluate a new membrane material in an industrial water-treatment facility.  Let's see some examples of how this evaluation might be science or not:

Science: When used at scale, is water quality maintained to appropriate standards? How well does the material hold up over time?
Not Science: Will this be easy to integrate into the current procedures of this particular plant?  What business and legal contracts will be necessary to switch suppliers?


Is the reputation/prestige of the scientific journals where you published a paper really important? Excuse me for the naive question, but is the reputation/prestige of the journal you chose for your publication really important?

In the end, I believe the scientific content of your paper must be the key part. Surely you want to publish it into a scientific journal which guarantees high visibility to your manuscript, possibly with Open Access and a strong social media presence. Surely you want your paper to go through an in-depth peer review, with honest comments and reviews. Surely you want fast processing times. Surely you want the journal to be about the paper topic. Surely you want a journal with the audience who are interested in the paper subject.

But in the end, is a specific paper P on scientific novelty N published on a journal J1 having impact factor 50 really more important/relevant/better than the same paper P about the same scientific novelty N published on a journal J2 having impact factor 5?

If yes, why?

Will it affect your career?

I can say for sure that the prestige of a journal can help you, particularly if you are a young academic!

I was applying for a position at a university several years ago and ended up being the second-choice candidate. Even though my publication record was larger than the other candidate's, and I had been publishing in good journals such as Journal of Physical Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Physics and Physical Review—all of them highly reputable journals in their individual fields, I lost out to someone who had published several papers in Nature. (I learned this after the fact from one of the members of the search committee.)

So, yes, publishing in good journals is very important when you're starting out.


Consequences for not attending an academic conference/forum in which your paper was already accepted? BACKGROUND

I was previously an engineering PhD student but I left the program.  I was really too inexperienced for the commitment of a PhD.  Further, my wife wanted me to leave and pursue an engineering job with a salary.

A while back I submitted an abstract to a relatively prestigious conference/forum, where the corresponding paper was suppose to be submitted 3 months after this acceptance.  Since I was leaving the program, I basically neglected this responsibility while applying for jobs throughout the semester.  However, my adviser expressed anger on this saying I must submit the paper because they already accepted the abstract and I could be barred from the forum in the future.  Thus I submitted a paper.

As of now I've left the PhD program.  However, there is a conference/forum for this paper in the upcoming week, and there is a speaking slot for my paper.  I know that my advisor (the paper's only other author) is busy and overseas and will not attend.  This means nobody plans to attend the conference for the paper.  Thus, I feel I must attend the conference.  However, I really don't have the funds and time, and cannot easily attend.  I checked the schedule, and there is a speaking slot for my paper.

QUESTIONS

What are the consequences for not attending an academic conference (for your accepted paper) in which you are slotted to speak?  I would assume not attending (complete absence) is common due to money and air travel problems (connecting flights, weather, etc). Would one be barred from future conferences for not attending?  Is it impolite to not attend (I've already successfully submitted the paper)?

It is unlikely there would be any consequences for failing to present at a conference.  It would be impolite and disappoint your former adviser.  You should notify the conference if you decide not to attend.


How to cite sources written in a different language than English? Assume one wants to cite a paper written in a different language than the article citing said paper (e.g., ones own article is written in English, but the source is French).

How to properly handle citation in such a case?

Do I cite the original (French) title or a translated title? If I use a translated title, people might have a hard time to find the source; if the original (French) title is cited, people might have a hard time understanding it.

You cite the original title, for the very reason you gave: to enable readers to find the original title. If your work is subject to guidelines, you should also check those.

Usually, there is no point in giving a translation of the title as it does not contain any relevant information for the reader. Many citation styles do not mention the title of papers at all. I see two exceptions though:

If a translation of the cited work into English exists (but you worked with the French original), you can mention it in addition to the French title, e.g. with:

  [actual citation] (translated into English under the title [translated title])

If the title allows the reader to estimate what the source contains and whether they want to read it at all. In this case, you should arguably change your text such that it states in what way the citation is relevant for your work.


PhD scholarship in nanoporous material; how to advertise? I would like to advertise some PhD scholarship positions located a Sydney, Australia in the fabrication of novel nanoporous material like mesoporous silica. I am finding that it is not straightforward to advertise locally and internally. Most of the big scholarship and general job  sites are expensive to post too.

What other options exist for finding candidates?

Are there discussion boards, social media accounts, or email lists for societies or interest groups that are directly/indirectly part of your field? Can you email the links to other researchers (the ones you cite or who cite you)? Perhaps there are researchers who are particularly adept at their internet presence (websites, social media accounts etc) who would be willing to share the information.

In my field, there are numerous opportunities for free advertising on all of the above-mentioned areas. Most faculty I know of are happy to share opportunities like that for students, since they recognize funded opportunities are increasingly rare.


Advice on study plan for Applied Math/Machine learning courses, for PhD degree not in either subject My question requires a little background which I will give here:

I'm heading into the 2nd year of my Epidemiology PhD program. I work on vaccine trials/infection control using simple non-linear math models and love it. The majority of in-department modeling courses have been survey courses focused on translating epidemiological concepts into models, only briefly touching on the math used for implementation.

I've signed up for some introductory courses in the econometrics department (with my department's permission) which cover bayesian statistics, pdfs, importance sampling etc. I chose courses in the econometrics department as I thought they would be more applied and have more students at a similar math level to myself.

1) My main anxiety is that I've always been a solid B grade math student. I learn best through project-based learning and hands-on implementation. Formula based lecturing and proofs have been very difficult for me and I find that subsequently I don't retain much.

2) I've been able to learn more difficult mathematical concepts using computational software (I am a proficient R and MATLAB user) and doing self-teaching tutorials. Concepts that have previously been explained to me in math theory 4-5 times 'click' when I code them out and can experiment with sampling, seeing actual results. (for example, mcmc metropolis-hastings)

3) What would be your recommendations be for devising a study plan for these classes, and my future classes, which maximizes learning the relevant mathematical concepts given this 'learning style'? Were there any websites, types of courses, or textbooks/exercise books that taught difficult concepts with code but didn't overly rely on pre-built functions?

People in other departments either seem to grasp concepts effortlessly or stop trying to learn them. In addition no one else else in my cohort or the years above work on these type of questions or models so I have no one to ask for advice.

I am under no delusions about my mathematical abilities here and have no ambition to pursue math/statistical/machine learning research. My goal is to reach a level where I am able to fully comprehend the tools used in my particular field and be able to implement and critique them at a 100% competent level. Thanks!

Concepts

First, you should know that machine learning is nothing special. For the most part, the term is only one of a series of buzzwords exchanged in order to maintain linguistic novelty in popular reporting, grant applications, and so on. Machine learning refers mainly to a class of adaptive algorithms that are amenable to, or at least worth applying learning theory to analyze. (And since you're interested in the applications, there's no need to look into that rarefied area.)

