Accepting organizing duties in a year...but waiting for a new position This question is strongly linked to a previous question of mine:

Tenured position to be started very soon…what to do with the old affiliation

Roughly speaking, my situation is the following: I am a non-tenured track researcher who had applied for permanent positions abroad and now I am waiting for notifications (to be known mid-July the latest).

In my present institution we are assumed to make lot of organization duties, and now the head of my research group is pushing me to organize a big conference in July 2016 (big for me means more than 300 people). This means that we should start preparing applications for grants as soon as possible, webdesign, and things like this that take a lot of time.

The organization of this conference is possibly one of the main examples to my current situation: it seems to me that the only talks we have with my boss are concerning the teaching and organizing things during 2016-2017 (which is definitely very far away of my expectations to be in my present institution).

I know, due to the really good advices in the previous post I linked, that I should keep prudent saying things about my application abroad (namely, do not say a word until something is clearer), but now every day he is coming with this type of questions, and this starts being mentally tiring.

How should I manage this?

A more general question (that would contribute in more general sense to the forum) is the following: while having a non-tenured position (3-5 years), which is the horizon that one may have in order to compromise himself/herself with certain duties (organization, applying for research projects that cannot be moved from a country to another, student advising, teaching duties,...)?

Thank you in advances for the suggestions

It's not so uncommon for a "local" conference organizer to have moved to another institution by the time of the conference, but it's good if there are some actual local conference organizers.  Since you are part of a research group, it seems reasonable that you will not need to be a sole organizer (this wasn't 100% clear from your question).  If you are being asked to be the "primary" organizer, you can still do that remotely, but it also makes sense to ask to instead co-organize it with other people.

So I think the main thing you should consider is: how much do you want to be involved with such a conference, regardless of where you'll be?

Note organizing duties usually count as "professional service" rather than "university service," and organizing conferences can have positive benefits for your career.  If you are doing this as "professional service" rather than as part of your job duties (and it sounds like this is the case since you are getting asked to do it, rather than told to do it), once you make a committment, you should typically follow through.  However, if you do move, then co-organizers are generally pretty understanding that certain aspects are harder for you to do remotely.


Theoretical CS research having a math undergrad I am currently finishing my undergraduate math studies, and I am really interested in computer science (especially theoretical). However, I realize that most CS departments expect their applicants to have a CS major or at least a significant amount of coursework in CS. I have taken a couple of programming courses and a course in data structures, languages and machines, and design of algorithms, but all very basic (so I would probably be rejected because of insufficient background). Therefore, I have been looking for math departments that do theoretical CS research, but I have found very few.

Is is possible for a mathematician to successfully enter a program of theoretical computer science with few previous experience in CS?

I thought this question was asked and answered before, but I couldn't find it. In any case, people with a strong math background can do very well in TCS. The only stumbling block might be the breadth of CS material (including things like architecture, compilers and operating systems) that might be required of a CS grad student.

However there are certain programs (CMU/Georgia Tech/Waterloo) in which TCS is a separate discipline: if you applied to one of these programs, you might be able to to circumvent core CS requirements that you don't have.


Is IRB approval required (by publishers or otherwise) for volunteer human subjects research? Update: Thanks for the answers. I reworded and numbered the questions for clarification.
As a volunteer endeavor, I want to do online survey and education research. I am not being paid for the work, and the research participants are also not being paid. I am in the United States.

Legally, do I need to obtain IRB approval to conduct the research?
Legally, can I self-publish (e.g. blog)?
Would any reputable journal accept results obtained without any IRB approval?
What might the legal consequences be for not obtaining approval?
If I'm not associated with any IRB, how would I get approval?
Does it matter what my job is if I do the research in my personal time?
What about a collaborator at a university who is helping as a volunteer researcher in their personal time?

Many journals have policies that require authors to have obtained IRB approval (or its equivalent in countries other than the US) as a condition of publication for any paper that involves human subjects. Here, the consequence of not obtaining IRB approval would be that your paper isn't published.

If you are employed by an institution that has a policy on human subjects research than you may be required to obtain IRB approval for any research project involving human subjects by your institution's policy, whether or not the research is sponsored by the institution or makes any use of the resources of the institution.  Here, the consequences of not obtaining IRB approval could include being fired from your job.

There are Commercial Institutional Review Boards that provide review and oversight for research involving human subjects outside of an institution with its own review board.  These are used, for example, by companies that do human subjects research as part of the development of new products.


After working 10 years in the non-profit sector, will getting a PhD open new doors? I am trying to come up with criteria to decide if I leave my job and start a PhD I was recently offered. One issue is the impact the PhD will have in my career: will it open new doors, will it make me a more attractive candidate to work for the government or the non-profit sector where I have been working for the past 10 years? Or should I just continue working on the issues I already have experience with and a network?

The main reason I am considering the offer is because I love the topic, I have been wondering about it for many many years and I would like to become an expert on it. It will be a big change for me, financially and geographically, as well as socially. PhD students can be very young these days.

The issue isn't your age but what you want to get out of a PhD.

A PhD teaches you how to do research. If you want a job doing research or teaching at the university level, then yes, it might be for you!

For any other type of job, it will probably result in slowing down your career without opening many other doors. In the US, a PhD can take 4-7 years of full-time work with very little pay.

The other possibility is that if you really just love the subject and don't care that it won't increase your salary potential, then it might also be for you.


How to revise a paper when the reviewer has not understood my work? A reviewer asked for modifications, which are not necessary. It is obvious that he has not understood my work. What should I do?

Make sure that the reviewer was wrong not you. S/he is definitely an
expert in the field and might see your work from a different
perspective. In this case, it is not a matter of being right or
wrong.
Assuming that s/he have not really understood your manuscript. This
suggests that there is something confusing about your manuscript. If
s/he, as an expert, has misunderstood it, this means many other
readers will not understand it too. Things might be crystal clear to us, but our expression can be confusing but we do not see the confusion from our perspective.

As a general advice, see peer-review as a gift instead of a fight.


What courses should I count when calculating my GPA in major? When calculating my GPA in major, should/can I only count courses that are meeting the requirement for major or should I count any course on the same topic and from the same department as my major? For example, if my major is Physics, and I have completed my major with courses A through J, but have also taken the course K after completing all the requirements as an optional course (which does not even count for graduation; a completely optional course), should I count the grade for course K when calculating my major GPA for reporting it on my CV and in applications, or can I not count that one?

If no specific guidance is otherwise provided, I would include additional courses in the same department as the major. The reason for this is that anybody looking over your transcript will assume that, unless the course is clearly marked as a graduate course, it's probably a requirement for your major.

That said, we're also not likely to check your math unless there's a gross error, and we're not likely to sweat a few hundredths of a point difference.


Too late for accommodations? Posted here as OP is not on SE:
Ok I have a dilemma. I am a university student. I was re-diagnosed late with ADHD due to a misdiagnosis of severe depression and anxiety, I have struggled at university often having submited assignments late with careless mistakes.

Now I know that the standard concessions given to someone with my condition are extensions plus additional support someone to help break down the assignments and help with structuring my arguments through providing strategies to organise my work.

My problem is the majority of my low marks and fails were caused by penalties for late submission 5% per work day. I failed multiple assignments being hit for the maximum penalty of 50% (10 working days).

Now that I have my late diagnosis, should I contest those results and ask the penalties be withdrawn or tempered? Or should I just go dig a hole and bury myself because without that degree that is about all I have left to do. ♂

Go talk to someone at the university who has some responsibility in such matters. There is often a specialized office for it. Discuss the situation there and ask for advice. They have knowledge that few of us here have and can make suggestions few of us might think of.

But it isn't necessarily a question of contesting results. Find out your broader options before you choose any particular one. There may be some combination of things that can be made to work for you.

You aren't alone in such things, and universities short be adept at handling them.


how should I describe my status in job applications? I have just passed my PhD oral defence I have passed my PhD viva voce and submitted my revised thesis. Currently, I am waiting for my degree to be conferred which will take one to two months. How should I describe/introduce my academic status in cover letters when applying for jobs?

I have learnt a phrase "degree pending", not sure if it suits my case?

I would just write:  "Ph.D. completed, to be awarded [month, year]."


Should one mention outside influences that negatively impacted grades on their PhD applications? I'm applying for PhD programs at the moment in pure mathematics and was wondering if there was any sort of general wisdom regarding mentioning bad things that happened to you that have negatively impacted your grades. In the winter and spring quarters of my junior year my father was in and out of life threatening surgeries and it generated a lot of anxiety in my life that made it difficult to keep up with school the way I had in the past. He is thankfully doing alright now and is only getting better, but it was really touch and go for a while.

Before those terms I had taken a lot of graduate level courses in mathematics and consistently got As, but there was a dip during that period to B+s and Bs. The difficult thing for me is that, now that I'm not dealing with those things anymore, I don't really have time to show on my applications that it was a temporary issue for me. Is this sort of thing worth mentioning on my applications?

