How to survive as a postdoc with unsupportive mentor and team I am at the end of 2nd year postdoc at a famous CS lab in the US. I have changed my research area (but related) that I worked for my PhD.

1) My current project and the lab focus are different than what I was working on earlier in academia. Moreover, the problem I'm working solely on is widely-accepted as hard to tackle. I have some preliminary results but not enough to publish a paper. An alternate (inferior) approach at some other university (with grad students) took almost 4 years to run. I'm being constantly told that I am unable to progress as they expected. This is de-motivating me to hold on to addressing this problem. With no visible publication yet, peers and other colleagues are assuming that I'm not worth researchy material. How do I take these criticisms constructively and stay focussed and solve the problem.

2) From my PhD, I had 4 publications in top rated conferences in my field. There is another group in my own team who work in the same area. When approached for collaboration with them so that I can use my expertise in the current projects, they do not include me in any work. What puzzles me is that why do they not understand (or why am I unable to convince them) that I hold expertise in that area and could very well contribute to their work. They are happy to take a novice with little-to-no knowledge of the field, but do not want me. They had few publications this year, where I could have very well been one of the co-authors. Due to points (1) and (2) I have no single publication; neither as a main author in the new research area nor as a co-author in my area of expertise, which makes it very hard to proceed to next level of career. I spoke to a senior scientist about this, he replied that most of the postdocs and few staff are so insecure of funding, that they do not want anyone else to be included in their close-knitted group. How do I overcome this?

3) There are couple of postdocs in my team each with their own mentor. My mentor is fairly junior having recently converted to scientist, himself being a postdoc for few years. Other mentors are more senior to my mentor. I feel that my peer postdocs are being guided and mentored very nicely; they are invited to talk to any visiting scientists, work with summer students. My mentor has 3-4 summer students every year; but does not want to me collaborate with them. This is reducing the scope of any joint publications with them, while others have atleast 2-4 papers per year with the summer students.

4) I am not gaining any visibility in terms of invitations to serve for program committee or workshops, where my peer postdocs have bunch of them in hand, owing to the support from their mentors. All postdocs have more or less the same number of publications in similar venues. I agree that it has to do more with networking, but due to the nature of work, I hardly get time to attend any networking opportunities barring 1-2 workshops a year. This is not helping me boost my research career.

I want to get feedback on how do I boost my postdoc career and survive here if at all I want to. I personally think my mentor is limiting the options that I have to improve networking skills, collaborations across projects. I feel so isolated and dejected. I am willing to learn any skills that I may be lacking.

Thanks,
K

I am actually in a situation that's similar to yours in a lot of respects (i.e. at the end of a postdoc and not that much to show for it due to lack of collaboration with my team for various reasons). So I'll give you some advice I have been trying to apply myself - although I haven't quite succeeded spectacularly so take it with a grain of salt.

It's a systemic problem. This is not practical advice on what to do, but emotionally, you need to try and kind of self-distance yourself from this situation to realize that academia does not encourage researchers - after their PhDs and before tenure - to go out on a lim exploring something deep that doesn't show immediate results. There are no mechanisms for consideration of effort and risk and potential impact of success, while an epsilon-improvement on the state of the art in what's fashionable is usually a sure-fire success.
Finding collaborators is job #1. Unless you can churn out award-winning work yourself, you absolutely must find collaborators. Maybe that means quitting the group, eventually. In the mean time, be very very active in contacting people who do work you feel you could build on or collaborate in, introducing yourself, talking about your plans etc. Possibly also out of academia if that's relevant.
Try to bargain with your mentor You're expecting your mentor to behave in certain ways, but s/he isn't doing so. You should have (and possibly still can) talk it out with him, in the sense of realizing why he is acting the way he is
If you can, try to get direct access to students You mentioned trying to work with tenured faculty's students. If you could somehow get in touch with prospective students yourself, that would be a bypass. Proposing to teach a workshop or proper course, or to co-teach something, or to offer a "lab project" course, or to give a guided tour of the lab's activities, could help. Of course, that has a cost in terms of effort.
Take the time/effort to also pick more low-hanging fruit Try to either branch out to a close/related subject, or work on a problem in your main subject of interest, which you think is not very significant - i.e. probably the opposite of your intuition regarding how to choose what to work on. While this would not yield a great publication, it could yield something publishable and opportunities to talk to people and make connections. It would also make it not appear like you're unable to produce anything in the bottom-line sense.
Explore collaborations with your PhD advisor and his/her group. You did well during your Ph.D; I assume the people around you did not all die in a car crash... talk to them, especially your old advisor if you're on good speaking terms. In fact, you could even ask for their advice on your predicament (that's orthogonal to suggesting collaboration).
Explore opportunities for funding. While this requires collaboration with a more well-established academic figure, you should still give it a try. In fact, it might be an opportunity to bypass your own mentor if s/he is not interested in helping, by talking to the more senior / most senior people in the lab. If you manage to secure funding, that would almost be like getting students; it would mean your lab and even your mentor would be more committed to promoting the research you're doing; and it's an important thing to have on your CV.