Now, that being the case, what does the field stem from? Three more basic mathematical areas:

Probability (used to define basic intuitions, thinking, and formal notions)
Linear algebra (used to describe processed information and algorithmic steps, such as feature selection and regularization)
Calculus (used for optimization formulations, proofs, and continuous distributions)

If you have a good grip on these three things, you can handle more or less any machine learning paper or topic. Some challenges you might face, judging from your stated style:

Probability: You don't have to be able to recite everything about sigma-algebras or Borel fields, but you need to have the axioms and their implications down. You also need to understand why something will (or will not) converge. If you're doing Bayesian statistics, you need to grasp parameter estimation and be able to understand what the different formulas are expressing. This is just a lot of math, as much as it is eventually codeable.
Linear algebra: Notation can be quite complicated. For example, MRI or EEG data typically come in tensors, which you can think of as N-dimensional matrices. Machine learning papers often throw around such linear algebra forms as easily as they were scalar forms, because they assume the audience can handle it. You should try to make sure you don't become disoriented, and can visualize what is happening spatially.
Calculus: The main thing that you need to be able to grasp is optimization. Ultimately it boils down to proving that something is a maximum or minimum (a cost function in the case of most machine learning algorithms), often expressed in terms of a Lagrangian. SVM is a classic case of this, expressed as a quadratic optimization problem with vectors.

Resources

Trevor Hastie has a couple of good books that may suit your approach, one with applications in R, and one called Elements of Statistical Learning that my advisor recommended to me. He makes them available for free at https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/pub.htm.
I personally find Andrew Ng's teaching approach overly intricate and unmotivating, but Abu-Mostafa is a gem to watch: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD63A284B7615313A
For probability, I highly recommend this Oxford book. It's well-formatted and you can flip to sections quickly to refresh yourself.

Strategies

Be willing to compromise. I myself learned R and machine learning basics at the same time, and I was more or less free to work out both the code and implementation in practice however I liked. However, for actual use, I typically (with few exceptions) trust the published authors of R packages to have covered more bases than I.

Figure out what you want to know. For example, I'm not interested in learning the innards of the latest way to efficiently update a neural network too big to fit in RAM; I just want to be able to phrase my questions in a rigorous way that allows me to judge whether or not such an approach is warranted or helpful.


What should I do during my PhD program to get a faculty position right after PhD, and how can I accomplish them? (Field: Statistics) I am starting my PhD next year (2019), and I have some concerns.

I recall one of my Professors from my undergrad years was telling me that in my field (statistics), excellent Statistics PhD graduates are taken for a tenure-track Research Professor job directly after their PhD without having to do any postdoc. And I am hoping that I can secure a tenure-track faculty position directly after my PhD, because I will be around mid-30s by the time I finish my PhD (i.e. if all goes well), and I would like to land a good career by then.

What are the things that I should do during my PhD program to get a faculty position right after my PhD, and how can I accomplish them?

I will be taking my PhD in Statistics in Canada, but I want to get hired by research universities in US as a tenure-track Assistant Professor directly after my PhD, if I can.

Thank you,

Obtain experience teaching a variety of courses.
Develop a wide network in the field. The better "known" that you are, the more likely a school is to consider you for a faculty position.
Establish relationships with multiple people who will be able to write you strong letters of recommendation.
Begin applying for grant money right now.
Publish relevant and impactful research.
Consign yourself to the fact that your friends in industry will make more money than you.
Get lucky and find a tenure-track position.


What are the major ethical concerns with private tutoring? I'm currently a computer science graduate student on a low stipend, and have started spending a few hours per week tutoring undergraduates to help make ends meet. I love teaching and want to be a help to students, but I also want to make sure that I don't personally cross any ethical boundaries in doing so, or be complicit in students doing so.

Some obvious transgressions are tutoring for a class for which I am also a TA (conflict of interest), and writing code or otherwise outright doing work for students (plagiarism), but what other ethical considerations do I need to keep in mind to remain above-board in doing this?

Students sometimes ask me questions about their assignments. How much help is too much help? If a student is asked a "trick" or unclear question, is it appropriate for me to clarify it? If they're having trouble debugging a program, can I help them localize the issue to a few lines of code, or do I need to remain very general about things? Can I review code they've already submitted to help them improve by, for example, showing a better way of managing memory in C, or showing how to optimize or shorten their programs? Can I write short code snippets illustrate a point in a lesson?

I've also noticed that some questions on homework assignments are very basic. For example, in our systems course, the students were asked "True or False: a register is a small location in RAM". The answer was in the lecture slides. It makes me nervous to not be able to distinguish a request for a basic fact from a request for a homework answer. The assignments are only visible to students during the term, so I can't tell unless they show me (as was the case here). Should I give an indirect answer like "I can't just tell you that; did you review the lecture notes on CPU architecture?" as I did this time? Was doing that unethical?

You seem to have a pretty good ethical sense based on your question, so I think you won't go far wrong following your instincts.

But if you have the opportunity, it is a good idea to go visit the prof teaching the course for which you are tutoring and ask for any additional general guidance.

It is usually a good idea to answer "trivial" questions with other questions. "What do you think the answer is? Why? Explain your reasoning." That sort of thing. Often the student will get a flash of insight. But if you can point to a flaw in reasoning you help the student without giving direct answers.

Good professors when asked questions by students seldom give out complete answers unless it is in the context of a continuing conversation. Instead, a "minimal" hint is given to get the student over a block and which lets them proceed. If a student repeatedly has problems with the same issue or block, an additional exercise will be given that tries to give the student practice with the reasoning.

But the technique of asking for an analysis of any issue that leads to a block is a good way to diagnose the student's thinking and help them get over it.

Giving students general problem solving strategies is also good, but probably less useful, as it doesn't usually have a diagnostic element. But even "Where did you look for an answer?" can help. Especially if followed by "Where else could you look?". You could then suggest other sources if appropriate.

I'll note for completeness that some students are misled by the resources that they use. Some of those resources are wrong and some may be written poorly leading to ambiguity. I've had students get in terrible jams by using perfectly rational thought processes applied to bad input data. That is rare, but it can occur.


Can a PhD student co-supervise master students in Germany? In Germany, is it possible for a PhD student to be co-supervisor of a master thesis?

By and large, yes.

The conditions for master thesis supervision are specified in the examination regulations of the considered department. Generally, there is a big variety between the regulations of different departments, so it's always worth having a look at them.

In all cases I'm aware of, PhD students can act as co-supervisors of master theses. Usually it's required that a professor is formally specified as the main advisor, both in the formal proposal and on the title page of the thesis document. The PhD student can be specified as an co-advisor on the title page.