Personally I'm a very private person and the thought of mentioning it makes me a little nervous, but my application before this happened was quite unambiguously strong and I don't really know if it's appropriate to mention or if people would take it into consideration when looking at my transcripts.

In the graduate school I manage (UK Russell Group), you will need to meet specific requirements to even be considered for a place in the PhD programme. If your grades (or English proficiency or industry experience or any other prerequisite you choose to identify) do not meet this threshold, no amount of explanation in your personal statement will be satisfactory. This is the first hurdle.

If you are able to surmount this first hurdle, then no specific explanation is necessary to include in your personal statement about the reason you feel your grades were negatively impacted. You are only required to state that there were personal circumstances of a limited nature that were the cause of the dip in your performance. There are three reasons for this:

Your grades have already been determined. An explanation will not change them. We will use your grades plus other evidence to rank you against all other applicants. Your reason will not be relevant in this ranking process. You will fall into one of three categories. If you are in the "clear accept" category or in the "clear reject" category, then your explanation is irrelevant to us. If you are in the "more information" category, when we will seek further information from you in the form of an interview, for example.
We have no way of confirming that the explanation you provided in your personal statement is accurate.
Your reasons may be highly private. If so, they will be difficult for you to write and difficult for us to read.

Please be clear about what I am saying. I am not saying that the reason is immaterial. Quite the contrary, in fact. What I am saying is that the reasons you declare will be considered in due course and we will invite you to respond and provide evidence if and when we require it. We will also specify the nature that evidence is to take.

Thus, in response to your question, I would advise the following:

DO mention that your performance over a specific number of semesters was atypical and impacted your overall GPA negatively.
DO mention that the reason for this atypical performance was of a significant personal nature.
DO mention that this issue has since resolved.
DO mention that you will be able to provide evidence should we require it.
DO NOT provide us specific details.

An example of such a statement is

  During two trimesters in academic year 2016/17, my academic performance was affected by a serious personal issue that has since resolved. This has negatively affected my overall GPA. The academic performance improved in the next academic year. I will be able to provide relevant evidence for your review upon request.

Finally, it is quite common for us to issue offers conditional on the receipt of further evidence. Not knowing your specific circumstances beyond the information you've already provided, it is likely that this will be the result that you will receive.

I wish you the best of luck.


budget allocation in research grant applications How to find about info about proportions of different categories in budget in grant applications? For instance, how much put in travel, how much put in RA fees etc.

Apart from asking your institution's research support unit (if there is one) as suggested in other answers, try to get in touch with colleagues with grants similar to yours (in terms of grant call, scale of the funding and scientific area) and see if they can show you their budget. In my experience when I was new to grant requests, this was the single most helpful thing that helped me tune my budget.


Should I share a scan of my published paper with an academic in my field? A notable academic in my field has asked for a copy of one of my papers which he says he wants to assign to a class. For me this is a big compliment and a good opportunity to get my work out there. Now, I could share the post-print with him, which is allowed by the journal, however, this does not have the correct page numbers and wouldn't be much use for any citations.

My institution always photocopies articles from books and sends them around the class. It's probably quite naughty but they do it a lot. Should I send a scan/photocopy or should I just send a post-print, which would effectively just be a Word doc?

Of course send the post-print. Why does it matter that it doesn't have the right page numbers? Presumably, your colleague wants to assign it to his class because of its content, not because of its page numbers! Send a note with what the proper citation information would be, in case anyone wants to cite it, or better yet just write that on the top of the document ("Please cite this work as: ...").


How to tell advisor I'm declining a scholarship? I recently won a scholarship that could (in theory) pay for the remainder of my time in graduate school. However, it comes attached with strings that I'm not comfortable with, and so I've decided to decline the offer.

I was aware of the strings when I applied for it (basically, the public institution funding the scholarship pays x years and you work for them for x years). I thought I had done my research at the time and knew all that I needed to know about that -- it didn't seem like an issue then. Since then, however, I've learned more about the program that has me on edge (some very negative experiences that past winners have had, and a relatively-low salary compared to industry on graduation). Furthermore, the placement is not what I had in mind -- I was hoping for a position on the east coast of the U.S., and they placed me on the west coast.

I have one more year of funding available, so I can continue applying for more fellowships/scholarships; and my advisor had indicated to me in the past that he had other funding available for when my current fellowship ran out. However, I'm worried he'll get angry if I tell him I'm turning down free (for him, at least) funding.

So my question is: how should I inform him of my decision such that (hopefully) he's least likely to get infuriated? Or, put another way, how would faculty members on Academia S.E. want to be informed of such a decision?

(I have already planned to do this in-person; I'm looking for suggestions for what to actually say.)

Just honestly tell him your reasons. They are very understandable.

Making a commitment to work for years an institution that you aren't sure you want to work for, at a location thousands of miles away from where you want to be, is a very big deal for your life.

Yes, it might be somewhat less convenient for your advisor, but so what?  This decision is about you and what is best for you, not about your advisor.  A reasonable person would not expect you to re-order years of your life, just so it is slightly easier to fund their lab.

I would just give your reasons and not worry about it.  It will probably be fine.  On the off chance that your advisor does get upset, just try to remember that it is not your fault.  And certainly don't change your plans in response.


Attending supervisor's group meeting after thesis approval I am a finishing Masters student. My supervisor approved my thesis recently, and I am waiting for the graduate studies office to process my thesis so that I can get a letter from the university that confirms the submission of my thesis and apply for a post-graduate work permit.

In the meantime, should I still attend my supervisor's group meeting? I do not contribute to the discussions in the group meetings anyway.

I cannot bring up the topic of attending group meeting because once before, when I asked him about the logistics of the final stages of the Masters program, he got really mad at me.

The general rule: go if you think it would be useful to you, though it would probably be polite to check with the supervisor first:

  "Is it ok if I still come to lab meetings during my thesis-pending period [or whatever it is called in your location]? I'd be interested in keeping up with the work the group is doing."

Usually I would expect the supervisor would be glad to accommodate you. And even if you are not reporting on any work of your own, you might have useful input regarding other people's work.

In your particular situation - "he got really mad at me" - for whatever reason it does not sound as if you have a very healthy relationship with your supervisor. So it's probably in your best interests just to move on. It's hard to say how your supervisor might feel about that, but in this instance you are better off thinking of yourself rather than trying to maintain an unhealthy relationship.


Can I fill an application for a PhD program, and send the scores of GRE and TOEFL later? How much later? For a PhD application due in mid-December to Mid-January, what is the deadline for sending the GRE and TOEFL scores? I know the answer is different based on the university and the program I am applying to, but I think there is some date which I can't exceed.

I want to apply for a PhD program this year, the deadline for the application is between mid-December and Mid-January, but the GRE and TOEFL scores won't be available till mid-March. Is that acceptable?

It depends on the university and the department and there is usually no way to tell from the outside unless the website is explicit. Unless you have information to the contrary, you should treat the deadline as the deadlines for all materials to arrive.

Many universities/departments will red flag missing TOEFL scores from international students and treat the file as incomplete - which means the application won't even get forwarded to the admissions committee. Some programs will also red flag missing GREs for both domestic and international students. The committee won't see these files.

In the application management system I used at my old department, I could run an alternate search for incomplete applications and still find incomplete or flagged files, but they wouldn't show in the default view and certainly not in the exported spreadsheet we used for committee ranking assignments.

So if your materials are arriving late, I'd write to both the graduate school and the admissions committee director or graduate studies director and make sure they know to flag your file for further attention. They may also tell you there's nothing they can do about an application that is missing material.

By the way, we usually have made our decisions by mid- to late- February so your scores arriving in March will definitely be too late and your application would likely get rejected as incomplete (unless you can argue that the TOEFL is inapplicable because you went to an English speaking college or some other reason).


Was supposed to do an oral exam, but was instead presented with my grade Me and a group of classmates (each of whom including myself had been active participants of the course) got called to the professors office half a week before our oral exam and were each presented with a grade. We went there together and could accept or deny the professors suggestion.

It was clear from my friends that they were happy to accept it (the real oral exam is very difficult). I was personally very unsure how to feel about it, partly because we had just written a "pre-exam" in the morning of the same day and I had made some really sloppy mistakes. The grade I was given felt unjustified in how high it was. Of course by the difficulty of the actual exam it felt stupid in a practical sense not to accept the professors offer. I still made a meek attempt to protest, after which he insisted and I essentially made the choice to accept. Also partly because of my friends who I in the moment realised would look worse off had I not accepted.

The exam is not especially important, it is a course like any other in the end. And I know (which was the professors point) that I would have studied to take the exam and probably done ok. But I cannot shake the feeling that I made the wrong decision. Having done some thinking, it feels unfair towards the people who have to do the real test, and I imagine this situation is precisely why terms like "kissing up to the professor" exist. I feel shame because I participated very much in the course simply because I love the subject and for no other reason.

