What are the criteria that determine if a research group/professor is actively pursuing research? While searching for research groups pertaining to my area, I came across one that matched my interests well. But in the publications page, the most recent paper was written in the year of 2015, which was also the last paper by the professor. There are no indications that the group has been discontinued. As for the professor, he seems fairly active until last year (but no papers), according to his bio. I tried to get in contact with the university regarding the activities of the group but I didn't get any response yet.

As for the students in the group, there isn't much information about their recent work. The university is pretty well ranked and my research interests align with the group so I'm hesitant to let this university slide but since papers are good indicators of how active a group is, does it mean it's better to move on? I haven't contacted the professor personally regarding this since I wasn't sure how to go about it. (I came across this and am considering sending him a mail.)

In general, are publications the ultimate measures of performance or is there a useful rule of thumb for choosing or not choosing of a research group/professor for PhD (apart from the publication list)? I'm not very knowledgeable about the process yet so any help on this is appreciated.

You have a piece of evidence that doesn't tell you very much. But there is a simple way to find out what you need to know. Send a message to the group's PI and express your interest in that area and ask whether they are still doing research in it. Is there any, more recent, work that they can share with you? Are there students in the group with whom you might correspond.

It could be anything from "we have ten papers in the pipeline" to "we dropped that a few years ago". Or maybe even "we think we are on the brink of a major breakthrough and have been quiet about our work while we refine it."

But only they know the real situation. Maybe they will be able to honestly share enough to let you know whether to move on or pursue it.

I'll note, also, that the lack of publicly visible productivity doesn't necessarily equate with a lack of productivity altogether. Research breakthroughs can't be scheduled. If they could be, then it wouldn't be research.

Note that according to Wikipedia, Andrew Wiles worked almost entirely in secret for six years before coming up with a proof of Fermat's last Theorem. There were a few glitches initially, but he was Knighted for his breakthrough.


How to give feedback to students after bad grades I realize that I have some difficulty giving feedback to students when they have expected to have a good grade and/or they have invested a lot of time. My impression is that there is a trade-off between clearly pointing out the weaknesses of the students' paper and, on the other hand, motivating them to continue and making it clear that such feedback is part of the normal learning process. How can oral feedback be structured to ensure that both are possible?

From my perspective as a PHD student (the other side of the spectrum) I feel that there are some crucial aspects to giving helpful and encouraging feedback:

Give the student constructive criticism. Give them the feeling that you are supportive of what they did (regardless of quality) and that you are giving feedback to improve their work in the future. Make them feel safe. Speak about what could be done better in the future and not about what went wrong or what they "should have done".
Emphasize both the good and the suboptimal parts of their work. It is important to balance both positive and negative feedback.
Avoid words like "however" and "but". It is almost always discouraging to hear positive feedback followed by a "however". It (in my opinion) completely devalues what was said beforehand.
Check in if they understood your criticisms correctly to avoid misunderstandings.

I hope my answer is at least somewhat helpful to you, if not, you now have the possibility to practice and give me your feedback! :)


Does the order of citation ([Kir10, HZK09] or vice versa) matter? I am currently writing my bachelor's thesis in Computer Science. When I have a sentence

It was shown in [Kir10, HZK09] that ...

does it make a difference if I write

It was shown in [HZK09, Kir10] that ...

instead?

Some styles require multiple citations to be in alphabetical or numerical order.  For example, APA style requires that citations be in the same order as they appear in the references list (that would be alphabetical order.)  Other styles (e.g. the Council of Science Editors) require that they be given in chronological order.

You need to check with the style guide for the style that you're following to see what is expected. If you're writing a journal or conference proceedings article, the instructions to authors should tell you what is required.  If you're writing a thesis or dissertation, there are likely to be institutional policies that specify a particular style.

In LaTeX there is a package called "citesort" that will sort your citations.  There is also a "sort" option for the natbib package that does this job.


Accept a PhD offer from a local school while applying to others? I just completed a masters in CS at a local school while working as a developer. I liked the process and want to go on to a PhD in other places. My adviser supports my choice and is writing me letters to the other schools. That said, the (small) department has offered me funding to stay on for the PhD, starting in the spring. The faculty in my department study very different things from me. I am applying to much more prestigious places now. If I don't get in I will probably take a year to publish more and then apply again. With that said, should I accept the offer to transfer into the PhD program at my local school? Will it help or hurt my chances if I need to reapply? I could certainly say (credibly) that there is no advisor in my department that supports my interests. I saw this and this but am not sure what to do:

Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?

Trying other PhD opportunities while accepting an offer from my master supervisor?

There is a general rule that if you apply to multiple academic programs in the same year, then once you accept an offer of admission to one of them, you must immediately contact all the others to withdraw your application, so that they can offer admission to someone else.

So if you accept the offer to join your PhD program at the local school, that is a final decision for at least a year, and you have to withdraw your applications from the prestigious places.  You cannot wait and see if a more prestigious school accepts you.  That would be considered unethical.

If after a year, you decide that you want to think about transferring, you can apply to a more prestigious program then.  However, at that time, your new application will need to include your achievements during that extra year, and the program will evaluate your expectations based on what they would expect a first-year PhD student to achieve.  So depending on how that year goes, your application could become either stronger or weaker.


Does the Americans With Disabilities Act require accommodations for students whose disability prevents them from behaving ethically? Does the Americans With Disabilities Act require accommodations for university students whose disability prevents them from behaving ethically?
Does it forbid punishment of unethical behavior which is caused by a disability?

Behaving unethically, at least as far as it requires or deserves sanctions, requires an element of choice. If the person had no choice, e.g. because of a disability, then sanctions are not called for.
It is probably my lack of imagination, but I cannot think of an disability that requires students to act unethically.
As to how the law views this: talk to a lawyer or the legal department, or equal opportunities department of your university.


Explaining bad grades in application: SOP or separate letter Question

Should issues about past academic performance be addressed in the Statement of Purpose or a separate letter to the admissions committee.

Background

I had originally posted about my situation here: Should a dismissal from PhD in graduate application be listed as academic misconduct?

One of the answers to that question suggested that instead of using my statement of purpose to address academic concerns, I write a separate letter addressing the issue. However, others have suggested that colleges are unlikely to read such materials with the application. I have written a short (500 word) explaining the circumstances under which I received my bad grades and what I have done so this doesn't happen in the future. I have also written a short (500 word) statement of purpose that does not address my academic performance at all. Should I rework my SOP to incorporate the academic issue, and skip the additional letter?

Some web-based application forms have dedicated fields for comments on grades or academic hardships. I would first of all take advantage of these if possible, and second, read the fine print if not: some application guidelines will forbid submission of additional materials. This doesn't have to stop you, but I would contact the admissions staff either way if there isn't a dedicated field. It should be as simple as asking, "May I enclose a brief additional letter explaining an issue in my academic history?"

In my opinion, that's what you should do however you can, unless admissions expressly forbids it, or if the issue at hand somehow affected your academic purpose. The statement of purpose is a fairly important and somewhat haphazardly scrutinized document, so anything tangential that interrupts your flow or the optimism and enthusiasm you express for your present and future work is likely to detract from the cohesiveness your message, the consistency and positivity of your tone, and the room you have to go into detail and cover other important information. You never really know what your readers are going to pay attention to in your writing, so it's best not to take any chances and leave it as flawless as can be, while conveying important but unexpected information through other channels if possible.


How much research experience do US grad schools really expect from an undergraduate CS student? I'm in my third year at college, currently pursuing CS. I've developed quite an interest in social network analysis and machine learning and have, thus, been working on research papers that lie within these two categories. However, while I am certain that I enjoy the research experience and can communicate this effectively in my Statement of Purpose, I am worried about the quality as well as low number of publications that I expect to have by the time I apply for an MS/MS-PhD program.

I say quality because I have not published in any of the top-notch CS journals. Two of my papers have been published in conference proceedings (Publisher: Springer). The third paper is actually a book chapter published in IGI-Global. However, two of these papers have only two authors with me as first author and my mentor as second author.

Apart from this, my grades are pretty high. Overall, 9.5/10.0 gpa as of now and I expect to keep this constant by the time I graduate. (If it matters, I scored a 10.0/10.0 one semester and so ranked first in the Uni for that sem.) Taking all this into consideration, is it reasonable for me to target the top 20-50 universities even with my 3 "okay" papers? I was hoping that my grades may offset this. Note: I am targeting an RA/TA position as I definitely require full financial aid as I am an international student.