One of the coauthors withdraws their authorship after submitting a paper Is there a problem to change (reduce) list of authors of a paper after it has been submitted to a journal? I am one of the (ten) co-authors of this paper. After the review and changes we made in the paper, one of the coauthors withdrew as a co-author of this paper.

Is this OK? What is the procedure in such cases?

It’s definitely weird, and a clear indication that something is going on with a paper. Basically, I can see two cases were this could happen, and both are not exactly great signs for the quality of a submission:

The removed author was just a “courtesy author” without any real impact on the work. (S)he wanted to tag along at first, but now when people started to nag her/him to do real work, (s)he is rather out. In this case, it is ethically entirely okay to proceed without the additional author, but one wonders why the courtesy author was on the paper in the first place. While this does not say something about the quality of the paper per se, it leaves a certain sour taste in the mouth with regards to the ethics of the rest of the authors.
The removed author was a “real” author in the sense that (s)he actually contributed to the work, but now feels that the submission is either so bad that (s)he does not want to be associated with it, or that the results are in fact wrong or unethically generated (e.g., because the co-author assumes that all or part of the work of somebody else was fabricated or is otherwise inaccurate). I think I do not have to explain why this would be a very bad sign for the quality of a submission.

What I would suggest in terms of procedure is full disclosure. Don’t just silently remove the author — in this case, the thoughts of the editor are very likely to wander to the two cases above, and this will make him look very carefully at your submission. Explain exactly what happened, and make sure to explain how it has nothing to  do with the quality of the submission. If you can’t do that (e.g., because the co-author actually withdrew because (s)he thinks your results are wrong), it is simply better for everybody to withdraw.


Journal submission refered to Editor-in-Chief I had submitted to a reputed computer vision journal. Both the reviewers (there were only two) marked it as "reject" with comments that alluded to the fact that they had actually "missed the point". It was interesting that the reviewers missed the point on two major levels, first on the actual aims and scope of that journal and second the actual scope of the conducted research. With 2 reviewers recommending "reject", the Editor decided to "reject" the article.

Even though there was no avenue for rebuttal, I drafted a long email with my rebuttal highlighting where the reviewers had missed the point of my article. The Editor replied saying that he himself was very much surprised by the reviewers decision because from his reading of the paper he actually saw value in it. On top of that, my rebuttal was very convincing. However, he does not feel comfortable reversing the decision because both reviewers had recommended "reject"  hence he is going to refer this to Editor-in-Chief to get his opinion.

Now, what are my chances of publishing this article of mine with this journal?

Update: The editor-in-chief got back with a list of possible items for major-revision that they would like to see. The major-revision deadline was quite short (just three weeks), they agreed to postpone the deadline on my request. I tried my best to address the items of major-revision and the article was finally accepted. Perseverance pays! :-)

First of all, your situation is not at all uncommon.  On the contrary, most academics who submit sufficiently many papers find themselves in it from time to time.

The fact that your rebuttal email resulted in an editor's writing back that he saw value in your paper is already worth something: it gives corroboration that your paper has value.  In general it is doubtful that an editor would write that only to be polite, because in doing so he is opening himself and the journal up to further rebuttal from you.  The fact that he is passing your complaint on to the editor-in-chief is further evidence that he takes it seriously.

  Now, what are my chances of publishing this article of mine with this journal?

If you're asking for a straight-up prediction: that's hard to say.  In general the chance that a paper that gets multiple negative referee reports is eventually published is very small.  However, it is also relatively unusual for an editor to directly communicate disagreement with the referee reports to an author.  The chances depend on how egregiously off-base the referee reports were.  If the editors truly agree that the referees "missed the point on...the actual aims and scope of that journal" then they are going to feel like wronged parties along with you and the chance that they will at least solicit another referee report seems pretty solid.  (On the other hand, if that is the case one wonders why they didn't notice it before you brought it to their attention.)  If a third referee report disagrees wildly with the first two, then perhaps the editors will be inclined to accept the paper (or seek yet further reports).

Nevertheless, unfortunately my guess at the most likely outcome is that the editors will convey their sympathies to you and wish you the best of luck elsewhere.  In my experience editors just do not have enough incentive to overrule referees in this situation.  From a hard-nosed perspective they may be right: if your paper truly is valuable and the referees are wrong, then you can resubmit to another journal of similar quality.  That outcome is in the long run almost as good for you and only detrimental to them if your paper is not just publishable in the journal but outstandingly strong beyond the sort of papers they usually accept.  On the other hand if your paper is flawed and they publish it anyway then they are throwing away all the advantages of peer review.

In general, it is a rare referee report that doesn't tell you something that could improve your paper.  If a referee wildly misses the point (which again, is not at all uncommon) it is not necessarily your fault...but nevertheless maybe you could rewrite the paper to make it easier to get the point.  Sometimes authors work for months or years on very subtle things and then expect readers to appreciate these subtleties upon a much more casual reading.  The fact that two different referees missed the point still does not imply that their comments have any legitimacy, but it does make it more probable.  If two people miss the point of your work in the same way, then I would certainly take a crack at rewriting the paper to avoid that particular misunderstanding.

All in all, it would be safe to at least start thinking about how you could (perhaps relatively quickly and easily) modify your paper for resubmission.  I would expect the editorial deliberations on this to be rather quick: if you don't hear back from the editors within, say, two weeks, then it would be appropriate to inquire politely on the status of your paper.  I would not advise you to resubmit to the same journal unless you know you'll get new referees: people who have missed the point once are not your best bet for appreciating the new version.


Will past medschool failure history affect Graduate admission in Literature/Linguistic major? 14 years ago, I attended med school. After 6 years and chronic depression issue, I decided to withdraw from that program. This means I have an official transcript, but of course did not earn a degree. (In my country, you can start med school right after graduating high school, and I enrolled when I was 17 years old)

I am currently taking a bachelor's degree in Literature, and so far I have gotten straight As, and my GPA is 4.00 (The maximum grade I can get in my country). Since I feel very passionate about my current major, I plan to do a graduate degree (MA&PhD) in Literature/Linguistics in Europe or the US. After seeing the application requirements, I have noticed that most institutions require all college level transcripts to be submitted. That would mean, I have to submit my med school transcript as well.

My poor performance in med school experience and the transcript are haunting me. The med school grades certainly look terrible compared to my Literature grades.

Will this affect my chance to be admitted to good graduate school in Literature/Linguistics? I start to worry that they will see my past failure as inability to work in PhD research.

Your past career as a medical student was so long ago that it might as well have been someone else. I doubt that a grad school in your current field will still hold you liable for problems you experienced much earlier in life, especially given your accomplishments since then.