Was I right or wrong to accept the grade?

There is no ethical issue here if no one was disadvantaged by this. Accept that grading can be an inexact science even in the best situations. The professor made a judgment about the quality of your work overall and suggested a grade. His expectations, apparently, were that the oral exam wouldn't change his judgement. Orals can be subjective in any case, and he  perhaps wanted to avoid that as well as lessen his own work load in the face of it not very likely to affect the outcome.

This would have been different if the suggested grade were lower than your expectations or if someone else were disadvantaged by the system.

In my own practice, I would set a grading rubric that was clear to the students. For example, 700 points earned would be worth a certain grade. Students knew how many points they had accumulated. But if someone earned 695 points they would get the higher rather than the lower grade. My assumption was (a) that the difference was not consequential and (b) minor changes in evaluations along the way might overwhelm the few points lost. Furthermore, I would occasionally let students who had already attained highest marks skip the final exam. It would give them the opportunity to work in their other subjects and was unlikely to affect anything. I think this is somewhat common practice.

Far worse to be overly strict and leave students disappointed in the course, in me, and in themselves.

Furthermore, if the grade "offered" was less than highest marks, you had the choice to take the exam. No harm, no foul.

I'm not sure I'd feel the same about this if the offer was made to only the lowest performing students. In that case it seems more like work avoidance than justice. But even then, I'd want more information before deciding.

And congratulations. I hope that you impressed the professor in some way.


International Student Funding for Graduate Programs outside North America I'm considering doing a masters or a PhD program outside of North America, in particular Europe or Australia. I had originally expected every graduate program to fund students the way North American universities do - as in, they (basically) fund every accepted applicant for somewhere between 12-24,000$ a year. I also was under the impression that funding covered your tuition and more. But the other day I talked to a representative from a small Australian university and she said that they did not fund international students at all unless they got a specific scholarship, which most did not.

I am curious as to which major universities in Europe and Australia fund all / most of their accepted students, and if so approximately how much. My girlfriend (who is coming with me) has EU citizenship and I do not, so I'm wondering about both cases. We are both currently in Canada and applying for mathematics/statistics.

I am particularly curious about the University of Amsterdam, ETH Zurich, the National University of Australia and the University of Melbourne, because those are the ones that I really can't find information about. However we are also considering other European countries (France, Germany, Spain, UK, Hungary, other places with good programs) and I would appreciate any information you had about institutes there too!

Thank you!!

I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia, a Go8 university which has similar application processes to the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne.

In Australia, funding for international students comes from three separate streams.

The federal government (heretoforth referred to as the Commonwealth) funds several recurring 3 (minimum) to 4 (maximum) year scholarships each year per university depending on total research output. These scholarships are then allotted to the highest ranking applicants for PhD candidature from the respective faculties in a given university. These scholarships are referred to as IPRS (International Postgraduate Research Scholarships) and are extremely competitive.

The Commonwealth also funds scholarships for students from developing countries through the foreign aid program. These are referred to as Australia Award scholarships and Prime Ministers scholarships. The application process is run through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website (DFAT).

Individual universities offer university scholarships to applicants and these are usually part and parcel of the application process for PhD candidature. These are highly competitive and based on a ranking process through the entire university and the top (x) candidates who do not receive an IPRS are given these.

The third (and most common) funding stream is via the research funding obtained by individual academics. Depending on how keen a particular grant holding academic is to bring you into his group, he may offer to pay your scholarships out of his own research grant. Australian academics are very used to this so do not be afraid of asking for an assurance from your prospective supervisor that he is willing to pay your scholarship if you are unsuccessful at obtaining an IPRS or a university scholarship.

If you want to do a masters, you will have to pay for it yourself. Hope this was useful.

Cheers


Applying for different PhD positions in the same research group Suppose there is a research group X under the supervision of two professors. They put out an advertisement seeking 2 PhD students one for experimental research and one for theoretical/numerical work.

If a student has experience and necessary skills in both experimental and theoretical/numerical research of that particular field, is it ok for him to apply for both the positions?

And if he tailors his CV and motivation letter for the specific position he is applying(individual application has to be sent for each position) for, will it look good if the professors read the both application. Or will they think that the student is an imposter?

Given that the PhD positions are highly competitive, the student is ready to work on either experimental or computational.

So, is it ok to apply for both the positions?

It is okay to apply to both positions.  The student might even be at an advantage, having interests and skills in both areas.  I might try to contact both professors in advance, and ask if they would like the application structured as one or two applications.  If the student does submit two applications, I would recommend stating in the cover letter that they are applying to both, and would be excited to work in either position.


I got a B- in Math. How bad is that for Econ? So the title explains why I'm posting. I'm a masters student in economics at a pretty prestigious university and one of the courses that you're required to take as a first year is called Math Methods for Economists. It covers topics from Calculus to Linear Algebra and Differential Equations. I really wanted an A in this class because I'm hoping to have the option of applying to a really good PhD program (although I'm not sure yet), but I got a B- in the class.

I'm pretty upset by this. I really thought I could get an A. I took Calc I and II as an undergrad and I got halfway through Linear Algebra- I dropped out because it was the last semester of my senior year and honestly I was just lazy (but I still remembered a lot of the concepts from the class).

In the class I did really quite poorly on the first exam and I do blame myself for not preparing enough for that one. I was going to drop the class and retake it in the Spring (because you have the option of taking it online with FULL internet access during the exams) but then the professor said that if you get an A on the final he'd just give you an A in the class. I was determined to use that loop hole and get that A on the final.

I spent the 5 days before the exam studying so hard- I mean every free second that I wasn't eating or sleeping- I was up until 3:00am every night studying. I don't think I've ever spent so much time preparing for an exam.

I kind of knew it was hopeless though. This professor gives insanely hard exam questions that he does almost nothing to prepare you for. As aforementioned, I have quite a bit of background in math and I have never seen math problems like the ones he puts on his exams.They're not conceptually hard to understand but he tries to trick you using the most obscure algebra techniques that even software has trouble finding a closed form solution for. I've tried plugging some of the problems into symbolab.com and multiple times I was told "can not be solved" - which I didn't even know was possible.

I ended up getting an 82 on the exam and I just think its so unfair that I have to have a B- on my transcript. I've never blamed a professor for my own grade but this is ridiculous. I know some students complained about the professor directly to the program advisor before and nothing resulted from it.

Is there anything I can do about this? Does the B- condemn me to eternal graduate school hell? I'm really just looking for some peace of mind.

Is there anything I can do about this?

I presume you mean "can do to change your grade"? No, grades are final (perhaps with an exception for mitigating factors).

  Does the B- condemn me to eternal graduate school hell?

I don't understand how a grade can condemn someone to "eternal graduate school hell," nor what "graduate school hell" is. If you are concern about graduate school admissions, then one grade will have little impact.


When you get paid to do research, but you're not a graduate student/PI, is it mandatory to put in extra time? When I was an undergraduate student volunteering in laboratories, I recall times where I would come in on weekends to work on plating cells, running experiments, etc. This was something I did on my own accord because I was getting professional development. I notice the same phenomena exists among graduate students as their whole existence in graduate school revolves around the acquisition of knowledge, and primarily, the completion of research.

However, what about a tech? Is a hired research technician obligated to stay more than the 40 hours a week their paycheck warrants? I am a newly hired tech and I was surprised/understanding to see my peers drop everything at 5 PM to resume the next day. Obviously this is not taken literally, but once stuff wraps around at maybe 5:10, 5:15...they're out the door. No one is staying until 7 PM, etc. like in college to make sure this assay runs well, etc.

A: Ask a labor or employment attorney in your local area

B: No. The law in most western economies is structured so that you have some form of redress (union, contract, employment law, etc.) so that you cannot be forced to work longer than a specific or nominal work week which can range from 35 to 40 hours per week (in my experience) without additional pay. Anything more is slavery and/or illegal employment practices. Now that doesn't mean that a savvy employer can't find a fake reason to fire you if you don't work enough hours to satisfy them. In lots of places that have "at will" employment (many states in the US, for example), you can be fired for the color of your shoes, your smell, etc., except for protected classes like race, gender, religion, country of origin, etc. Still savvy employers can find ways around this, even if you have an employment contract.

What's you're real question? Are you worried about expectations from an employer, are you under the gun to work harder, or something else? Typically, unless something is weird, you're allowed to voluntarily work more hours than the standard work week, but you also can't be forced to without receiving legally mandated overtime pay. Some unscrupulous employers can even find ways around this, like by doctoring your time records, but this usually highly illegal and worth reporting to the correct authorities. Some classes of employees in the US are exempt from overtime, but a technician wouldn't often fall into that class in my experience.