The general answer to your question is, there are no expectations per se. Although your question is phrased in terms of undergraduate research, your explanation focuses mostly on visibility in the form of publications. By parts and based on my own experience:

Undergraduate research: This is highly desirable, importantly because it's the best way to get an in-depth letter of recommendation. Letters are the most underestimated factor in admissions by students. The difference between a letter from someone we know describing at length your qualifications and a letter essentially re-stating that you got an A+ in a large class is very significant. Another reason why undergraduate research may be important is because it may give your statement of purpose more focus. Last but not least, it's always desirable to get a student that knows what he/she is getting into and that can hit the ground running.
Publications: If you have a publication in a top-tier venue, that is of course an excellent thing to have. A publication in a low-tier venue won't count for much by itself; its significance will depend on, you guessed it, what your adviser's letter says about your contribution.

Ultimately, I think the questions you want answered are:

Will someone with undergraduate research experience and a very strong package (including letters of recommendation), but no publications, be competitive in CS? My answer is Yes.
Could such an applicant lose over someone identical but with some low-tier publications? My answer is, these two applicants would probably be considered essentially equally.
Alternatively, could such an applicant lose over someone identical but with one or more publications in top-tier venues? My answer is Yes, IF they are competing for a single spot--which is unlikely. Also, such kind of applicants are not at all the norm in my experience (which could vary by area).

In any case, it probably can't hurt for you to engage in research that aims at publishing at a top-tier venue: When you shoot for the moon, even if you miss it, you often end up among stars.


Ideal Teaching Mix as a Postdoc? I'm a math postdoc at a research university, and I have 1-1 teaching for the next two years. What would be the ideal mix of courses to (1) prepare me for a higher teaching load in the future (hopefully as TT faculty), (2) demonstrate my teaching ability to hiring committees (if it matters), and (3) still allow me to concentrate on research?

I'm considering requesting Abstract Algebra II and Linear Algebra next year. My only teaching experience so far was one semester of Linear Algebra in graduate school. It went well and I enjoyed it, but it was a while ago so I think I'll have to spend some time getting used to teaching again.

First it depends on the type of tenure-track job you're seeking.  For some jobs (e.g. liberal arts college or regional university focused more on teaching than research) your teaching will be considered more seriously than your research.  You should also know that for many of these jobs, having a postdoc at a research university is "one strike" against you: they will still consider you, but they really want to see and believe that you are interested in their institution because of a true interest in teaching, not just as a backup if a research job falls through.

Second, teaching just one course as a graduate student is a bit behind the curve for math students at American universities.  With this kind of background you would have to do something rather heroic to be seriously considered by teaching-oriented programs -- not necessarily teaching more courses, but perhaps exploring a combination of teaching and outreach or taking on more leadership responsibilities within the teaching life of the department.

If you are looking for a research-oriented job then my feeling is if you have good rather than bad teaching evaluations, that will serve you reasonably well.  The academic job market is certainly very competitive, but for a research job your time and energy is probably better spent concentrating on your...research.

I don't think a higher teaching load needs to be prepared for.  But it's a good idea to get experience teaching calculus of various sorts, since most math faculty I know teach a lot of that.

As a postdoc at a research university with a 1-1 teaching load, I would encourage you to take some teaching assignments that are routine in the sense that you will not spend too much time engaging with or preparing the material (again, calculus is good for that).  For your own interest as much as your future career, it might be pleasant to alternate those with some more interesting teaching assignments.  If you can teach one graduate course while you're there, that will probably be a fun, rewarding experience, and it will strengthen your connection with the graduate students there (many of whom will end up being your future colleagues). Teaching an advanced undergraduate class is also a good data point for understanding what undergraduate math majors are really like.

In summary, there are no clear answers here, and for a future research job your choices will probably be informed more by your own predilections and a desire to broaden your perspective rather than to specifically increase your chances of being hired at a research university.


Why don't more professors utilize their students as research help? With more and more data science students being interested in collaborative communities like Kaggle, and with faculty constantly being asked to do more with the same amount of resources, there seems to my naive mind an opportunity for a more symbiotic relationship.  These community's successes are evidence that many students (in the broad sense of the word, at least) are seeking additional opportunities to reinforce their education through applied learning.  Beyond the obvious ethical issues that might arise from a sort of indentured service, I am curious why more professors don't offer opportunities for students to practice and realize the practical application of their skills by doing even some of the exploratory or data clean up grunt work that most research requires, as this might provide them more time to engage in higher value add activities.

I do employ students to participate in my research. In my department these students (Bachelor and Master students) are paid. That is the first limit to the number of students I can employ: I can only employ so many students as my budget allows.

The second limit is that in the kind of research I do these students cost me more time than they save (unless they are really good). Doing real research is for them a whole new experience, and they have to learn. That costs time, I need to do a lot of explaining, errors happen that need to be found and than fixed, etc.

That is fine, giving them that experience is why I employ them. They can see if this is something they are interested in pursuing as a long term career. If so, then they start with a bit of experience. If not, they are saved from starting a PhD and than dropping out. Either way is a positive outcome for them. For me, employing students for research is more a teaching task; an enjoyable and rewarding teaching task, but not something that I expect to improve my productivity as a researcher (If it happens than that is a nice bonus).

This obviously depends on the kind of research one does, and the kind of tasks that needs to be performed to do that research.


What is the average teaching load for a math postdoc position in the US? What is the average teaching load for a math postdoc position in the US? And can someone please explain this in reference to the trimester or quarter system, which I'm not too familiar with.

According to most job ads I've read, it seems for universities on trimesters, it's 3 courses per year, and for universities on quarters it's 4 courses a year.

However, is it the case that the summer term (in either system), is different from the other terms and that teaching usually doesn't occur in summer? So it's 2/1 courses per term under a trimester system and 2/1/1 courses per term under a quarter system?

Usually how many weeks are there in a term under each system? And usually, how many hours per week is there in a normal course?

Obviously, I know these answers will vary from university to university, I'm just looking for a ballpark answer.

The general answer isn't really a number. I expect that in most cases a teaching load is similar to that of a regular faculty member, though that isn't necessarily the case.

The semester, trimester, quarter system defines how many regular terms there are per year, with trimester and quarter often being synonymous. It is the number of terms that most students attend in a given year. Two semesters make a year on the semester system, etc.

A post doc is more likely at a research institution than a liberal arts college and the teaching load differs. In some R1 universities the teaching load is one course per term. At Dartmouth (quarter system, "Dartmouth System"), the load was four courses per year, or one per "quarter", though you didn't need to spread them out over the four quarters. I don't know if the system has changed and my knowledge is very old. The summer term was just like any other and students were expected to do something academic, but perhaps academic related travel.

At some State universities, the load is two courses per term, so four in a year on the semester or six (shorter courses) per year on a trimester system. Again, it might not be necessary to spread them out evenly and it might be possible to "buy" yourself out of a course or two using grant funds. The load might be lighter than that at some places, but not likely heavier at an R1.

At most R1 sorts of places if you have more than one course to teach in a term it is more likely to be two sections of the same course than two different courses, but not guaranteed. At some places the tenured faculty (and probably post docs) teach in their specialty in advanced course, but, again, not necessarily.

At a liberal arts college the load might be four or even five courses per term. But there are few post docs at such places.

A post doc might possibly not have teaching duties at all if the are paid out of grant monies. It would be uncommon, I think, to have a higher load than the regular faculty. In some situations you might actually have to beg to get teaching duties at all.


A professor wanted me to wait for his decision. It's been about 10 days, what should I write to show that I want to know how long it is going to take? I am a PhD applicant and a professor interviewed me for joining his team. I waited for his intention regarding my case, after two weeks he emailed me that I should "wait a little bit longer". It's been almost 10 days from his email and about a month after our last interview. How should I write an email to show both that I am still waiting for his response (and interested in his work),and I need to know a timeline for his decision?
*It is already late to get an admission!

It sounds like he's asking you to wait because you're his plan B, not his plan A. In other words, he may be afraid that his favorite candidate backs out, and he's keeping you in the wings just in case that happens.

So should you push the issue? No, not unless you have other offers. And if your other pending applications haven't been responded to yet, it's in your best interest to wait until those other decisions come back to you.


Are PhD students enrolled or hired? In most universities, PhD students are literally students similar to master students. Fellowships and scholarships only support them financially, but officially they are students.

Some European university advertise PhD open positions like a contract job (similar to research associates or postdoc). It is understandable that these funded PhD students provide some services for the university, but in the first case too, PhD students regularly provide TA and RA services, but they are still students.

Are these two schemes different in action, or difference is only in words on paper?

Do European PhD students (mentioned in the second case) have more rights or flexibility?