Note: These suggestions are not comprehensive and are not in any particular order.


Whether to tell his prospective employer that a new male post doc opposes affirmative action for women in academia? I personally know a male graduate student who works in a different area (in STEM) than mine and who has a potentially controversial view.  He opposes to affirmative actions for women in academia and outreach activities for female teenagers conducted by a university.  He's repeatedly and openly expressed his idea on his public Facebook post, in his (and my) native language, which is not English.

This particular student is soon graduating and has been granted a post as a post-doc at a very prestigious university in the U.S., from (I suppose) this fall on.  I don't think that whoever in charge of hiring him knows his view, since, albeit they are public, his posts are not written in English.

While I don't know if his beliefs should prevent him from being hired, I do think that this may be a potential concern to his future employers.

Obviously I'm really concerned about his views and feel that, since they are expressed openly, it might be appropriate to make sure his prospective employers know about them. Is there a professional way to do this, or is it the case that no matter how baleful and publicly expressed the views may be, I should play no part in informing his prospective employers?

Corrigendum: I should have been really, really careful as to how to put my question.  For one thing, I don't see his view anti-feminist.  The word anti-feminist appears there (with quotation marks) because I couldn't think of a good adjective.  It could have been anything else.  Since so many people are distracted by this, I remove the word completely.

Mind your own business.

If you believe that your colleague poses an actual threat to someone, it is of course your duty to warn them.  But opinions are not threats.  It is entirely up to your colleague who he shares his opinions with.  Revealing your colleague's opinions to his future employer, no matter how offensive you may find them, would be a violation of his privacy.


How to deal with the fear of missing out? I will be soon starting my Ph.D. but have already experienced some of the research environment. I have chosen to work on a field in machine learning that is becoming increasingly popular. Every time I see people publish something new in this field, I cannot help it but feel like a loser who missed out or has lost the opportunity to publish that others did. I feel like when I catch up and have the necessary skills, everything would have been already discovered.

This is a downside of working in a "hot" area. But it is also why you have an advisor to guide you. In reality you can't do everything and your research will be (should be) deep and narrow. Therefore a lot of the stuff flying around you just isn't especially relevant to your research, provided that it is properly grounded.

Focus and treat all the other stuff as noise. Once you get some research published you can think about broader issues and where you want to take you next deep dive.

Don't completely ignore the general work going on, but don't be overly concerned if others are picking apples in the same orchard. Only get worried if it seems like others are making progress on your problem faster than you are. Your advisor should be able to help with this. But nothing is guaranteed. There is a lot of parallel work going on in hot areas.


What universities (especially in the USA) prohibit or restrict duplicate advanced degrees? For example, University of California - Berkeley says

  The Graduate Council views academic degrees as evidence of broad
  research training, not as vocational training certificates; therefore,
  applicants who already have academic graduate degrees should be able
  to take up new subject matter on a serious level without undertaking a
  graduate program, unless the fields are completely dissimilar.

and says

  Students may enroll for a second academic or professional master’s degree if the second degree is in an unrelated field.

What are some other universities that prohibit or have restrictions on the duplication of advanced degrees?

This is more of a statement of how resources are allocated than a strict prohibition. It is a statement of "may enroll", rather than one of "may not enroll". I think admissions committees at a lot of places take a similar view, even without a formal statement. "Why do you think you need a second math masters?"

The available slots and money are limited most places and committees generally want them to be be used to expand the pool of educated folks.

So, I think that any numerical answer will be misleading. And any listing would be equally misleading.

But the statement is useful as guidance to those who would want to apply when it would be unlikely that the committee would accept them.


Why do some professors with PhDs leave their professorships to teach high school? I can surmise that some of them mightn't have gotten tenure and needed to find another job, but wouldn't these former professors be bored teaching the same (relatively basal) material yearly?

Let me know of other examples, but I was riffling some fee-paying schools and lighted upon:

Audrey Budding, of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies

  B.A., Swarthmore College 1982
  B.A., University of Cambridge (UK) 1984
  M.A., Harvard University 1991
  Ph.D., Harvard University 1998

Eric Casey, former Associate Professor of Classics, Sweet Briar College. Now at Trinity School NYC.
David Gomprecht at Dalton School.

  Gomprecht, PhD, graduated from Wesleyan University, where he majored in mathematics and physics, and then went on to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a research mathematician for a few years, David returned to his hometown of New York City, where he has now been a math specialist and private tutor for over twenty years.

Mara Naaman at Dalton School.

I have done this so perhaps can answer your question. I was a tenured full professor of physics at a state university but currently teach high school.

There are several reasons I chose to do this.