Honesty of advisor when determining an adequate research project for thesis Questions

What duty does an advisor have to advise a student on a reasonable workload for a thesis?

Background

When I started my masters degree in Biology, my advisor quickly assigned me to three separate projects and told me that all three needed to be in my thesis. The plan had been that I would submit one of the three projects as a paper. The other two projects would be contributions to other papers.

I trusted his judgement, and worked on all three.

However, in my last semester, my advisor told me that I only needed one of the three projects for my thesis. He also expected me to continue working for him - unpaid - after my graduation for another year before he was OK with me submitting the paper.

I had accepted a different job and was not able to dedicate anymore time in the lab. He reassigned the project to another student and a paper was submitted 2 years later. The paper contains essentially everything I did, and my advisor justified the change in authors by saying it would be good for the other students career.

I feel upset, because if I had been allowed to only focus on one of the projects, I probably would have been able to publish before I graduated.

At best, I feel that he was trying to nudge me towards staying in the lab for a PhD and was loading me down with projects in preparation. At worst, I feel that he was trying to get as much work out of me as he could, including unpaid work after graduation.

I would like to start by reinstating an already made comment: it is hard for anybody to look at this kind of mild conflicts without biases. The student who replaced you certainly had to replicate some of the work you have done, and most likely has been exploring and wandering in other research direction.

That being said...welcome to the academic world. Not all advisors are able to mediate their own best interest, with their students/postdocs best interests. Let me be more precise, and talk in economic behavioural terms: it is always the advisor's best interest to get as much work as possible from any person working for him. He/she lives in a highly competitive world battling with few resources to stay ahead of the competition. However, any supervisor needs to balance his/her need to get the most work out of his/her research group, with the need to build a positive reputation in offering a working environment that compromises reasonably between being treated fairly, and having the opportunity to grow in a career while working hard. Failure to do so will cut his/her stream of future students/postdocs into his/her group.

It seems like your advisor did not quite strike that balance - especially about the unpaid work. Unfortunately, that too is all quite common, especially in universities/countries where funds are lower than in the average US institution.
Just take it as a learning experience, and try to learn the most out of it.


What should I comment on when contacting a potential advisor? I’m applying to a masters program and I need to find a potential advisor prior to applying. I’ve heard that it’s a great idea to reads some papers from the potential advisor and make thought-out comments on the papers when contacting the advisor(s) to show that you have genuine interest in their research. I am awful at thinking of questions / interesting comments. Although it would be impossible for you to suggest what I should mention about the paper without having read it, what areas of a research paper should I focus on when making insightful comments about it?

It's good to look into a potential advisor's research. If there is a specific reason you are interested in working with them, that is also good to mention that (briefly) in an initial email.

However, I think making detailed, specific comments about the professor's papers would usually be a bad idea in this context. It is far too much detail for an introduction, and if you are doing it just to demonstrate your knowledge and/or interest, it will come across as forced and artificial. If someone was advising you to do this, I don't think it was good advice.

Keep the initial contact brief: introduce yourself and say something about why you want to work with them.


After initial contact, how long should I address a professor as "Dr. Smith" or "Professor Smith"? Let's assume that I've contacted professors in the United States and referred to them appropriately as "Dr. Smith" or "Professor Smith" based on their having attained a Ph.D.

If they respond to me informally, should I continue to address them formally? If so, for how long?

This is so highly dependent on particular universities -- let alone particular regions -- that it is probably best just to ask students and faculty what is the culture at their particular university.

I will give one example.  At most American universities you should begin by calling all your instructors by "Dr." or "Professor", although in some cases your instructors will be neither one of these and should probably say so in response.  For anyone who is either a Doctor (i.e., has a doctoral degree) or a Professor (in the United States this usually means "is on the tenure track", but already there are variations...), it seems a bit rude not to use one of these two appellations.  When students call me "Mr. Clark" I assume they are just forgetting that they are not in high school anymore.  But whether "Dr." or "Professor" is preferred is highly variable.  At my university it seems that "Dr." is the go-to appellation: I have even heard other faculty refer to me as "Dr. Clark" when talking to students.  Nevertheless I prefer being called "Professor": getting my PhD was nice.  Getting a tenure-track job took place three years later, and that's when I really made it big.  However at some places you call people "Professor" because you are not sure whether they have a doctorate, and for the ones who do, "Dr." is the superior honorific.  Et cetera...

(I believe I learned some of this from Paul Halmos's Automathography, which I highly recommend to all academics and not just to mathematicians: to mathematicians I would require that you read it if I could!  He goes on to explain more nuances than I did above.)

What you call your instructor also depends on things like their age, their gender, and honestly perhaps even their ethnic background.  As a tenured Caucasian male, the desired aura of authority is already there: I don't have to do anything special to summon it. On the other hand I am still "young" -- closer in age to some of my students than some of my colleagues -- so if I met a student in a non-academic context I would not want any deferential treatment.  (This is also a generational thing: telemarketers, phone company employees and so forth now call me and refer to me by my first name, and I wonder where our civilization is heading...) I am totally okay being called by my first name by any university student.  Whether they are similarly okay doing so is another question, but I encourage this behavior particularly from former students and in contexts outside out of the university campus.  If I were 65 years old and wearing a suit, calling me by my first name would seem less appropriate.  (In fact I had to steel myself at first to call all of my colleagues by their first names, even the ones who were famous mathematicians before I was born.  But that is definitely contemporary American academic culture: any of my colleagues who calls me "Dr. Clark" is signalling that they want to strangle me.)

I feel that it is especially important not to use less formal appellations for female faculty.  I covered a colleague's class a few weeks ago, and one of the students asked a question, beginning with "Miss Matic said..." And my answer began "Well, first things first: it's Dr. Matic..." I then got the student to agree that that was the correct thing to say before moving on to address the question.  Also I feel honorbound to stand more carefully on honorifics when addressing minorities.  It is sad to me that contemporary American society has not gotten past the point where this seems necessary...but it hasn't yet.


Accepted as PhD student, but my funding application was rejected. Now my prospective PhD advisor recommends that I should bail out. What should I do? I was recently accepted by a university as a PhD student. During the whole process, my potential supervisor agreed to supervise me along with some of his colleagues as my co-supervisor. Although, I have been accepted as a PhD student by the university, but I didn't get the scholarship. I a mentally as well as financially prepared for the expenses. But now my supervisor is saying that I should decline the offer. I told him that I can manage my expenses, but in every mail he is giving me some other excuse for not accepting this offer. I am confused now as to what I should do. Since the graduate school has accepted me, now it's up to me whether I should accept or not. But I am not able to understand why my supervisor is not willing to take me.
Any suggestions for what should I do now are highly appreciated.
Thank You.

Probably write to that supervisor, asking that if you think you will be busy, then perhaps you can suggest any other colleague.
There can be many reasons which that guy must have shared with you. I am assuming a few instances.

First, as pointed out in the comment above, he may be thinking that
getting a self-funded Ph.D. is too over-burdening to you (which
frankly, it is, because unlike bachelors or Masters degrees, Ph.D. is not only
tough, there is no minimum time-limit per se)

Secondly, he may be leaving the university or department, or he may have other engagements that do not allow him to supervise you at the moment. In that case, your asking him to direct you to any other colleague of yours would make more sense.

But frankly, I personally think that one should do a PhD on any funded project. A self-funded Ph.D. journey often gets a bit bitter towards the end.


A scholarship dilemma Hello everyone and thank you for your attention!

I have been just offered two different scholarships which are pretty much the same. However, the first one requires me to apply to the university and will be granted only if I am accepted. The second combines an acceptance offer + the scholarship itself (Erasmus +).

I can't be 100% sure that I will meet the requirements of the first scholarship but it appeals to me. Only if I get rejected here (I will know that in several months), I will choose the Erasmus +.

I have just a week to accept Erasmus + and want to have this option if anything goes wrong. Can I now accept their offer and decline it later? How will that affect my academic future or whatever?

Any suggestions on how to deal with that?

You'll want to check the details of the scholarship, probably searching for terms like "deferral", "cancellation", "forfeit", etc. Most large scholarships will have handbooks, FAQs, and maybe even someone you can email directly to ask a question.

Some scholarships/fellowships can be combined, so you can accept more than one, and some can't. This is generally an unusual enough case that you'll need to ask the program administrators for the answer. In the programs I've seen, you are free to cancel or withdraw at any time with the only limitation perhaps being that you may not be able to reapply for that specific program again.

Given that you won't know for a few months, the only thing that might not be a good idea is to reject the scholarship which is offered now, on the hope that you get the other one. Admissions, and especially scholarship money, are never guaranteed until you have been formally offered them.

Based on the limited information here, if I were in your shoes I think I'd take the guaranteed offer now, and then don't worry about it. If you get offered the other scholarship, then inquire at that time with your program and the previously accepted scholarship what your options are. Then, with the new information in hand, choose what is best then, now that you have the offers.