At least in Germany, doctoral candidates are either employed as Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter (research assistants) or given stipends as "doctoral fellows."

However, regardless of how they are paid for their efforts, they must "enroll" as doctoral candidates with one of the faculties if they are to receive a degree. So, to a certain extent, they are treated like students as well, and have many of the same privileges (for instance, they are entitled to the same student benefits when they register).

So, to a certain extent, they are both; however, their employment contract, rather than student regulations, tends to be the "controlling factor" in their treatment.


No reply from potential supervisor of my dreams: is it OK to try meeting them in person? After much research at many universities, I have found a supervisor whose research perfectly matches my research interests. I believe that I have truly found a good match...and believe that I would also be a great addition to the research team given my background and goals etc.

I have not heard back from said professor...it has only been a few days, and I intend to send follow up emails in the future. However, I am wondering, should I never hear back (because this has happened with other potential supervisors), do you think it would be OK to try and meet with this person physically? Said supervisor is at a university I have never been to, and in the UK (I live in the US), and I can't really find their office hours online nor classes they may be teaching. Any advice on how to get in touch with them in person, if I am willing to travel and go that extra mile? I would normally drop it, but I am so set on this one.

Some important things to know:

1) Many professors receive dozens of unsolicited emails a day from potential graduate students, and essentially ignore them because they can't keep up (although having a form letter "no more students!" response is, perhaps, a nicer thing to do).

2) Many (most) faculty don't admit students without having some idea of how they will fund them, so it's not unlikely that this specific researcher can't really offer you a spot in the department.

3) In my experience, most of the unsolicited emails are also way off the mark in terms of research topics, so the most important part of your communication with this researcher is conveying that you a) actually know what they do, b) have something useful to offer, and c) that you are applying to the department and would like to work with them. And it's fine to ask to speak with them briefly (by email or phone) about whether you would fit in with their research plans.  They might ignore you.

If you are actually in the area and want to set up a meeting (by email), that's one thing, but I don't think you should fly to their country and ambush them.

Not to be a downer, but just because you think this person is the perfect advisor doesn't mean that you are their perfect student (or that they want another student right now).  That said, you can still send a nice follow-up email and apply.  You might want to apply to some other places too, however.


How and why are PhD programs free in Europe? In some European countries, PhD programs are free. As I understand, PhD opening depends on the research funds of the supervisor. In other words, PhD research is funded by a national agency or EU.

Some countries offer the programs for free and an international student in the UK should pay about $20,000 per annum?

In addition to the research cost (which is funded through the same routes), a PhD student has other expenses for the university, which is provided by the tuition fee in the UK, while in countries with free PhD programs, the governments provides the supports (correct me if I am wrong).

My question is: Why/how such governments support PhD education of international students? And if it is reasonable, why isn't it the case in the UK?

I believe what you're talking about is the issue of tuition waivers: that is, are students obligated to pay fees for the tuition, or are those handled by the university.

In many countries in central Europe (including Scandinavia, Benelux, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria) PhD studies are actually paid employee positions, so what tuition charges exist are small, since students normally don't have to take many courses as part of the PhD program (international students may need to register for a few classes to satisfy qualification requirements, but it's not a coursework requirement per se). In other locales, such as as some programs in the US, grants cover tuition charges as well as stipends, preventing students from having to pay those charges. And in many of those countries, the tuition fees amount only to a few hundred euros, not tens of thousands.

It's only where students are expected to do large amounts of coursework and where no arrangements to remit or waive tuition are made that students are responsible for paying large amounts of tuition.


I'm thinking about leaving after 6 months as a PhD student I started last November but I've been having this gut feeling that this project may not be the one for me
The big picture is that I'm not really happy with the theory- if I'm being totally honest with myself, I feel that the project is disconnected from what I truly enjoy.
It's not something I'm considering lightly but the last few months I've been working, I sometimes wake up dreading the day ahead. I can't even enjoy my weekends without feeling this way. A PhD is a big undertaking I know but surely I should be happy and enthusiastic about approaching it? Even with a supervisor as prominent as mine, I just feel like I'm not having a good time.
I'm going to leave it a few weeks but I may need to take some time to consolidate my plan.
To summarise:

I feel that the field doesn't satisfy me, after extensive literature review and discussions, it feels as if the field has no practical uses and is purely academic. I wanted something that's engaging and hands on- so far my supervisor hasn't been able to answer about the applications of the research.
I think that my mental health should also come into it, the thought of dealing with this project makes me feel utterly depressed, I wake up dreading every day I need to work on it.
Something else which I didn't mention is the admin and HR department is very poor. For starters, I'm on a funded project and they tried to invoice me £8k. Moreover my supervisor put in a purchase order for some software and books I need and it still hasn't been approved after 3 weeks.

Thanks for reading.

I just read your question and I decided to sign up here so that I can answer your question.
As you say PhD is a long "journey", you are going to spend several years working on that project, and I really think that you should "believe in" your project to keep motivated. If it helps, I'm in my 3rd year of PhD, I am studing microbial ecology, which is not exactly my field (I studied Biotechnology and little ecology), but I was interested in the field I could see why it was important. Although I don't see future applications in industry (at least right now), I am aware of the importance of doing "basic research" and builging a general knowledge that help to better understand the world...
During my 2 and a half years I have had good and bad moments, and sometimes, talking with my supervisors helped (I must day that I'm very lucky because they are great persons), but most of the time, motivation depended on me, on seeing through the "bad days" and working on mental health, which includes not working on the week-ends, spending time out of the office, doing sport, talking about my work-related problems with other people in and outside academia, taking holidays...
This is my experience, if you have just started and you already have this feeling, I think you should look for other project or other type of job. Sometimes, deep inside, you know what you want but you are a bit scared/worried/embarrased to confront it (I don't want to make any assumptions). Problems with invoices, books, money etc are usual in all labs (in my experience), so you might encounter similar problems if you move to other lab. But mental health is so important!! If talking to your supervisor doesn't help, try other people around in the lab, with the experience of doing a PhD. You should be the most motivated person about your project, if you cannot see its usefulness, or you don't like it, it will get worse... In the next years, you will need to defend your project in papers and dissertations, you will have to read a lot of literature related to that to build a good knowledge, so at least you should enjoy reading and learning about that topic, if not, everyday will be a torture...
In any case, don't feel bad about your supervisor if you finally decide to leave, I know it can be embarrasing after the month he/she has spent teaching you etc, but if you think it is the right decision, you will be grateful in the future ;)
Hope this helps!


Asking PI I barely interacted with for letter of rec? I'm a rising senior and will be applying to PhD programs this fall. I'm wrapping up a research project I was doing this summer at another school (basically an REU-like program) and the school is at the top of my field. I learned so much this summer and was able to accomplish a lot with my project. I was mentored by staff scientists and basically worked with them the entire summer. The PI of the lab is very hands off and hard to pin down. I met with him once in the beginning of the summer and have a meeting with him this week as I finish up. I was planning on asking him to write me a letter of rec then. The staff scientists said that what will probably end up happening is they write it and he'll sign it/co-sign it, but I need to ask him myself. I'm just a bit nervous/paranoid he'll say no so if anyone has any advice/words of encouragement, I'd appreciate it.

I understand that letters should come from people who know you well and I plan on my other two to be from professors that I am close with at my school. Given that I attend a school where there are limited research opportunities, I consider it to be integral that I get a letter out of this experience that speaks to my capabilities as a researcher. Based on the advice from the career office at this visiting school and other lab members, the letter should be coming from the PI/professor. The scientists I work with will contribute to a strong recommendation - they themselves acknowledge that it just wouldn't be as valuable coming from them. I guess my nervousness has to do more with the fact that here with big labs and big name PI's everyone says this situation/procedure is the norm and coming from a smaller school I'm not as used to it.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: writing a letter of recommendation for a student you know well is easy, it's a treat, and the letter you write can be GOOD. Writing a letter for a student you barely know is difficult, time consuming, and ends up sounding generic and forced. As someone who reads recommendation letters, it is very clear when the writer doesn't know the student.

I don't think them saying "no" is your problem here. See, even if they say yes, if you have this person who doesn't know you write your letter of recommendation you risk it sounding like a form letter which, in turn, won't distinguish you from the pile of other applicants. Unless the underling that they have write the letter really knows you and your potential, the letter is unlikely to be great. The box will be ticked but it won't be a meaningful tick.


The differences between AMS research journals The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has quite a few journals titled "(something) of the AMS".

The research journals include:

Journal of the AMS
Proceedings of the AMS
Transactions of the AMS
Memoirs of the AMS

How do these journals differ in terms of scope?