If you are concerned enough to mention it as part of your application, then just make sure to comment about why you believe it’s not relevant to who you are today and why schools shouldn’t worry about a repeat episode. Of course, you can point to your current record as proof of the change!


How to politely turn down an on-site faculty interview offer I have decided to accept a tenure-track assistant professor offer. But at this moment, I still have a virtual on-campus interview with a different university. It is now the time to inform the university that I won't be able to participate in the interview. Three days ago when I was still waiting for a pending offer, I told them that I would attend the interview. I want to seek some suggestions about turning down the interview invite in a professional manner.

Dear [name of person you were communicating with],
I have an update about my job search. Since we last talked I‘ve received a tenure track job offer from another institution, and have accepted it. Consequently, I am withdrawing my application at your department, and am cancelling my upcoming interview with you and your colleagues.
I do very much appreciate that you considered me for the position, and hope that we will have occasion to meet in the future.
Sincerely,
[your name]

P.S. Congrats on the job!!!


Should I inform my professor of a very recent paper vaguely related to his research? I'm currently an undergrad student and have found a recent paper, published in Nature a few days ago, that represents a huge breakthrough in its field (I'm active in that area, so I'm aware of it), but has barely been reported elsewhere.

One of my professors is doing research in a related, but not the same area. I was thinking of sending him a short email along the lines of "It seemed like this might be of interest to you, so just for your information: There has been a breakthrough in [area] recently, published at [link to Nature online], in which ..." and one or two sentences about the content.

It is nothing that requires a lot of thought to understand, and the fact that it happened at all is more important than the details. One can easily understand most of it from the abstract.

Would such an email generally be considered more of an annoyance, or acceptable?

Update:
Thank you all for your helpful answers and also the many interesting comments. I have sent him an email and received a short reply.

Yes, send it. We all like to get links to papers we might have missed. I would leave out the "breakthrough" part. He may have seen it (or even reviewed it), but there is no harm in sending it along to either him or his entire research group.


What should physics majors work on during semester breaks? First and second year students are unlikely to get selected for major internships (right?). Given this, what can students do after freshman and sophomore years that will be useful later on. I thought of learning MATLAB, but not sure if this is a good idea or if there are better options.

The summer after sophomore year should be late enough to start doing research. There are lots of questions / tutorials about how to start research; best to just talk to your professors and/or apply to research programs such as the REU. This is also a good time to start studying for your physics GRE.

For the summer after freshman year, it's probably too early to do the above (though it's worth asking your professors about research options). I recommend working on soft skills -- writing, people skills, presentation skills, and programming all come to mind.


What are some good questions to ask current graduate students when visiting schools? For the record, I'm visiting the University of Chicago as an accepted PhD student (in the geophysical sciences) next week.

In particular, I'd especially appreciate creative questions that few other visiting students ask.

You'll want to get a sense of their feelings for:

The graduate program

Easy to work with regarding customizing the program to their specific needs (i.e., taking courses outside their specific area if necessary)?
How easy/difficult was the process for joining a lab?
Have they found the staff easy/hard to work with?

The advisor

Attitude towards students (respectful/distant/slavedriver)
Presence in the lab (micromanager/occasional presence/absentee)
How organized is the research?

The university as a research institution

Easy collaboration between departments (in their opinion)?
Availability of course offerings (from their experience)?

The city as a place to live


How do I get recommendation letters? I have had a different set of professors every semester and as batch sizes are pretty big ~80, and with every professor dealing with 3-4 separate batches of equivalent size, for barely 3-4 months at a time, it has been hard to develop one to one relationships with professors. In such a scenario,

How do I decide whom to approach for a recommendation?
How should I go about this to get a good recommendation, in this specific scenario?

Given the OP’s situation explained in his question and the following comments that he has trouble with getting recommendation letters written by his professors themselves, if I were him I would

    Find the professor who would write the recommendation letter himself.

    Find the professor who taught the class which I had very good grade.

    Find the professor who taught the class in which I was most interested.

Usually, I need three recommendation letters. Now, I have three.

My personal experience is that I tend to have good grades when taking the class I am very interested. If I had good grade in a class I was interested, the chances are the professor would remember me and more willing to write the recommendation letter himself for me.


How do I, or should I, bring up research that I did under someone who was fired for another reason? I worked under a professor whose research was funded by a non-profit organization. They were released from the university for some inappropriate behavior. The research that they have been publishing has been solid so, were it not for this incident, I would happily put it on a resume or application. The incident does not involve plagiarism or really anything that would make someone suspicious of the validity of their findings or published works. I understand that this is vague, but it is intentionally so for privacy and security reasons.

Until now, I have been putting down the name of the research program that the professor led that I was a part of. However, I am worried that employers may research the program, the professor, and the incident that resulted in their termination and make judgments about my character and work.

I am trying to finish the work that I started either alone, or with a professor at another university. I plan on acknowledging the university that I am enrolled at and the non-profit for providing the equipment and grant money, respectively.  If I am able to continue the work with another professor at another university or simply publish on my own, then I may just discuss that aspect of the process in applications and interviews, but until the work is completed, any advice on how I should proceed?

From the tags, it seems you are an undergraduate. Therefore, I am assuming you don’t have a lot of other research experience to list. You also specify that the misconduct was not research-related.

Based on these factors, I would suggest keeping this work on your resume/CV. I would stress the topic and content of the work rather than the person/group. Perhaps where you would normally list the faculty you worked under, you could list the university and department. Or you could perhaps list a post-doc who was a more direct supervisor, if applicable.

You are concerned about negative consequences of being affiliated with the professor in question. People don’t generally hold undergraduates responsible for professors’ conduct, so I think anyone who really considers the issue will not blame you. Personally, I would be more inclined to pity an undergrad in such a situation.


What corrections can you make on galley proofs? When I receive galley proofs of a paper, I look at possible errors introduced by the copy-editing team. But while I proofread the article, there are sometimes small mistakes I'd like to fix, which were not introduced by them (i.e. they were already present in the accepted version of the manuscript).

Usually, the proofs are accompanied by instructions saying that extensive changes should not be introduced at that time, and any such changes would have to be approved by the editor (hence, I suppose, delaying publication). However, the limit is not very clear to me. What is considered extensive changes? In particular, what do you think of the following items (from my experience):

Slight changes in wording, to improve clarity
Updating a citation, because an “in press” or “ASAP” article now has page numbers
Adding an important (but not crucial) citation one had missed, in the introduction
Adding a citation to a paper that has been published since the manuscript was submitted; possibly adding a short sentence to the text

What I have done so far is change everything that I think should be changed to improve the paper (including all the above items), and let the typesetter decide whether he wanted to send it back to the editor. I never received any complaint or comment on my changes, which could indicate that it was the correct course of action.