How to deal with administrative duties killing the research spirit? Some months ago I was promoted with a managing position inside the university (in my case, associated chair of my school, being for instance the head of admission committee and the director of doctoral studies).
At least in my country, these jobs have a teaching reduction. However, my intention taking this position was to try to make contributions to the bad way that my university is doing right now.

However, I have encountered a really big issue that I was not expecting:

The type of duties I have are really of ‘administrative’ nature. This means: preparing schedules of courses, preparing calendars of bachelor thesis defenses, preparing slides of how satisfied the students are with their courses. I found that there are no really ‘important’ duties to do, i.e., strategic duties.
What worries me more: Due to all these monotone work, I am feeling discouraged about my research. For three months, I arrive home every day after dealing with this administrative things and say to myself: ‘Today is another day that you both did not finish several things, and even worse, you did not have even one hour to work on your projects.’

Some months ago I was somehow discouraged about my place in this university, but after taking this position I feel that I am going directly to a disaster. Either if some months ago I was a little tired (maybe burnout), I had still some energy and feeling happy making research. But now I had arrived at a point that I have started giving a deadline for this situation (December 2019), and if this does not change, start looking for something else outside academia.

What do you recommend to do? I have considered to talk with some senior professor here, and even to quit this administrative duty, but the thing that worries me more is that nowadays I have lost the passion I had for research that make me sense to stay at the university.

First, I absolutely do appreciate your disaffection with the situation.

I would wager that some of your disappointment is due to pointlessness of some of the administrative activities, or the pointlessness of trying to "over-perfect" things that only need to be "good enough".

Also, some administrative problems will never be solved/resolved, but only "stayed", and require a certain (perhaps small) effort forever. Expending more effort at this moment will not solve those problems. Staying up late will not solve the problems. They're like laundry or dishes that just have to be dealt with, regularly, and "doing a great job on laundry" this week will not really reduce the laundry burden for the next week.

But, yes, these administrative things are very important to keep things going. So there is some exercise of thought to see how much of one's motive force to allocate to "routine" tasks, etc.


How much patience is needed in a PhD? I am a PhD student who works in theory. I have been patient but nowadays I am losing my temper, patience, etc. Many publications have been rejected as well as my proposals for grants. I have submitted one research paper which was also recently rejected.

I am working very hard but also feeling disheartened about the way academia works. As a student it is very hard to be patient. I worry each time my proposals get rejected or even if I have a failure in my research. I am trying my best to be patient but I don't know how to keep it.

Question:  How much patience is needed while working on a PhD? (in terms of number of years for a publication) Is there any way to not worry about the failures we have in academia?

The PhD is a test of your stubbornness, patience and grit more than it is a test of any sort of intelligence or ability.


I wrote a research paper and just realized that my idea has been published before. Must I cite? I work as an engineer in industry. I have been working alone in a project of my firm for four months. In the course of this, I invented a technique which can optimize and reduce considerably the cost for my firm.
The R&D manager said my work is original, he hasn't seen it before. Therefore, my work will be presented to the director of my firm in the committee meeting next month, and he agreed with me that I can publish my work.
Yesterday, when I made some verification of citation sources, I found a thesis, published in December 2016 with the same idea as mine.
I made up this technique on my own, and I have never known this thesis before. But the key idea is already published in the thesis.
I understand now that I can no longer publish my technique. Even if I find my technique is actually more general and seems better than the technique in this thesis, it is not sufficient to publish unless I make more improvement.

Must I cite?

Yes, you must cite the thesis, since it's part of an author's responsibility to give an accurate representation of the state of the art.

  I understand now that I can no longer publish my technique

I think these worries might be unjustified. Most research is incremental, in the sense that it improves on existing work, rather than inventing something completely new. Just cite the work and clearly discuss (or even better, show experimental evidence) why your technique gives an improvement in terms of generality and speed.


Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions? I'm currently an M. Phil student in Math and I failed a course last semester because I was not able to hand in a home work assignment (which was worth 40% of my grade) on time (I was 30 minutes late).

Apart from that I'd say I'm a fairly decent student, I got an upper second class honours bachelors degree, I have a B+ and A's for all my other courses in my current programme and I'm almost finished with my first paper to be published.

I've however been deeply worried about this failure as it would reflect poorly on my transcript if I were to apply to a Ph.D or another Master's programme.

Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?

It's not a deal breaker. I had awful grades in many courses but I got offers with TA/RA-ship/fellowships from a couple of top 25 US PhD programs in Math. The reason, I think, was that I had very high GRE scores, I had participated in undergraduate/masters "research" projects for a few years with professors at my schools, and I had pretty good recommendations. My research statement was normal and earnest. I didn't have any extraordinary ideas nor some well defined research agenda in it. I think that, overall, the rest of my portfolio made up for my awful grades.

In your case, it's just one course. That does not signal any systematic problem. If you feel particularly insecure, you can address it in your personal statement but don't talk about the professor in question negatively, instead you can focus on how you were tardy once but it does not reflect your work usual work ethic. I cannot speak for top 10 schools. They may have a sufficiently large pool of applicants who may beat you on every metric.

Also, Math departments at large public Universities generally need lots of bodies to TA/grade their numerous remedial and baby-calc type undergraduate courses and generally do the culling at the qualifying exam stage. You may find their standards for an incoming PhD class to be more forgiving.


Justifying sub-optimal research quality by lack of supervision When starting a Ph.D. position, one naturally expects that there should be some kind of supervision of his work. That is, their advisors should be aware of the state-of-the-art and be willing to sit and discuss research directions and provide pointers to the literature. In some cases, advisors may be too "bossy," expecting their students to be "good soldiers" doing what they are told to do without many questions about its research value. However, it's also not uncommon for advisors to be "hands-off," basically  leaving their students on their own and so they come back only when they have something to publish.

Navigating solely through the literature is arguably the worst part of Ph.D Grind. It's all too easy for a student with undeveloped "feel" for problems to spend months trying to shape a proper research plan. That is what happened in my case, where I needed more than a year. Now that I've started with actual experimentation I realized that the workload may be a bit high for a single person. Therefore, I'm expecting that I'll need more than a year before I start publishing results.

Given that I'm working totally independently on my Ph.D. degree, can I state that to future academic employers as a justification for what could be sub-optimal research work? or would that sound like I'm not taking full responsibility?

You should be very, very careful about seeming to criticize your own department or supervisor. It might be unfair that you received sub-optimal results, but if you try to blame somebody else for your results, search committee members are much more likely to just think you are a complainer or a malcontent.

The best advice at this early stage in your career: either find a way to work together better with your advisor, or switch advisors.


What are the main differences between undergraduate, master's, and doctoral theses? When I did my undergraduate thesis, my adviser was expected big on students expecting them working really hard, so it ended up as a reduced master's thesis (most of the reviewers said that it was an overkill for a B.E).

So because of this, I did my master's thesis pretty much in the same way I did my bachelor's thesis; the PhD dissertation was a different story.

What are the principal differences between these three pieces of research?

In a Bachelor or Master thesis, you have to show that you are able to apply the knowledge of your field to solve a typical problem in your field.

In a PhD thesis, you have to show that you are able to extend the knowledge of your field to solve new problems.

The distinction between a Bachelor and a Master thesis may be a bit subtle. Generally I think a Master thesis should show a significantly greater level of independent working. While for a Bachelor thesis your advisor could tell you which methods to use to solve a specific problem, for a Master thesis you could be expected to choose the methods on your own, and maybe adjust existing methods to better fit the problem at hand.

These are the principle differences I see, but of course its also depending on the specific student. A good Bachelor thesis can be better and include more independent work than a bad Master thesis.


Could it be possible to answer a new research question with the help of literature review? Could this be published at a symposium? I am a master student and my university didn't teach us econometrics, but I am doing self study. So, right now I am not adept at and could handle large time series data. But I sent an abstract to a conference, and they have accepted it.
I am unable to handle large data and technicalities of macroeconomy. But since I am doing this all by myself, I am finding it difficult to apply techniques. My research question is unique, and no one has answered it, so is it possible if I do but with the help of past literature?

Actually, for most things you need a literature review, since you need to know what has been done already. But if the complete answer shows up in the review then there is nothing left to research there and you need to move on.
I hope you have an advisor somewhere, or access to some sort of academic guide. You seem to be unsure about how to handle things, and a guide can help get you on the right track.
And doing a good literature review can also help teach you common techniques that you will need to answer your question.


How to prevent students from using modified calculators to cheat on exams? Recently my faculty (mathematics and statistics) and I have been dealing with widespread cheating due to calculators that have been modified so as to have more functionality than is permitted.