Some information about the roles of these journals can be found on the AMS journals website. However the only distinctions given are that JAMS is for "research articles of the highest quality," while PAMS, TAMS, and MAMS are for short, medium, and long articles respectively.

Are there further differentiations between these journals? If a mathematician wants to submit a paper to an AMS journal is the decision process for which one really as simple as "If my paper isn't good enough for JAMS I'll check its length and ship it off to the appropriate one of the other 3?"

If a mathematician wants to submit a paper to an AMS journal is the decision process for which one really as simple as "If my paper isn't good enough for JAMS I'll check its length and ship it off to the appropriate one of the other 3?"

Yes, more or less.  Journal of the AMS is a special case (as you observed) because of its extremely high level, and Memoirs of the AMS because it will consider incredibly long papers.  In both cases, there are only a small number of competing journals with these properties.  On the other hand, Transactions and Proceedings have substantially more competitors.  The primary distinction between them is length, but from my perspective there's also a difference in prestige.  Proceedings of the AMS gets some great submissions, but the length cut-off is pretty short for mathematics papers and this means it gets fewer great submissions than Transactions does, so the prestige level is a little lower.  Other than length and prestige, they are pretty much identical, for example in topics covered (a broad spectrum of pure mathematics, but limited coverage of applied mathematics).

So for Proceedings/Transactions papers, there's a four step decision procedure:

Is your paper on an appropriate topic?  (To a first approximation: is it pure mathematics?)
How long is your paper?
Do you have a realistic shot at acceptance?
Is the journal prestigious enough that you would be happy publishing your paper there?


Appendices to other people's papers - what's the incentive? I've noticed several instances of papers in mathematics which include an appendix written by someone who is not among the authors of the main body of the paper (for instance, here).

I'm quite curious about this practice (I don't have a practical reason for asking, except for wanting to understand academic environment a little better). Specifically:

What's the motivation for the authors to for this kind of partition? It seems that it would be entirely within the ethical and cultural norms to simply write a joint paper, or to write two independent papers. Joint paper seems like a much easier option, two disjoint papers is simpler and more clear cut (and a cynical person might add - produces more citations).
For the sake of keeping track of publications (for the sake of CV, citation counts, etc.) does the author of an appendix count as being one of the authors of the paper, not being among the authors of the paper, or being the sole author of the appendix which counts as an independent publication?

1) The results of an appendix are usually much less significant than the results of the main paper.  It usually would not be within the cultural norms to produce a joint paper, because the authors of the appendix did not actually contribute to the important parts of the paper; in mathematics, a 3%-5% contribution doesn't usually warrant adding an author to a 2 or 3 author paper.  It would be possible to publish the appendix separately, but only in a bottom-tier journal that accepts any contribution that is correct and not plagiarized (or at least a much less well-regarded journal), at which point the appendix may very well get more attention attached to a somewhat important paper rather than buried in some obscure journal.  Also, producing a separate paper is more work, because the authors would need to write an introduction, set notation, restate the results of the main paper, and so on.

2) Only idiots care about these counts.  If an insignificant contribution of the kind you would put in an appendix actually matters for your career, you're doing quite poorly as a research mathematician.  (Exception: sometimes a top mathematician will write an appendix whose contents would be considered significant if produced by me but are still rather insignificant in the context of their work.)  If your university gives you a raise or a bonus per paper, they are idiots, and you should discuss with your dean beforehand how an appendix will be treated.


What to do for my graduate school application if I think my GPA doesn't reflect my coursework mastery I am one of those people with low GPA but want to apply for graduate school in US. I am really having trouble with standardized tests in my institution. It's not uncommon for me to receive low grade in final exams(finals normally account for 60% to 70% percent of grading of corresponding courses) and this has led to a number of courses with poor grades that is already enough to ruin my GPA. It is not that I didn't spend time in studying, in fact I learned those courses quite well (perhaps, in other words, I am not a good test taker). I was initially thinking I should get the right GPA I deserve and was very angry with myself especially when I saw many of my peers could confidently gain much higher GPA than I do even with only a little understanding of course materials plus simply memorizing lecture notes by force(yes, our exams makes this kind of preparation really an effective way to get grades like 3.7/4.0 for most core courses). It seems to me like my classmates can have 3.7/4.0 with ease, but I was more likely to get only 2.7/3.0/3.3 even if I was well versed in coursework and fully prepared for exams. I talked to my classmates for help but they told me they were too surprised by my situation and don't know what I should do at all. I tried various methods to make a difference like making sure my homework/class attendance parts of scoring rubric are going well, even the above mentioned exam preparation strategy, but still received little improvement.  I never successfully found a solution throughout my undergrad, and I really want to defend this shortcoming in my statement of purpose, but I have worries about this.
MY QUESTION IS:
If I go ahead to explain this in my SOP, would it sound like merely an attempt to find an excuse? If your advice is "do it", is there anything I should not talk about regarding the reason I mentioned above(i.e. don'ts)?
*. Some additional information, I am applying physics graduate program. I have first author publication in physics which I think could help me address that my knowledge mastery of related  maths and physics is not what my grade shows. But even so, my paper, of course, cannot address other poorly scored courses.

An application for grad study in the US contains many elements, of which GPA is only one. If the GPA is poor, then the other elements need to indicate a high likelihood of success in graduate study and thereafter. Research experience (published papers especially) is a good indicator. And in the US, the letters of recommendation from people who know you well and can be expected to give an honest assessment can be very important.
Talk to some of your current professors and get their advice about how to proceed and ask for letters as appropriate.
And, you need the knowledge from those early courses, even if your GPA doesn't reflect that you have mastered it.

To respond to your edit:
No, the SoP is not the place for this and it will sound like an excuse there. That isn't to say that you couldn't mention it elsewhere, though it is best if the explanation is given by others, such as letter writers.
But, the SoP should be entirely forward looking, saying what you want to do in the future and not giving explanations about the past. Say, in the SoP what your plans are for graduate study and thereafter, including any ideas you might have about research areas you hope to explore. You likely have a limited amount of space/words in the SoP. Use them effectively.


Would a Russian specialist degree (diploma in dentistry) qualify me a for a master's program in Europe? I have a specialist degree (specialist diploma in dentistry) from a Russian institution. Would I be eligible for a European (e.g., German) master's program in economics? If so, how do I use the Bologna framework to convert my degree into its European counterpart?

Different MSc programs have different requirements. Most MSc programs in Economic admit students with BSc (or equivalent degree) in Economics, or similar topic, such as Finance, Business, Mathematics, sometimes Management, etc.  Your Dentistry degree does not  fall in this category - it is not similar enough to what you want to study. Some MSc programs (called conversion degrees) will admit students with less relevant experience, but they are often run at less desirable Universities.
In principle, a specialist degree can be recognised as BSc or MSc depending on the international prestige of your University and the requirements of each particular University. There is no general rule on how a specialist degree must be converted into Bologna system degrees. However, in your case, this is less important, because as mentioned above, your Dentistry background is rather irrelevant to the Economy which you want to study.
UPD: In addition, this year many Universities in Europe prepare for a downfall in number of both local and international applications due to Covid19. It means that many programs will have to be more sympathetic to candidates with "borderline" profiles.  Many MSc programs are still open for applications and are more likely to issue offers this year, even to candidates who normally would not be admitted.


Which differences are there between Math PhD programs in the US and in the UK regarding admission, funding, and reputation? I'm an American citizen and a Junior at a US institution and I've recently been compiling a list of graduate schools to apply to. I'm mostly interested in differential geometry and geometric analysis. In addition to domestic institutions I have been looking at institutions in the UK such as the London School of Geometry and Number Theory, Cambridge, Oxford, etc...

Are there any fundamental differences in the way UK PhD programs admit and train their students? As an international student would I also be able to obtain funding for my education the same way I would be able to in the United States? Finally, how are UK PhD's looked upon in the American Academic job market? I imagine there shouldn't be much difference but there could be some politics I'm overlooking. Thank you.

I am a first-year PhD student at Oxford, having done some graduate work (and my undergrad) in the US. My answer might be a bit institution specific as Ruadhai Dervan suggested above, but it appears there are some trends across the UK that are quite different from in the US.