A galley proof should primarily be proofed for typos or mistakes made in the type-setting process. It is not the time to change phrasing, exchange figures, add or remove blocks of text or anything else substantial.

Adding references might seem like a useful addition but the problem is that it would then be possible to add references without the knowledge of the editors and of course the reviewers and hence possibly make changes that could have affected reviews etc. The case of adding anew paper is a similar problem since it may change the paper in ways that the editor and reviewers have not seen and therefore ok'd. If such changes are wanted (they are probably seldom needed), it would be best to at least check with the editor if that would be appropriate. In short, no changes should be made that alters the content of the paper. All such details should have been checked and if necessary corrected before submitting the final revised manuscript for copy-editing and proof production. Any corrections called for by the copy-editor and editors after submitting the final version is of course to be made.

Updating of references are usually also acceptable, to, for example, add the publication year (from e.g. "in press") or adding doi, page numbers etc. if these were not known at the time the final version was submitted.

The proofing stage is not a stage where many changes should be made. The manuscript that is submitted for proofing should be considered the last chance to make any substantial changes. What many do not realize is that all changes done after a type-set proof has been produced may cost the journal money, apart from the extra time and trouble it causes. So, as an editor, I often have the feeling authors just send in their final manuscript without checking figures and text properly and then waiting for the proof to make final changes but is, in fact, an abuse of the system.

Regarding your last paragraph, the type-setter is usually not a scientist and has no idea of what changes might mean so to think that the type-setter would act as some form of intermediate editor is not right. In cases where type-setting is done in-house it might be a professional doing the type-setting but I would still say this is not the way to handle the type-setting/proofing stage.

So, anyone, make sure the final submitted manuscript is checked, complete and correct.


Switching from one area of graduate study to another? Is it possible to switch from one area of graduate study to another in US universities? For example, suppose someone has enrolled in a computer science phd program. Can he switch over to math(or physics) phd program in the same school later?(or say from applied mathematics to pure mathematics?)

What are the steps for doing for doing that?

In general, transferring to a different department requires a fresh application. While many departments will be sympathetic to applications from students alresdy at the university, they will still require all the formalities associated with a new admission.

However, the procedures vary wildly from place to place, and you must check with your local institution (if you have one already).

Other factors that can mitigate or complicate this process: if there's a standard procedure for doing this, if the two departments historically are comfortable with movement back and forth, if the departments are in the same college/school within the university, and so on.


How much time are UK PhD admittees typically given to accept/decline an offer? Is there a general convention as in the US (i.e. "until April 1"), or is this highly institution-specific?

Its completely context specific. It might even depend on the quality of the applicants - if I have two good candidates, I might want an answer from the first choice quickly so as not to risk the second choice taking up another offer if the first choice says no.

Conversely if the first choice is really good and I really want them, then I am more likely to be willing to agree to wait for an answer, so as not to risk them being rushed into saying no.


I caught several of my students plagiarizing. Could it be my fault as a teacher? I have been teaching for three years now. This year, for the first time, I caught multiple students in a class (out of 50) either handing in the task of a colleague or copying the majority of someones work.

Now I've started to question myself whether this could be on me in any way. Could I have caused this behaviour by something I said? Am I getting paranoid, or was this just a coincidence or the usual abnormal behaviour of some students?

For more context: All students in this class are going to be teachers. In the first lecture I mention some e-learning resources including the online library of all master's thesis of the faculty.

Additional information to answer some comments (some comments are now in chat): This is a course at university level. In this University cheating is -- on paper -- taken as a serious offense. Meaning, if you get caught cheating it will be noted in your examination record and you have to repeat the whole class. Apparently, not all students know this.

I mention the online library in this course because we are discussing electronic materials in this course. One topic of the course is using "digital tools" for teaching. For me this includes using existing resources for preparing classes.

I checked my slides from the introduction. I did not have a "do not plagiarise note in them". Although, I believe that this should be not necessary.

I have to admit that I might invite them since I do not change the tasks between semesters. The reason for this is that I quite like them and that I have the feeling that the output of the tasks will be useful for them in the future.

I suspect that in a group of 50 students there will be a few who want to cut corners. It isn't your fault, exactly, but there are some things you can do to make it less likely. If the  number is small, you can deal with it individually in your office, of course.

But you should consider why people feel that cheating of any kind is a viable option for them.

If the tasks you set are all very high risk then people will sometimes act badly out of fear. This goes for both assignments and for exams. If you permit re-work to improve grading on assignments you lower the risk and improve the chances of proper behavior.

If the risk of cheating is extremely low, some will do it out of laziness. I once had a group whose experience previously was that no one actually looked at their work, so it didn't matter much what was turned in. I had to convince them (and the Dean) that I was willing to fail everyone if they kept up that behavior, and also convince them that I would look at and comment on their work. But if they don't get individual feedback, their work actually has little value to them for learning. With 50 it may be difficult to give this feedback, of course, though it is (IMO) essential.

Some students have gotten the idea that the reason that you set a task is to get the "proper" answer, rather than to help them learn. So their focus becomes getting that answer, even if no learning occurs. You need to find ways to educate them about the nature of education - especially as they will be teachers. It sometimes surprised a few of my students that I didn't ask them to do things because I needed the answers. I could provide my own answers. It was the production of the answer that was important, not the answer, and the answer could actually be wrong if I could use it to educate (re-work, feedback, ...)

There are other tricks that can be used to lessen the likelihood of plagiarism. Don't used old exercises if you find students turning in old solutions, for example. But permitting, even requiring, teamwork can, in many cases, lower the risk of plagiarism, as well as make education more of a social process. It also helps solve the 50 student problem if students work in groups, or even pairs.

In case of paired or group work you need a way to do peer evaluation, of course, but it need not be meaningless or threatening.

There are also strictly punitive measures, though I try to avoid them. Giving zero credit for all parties when plagiarism is encountered can be effective. So can expulsion for repeat offenders.


How can I relate my undergrad works to professors research areas? Recently, a professor answered my email for a graduate position. He asked me to tell him to what extent I am aware of his research. I have a background research experience in his research area, I can understand his papers generally but I can't talk about them in detail. Since he asked me to answer this question in detail, please help me to how can I talk about his research area?

Moreover, he asked me to tell him about a specific direction that interests me for my future studies and the way I can make a contribution to his research.
Answering this question is hard for me because I don't know how to define a specific direction that doesn't make me limited and lose the opportunity of working with him.

Please help me if you have any ideas.
Thanks in advance.

Answering this question is hard for me because I don't know how to define a specific direction that doesn't make me limited and lose the opportunity of working with him.