At my university we have a standardized calculator that is to be used for tests. This brand of calculator has limited functionality however recently these calculators have been modified and sold so that students can cheat on tests. We have managed to get a hold of one of them and it appears that the electronics inside have been modified. We have managed to identify the group of individuals responsible for modifying and selling these calculators however we are not sure what to do about it.

Here are the options we have considered so far:

Check each calculator individually before tests to see if it has been modified.
This is impractical as they don't look any different on the exterior and are no different in weight. We would need to open them all up and look inside.
Provide our own calculators to the students.
This approach, although better than the last, has its drawbacks. It would be expensive for the department to purchase enough calculators initially and then they would over time break and be lost, resulting in more cost so we would prefer not to go this route for that reason. Additionally, students could still quite easily take a modified calculator of their own into exams and swap it out for the provided one.
Change the official calculator model.
We could move to a new model of calculator however I suspect this would only be a temporary fix as the group responsible for modifying and selling the calculators could easily switch to modifying the new model.
Stop having calculators all together.
We would prefer not to resort to this as we don't think forcing students to do lengthy arithmetic calculations is the best way to test them. We could try to avoid such things however sometimes it is simply necessary to ask such questions, for example, in an introductory stats class we would like to ask students to find the standard deviation of a set of data points. Asking them to do this without a calculator seems unfair however we can't simply avoid asking such questions if we want to test the students properly.
Taking action against the group responsible for making the calculators.
Fortunately this group has been identified, however they are not students at my university so we cannot take direct action against them for academic disintegrity. We would like to take legal action against them if possible however my faculty and I are unsure if there is precedent for such a thing. As far as I can tell they are not committing any crimes. If there is something we could do in this regard please let me know.
Simply ignore the problem.
This is obviously not ideal as using these calculators gives students a clear advantage over those without them. Additionally, students using them often don't need to learn how to perform various calculations and can instead just plug in the various values and have the answer come out.

Has anyone has this happen at their institution before? If you have any suggestions as to what we can do in this situation it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is some clarification on the exact nature of the modifications:
To enter into the modified "mode" you type in a sequence of numbers (eg: 1234567) then it enters into the new mode in which you can do many advanced calculations.
pressing the reset button on the back causes it to appear to reset without actually resetting. If you type the password in you will still get back to the modified mode. In this mode formulas can be saved for example.

I received my bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1970. I didn't own a calculator.

There were some adjustments that helped with no-calculator tests:

Many of my exams had ten points per question. 9 of the points were for clearly showing correct working. One point was for getting the right answer. A student who understood the material but was bad at arithmetic could get 90% without a single correct answer. A student who depended on a fancy calculator could miss more points for not showing all their work.
The exam booklet included, at the back, any trig and similar tables we were going to need. Answers only had to be to the rather low precision supported by those tables.
Questions were designed with easy numbers. For example, fractions would often simplify by just crossing out common factors.
Questions were structured to minimize difficult arithmetic. For example, ask for the variance rather than the standard deviation, but also ask what they would have done differently to get the standard deviation.

Given the problem of the modified calculators, you can go in one of two directions. The first is real world. Full Internet access, statistical calculators etc. The other is to go back to the 1960's, and design tests for no calculators.


How to search for an open access journal with no publication fee? I'm having some trouble trying to find a place to publish. Therefore this question is about how to find these places.

For this I provide the following example, my particular case.

I'm searching for:

A journal, not a conference, workshop, etc.
Where publishing is free (no cost for processing the paper)
That is open access (no cost for readers)
Where the reviews are transparent/public. I.e. anyone can follow the review process
Where my drafts are also public (for people to follow the review process) The point is that I would like not to need arxiv.org or similar services to dissuade reviewers from shifty actions
In the field of computer science theory (like lambda calculus and such)
LaTeX should be accepted, this is very important
I don't need trees dying, online publishing is fine
I don't care about impact factors, as long as the journal is trustworthy

This is my particular case, but I'd like to make clear that I'm not asking for this specific fish for me, but for a good method about how to fish that can be useful for everybody in academia, specially those that are new and do not have this kind of knowledge.

PD: maybe a workaround would be using two services where one should be. Now I am thinking about uploading the paper to arxiv.org (or similar) and asking for reviews and comments on cstheory (or similar). I think that would meet all requirements and implicit requirements (implicit for journals) as allowing citations on my paper, proving authorship, etc. I'm not sure about being overlooking something or which considerations should be done to find the right place(s) to publish in this new context.

The set of journals you are describing is almost guaranteed to be equivalent to the null set. You are specifying way too many criteria on the journal. You are basically asking for a complete wish list that no single journal can reasonably satisfy and still survive. For instance:

How does it pay its ISP hosting bill?
Who handles the processing and editing of articles?
Who does the typesetting and copyediting?
Who maintains the web site?

All of these things require labor, and is not something that anyone is likely willing to donate pro bono. That means income has to come from somewhere.

Some of these criteria are not problems (for example, a CS journal is unlikely to refuse a LaTeX submission). However, in total, I think you really need to decide which criteria are required, and which ones would be nice to have. Then prioritize accordingly.


Is there an online directory listing upcoming scientific conferences? I am looking at organizing a small conference next summer and I would like by all means to avoid concurrent dates with any major or highly-overlapping conference on the same or related topics. I thought that it would be really useful if there was an online directory where I can check a calendar of upcoming scientific conferences and workshops (maybe sorted by field) and plan mine on a week in which it does not coincide with an already planned event. That way I would not be "competing" for speakers and attendants against the organizer of a different event. I would prefer to avoid "manually" browsing the internet to find this information out, so a centralized online service would be perfect for my needs.

Does such an online resource exist? If the answer depends on the discipline, I am mostly interested in physics, chemistry and materials science conferences and workshops.

The first resource that springs to mind is the COMS directory, which lists conferences in the scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, maths, life sciences etc). I don't know how comprehensive the listings are, but I think most major conferences should be listed there. You can filter the search by subject area (down to subfield level, such as astronomy or condensed matter) and country.

More specific resources exist which only list conferences in a certain country or subfield, for example the IOP (UK physics only), APS (mostly US physics only) or Inspire-HEP (international, but mostly high energy physics only).

Another resource used in my field (cosmology) is the UK Cosmo mailing list, maintained by the University of Sussex. Organisers can mail conference and summer/ winter school details to the list, and it's not limited to UK meetings either. A similar mailing list for your field may exist, although the benefit of such a list is its narrow scope-- after all, people don't want their inboxes spammed with emails about conferences in other fields, so I would use one with caution. Another drawback is that not everyone may be on such a list in the first place.


Obtaining followup clarification/feedback from referees via the editor [This looks like something that might have been asked already, but I have not found a question like this on this site.]

I recently had a paper rejected with resubmission from a top Bayesian Statistics journal. This was not a surprise. My main reason for submitting to the journal was to obtain feedback, which I did obtain. I received two reasonably detailed reviews, one more detailed than the other (the longer a bit over 3 pages), as well as a very short and somewhat cryptic (one short para) comment from the Associate (Area?) Editor. Also, these reviews were delivered very fast, which was good. I submitted the manuscript on 27th of April, and it was rejected on the 3rd of June.

The general tone of the reviews is captured by the EIC's one line summary

  Your paper has been read by an AE and two referees. They have all found the topic interesting but with several major flaws in the methodology and implementation

Now, some points in these reviews are unclear. Would it be reasonable to write to the editor asking for feedback on those points from the referees? Perhaps something along the lines of

  Is this what you meant? If so, the answer is this. If not, can you clarify, please?

or maybe just

  I don't understand what you mean here, can you elaborate?

Assuming the message is forwarded and the referee replies, I suppose there could conceivably end up being a bit of a back and forth with the reviewers via the editors.

On previous occasions I have not tried doing this, but I have come to believe there is no sense in being too shy in such matters. If you want information, ask for it.

However, I wonder if this is considered unorthodox, improper or inappropriate procedure. It is relevant to note that I am not an expert in Bayesian methods. However, the editors and referees apparently thought my paper worth the trouble of reviewing in detail. Regardless, my lack of experience/expertise may hamper me in understanding the finer points of what is expected in the field.

I will of course do my due diligence in trying to understand the content/purport of the comments, but I don't see the point of my spending hours trying to guess what is meant when the referees could (hopefully) clarify the point in a few minutes.

So, to summarize, the upsides are:

If I get a response, my eventual fixes will be better and more targeted
I don't waste a lot of time trying to guess what someone meant. Maybe it was even based on a miunderstanding

The downsides are:

The reviewers/editors will not want to be bothered with responding to me. This will be especially true if this is not considered normal procedure
They might be annoyed by my (possible) cluelessness in the area.

If I don't ask for any clarifications, then I will just end up making my best guess as to what the referee means. I don't think that the results would be as good as if I was to get clarifications.

The simple answer is: there's no harm in sending the editor a polite email to ask. Provided your questions are broadly sensible, they're unlikely to hold a grudge against you for doing so.