"Are there any fundamental differences in the way UK PhD programs admit and train their students?" - Most students seem to enter a PhD program in the UK with a fairly specific field of study in mind. For my applications to Manchester, Warwick, and Oxford I had to write a research proposal for a fairly specific topic for each application, as well as have an idea of who might supervise this research. Many students deviate substantially from these ideas, but almost all students here work in a very similar area to what they applied for. In contrast, I know many US students who started out doing pure mathematics preliminary exams and found themselves finishing a thesis in a very different area, such as Numerical Analysis or Mathematical Biology. These things happen much more infrequently in the UK, in part because the programs are much shorter. The Oxford PhD is designed as a 3 year course, though many students take 4 or more years in practice. Some institutions are starting Doctoral Training Centres where a first year of training and project mentoring occurs. This is similar in flavour to US institutions having preliminary or qualifying exams, but these are often much more directed than in the US. I have not heard of any UK program where anything like preliminary or qualifying exams takes place, so that appears to be a US component of graduate school not present here. I would suggest looking at specific institution overviews of their PhD courses to get an idea of how they compare to US PhD programs.

Another important difference is the emphasis here on research as opposed to teaching. Most students in my program do some teaching, but it is frequently less than three hours a week. In comparison, my MS program in the States had me teaching 10+ hours a week, often with 10 or so hours of prep and grading. I also began doing research the week I arrived, whereas a US student may spend some years deciding on a specific topic to study. PhD students here also spend less time attending classes, and coursework requirements seem to be incredibly minimal compared to most programs in the US.

"As an international student would I also be able to obtain funding for my education the same way I would be able to in the United States?" - Probably not in general. Most US students in my experience are funded as Teaching Assistants, and they spend a lot of time teaching. Students are paid for their teaching services here, but the quantity is so much less that the funding from teaching is nowhere near enough to cover tuition and living expenses for most students. Exceptions probably exist, but most students here seem to be funded from grants their supervisors have, grants or scholarships they have gotten (e.g. Fullbright, Marshall scholarships), or similar things. You can apply for loans subsidized by the US government as well, just as you would for a domestic program. Many students are now funded through the Doctoral Training Centres, but at Oxford the funding for these is almost entirely for UK/EU students.

Your third question is a bit difficult for me to answer without any experience, so I will refrain from conjecturing. Most people have suggested to me that other factors, such as quantity and quality of publications, conferences and connections made, etc, are more important than where you obtained your PhD.

I would suggest finding a copy of Steven Krantz' book4, and read through it as soon as you can. It is directed almost entirely at students applying for or entering US programs, and is useful just to get an idea of what the whole enterprise of a PhD is about.


Finding graduate program with large number of high quality peers From this answer I understand that it important to get into a top schools with top graduate programs because of the large number of higher quality peers makes a big difference.

I am wondering how do I find those schools? Do I need to look into this list R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity.

I am also under the assumption that some schools have a good graduate program on very specific areas that won't show up in the above list. Where do I find those schools?

Yes, in the US, start with the list you link to. A lot of them are large State funded universities and they have large faculties and most of them cover most fields. But to narrow it to a single field you need to do some research yourself.

They will all have websites listing faculty by department. Some of them also list graduate students. Find departments with a fairly large number of members and then narrow it further by looking at the sub fields and, especially, the recent papers that the faculty has published. But, unless your desired field of study is very esoteric, most large R1 universities and even some R2 places will serve you well. Smaller places can be excellent, but they may also be a bit spotty in the research fields they are able to support well.


Better to do PhD program for Marine Science in Australia or US? I have a dilemma about doing a marine science research degree in Queensland Australia vs in the USA (california or florida). I have been accepted to schools in both countries and offered scholarships to pay for my studies. I have personally spoken with advisors that I would work with from both countries and both have great projects that I am interested.

I am just wondering if anyone has insight into the quality of life and research at either location?

I am also concerned about the strength of a PhD from Australia if I wanted to go back to the US to do a postdoc?

Thanks for your input!

Quality of life is very subjective.  If you like nature, you will struggle to find the same quality of life in the U.S. as you do in Australia.  If you like big bustling cities, then your quality of life will be better in the U.S. than in Queensland (Brisbane is lovely, but hardly bustling).

People care more about the strength of the school in the Ph.D. subject than they do about the university overall.  If you intend to stay in marine science, it doesn't really matter whether you get a Ph.D. from e.g. James Cook in Australia or many places in the U.S..  If you're not sure marine science is where your heart is, a university with a bigger name overall will help you.  Australian universities are competitive internationally; it really depends what your choices are.  (U.Q. is not, say, Stanford, but I don't think there's anything in Florida that would really give you a big edge over U.Q.)


graduate student credit for work on a paper I am a graduate student with a question about credit for work that I did. I contributed design, data collection, analysis and writing for a paper for which I am almost certainly not being credited as an author.  Though I have tried, I have not and am not expecting to make headway with the PI and first author to address issues clearly and fairly.  I am also pretty certain the PI would find a way to retaliate if I push this issue with others. I am not sure if it is better to just give up and graduate or continue to push because I think I am right and I have put a lot of effort into this project.  Would you please offer advice?

Any significant words that you wrote which go uncredited constitute plagiarism, full stop. Your contribution may not rise to the level of authorship, but it deserves an acknowledgement at the very least. The editor of the journal where the article is submitted should be quite interested in this at the very least. If you have draft text saved that can demonstrate your contribution to the paper, that may be strong and convincing evidence. Git/SVN commits to a LaTeX version of the paper would be best, but any evidence of work in progress is good. Contacting the editor is the nuclear option, but if you feel strongly and have proof, you may be able to make a case for killing the article.

The real question for me is whether the PI is your PhD supervisor or not. Your graduation hinges on your relationship with your PI, and if you destroy that relationship by exposing their misconduct, you may do more harm to yourself than the publication is worth. What does your supervisor say? Are they the same person?

I cannot understand why a professor would exclude any contributor who appears to have done as much as you have from authorship for any reason. Are we missing something here? What argument does this PI make that you shouldn't be included?


Why didn't more people graduate with a college degree when it was "affordable"? Adjusting for inflation, (without too much controversy, I expect), it is evident that college was more affordable in the past.  See for example, this chart of Tuition and Fees and Room and Board over Time, 1975-76 to 2015-16.

And yet, in the United States in 1980, roughly only 15% of the population had a college degree. It seems to me to be a very economical choice to attend.  Are there reasons for the low graduation rate?

There are many factors!

In the past there was much less demand for highly educated people, as there were many more jobs that were mostly manual labour. Technology is largely to blame for this, as computers and machines take over what we had to do with our heads and hands.
People were more likely to work in one job for their whole life, so there was less incentive to get a more general education.
Apprenticeships were more common, so you'd learn on the job rather than study at university.
It was easier in the past to "work your way up the company" – you'd start as a front-line grunt, and have a good chance of becoming a manager later on.
Children with poorly educated parents are much less likely to go to university. Starting off 100 years ago when almost everyone was poorly educated, it's actually taken remarkably few generations to get where we are now.


A PhD thesis without any publication I am currently a Ph.D student(computational maths) works in a theory. I will be graduating in the next year. I have one paper which I will be submitting soon and working one more paper. One of my research article has been published but not related to Ph.D thesis. My first research paper is fully reviewed by my advisor several times. I don't know I will be able to publish anything more in my Ph.D as this is my second last year. I have put of lot of effort in my Ph.D my supervisor also have admit this thing, but verbally. I don't want to do go for a faculty job after my Ph.D, I will be going searching a post-doc after my Ph.D. I am worried about whether I will get a post-doc or not. According to institution norm's there is no requirement of publication in Ph.D.

Question : Is it going to harm my research carrier if I submit my  PhD thesis without any publication?

This sort of thing varies by field. In some, there is no expectation at all of publications prior to finishing the degree. I think the push toward requiring publications is somewhat recent. When I finished (long ago) in mathematics it would be very rare to have any publications at all upon graduation.

But in some fields there is such an expectation. However, I think that in those fields, students are funded more for research (RA) than for teaching (TA). If you are part of an active research lab in the sciences it is more natural to have several publications as a consequence of your work prior to graduation.

But any effect at all on your career would likely be very brief. You establish your own reputation. Starting a bit late with publications eventually evens out if you are productive, either in academia or elsewhere.

Of course, it won't harm you to be thinking about what you could get out there in your time remaining. Your advisor should be able to tell you about norms in your field, of course.


Is it okay to typeset someone’s to-be-graded assignment for them? I have a friend who’s an undergraduate at university. I believe myself to be fairly proficient in TeX/LaTeX; I’ve seen some of the assignments that he’s received back, and we both agree they could look more professional.

Is it ethical for me to typeset his work to look more like a paper before it's submitted for grading? I would not be adding any new information to the assignment and I would not correct any mistakes that I think I see, but it still seems to me that perhaps it could be against the rules.

I think that the best favour you can do to your friend is to teach him how to use LaTeX, so that he can improve the look of his work by himself.