This is a thoughtful response on his part. He is not asking for you to send him a dissertation proposal, but maybe something four or five times as broad. Maybe something like "I'm interested in interventions to support learning in recent immigrants to [your country]," rather than "The effect of X intervention on mathematical learning on late teenage refugees to [your country] who did not receive formal education in their home country."

It's not a quiz to see if you come up with a good enough one and "lose" the opportunity to work with him (unless he's a nasty person). More of a determination whether you two are a good scientific fit.


Are math grad students increasingly consulting SE and Wiki, ignoring research librarians and libraries, to their own detriment? Judging by posts and comments by graduate students in math.stackexchange.com and mathoverflow.net, I have come to the conclusion that a large part of their knowledge comes from SE sites and the Wikipedia, as opposed to traditional publications such as books and papers.
I was deeply shocked the first time I heard of a student researching the literature through Google, which spits out at least as many SE and Wikipedia answers as references to books and journals.  But, of course, nowadays I do the same, certainly more often than going to the library!
Are traditional publication forms becoming obsolete, in the face of purely electronic forms? Or, contrariwise, do younger people who ignore traditional forms miss out on essential information?

I think wikipedia is good for mathematics topics that are fairly settled. There are few errors and the ones that do appear (I've found some) tend to disappear quickly. You can get a good overview and if you follow up on the sources provided you can get a more complete view. So, I hope students use this for background on things they need to study.
But, by its nature, it is less useful to bring you to the state of the art: stuff that isn't yet "settled".
I think SE is the opposite, in some ways. You  might find answers to contemporary questions, but the sources may be less reliable. Wikipedia has many editors (formal and informal) keeping things right, SE, less so and not everyone commenting really has a good answer. So, again, I hope that grad students use it when necessary, but with caution.
If the alternative is to set for ten hours at a time in a library, pulling older and older books from the shelves, it is no contest.
But reading things and being given answers isn't the best way to gaining insight into a mathematics problem. Not deep insight, anyway. For that you need to do some work yourself.
And, as you say yourself, it is a professional approach to use such resources. You do it yourself. And, I would say "to the detriment", actually. It is a supplement and/or a place to start.


How to withdraw a paper when advisor insists on having his name I have written a paper all by myself,the research problem and its solution all were formulated by me.
As a result I wrote the paper and submitted to a journal citing only my name.

As I told my advisor today that I have submitted my work,he is insisting that I should include his name in the paper as he is my supervisor and he has every right to own it.

I knew that if an author makes some significant contribution then only his name should be cited.

But I fear that if I dont agree,he may spoil my career.

Shall I ask the editor that I want to withdraw my paper citing this as a reason?

or What shall I do to include his name as the paper has already been submitted?

I think I should not submit my paper for publication at all.

Shall I ask the editor that I want to withdraw my paper citing this as a reason?

Resolve the co-authorship dispute with your advisor first, before doing anything with your paper.

Let's give your advisor the benefit of the doubt.  It is possible that they actually did contribute significantly to the development of your paper, but in ways that you may not recognize.

So I would recommend asking them, directly but calmly, what they believe they contributed to the paper.  And then LISTEN.

If their only answer is "I'm your advisor", start looking for a new advisor.
Same for "I pay your salary" or "I need it for my tenure/promotion case" or "It's a department/university rule".  The only ethical justification for co-authorship is a novel and significant intellectual contribution to the paper.  The requirements are the same for your advisor, your department chair, your office mate, the bartender at your favorite pub, or some random stranger on the internet.

But your advisor might remind you of activities that they consider significant intellectual contributions, even if you don't.  For example, if you and your advisor discussed your research results as they evolved, those discussions could be enough of a contribution for co-authorship even if no concrete ideas from those discussions appear in the paper.  In particular, steering you away from tempting bad ideas is definitely a contribution.

Whether their contributions really are significant enough for co-authorship is something the two of you will have to negotiate, but I recommend erring on the side of generosity.  Not because they're your advisor, or because you "owe" them, but because generosity pays off more in the long run.

Alternatively, they might have expected to be more involved—as a colleague and mentor—in the research and writing process.  After all, their job as your advisor is to help you become a better researcher, but they can't do that job if you don't let them.  That's not a good argument for retroactively making them a coauthor of this paper, but it is a strong indicator that you and your advisor need to discuss your expectations for future research much more clearly.

If you are seriously worried about your advisor overreacting ("spoiling your career"), you should discuss the situation first with your department chair, graduate program director, department ombudsman, or one of your other faculty mentors.  (You do have at least one other faculty mentor, don't you?) Again: LISTEN.  Given the high emotions involved, it might be appropriate to invite the other faculty member to mediate the discussion between you and your advisor, or at least act as a neutral observer. Hopefully, your worries are unfounded.

And if you can't trust your advisor enough to have the discussion at all, I'm afraid your relationship with your advisor is broken.  Start looking for a new advisor that you can trust.


What are the common mistakes PhD candidates make in their final defense session? For a PhD candidate that has done a fine job in their PhD, what are the common mistakes to avoid in a defense session?

How the dissertation defense works varies enormously between fields, countries, universities, and departments.  Any guidance has to take into account what the expectations are.

For example, in the defenses I'm familiar with, there are no common mistakes at all.  In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do anything worth calling a mistake.  Here, the defense is basically a formality: you don't reach that point unless your advisor and readers are happy with your dissertation and confident you will easily pass, and in practice nobody fails unless something goes dreadfully wrong.  That can happen (I know of one case in which a serious mistake was uncovered at the last minute, which was certainly embarrassing to both the candidate and the committee), but I've never actually been present when someone failed.  So if someone from my department asked me about common mistakes they should avoid, I'd tell them not to worry about it: making it to the defense is the hard part, and then passing it is really straightforward.  It's more of a celebratory ritual than an actual test.

But of course this depends on how the defense is handled in your department.


What is the purpose of chairmen at conferences? I often struggle when explaining people not familiar with academics or new to academics the concept of a chairmen at conferences or talks. At some point I have to say that this is somehow an academic tradition or a way to give small honour to people with reputation in some field.

Beside this and some obvious things (Someone has to make sure that the speaker is not running out of time, etc. -- Why not the organizer for example?): What is the purpose/what are the arguments of having a chairman?

Depending on how the conference is organized, the duties of a chair before the session can include:

Selecting the abstracts that will be presented within a given session.
Organizing the abstracts in the order of presentation.
Transferring unused abstracts to other sessions (where possible).
Advertising to solicit contributions.

During the session, the goals of the chair can include:

To introduce the speaker
To ensure time constraints are being adhered to
To moderate a question-and-answer session following the talk
If other questions have not been asked, to offer questions of her own.