However, I imagine that an editor is going to be wary of encouraging a discussion that might irritate his reviewers (who he wants to be able to use again in the future), or which appears to risk developing into a challenge to the review process itself. I suspect that you are unlikely to get a positive response unless your question is very limited in scope: for example, "Reviewer 1 comments that my results would appear to generalise the Jenkins-Smith theorem; however, I cannot find a statement of this. Would the reviewer be prepared to give me an appropriate reference?"

Have you asked a colleague to look over your reviews? Sometimes, counterintuitively, things are clearer to a reader with a shallower understanding of the intricacies of your work.


Advisor suggesting my marriage may cause problems in Postdoc position search I am currently looking for postdoctoral positions, and am considering applying overseas (in US right now). My advisor has expressed his opinion that I can not be successful in an overseas position because my wife won't want to move there and will cause trouble. She doesn't like to move, but has realized that it's necessary, even if it's to a foreign country.

To help in my job search, my advisor has arranged for mock interviews with other faculty members in the department. He has provided a list of questions to prepare for, including "How will your wife like living in INSERT CITY HERE?"

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't precisely what section of the law bans questions about marital status, but I know it's outlawed. Even in an academic environment, a professor hiring a postdoc sure seems to fit into the definition of an employer or supervisor, given that he has the authority to hire, fire, or otherwise direct job responsibilities.

I don't think it's appropriate for him to criticize my personal life, and I have done my best to keep it from interfering with my work. I am mad that he might use my marital issues to sabotage potential job offers. What is the best way to respond to his behavior, and how should I prepare for any potential problems it might cause?

By sabotage, I think he might give negative recommendations. He has told me that if someone asks him for a letter of recommendation about me that he might have to tell them that my personal issues will interfere with my ability to function in the lab. Because this statement happened in the middle of a discussion about how he doesn't think my wife can adjust, the only way I can interpret "personal issues" is "marriage".

By suggesting that you prepare for questions about how your wife will like living in a new place, it seems to me that this advisor is actually trying to help you in your job search, not sabotage you. Even if you only interview in countries where this question is illegal, people who interview you may ask the question anyway (perhaps out of ignorance of the law), in which case it's usually best to answer. And even if they don't ask that particular question, the issue may come up as a result of other questions. I could be wrong (you know him better than I do), but if your advisor wanted to sabotage you, he wouldn't be going to the trouble of arranging mock interviews and confronting this issue head-on.

The letter of recommendation seems to me to be the more critical issue here. I think it depends on how your advisor became aware of your family issues. If these family issues have affected your work, then your advisor may feel he should mention it in the LOR.


Re-applying for the same PhD program abroad after finishing it in one's home country? This is a little bit hypothetical question… Let's assume I finished my PhD in math in my country but I am dissatisfied with it (assume I live in a developing country). Also I have enough money and time. Can I apply for a similar PhD program in an another country? Is it theoretically possible?

No, it's generally not possible.  Almost all Ph.D. programs have a rule against admitting someone who already has a research doctorate.  Under special circumstances, one might be admitted as an unfunded Ph.D. student in a completely different field; but in the same field, never.


Is there an open crowd-based peer-review tool? I would like to know, if anybody is familiar with any open crowd-based peer-review tools?

If I as a student, for example, use www.academia.edu, is it then possible to get my papers peer-reviewed? I understand that this normally happens if I write a conference paper or a phd. But would like to know, if there is any open tool, where I can add papers and get reviews in a not-formal way?

Besides http://peerevaluation.org, there is http://www.peerageofscience.org; and there is also reddit.com. Reddit is most like SE in terms of user interaction, however they have some problems with quality control. It is "open" in the sense that anyone can offer material and make a comment (review): it is "not entirely open" in the sense that authors and reviewers have the option of using a pseudonym, so real identities are usually not known. The other two sites are open in the latter sense, that authors and reviewers are openly identified (as far as I can tell), but peerageofscience requires reviewers to "have published a peer reviewed scientific article in an established international journal, as first or corresponding author", so it is closed to reviewers without that credential. (I am not sure about peerevaluation but it does not seem to require any qualifications from reviewers though it does ask you to categorize yourself).


Is it bad style if a section has exactly one subsection? In a discussion on why subsubsections are evil, egreg comments:

  If you have subsubsections, you must have at least two of them in a subsection; you must have at least two subsections and, of course, at least two sections. Draw the tree and you'll understand.

When I'm writing long texts, such as for my thesis, I might have sections that contain only one subsection.  For example:

5.3 Topic X

... bla intro bla ...

5.3.1 Special Case in Topic X

... bla detail bla ...

Is it considered bad style to have 5.3.1, but no 5.3.2?  Should I rather put the bla intro bla in a 5.3.1 Introduction and have the special case in 5.3.2?  What are the general approaches here, what is considered good or bad style, and why?

Having a section with a single subsection is usually considered bad style: most style guides, academic or not, advise against it. In particular, the Chicago Manual of Style advises against it.

Regarding the reasons why this is considered bad practice, I'll quote Wikipedia:

  Single Subsections
  Just as your English teacher told you, if section 2 has a subsection 2.1, there'd better be a section 2.2 as well. If you see a section with a single subsection, you have three choices:

  If there's a lot of text in the section, followed by the subsection, you ought to be able to carve out a good subsection from the initial material, or even two, to create multiple subsections.
  If most of the section's material is in the subsection, you may not need a subsection. Just combine the two.
  If the content of at the top of the section is short and substantially different from what's in the subsection, you might be able to promote the subsection (for example, change the heading from level 3 to level 2). On other hand, if the subsection covers something relatively unimportant, then don't promote it to a level 2 (top-level) heading.

Other sources, both style guides and writing advice, say the same thing: 1, 2, …


Problem with my Professor Unfortunately, I am in a very difficult situation with one of my Professors. In the previous semester, I argued for the grade he gave me in my assignment. I tried to explain him that the way that he had marked me was unfair. He told me that there was no possibility to remark my assignment without giving me more feedback. I felt disappointed and I decided to address the problem to my programme leader. The programme leader told me that an external examiner will be involved. 4 months have passed and I am still waiting. I feel that they tried to cover up this issue. Apart from that, in this semester, the same professor failed me. I feel terrible. I want to drop the programme. Could you, plesase, advise me?

I would advise to first talk to this professor, and ask what you should do differently to get a good grade in his class. Write down his advise, and mail it to him, just to have a written overview of what you discussed. When you understood him correctly, he does not need to respond. When you misunderstood, he might respond to that.

I would refrain from discussing with him whether it was justified that you failed his class or received a poor mark for the assignment. Such discussions will be very unlikely to deliver any result that is positive for you.
Rather focus on what he thinks you need to do now. If you work with that, you are much more likely to get a better grade.

Maybe, you are right, and he did evaluate you unfairly. Maybe not. You can put a lot of effort and energy in trying to proof that you are right, but this will alienate the professor only more.

Life is not always fair. Sometimes it is smarter to focus on how to improve a situation rather than on what is fair.


From blog posts to research papers; successful cases? I am subscribed to many interesting blogs. Some of them are related to my research field, while others not. Sometimes I am really impressed that some of the posts are in fact real pieces of scientific work (or sociological work, depending on the field), that although they do not follow strictly the scheme of a scientific paper, could be easily converted to a research paper. Therefore I am intrigued why these people do not convert sometime their most relevant and accessed blog post to research paper, do you know why? Besides, do you know successful cases where people have converted them to papers?

First, it totally depends how you define the term “research paper”. Some people uses a blog in such a way that (some or all) blog entries are actually akin to minimal-size “research papers”, albeit with a nonconventional publication mean and possibly nonconventional format.

Secondly, it also depends where you draw the line between “turning X into Y” and “writing X based on Y”. Obviously, many journals would object to publishing material that has already been published somewhere else, including on a personal blog. Moreover, publishing identical content in two very different media probably means that it is not fully adapted to one of the two (or both): to give only one example, you don't typically have the same language level on a blog as in an academic paper.

Finally, an example: scientific writer Philip Ball has a blog on the topic of Water in Biology, and he also regularly publishes “News & Views” articles for Nature (one example there). In both cases, he writes critical reviews the recent literature on the same topic: there is wide overlap, but he does not publish his papers by directly converting blog posts.


How to express dissension as a grad TA while maintaining professionalism I have a problem with the courses I'm TAing.  I am a math PhD student at a large (supposedly good) state university where the lower-division math classes are taught in the "discussion section" format (i.e. students go to a big lecture with clickers three days a week, and attend 30ish person sized recitation with a TA once a week).  I teach three of these recitations.