In this way, you won't go against any rule and you'll teach your friend a new skill.


Should someone giving a second opinion on an article be a co-author or just acknowledged? I decided to write an article extracted from part of my master’s thesis. This will be my first time trying to get published, so obviously I’ll never think it is good enough therefore I’ll need a second opinion. I’m thinking of contacting my previous supervisor and ask him if he can read it before I try to submit it to a journal. And if things goes well, I’ll ask one of my colleagues (an assistant professor) to read it as well.

My question is, if they are willing to read it, should I include their names as co-authors or just in the acknowledgment?

To just evaluate a manuscript should not result in co-authorship. Authorship implies a certain contribution to the article. There are many interpretations of what is sufficient and some are really bad. Criteria for co-authorship that has gained support has been given by the Vancouver Protocol (see e.g. the BMJ description of their use of the terms in practise)

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

AND

Final approval of the version to be published;

AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

An advisor for a master's project sounds as a reasonable candidate for co-authorship since that person likely has provided much input on original ideas through to the final written product. How that applies in your case is for you to decide.
It is, however, never wrong to add a new person as co-author, if that person provides contributions that qualify them according to the list above. So consider who may be considered co-author and do not promise co-authorship without explaining the terms.
For additional input, please search on the authorship here on Academia.sx and look into the concept of contributorship, a concept more clearly related to contributions than what the term authorship implies, by also searching the internet.


What is the best way to propose one remote collaboration of this kind? This question is a followup to this previous question of mine. Let me quickly summarize. I'm a Physics PhD student interested in one particular subfield which appears to be very active and promising. I have studied some key papers about the subject and I do understand them, but I really don't know how to start doing research on the topic. I asked if I could remotely propose some kind of remote collaboration with some postdoc working in the subject to learn and gain experience and by the answer I get that it is indeed OK to do it.
This question is about how to do it so to maximize the chance of success. I know about one postdoc that has several important papers published in the subject. I watched one talk he gave online and he seems very approachable. Moreover in his talk he showed very clearly that there are lots of things to be done in the field.
That said, I would like to send him a message and ask if I could collaborate with him remotely. What I want is to get involved in the research in this fied, help and gain experience.
A first point is that he doesn't know me, nor do I know anyone who knows him. To be honest I don't know anyone who knows people working in the field.
In that scenario, what is the best way to propose such collaboration and how much information should I send with my message?

Decide on what this field means to you and act accordingly.  From your post, you are a PhD student and therefore presumably already have a field of study.  If this is your first semester it will be a simpler conversation than if this is your sixth.  I'm going to assume that you don't want to change your current field of research, but would instead like to work in both fields to some capacity.
Whether your current field and this new one are related, and the extent to which they are related, is also important to consider.  If they are basically unrelated, or only tangentially so, then you'd be asking this post-doc to train you to be a collaborator.  If they are related well enough, then you'd be a useful collaborator to start with.
I personally would not begin a conversation around collaboration.  You appear to be too new to the field to do that.  Instead, I would begin by contacting the post-doc about his research, or potentially his talk, and discussing those open problems.  Are there any open problems that interest you and the post-doc, and in which you feel you could meaningfully make a contribution?  Start talking about your ideas, discuss it as though you are curious in a deeper way than someone who just watched a talk, but still not ready to jump ship and switch fields.
Through those conversations, you'll gain the insights you need to start proposing relevant questions for further research, and from there be able to ask this post-doc about collaboration opportunities.  Remember, this person also has their own projects.  They probably won't just bring you on to their own because you sent an email.  If you can both work on a truly new contribution though that would further your mutual careers, and if this doesn't negatively impact either of your abilities to get done what you need to do already, then it's a better conversation.
So, TL;DR: don't ask to collaborate, just start talking about a mutual interest, and see where it goes.


Socially acceptable to email a connection of a connection requesting information? I'm interested in knowing the optimal technology/techniques to implement something (storing Lidar data in a database) in a corporate IT world. I have a colleague who recommended that I contact his old phd adviser since his old adviser has done what I'm looking at doing before. He carried out the work as a means to an end for his research and the work I'm interested in is not his research itself. I believe they parted on less than perfect terms and my colleague has said mentioning him might not achieve anything productive as a result (I suspect this wouldn't be too bad as it is simply a referral from a colleague and was a while ago).

So, is it generally regarded as acceptable to email this old phd adviser of his with or without mentioning the referral and ask him if he would mind answering 3-4 basic fairly high level questions regarding the work he has previously carried out? Since acceptable depends on how it is written, what are some good techniques for writing cold email requests for information in this sort of scenario?

NOTE: This is in academia primarily because I'm wanting to email a professor and ask about information he has worked on that he carried out as a means to an end.

Ideally the person who knows both of you would write a short introductory email and send it to both of you.  You could request that he do that.

If he doesn't do that, you can still mention that he suggested that you write to this person at the beginning of your email.  Just use a succinct, mildly friendly, and professional tone, and you'll be fine.


How to get the PDF of a hard-to-find paper? I'm finding this paper: Adobe Camera Model.

It's the second result in Google Scholar:
the result of Google Scholar

That's it, without any linkings.

And I searched Tech. rep., Adobe, Adobe Technical Reports in Google, but get nothing useful.

I also tried the names of the authors.

What are the common methods to find the PDFs of such papers?

I see that quite a few people have cited the work. The authors of those papers can be contacted for help. I'm hopeful that they will respond kindly.

I've experienced this before. Don't hesitate to ask them by email. But also, be ready to explain why it is needed and what you've tried to find it yourself. All the best!

Edit: The link by user 101010111100 looks like it!


Should I cite logos and clip-art in my thesis? In my presentation I am using a block diagram which contains few logos (like Mathworks, visual studio) and some clip-art (like desktop, hardware board) . I got these from various random websites from Google image search. Should I  cite them??

You should cite anything you use, and you should make sure that you have an appropriate copyright license for any material you do not own the rights to. Look for Creative Commons and other pre-licensed materials to use in your work.


Is the promotion of meditation activities by my university a form of religious discrimination? My university constantly promotes activities of meditation, mindfulness and other "new age" activities inspired from some eastern spiritualities (particularly Hinduism and Buddhism). The university is secular and would surely not widely promote Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other religions' activities, calls for prayers and the like. Is this a form of discrimination in favour of certain spiritualities?
I wonder what your experience is about this.

On the basis of the following definitions, I see no basis to consider meditation nor mindfullness to be solely associated with a particular religion.

Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique...to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state (Wikipedia).

Mindfulness is the psychological process of purposely bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment (Wikipedia).

I do not consider the origins of these activities relevant. (I will note that Wikipedia discusses meditation in the context of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.)


Off-campus job and Internet earning As far as I know, international students can't  work off-campus in the USA (according to the law). What about Google AdSense?

I have been working on my personal websites and I have activated AdSense on these websites. I have been getting paid in my native country and Google sends the payment to my local bank account.

Could I link my US bank account after I reach there? Will it be considered as off-campus job?

Two things:

If you are structuring your royalties through a foreign bank in a way to avoid paying American taxes, then from the USCIS/IRS perspective, that would of course be a big big no-no.
As to whether you are permitted or not to receive royalties under your visa, you should ask your international student/scholar's office. It may depend on the degree to which your royalty payment is considered a passive or active activity, or whether it is related to your work as a scholar. You shouldn't do this without consulting the international student's office or an immigration lawyer.


Post-doc Salary in Germany I noticed that there are some significant variation in the salary of post-docs in Germany. The post-doc salary could be given in TVL13, TVL14, TVL15, and even TVL15U scales. This means that the net income could change from 2,000-4,000 Euros. I have currently an offer to start my post-doc with TVL-13 (Stufe 4) which gives a net income of 2,900 Euro. Is this something reasonable?  What factors are important in determining the post-doc salary? and how could I change them?

Postdoc salary (like for any non-tenured academic position) in Germany is fairly rigidly structured. The salary is always according to the federal wage agreement ("Tarifvertrag der Länder", TV-L) and is determined by

pay scale ("Entgeltgruppe"), which depends on the position, in particular, the responsibilities that are officially attached to it. (Basically, no formal responsibility means TV-L E13; responsibility for crucial infrastructure, e.g., running a big device or doing a specific analysis for all the group, means TV-L E14, and being head of a sizeable group means TV-L E15)
pay grade ("Stufe"), which depends on how many years you've had this job (think automatic promotion); you start at Stufe 1, after 1 year you move to Stufe 2, after 2 more years it's Stufe 3 and so on.
percentage of working week ("Wochenarbeitszeit"), which is just what it sounds like. (A full working week is about 40 hours.)
federal state ("Tarifgebiet") of the institution, because the former Western states have a different agreement than the former Eastern states. (Eastern states have lower salary, because the cost of living is (assumed to be) lower.)