The organizer of a session may or may not be the chair of the session. In larger conferences, in which you have many parallel sessions (some have 50 to 60 or more run simultaneously), it is entirely impractical to have a meeting organizer chair every session. For smaller conferences, however, this is done. In such cases, though, the organizer of the session is still called the "chair" of the session.

It is also possible, at some conferences, that the organizer is unable to attend the session, as a result of illness or conflicts, for instance. In such cases, an "emergency" chair is appointed to run the session. (I had to serve in such a capacity at the most recent conference I attended.)


How do judge the quality of your own PhD? I'm close to finishing my PhD and I'd like to evaluate the quality of my PhD. I'm doing my PhD in the field of software engineering at a Central European university. My PhD thesis consists of published conference papers and a synopsis. I first-authored two papers in the top conference of my field and I also had a few other papers.

The problem now is that I'm unsure how good of a PhD this actually is. My PhD thesis gets graded, but I noticed that every PhD student gets something between the very best and the second best grade, independent of the quality of his/her work.

If I can't rely on the grade, and if I can't compare the number of publications to other PhDs, how can I best and honestly assess the quality of my own PhD?

You can't.

Probably this is a bit strong, but I think that in general you can not grade or judge your own thesis or assess its quality in any way. You are hopefully very critical with yourself and this is good. Your advisor and others referees for your thesis can and will grade your thesis and should provide a report which you may be able to read (depending on the local regulations) . If you need a more detailed feedback, ask these people some time after your defense (not directly after your defense - after passing it's time to party...).


Must my ex-advisor be a co-author in new research after the defense? When writing papers about new research made from my doctoral research results, after my defense, must my doctoral advisor be included as co-author?

The traditional role of authorship is to clarify who (significantly) contributed to the work being published. Doctoral advisors often contribute actively to the research being performed, and thus are included as co-authors on that particular regard.

However, they should not be included as co-authors automatically. Only if they have actively contributed towards the paper's ideas, implementation and/or writing. The least that can be expected is that they contributed to the paper's ideas (during your supervision) and that they have read and edited the paper being published.

That said, it is usually expected that you invite contributors to co-write a paper, if they have contributed significant ideas. If your doctoral advisor did that for the research you made during your PhD studies, then you should invite them for those particular papers.


Fall grade reporting Some programs require fall grades (which I'm happy about, mine are good).
However, some neither require it, nor do they have the ability to upload them through the online app.
Should I email someone on the grad admission committee something along the lines of:

Hi,

greetings and thanks for opportunity to submit my app and thank you for the time you take to read my app

rewording the text above^^^

happy holidays, thank you

Thoughts?

You should never submit your grades directly

Students should never be in charge of submitting their own grades or recommendation letters to programs (I'm assuming you mean graduate program).  The risk of cheating would be extremely high, and your current university is almost certainly well-versed in sending (and receiving) grades in a safe, secure way.


How general should my introduction be? I'm a high schooler (rising senior) writing a research paper on astronomy for the Siemens and Regeneron STS competitions coming up in the fall. My research advisor at my high school wants me to start my introduction very generally (basically almost wants me to write a review of modern astronomy) before diving specifically into my research, whereas every single other research paper I've seen (competition submission or one in my field) starts broad in the first sentence and gets specific immediately.

I'm not sure whose advice to follow. Besides their websites, I can't find much guidance or past successful papers for these competitions (only have found 2 total papers and an outdated ScienceBuddies blog post), so I'm reaching out to you guys. Should I start very general and slowly hone into my topic or should I focus on my specific the entire way through?
Thanks!

The introduction of a paper has many important tasks. It introduces the topic you will discuss, it gives an overview over the field, etc. One important point, that is sometimes forgotten when strictly following the formal rules, is that a good introduction should answer the readers question "Why should I care about this?". For this, you need to know your reader, you need to know who is your target audience. If you are writing for a broad audience, then it is good to first introduce the general setting, as proposed by your advisor. If, on the other hand, you are writing for a very specific audience of experts, they might get bored if you spend two pages telling them what they already know. Thus, step one should be to figure out who you are writing for. Once you have this figured out, ask yourself how you can motivate them to read your work, to be interested in your results. Do your results have some sort of impact on their life, on their work? If yes, this should be made clear in the introduction.

In short, a good introduction covers all needed points (overview of the field, content of the paper, etc.) and furthermore motivates the reader to keep reading. Note that this motivation is also influenced by your writing style, your language skills, etc.

edit: Regarding the question who is right, your instructor or the other authors: I googled STS and found the term "Society for Science & the Public", so it looks like it might be for a public audience. However, I'd advice you to look into it a little more before deciding, maybe also ask your advisor about it.


What should I do if my advisor and committee members want me to do two different things? My advisor said that when I write my thesis I should staple together my three papers.  One of my committee members says my thesis should have a unifying theme and a narrative that ties together all the papers.  My advisor thinks this is stupid and explicitly told me not to listen to my committee member.

Both of them have to sign off on my thesis.  What should I do?

The way you present it, it sounds like the two are mutually exclusive, but they are not really: a "stapler thesis" generally contains an introduction and a conclusion that are there to tie the papers together into a whole. This implies a unifying theme and a narrative. It's only a few pages, but it makes a big difference.

You should probably at least make some effort to introduce a narrative, despite your advisor's opinion. Of course you know them best, but in general it's less likely that someone would refuse to sign off on something because you put in more effort than they thought warranted, and more likely they would refuse because you didn't put in enough. Better to err on the side of doing more.


Graduate School Application: should I mention where my working paper would be submitted Follow-up on
Does unpublished paper matter for U.S. graduate school application?

One of my papers is ready and my research adviser wants me to submit it to one of the best journals in my area. But it's actually proposing a new idea so there's still a lot to be done (in the paper I pointed out many tests that should be carried out), so I'm not entirely confident about it getting past the review.

On one hand, I could submit anything to any journal so it's not necessarily saying mcuh about the quality of the research, and it would look pretty bad if it failed the review; but on the other hand, my adviser is kind of a semi-big deal in the small circle (I mean, he knows some people and some people know him). So those who know him will understand that the paper would be examined rigorously by himself before submission.

So, should I add anything to my resume about this? I understand the answer will probably be largely opinion-based, so I'm sorry if it's violating any rules here!

I'm in a business school and our norm is to list a submitted paper as "under review at so and so journal" on our CVs. People tend to update their CVs in this manner before heading off to the job market so that selection committees can see that they have projects that have progressed. I've served on a doctoral admissions committee in our department. Knowing that an applicant had a paper that was far enough along to be submitted would have put that applicant at the top of my consideration list.