When I first came here several years ago, I was shocked by the low quality of the courses I was assigned to. This was supposed to be a good school, yet the students are treated without respect, held to no standards, and come out knowing virtually nothing.  Furthermore, there are strict limitations imposed on TAs, to the point where I feel that I am being actively prevented from teaching anything to my students.  A breaking point came for me recently when my course coordinator made it mandatory for us to assign online quizzes through a third party "online instructional application," instead of administering handwritten quizzes in class.  I have very strong objections to this, for multiple reasons that I could elaborate on, but they are not the point of this post.

The point is, I feel gross. I'm being forced to teach in a way that I find unethical and unreasonable, and every attempt that I have made to bring up an issue in the past has been met with complete inflexibility. It seems to be the culture of the department to dismiss the opinions of its graduate students.

I don't know how else to state my objections. I know I'm not in charge, and I don't want to be unprofessional, but I want to be heard.  I have given serious thought to resigning with a public letter.  However, even with that sacrifice, I'm not sure anyone would listen.

Is there anything I can do?  How should I handle this situation?

I would strongly recommend against doing anything dramatic, such as resigning or publicly denouncing the course.  I feel bad about discouraging acting on your beliefs, but I think it could actually hurt your career.  There are two reasons for this:

First, the topic of how to teach low-level mathematics courses has become contentious and politicized in recent decades.  Unless this is actually your scholarly specialty, it's safest not to get too dramatically involved, particularly as a grad student.  The problem is that you can easily find people who will embrace you as a champion or martyr, whichever side you are on.  Even if you are sober and self-restrained (which would probably rule out a public letter), other people on your side will say provocative things and attract negative attention while supporting you.  Controversy is dangerous for academic careers, since it's generally easier to veto hiring someone than to generate an offer.  So if you acquire equal numbers of friends and enemies, your enemies can hurt you more than your friends can help you.  Plus, if you want a research career, being known for inflexible opinions about low-level teaching will distract attention away from your research accomplishments.  That distraction can be a problem even for people who agree with you.

Second, you risk coming across like a worrisomely disruptive colleague.  Most math departments contain at least one faculty member who regularly takes fervent stands on seemingly minor issues.  They feel they have logically analyzed these issues, and they can't in good conscience cooperate with anything other than what they see as the logical option, since that would be a betrayal of the basic principles underlying mathematics.  Coordinating with others or compromising play no role in the analysis, and it doesn't really matter how important the issue itself is (what matters is standing up for what's right).  These people drive everyone else nuts, since they make it impossible to get anything done without either giving in to them about their pet issues or spending hours debating.

I'm not saying you are necessarily disruptive in this way.  You have chosen an important topic to get upset over, and you might be completely right about it.  However, if a hiring committee hears that you resigned in disgust upon being asked to administer online quizzes, they will wonder what else you might make a fuss over.  This could put them off even if they agree with your concerns about teaching, and there's no way to reassure them that it's really just this one issue.

So what can you do while avoiding these dangers?  One approach is to let the faculty handle this fight.  If every faculty member disagrees with you, then your cause is hopeless in the short term and it's best just to calm down and finish your Ph.D. program without too much controversy.  If some of them do agree with you, then it's not likely that publicly joining them as a grad student will shift the balance of power in the department.  Instead, you can try to get your future TA assignments in courses they teach, while encouraging them behind the scenes in their attempts to change the department's approach.

To the extent you take direct action, I'd look for approaches that don't cause extra work for anyone else.  For example, if you resign, then someone will have to find a replacement for you (so they'll automatically be upset about it).  But you might be able to improve the course by strategic volunteering.  Could you prepare optional handouts meant to deepen the students' knowledge?  Could you offer a few additional review sessions before exams?  These sorts of things aren't going to effect the fundamental changes you seek, but they could at least make you feel better about having done something rather than nothing, and they may build some goodwill with the lecturer by showing that you really want to help the students.


How can I recover professionally from being a crank? Three years ago I got kicked out of graduate school in physics. I was suffering from mental illness, which led me to believe I made a huge discovery in physics. But my advisor kept saying that what I was doing is nonsense and that I should focus on something else. I just ignored him and kept working on huge discovery, convinced I was going to win a Nobel prize.
I started sending many emails to many physics people (I had a list of thousand email addresses I found online) hoping someone would realize my amazing discovery. I got kicked from school which made me send more emails (almost one a day near the end), and when I got negative responses I sent an email to everyone on the list insulting them and saying I deserved to be in their place.
I got psychiatric help, and eventually doctors found a brain tumor, which they removed. I am now taking drugs, and doing much better. I now realize how insane my behavior was.
I want to re-apply to grad school, but I’m scared people will recognize my name or contact my university. My undergraduate grades were very good. Should I mention my illness (with proof) when applying? Should I send apology emails to the people I’ve contacted?

A few suggestions:

If it were me, I would be very forthcoming about the illness. Of course, no one is entitled to your private medical information, so you will have to decide what you're comfortable with. But "an undiagnosed brain tumor caused me to act erratically" is a very convincing explanation, and does not reflect poorly on you.
Consider reaching out to your previous advisors / colleagues. Even those who were furious at your previous behavior would probably accept that an undiagnosed brain tumor caused you to exhibit poor judgment. It's a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" situation.
Along similar lines, consider contacting the university, and the specific school within the university, to discuss whether the expulsion can be expunged or converted to some other classification. Most universities are really understanding if you speak to the right people.
When you apply, I would absolutely explain what happened. I would give a shorter version of what you wrote above -- even if they don't recognize your name, they will see that you were expelled, so it's better to tell your story. And you did a good job telling the story above, so I trust that you can write an explanation that is similarly clear and compelling.
There will likely be no need to provide medical proof. You could (perhaps even should) offer to provide proof, but I suspect most admissions committees would not request it. Among other reasons, it will likely be clear from your tone that you have recovered.
I don't think it's necessary to send an apology to your entire mailing list. But I don't think doing so would be inappropriate either. If you do so, be concise: no need for more than a sentence or two.


Checklist for cited references, including nasty details My personal library (.bib-files) contains references which I gathered from various sources, including academic search engines. This includes problems like:

Some information are missing
Journal names might be abbreviated or not
Capitalization might differ

What is a good checklist to ensure that the references are in a acceptable state?

The best strategy for dealing with a reference database (be that a citation manager or just a .bib file), is to clean everything when you initially add it. Otherwise going through these things later, when you need put together a reference list, is a major pain and prone to error. Establishing a standard set of formatting rules/procedures up front is always your best bet.


Reusing material from paper on website I have been working extensively on a project for which I have written a couple of papers which still haven't been submitted for publication. I am also preparing a website where I want these materials to be freely available. I would like to avoid having to rewrite everything again for the website, so I was wondering what is the best solution to be able to reuse literal sentences from the papers (once they're published).

As far as I know, Open Access solutions sometimes allow the author to retain copyright, but I'm not sure if always. What kind of publishing licenses would allow me to copy-paste literal material from my paper onto my website?

Overall, is this a good idea or should I strive to rephrase content even if not legally bound to do so?

It likely depends on the journals to which you are looking to submit your papers. Different journals have different copyright options, some allow you to publish a "draft" (i.e., identical to the final paper), as long as your don't post the actual article .pdf, and you provide a link to the published journals. Others might have an embargo period, after which you are free to publish on your website.

SHERPA/RoMEO provides information on copyright policies for various journals:
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

If you are at an institution, it might be worthwhile to talk  with a trusted librarian, as they will sometimes be able to assist you with negotiating copyright contracts with the journal editor, so that you are able to publish copies of the articles on your website. Authors will sometimes use publishing 'hacks', such as copyrighting or even publishing an article themselves before submitting to journals, so that the author owns the copyright instead of the journal.

Open access journals are another option, although some may be predatory or require a fee to publish your articles. For example, Elsevier charges up to $5,000 if you want to avoid an embargo period.

So,

  Overall, is this a good idea or should I strive to rephrase content even if not legally bound to do so?

In my experience this is a relatively common practice, just be careful to follow the copyright restrictions negotiated between yourself and the journals. Rephrasing content is not always a good solution, as some fields consider it unethical to publish the same work in multiple forms/venues.

Elsevier Gold Open Access Price List: http://cdn.elsevier.com/promis_misc/j.custom97.pdf


How to spot problematic pictures in a publication? A few professors from the National Taiwan University were caught manipulating experimental data in their publications on several prestigious journals this year. They were accused of using the same image in different experiments, and the papers were either retracted by the authors, or removed by the journals.

This kind of plagiarism is not very rare in biology. What are some key points to spot plagiarized scientific pictures?

i once saw a presentation by a journal editor about what they do to check on modified, altered data.

as you can guess, they ask for the raw data, and check imagies with photoshop.

a very easy way to spot altered pictures is to blow up contrast and brightness, which tends to highlights cropped and modified areas.

obviously people are getting smarter at that too, but if the goal is to deceive, i think at some point it will be difficult to tell what's fake and what's not.