Only the second point actually depends on the applicant, the rest is tied to the position and needs to be fixed before it is even announced (e.g., as a 75% TV-L E13 position) and is therefore non-negotiable. The second point is somewhat negotiable by trying to get them to recognize previous postdoc positions with similar responsibility as time on the job (although that is an administrative matter, and the possible influence of the academic staff on the administration varies wildly...)

Which pay scale and in particular percentage is reasonable is very discipline-specific. If it's a full-time position with no responsibilities (such as running critical experiments for everyone else), it seems not bad because Stufe 4 is actually comparatively high (E13 only has five grades).

If you want to get gross and net salaries from pay scale, grade and percentage, you can look it up at http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info (in German, this answer might help navigating the site).


Prolonging a PhD to improve research CV, is this good ? I am in my 4th year of PhD. Few months ago I presented my thesis proposal which already included some of the results (that are actually published). I proposed to add another chapter (call it Chapter x).

One of the committee members told me that the results presented are sufficient for a thesis. He said that chapter x is not necessary, or it can be replaced by a literature survey (instead of presenting original work - as I proposed during the thesis proposal). He said that original work can be done during a post-doc instead.  My thesis supervisor agreed.

Right now, I am in the middle of of the Chapter x [and some other stuff] (and I think I have original results that are not complete - they would be complete, if everything goes fine [which is never the case in research]).

My question is: should I write my thesis without novel results in Chapter x and then do a postdoc based on Chapter x ? Or: should I continue working on Chapter x even if this will result in a longer PhD ?

The source of my confusion:
Wouldn't adding novel results in Chapter x improve my research CV ? but at the same time, will the long period of PhD negatively affect the research CV ? Plus, will I find the chance to work on this topic as a postdoc !

As Irwin suggests, prolonging the PhD to improve your research track record is a standard strategy, especially for students who are interested in pursuing an academic career.

The minimal requirements to get a PhD are fundamentally weaker than the minimal requirements to get an academic job.  Despite all high-falutin' talk to the contrary, the only real requirement for completing a PhD is convincing your thesis committee to sign the requisite paperwork.  Most faculty have an image in their heads of the necessary work; for example, in computer science, a minimal PhD thesis is roughly equivalent to two solid conference papers.

On the other hand, the academic job market is a true competition.  Only people with truly outstanding research records (and strong recommendation letters) get invited to interview for faculty positions, or accepted for research postdoc positions.  It doesn't matter whether you're "good enough"; lots of people are "good enough". What matters is how you compare against other people on the market.  So it's actually quite rational to delay completing the PhD past the point where you have a viable thesis, in order to improve your research record.

That said, phrasing the delay in terms of "making your thesis stronger" is totally missing the point.  Your PhD thesis is an administrative hurdle.  At least in computer science, if you're lucky, three people will ever read your thesis, including you and your advisor.  (The standard joke ends "...and your mom.")  Your colleagues will see and judge your track record through your peer-reviewed publications in conferences and journals.

So, the short answer is: Do more original publishable research, and then publish it.  And then I guess you could show off to your committee by including those results in your thesis, but whatever.

Also, please slap your advisor for me.


What degree of borrowing from a Stack Exchange answer and submitting to a peer reviewed journal, without citation, is ethical? I posted a highly-upvoted answer on Skeptics Stack Exchange based upon numerous Chronicling America database newspaper quotations, and chatted in comments about this with a psychology professor.

The professor, listing himself as sole author, then submitted an article with highly overlapping content to a peer reviewed journal, without any citation to my Stack Exchange answer.

(More specifically, in Stack Exchange comments, I criticized a specific 2012 paper of the professor, which was primarily based upon google book ngrams, and showed in my answer numerous quotations from the Chronicling America database that result in a different conclusion. The professor then submitted an update of his 2012 paper to the same journal adding numerous quotations from the Chronicling America database.)

Is this ethical? I've only published in chemistry/biochemistry journals and don't have any idea what is typical for psychology journals.

General Case

Ideally the author should acknowledge you in an acknowledgements section if you contribute assistance in some way. Unless you wrote part of the article, authorship is not warranted.

This Case

The post your wrote was quite good and provides a lot of good material, but other than saving a researcher time, it doesn't appear to do any original research. That's in line with the policies of Skeptics.SE as well. Likewise, while the person asking the question has reasonable grounds to be skeptical of the claims, the thesis is not novel.

I will also note that it the edit history shows that you started working on the answer in June 2017. The letter to the editor that you linked to says that it is in press as of the same month. I'm not sure what the lead time is like on that journal, but I wouldn't be surprised if the author has been working on the paper for significantly longer than you were working the Stack Exchange post. This is somewhat borne out by the author's publication history - they previously wrote on the same topic.

In short, it appears that you were both working on the same material independently before encountering each other.


Maximum/reasonable number of authors for a (conference) paper What is a reasonable number of authors a small conference paper should have?

In my case, this is an interdisciplinary research paper and several people are linked to this work in one way or another. Currently, there are 8 authors and I feel this may seem too high.

Is there any common-sense consensus regarding this limit?

In case there is a field-specific dependence, the main field is Computer Science.

UPDATE: my justification for this question is the increasing buzz around the very issue: author inflation.

In my field (software engineering), having papers with 6+ authors is uncommon but not unheard-of. Most often I see papers coming out of larger international research projects having many authors, presumably simply because in a large project more hands tend to touch any given piece of research outcome. Further, in larger studies, you sometimes need more manpower to actually carry out the study. If you have a chance to do an interview study with a large group of people, just having one or two interviewers might simply be infeasible because it would take too long.

If you are worried that your large author list will be considered a negative during the review process, this may happen if it is not clear how the large author list is warranted. That is, if you were to publish work coming more less directly out of the PhD thesis of the first author with 7 co-authors, one may ask what the remaining 7 people actually added. In such cases, it is not uncommon to drop subtle hints into the paper about the role of each author. For instance, when you describe your research methodology, you could mention that the first three authors conducted the study, while the remaining three authors were mostly involved with analysis, and the last two authors provided domain feedback and validation of  the achieved results  (if interdisciplinary).


Supervisor continues to boss me around long after I left the university I have submitted the PhD thesis for examination more than 2 months ago. I am currently working with full time job as a researcher in industry. While I am still subject to my supervisor as I have yet to undergo viva voce, I am tired with how my supervisor is treating me now. She likes to boss me around with work at university.

She asked me to provide training to new PhD students in the lab. While I don't really mind do it during my free time (i.e., weekend), she forced me to do it as soon as possible so that she can get the results and publish them in short time. This has led me to ask for leave from company just so I could demonstrate lab techniques to her new students.

Furthermore, she nonchalantly gave my phone number to new grad students to contact me should any problems arise in the lab without my permission. To make things worse, I was the one held responsible to troubleshoot the problems if the experiment was not successful. Also, she just e-mailed me any papers or manuscripts for me to analyze/check the statistics without me being involved in the project. Then I found out that she didn't even acknowledge me when the paper was published (as co-author/ acknowledgement section).

I am tired of the way she's been treating me. I know I am still bound to her as I have yet to undergo viva. I am scared to tell her that she needs to back off as this will definitely affect my viva voce. What should I do?

To be frank about it, your main problem is that it is not long enough after you've left the university -- i.e., you've submitted your thesis but haven't defended it yet.

Taking a job in between your thesis submission and successful defense sounds inherently awkward to me: what happens if your defense isn't successful?  But I gather that having a such a long gap between submission and defense (in my neck of the woods, we are happy if students send us their thesis three weeks before they defend it) is standard in your part of the academic world.

Did you discuss how you would be spending the time between submission and defense with your advisor before you took the job?  If not, now would be a good time to have that discussion.  I agree with a comment above saying you should try to set boundaries.  I think "Because of my full-time job..." is a promising start to an explanation of why you can't do everything she wants.  You wrote

  This has led me to ask for leave from company just so I could demonstrate lab techniques to her new students.

That seems like a more drastic step than talking to your advisor about this. If you are willing to go on leave from your full-time job, then where are you going to draw the line?

However, I have to counsel you to have this conversation with your advisor carefully: assuming that getting the PhD is important to you for the rest of your career and life (a fair assumption given your situation, I hope!), the truth is that your advisor has as much power over you now as she has ever had.  If you have a terrible falling out with her, that could make her look over your thesis in a different light and -- while personal disagreements with your student should not turn an acceptable thesis into an unacceptable one -- there is some risk of that happening, I'm afraid.