Should I tell my advisor that our paper is full of mistakes? Okay, I'm in a nasty situation. I'm about to receive my master's degree in two months. Also, I am a third author on my advisor's paper, and the paper is completely awful and full of mistakes. Contradicting results not reported etc., it has it all. The thing is, my advisor will take it personally if I give comments that would put him to a bad light in front of the other co-authors. Very probably, he would let his anger to be seen in the evaluation of my master's thesis.

Really, I have no idea what to do. Should I be quiet, hope the paper gets rejected, and then RUN FAST, or just write a long email about every error there is? Which one is less harmful? I really don't want my name on that paper, nor a biased evaluation of my master's thesis.

(For background, my previous advisor left the university about 6 months ago, and then I got this new one. So, I could probably get a letter of recommendation from the previous advisor.)

Your name is on the paper; you should be able to take a look at the draft, and suggest improvements.

  The paper is completely awful and full of mistakes. The thing is, my advisor will take it personally if I give comments that would put him to a bad light in front of the other co-authors.

Okay, there are two ways to address this. You can pubically say, "This paper is awful and full of mistakes," paint your advisor in a bad light, and face his ire.

Or, you can take each of the mistakes, and tactfully offer an improvement. That is, you could privately say, "I think the paper might have a better chance of acceptance if we made these changes."

In other words, don't edit as a critic; rather, put some work into the paper as a co-author.

There's a fine art to editing work in a way that isn't off-putting for the primary author. People tend to get defensive when their writing is critiqued – it's a very natural reaction. However, if each of your suggested changes is offered constructively, as an improvement to an initial draft, rather than an indictment of it, you stand a better chance of incurring thanks instead of wrath.

On the other hand, if the paper is so bad that it's not salvagable, then I'd suggest requesting that your name simply be removed from the author list.


How to include unfruitful attempts to use software that were not explored much? I wasted spent like a month or so trying to get two software libraries to work.
They partly worked, but at some point produced only unplausible results.
That might have very well been my fault.

The third one worked right out of the box and it's the one I should have chosen to begin with. The lack of problems with this library suggests that there was either something wrong with the other two, the setup, the system or whatever.

Either way, the conclusion is that I would not suggest to try the first two libraries and go with the third one, no matter how tempting it is to try the two.

I would like to include this in my thesis, because it appears to be valuable information. On the other hand, I'm not a software expert and I might simply have done things totally wrong, which is why those libraries didn't work for me. But despite some effort, I could not find documentation on what could be the problem.

Basically, what I have to say is this:

  Tried X and Y. Didn't work. Don't know why. Not recommended. Use Z instead. Works perfectly.

Is it a good idea to include such information? It's not backed up by any reference and I cannot include all the related information about the details to reproduce the problem. Partly because I don't know them and partly because that's not what my work is about. I'm also afraid that including this information will make me look incompetent.

How should I include this information? I think the best thing to do is to state that under the overall time constraints getting either of the two libraries to work was not explored any further, which is what actually happened. But then this might look like I didn't spent my time efficiently.

Maybe I'm just too much concerned that there will be only glass-half-empty people reading this, trying to see the problem in it.

I would have to disagree with the previous answers.  I would consider documenting what did not work.  I am not saying that I would definitely do it, but I am saying that ruling out the idea, out of hand, is not good advice.  I have 27 years of experience in software development and project management, and I would very seriously think about at least a short section where I would lay out what I tried.  Sounds like there are some serious holes in your knowledge of those libraries and your attempts to use them, which might make it difficult to document what you did, but I encourage you to give it a shot and run it by your advisor.
In the end, you could take the section out if it ends up detracting from the finished thesis.  But I find that kind of honest appraisal of failed attempts to be often more informative than the success stories.  I find it to be counterproductive to the community and the researcher when academia is reluctant or completely unable to admit when something did not work or the researcher had a knowledge gap.  I find the disarming honesty of "I tried and it did not work" elevates my opinion of a researcher.  But there is so little of it, that I find myself going to non-academic sources much more often than not, when I want to find answers that are real and practical.
Be careful in how you write it, and how you make the final decision to include it or not.  If you can say, I tried this library.  This is what it gave me.  This is why it was not suitable.  I tried to find relevant documentation to resolve the issues, but no such documentation could be found.  And in the end, the ability of this project to integrate a proper library is demonstrated in the use of X library, which worked.  If you can frame it like that, informative, honest, yet demonstrating your competence by highlighting, once again, that you did successfully integrate a library that worked, you could add some real value to your thesis.
The main reason for not including such an admission, in my opinion, would only be if your ability to integrate the third library was more luck than real skill, if it did not demonstrate a concerted effort aided by much better features and documentation.  If that is the case, then forget what I have said and go with the other answers' advice.


Numbering sections in a two-part paper How do you number the sections in a two-part paper i.e. a paper that is published in two parts?
I wrote an expository paper for high school students and it got accepted into a magazine, only that it will be published in two parts (because the magazine has a limit on the maximum number of pages an article may have). Now, after I have split my paper into two parts, I wonder how should the sections be numbered. The original paper consisted of three sections, which I've split as follows: in part 1 I have sections 1 and 2 and in part 2 I have section 3. Should section 3 still be labeled as section 3, given that it will appear in a different issue? I believe that it should, because I clearly state that part 2 is a continuation of part 1, but I would like to know what the practice is in such uncommon cases.

Should section 3 still be labeled as section 3, given that it will appear in a different issue?

No.  Since the journal/magazine has decided to publish your work in two parts, you should make each part as self-contained as possible.  Number things in a way that will not confuse someone who only has part 2.


How large is the effect of one's appearance on the recognition among scientific peers? I just found the paper by Halford and Hsu, that describes the effect that the appearance of companies' CEOs have on the stock value of said company after public appearances of the CEO. They were able to confirm the correlation and gave sufficient evidence to suggest causation.

Even though the scientific community tends to think it soars above the normal, human things that people do or concern themselves with, being human beings comes with its set of deficiencies. I have tried to find articles that try to analyse the impact of conference talks with respect to the appearance of the person giving the talk, but my searches came up empty.

I cannot believe that we are able to fully dissociate content and appearance (this goes for written communication as well) from each other to come to a neutral, unbiased judgement about the content.

I am interested if there are known cases of bias of the scientific community in general, and possibly your discipline in particular, which value the contributions by their peers differently, depending on how they look.

Basically, since the question in the title is rather broad, it boils down to this: Is there correlation between beauty and citation count? If someone can dig up a paper that describes and checks this, I would be grateful.

I doubt how a scientific study could measure "beauty", in order to conduct the study. Perhaps human labelled? A study that would like body mass index to citations perhaps is a research waiting to be done!

Yet, unlike CEOs, you don't see the authors when reading a paper. Altough, being popular at conferences might help them get initial citation count.

Go for it :)