Coming back to the first sentence: you're in an awkward, but temporary situation.  I would suggest working overtime (literally?!?) in the short run to make sure that you both get your PhD and keep the job you want.  Hang in there until you get everything you want.  Good luck.


How much are local (same state or country) applicants favored in PhD admissions? How protectionistic are PhD admissions?

Here, protectionism means to favor residents of the country (or state) the university is in, as far as PhD admissions are concerned. Usually, protectionism arises due to funding restrictions or other burdens of a financial nature (e.g. tuition waivers).

But how much of a disadvantage are foreign students at, when it comes to PhD admissions?

I understand that the answer differs from a country to another, and from an institution to another within the same country. And even different fields within the same institution have different standards, so please pay attention to context when providing answers.

In the UK, in STEM areas without industry funding (where I have most experience), funding restrictions typically meant there are at least 10 places restricted to home (or in some cases EU) students for every place open to students of all nationalities.


Do Postdocs have any seniority ranking or progress? I am seeing many people doing postdocs for years, or even nearly a decade, well into their late thirties. Do they usually have progressive salary and responsibility, as one could expect in a job?  Is your fifth or sixth year as a postdoc essentially the same as your first month after PhD., but with some extra publications?

For clarification, this is what I mean by progress.

In your later years, do you get to build and lead a small team of junior researchers who you hire from your grant, whom you can give some instruction, or you divide the tasks of a more ambitious project and you take some supervisory role in addition to your own hands-on research? I do not expect it to be completely managerial because I know postdocs love the actual research…but at least some mark of seniority and experience?

Of all the kinds of academic positions, the postdoc is probably the most variable.  The common ground across (almost) all postdoctoral positions is: you should have a doctoral degree when you start the position, and the position should not be permanent or tenure-track.  That's really about it.  (Added: I agree with @StrongBad that most postdoctoral positions have an expectation of "advanced training" of one kind or another.)

It is rare for a single postdoc position to last more than 4-5 years.  In my understanding, the ones that do are soft-money positions and thus are more explicitly doing specified projects for the PI / grantholder.  I am not aware of any kind of formal seniority across multiple postdocs: generally the reason that someone does a second postdoc is because they want a permanent academic job and haven't gotten one yet.  They may also want additional specific training / the chance to work with other researchers, but this really is "additional" rather than on top of.

In terms of salary: in my experience [mathematics, US], postdoc salaries are rather flat across the period of employment.  (I previously had more detailed information, but I am less confident that it is representative even among math postdocs in the US.)  In my department we have one kind of postdoc that pays about $10K per year more than another postdoc is funded by an NSF grant, and the salaries for the latter postdoc are set by the NSF, so will be the same unless / until we get a new grant (or an updated version of the same).

When it comes to skilled labor, wherever you work for a year or more, you gain knowledge, experience and seniority in some informal sense.  One might say that a postdoc is a process of laundering a student into a faculty member, so late-career postdocs resemble faculty members more than early career postdocs.  Most postdocs in mathematics find their way from a combination of completing / continuing their thesis work and starting new projects with their new supervisor to developing a distinctive and independent research program.  Although the particulars differ across fields, I think that something like this is the goal of most postdocs: if a postdoc only does their supervisor / PI's work then it will be difficult for them to portray themselves as a valuable faculty hire.

For math postdocs, the only formal seniority comes from teaching obligations: namely most math postdocs start out teaching freshman / sophomore level courses.  If they are competent at their teaching and interested in teaching other courses (not all postdocs are), many postdocs move on to teach a junior/senior level course for majors in their second year and some postdocs teach a graduate course in their last year.  (In my fifth semester as a postdoc I was able to teach a topics course in the arithmetic of Shimura varieties.  I have since taught about a dozen graduate courses, but none as advanced as that.)

  In your later years, do you get to build a small team of junior researchers who you hire from your grant whom you can give some instruction,,

Some postdocs are not associated to a grant in any way; they are rather temporary faculty funded by their department.  Some postdocs work under their PI's grant, in which case the answer to the question is up to the PI (and the grant proposal).  Some postdocs receive grant funding of their own, in which
case some kind of money for junior personnel may well be included.  Also some postdocs work with graduate students, in a variety of different ways.  My current postdoc is for instance a member of the dissertation committee of one of my students.

  or you divide the tasks of a more ambitious project and you take some supervisory role in addition to your own hands-on research?

That could happen.  Some large research groups employ postdocs in a kind of managerial role.

  I do not expect it to be completely administrative or managerial because I know postdocs love the actual research…but at least some mark of seniority and experience?

Keep in mind that any seniority you acquire as a postdoc is ephemeral.  Spending too much time doing administrative / managerial work as a postdoc sounds very risky if you are aiming for a permanent faculty position.  Some departments somewhere must be hiring some faculty largely for their administrative skills...but I confess I have never seen it with my own eyes.


Presenting a talk on two parallel sessions of the AMS meetings On the meetings of the American Mathematical Society there are many parallel sessions subjects of some of them overlap sometimes.

My question is whether it is OK to present the same talk on two parallel sessions if I believe that the subject of my talk is close to both of them.

I was independently invited to two different sessions by the organizers. Should I choose only one session? Or it is OK to accept both invitations?

The American Mathematical Society may or may not have a rule against it, but even if they don't I think this is a prohibitively bad idea.

At a conference, especially a big one like an AMS or AMS/MAA conference, time is the most valuable commodity: there are so many people there who would like to interact with each other and hear about each other's work, but so little time that many of the events take place on top of each other and the time given to each is very little.  Notice that the standard length of the talks is 20 minutes.  Virtually everyone who gives a 20 minute talk would rather give a longer talk (in particular, has much more to say).  Most of the talks are kept
that short so as to involve the largest number of people in the very limited time available.

With this in mind, taking up two slots for the same talk may be viewed as remarkably selfish behavior.  Many if not most people at these conferences are interested in more of the talks than they are able to attend: sometimes tough choices have to be made to see one talk versus another (some of us who attend these meetings remember "who we went up against" and marvel that anyone made it to our talk).  To give the same talk twice really looks unfair and ungracious to the other participants.  It would be hard for any session organizer to justify a "repeat performance" as a better intellectual outcome than a new talk.

I should say that at the JMM sometimes people give multiple talks.  At a meeting a few years ago, I noticed that a certain hot job market candidate was giving three talks (of different kinds; maybe not more than one in a special session).  If you're planning to give more than one talk in a special session I would definitely mention this to both session organizers: to have someone turned away while someone else speaks twice looks harsh and should be avoided most of the time, I think.  This is a different thing though than giving the same talk twice: in fact, since giving two different talks is not unheard of in these meetings, giving the same talk twice looks perhaps even weirder: in particular, it may look like you very much want to talk but don't have very much to say.

Added: My colleague Brian Boe is the Associate Secretary for the Southeastern Section of the AMS.  I consulted him, and he replied with the following information:

An individual may not give two talks on the same paper. (At JMM, this implies: not even in an AMS special session and an MAA invited paper session, for example).
An individual may not give more than one (10-minute) contributed paper talk.
An individual is allowed to speak in multiple special sessions (and up to one contributed paper session), as long as the talks are on different topics.


Should one mention the prestige of the target university/advisor as motivation in a statement of purpose? When one writes their statement of purpose, is it advisable to mention the prestige of the target university?
How about expressing interest in working with a certain professor due to him being world renowned in the student's field of interest?

On the one hand, it seems quite common, but on the other hand I'd think the committee would get the impression that the student is applying randomly to top universities (and/or to work with famous researchers), instead of choosing based on specific research interests.

Thanks!

When applying for a graduate degree, the prestige or other characteristics of the university as a whole are generally irrelevant, compared with the specific department or graduate program.  I would strongly recommend against mentioning the university's prestige at all.  (You definitely don't want to give the impression that you see being able to list Harvard on your CV as comparable in importance to intellectual issues.)

It's common to discuss characteristics of the department or potential advisor, but you shouldn't focus on fame or prestige.  Instead, you should highlight the more fundamental aspects that matter to you.  There's no point in saying something vague like "I hope to attend your graduate program because everyone agrees it's great."  (Assuming this is not just empty flattery, the admissions committee already knows they have a great reputation, and it's irrelevant for your admissions decision.)  Instead, you could say something like "I hope to attend your graduate program because of the opportunity to work with leading experts in X and Y."  This might be highly distinctive if few departments have strength in both X and Y, and even if this is common it's still more substantive than just talking about prestige.