Most importantly, I love teaching and am great at it, while I dislike the constant drudgery of research and will not be winning any Nobel Prizes. I never have to hit my head against the wall of grant competitions or peer review.
There came a time when I needed to solve the Two-Body Problem and the high school option made me far more mobile.
I get more time for myself. Classes generally require only about 5 minutes of prep time each, if that. The time between periods is sufficient. Grading takes less than 10% of the time it took at college because of the level of study and can often all be done in class while students are taking a quiz or test. When school is out, I go home and forget about work. There is no constant e-mailing from students wanting help and extensions.
My interactions with high school students are closer and more positive than those with most of my college students. I never learned most of my college students' names. In high school, I have a relationship with every student.

The down sides are minor. The pay kind of stinks compared to what I used to make, but the free time makes up for that. I sometimes have to loop in the Headmistress when making grade decisions that involve teacher's discretion, which grates on my sense of academic freedom. But I think I can deal.


Can I submit an unofficial TOEFL score report if the official one won't be received by the university before the deadline? It's been 8 days since my TOEFL scores were sent to me by ETS and I chose for them to be sent directly to the university I am applying. However, the official score reports won't be sent there before the deadline. Is it okay to copy-paste (since there is not a "print" option) and upload the scores that were electronically sent to me 10 days after the test date and notify the university about the delivery of the official score reports? Also, will I be notified by ETS when the university receives the official score reports?

In my experience, universities don't have a deadline for official scores. They do however have a deadline for when you should have taken the exam. If you took the exam before the deadline, they either know that the scores will arrive before they actually start reviewing your application, or they don't consider the scores until later in the process. You can always contact them and ask if they would like an unofficial score report, but if you took the exam before the deadline it will not be a problem.


Why do people not seem to consider private grants in favor of small public ones? I have now experienced multiple instances where a group of researchers involved me in a grant application where the total awarded funds were quite small compared to the number of researchers in the group. Thus I find the benefit of a successful application very small compared to the time spent writing the application (the awarded funds are likely going to be divided by the number of researchers in the group). I have also been quite good at getting funding from other partners or private entities (only a small share from companies), so I find it hard to stay motivated for these public grants. Yet, it remains mysterious to me why other researchers in the group stay motivated -- they would be better off doing their research than writing this complex grant application for an overall small sum. I must say I have quite a bit of experience in academia, and almost always got easy funding (not public funds) in the past. It looks like some researchers enjoy "winning" a grant regardless of how small the funds are.

Do you have thoughts on this? I feel odd that I'm not sharing their enthusiasm; and it looks like I'm missing some key element.

I'm not sure if this "answers" the question, but my belief is that people apply for grants for a combination of one of two reasons:

they want the money itself
they want the record of succeeding in getting the money.

While true of both public and private money, part of the prestige is that grants put their money where their mouths are. And public ones -- especially with longer histories can bank on those names (whether the banking is always warranted is of  course another question).

Your point is vis-a-vis 1 and could be restated as (A) more money is available through other means or (B) the amount of work vs. amount of money is a bad deal.

But the defense of pursuing famous public grants centers around 2. These public funding sources are (A) well-known, (B) perceived to have solid review processes, and (C) they are seen as prestigious because of (A) and (B), which should also make them (D) highly  competitive.

These features tend to make them attractive for career purposes. This is especially true when the quality of research is being evaluated by people who are not in the same field. I've got no idea what the Annual Peanut Factory Conference C's level is, but that the Snickers grant comes with $10,000,000 or even $1000 tells me that nut researchers would have competed to get it, and that you getting it means something.

In Japan for instance, Kakenhi from the government and how much you've gotten is a metric for getting jobs. In the USA, having gotten NSF or DOE grants can also help you in the future to get better positions or money.


Is it better to go to class, or watch the recorded lectures? I'm in a large class where lectures are recorded and posted online.  The lectures are difficult enough that I benefit a lot from being able to pause the videos and stare at the slides for a few seconds, or even rewind the video if I realize I missed something from an earlier part of the lecture.  It's also nice to be able to pause the video if my mind starts wandering, so I can give the lecture my full attention.

However, if I don't go to class, it's easy to get behind on the lectures, and it's easy to get distracted while watching the videos (so watching a lecture online takes me a lot more time than I would have spent in class).  What do you think is the best approach?

If it makes a difference, it's my advisor's class, and the lectures are at 9 am.

A combination may be best. Go to the lectures. During the lecture, if you miss something, or have trouble understanding, make a note of the time. Afterwards, before attempting the coursework, bring up the recorded lecture and view the places you missed during the live lecture.

That way, you get the keep-on-track benefit of the live lectures. You spend your viewing time in a very focused mode, looking only at the difficult parts of the lecture, which may reduce the tendency to get distracted.


How to reduce student plagiarism? During the last term, I recorded at least 50 cases of student plagiarism. The most common cases were students copying and pasting paragraphs verbatim from various Web sites, assembling them together, and calling it their essay.

I took what I thought were sufficient steps to inform students of what was not allowed:

I posted the rules in the syllabus, on the course Web site, and listed relevant rules in the instructions for larger projects.
I issued spoken warnings in class regularly, occasionally showed some examples of such submissions, and also showed students some of the steps I took to catch the plagiarism.

I also set what I thought were strict enough consequences so that students know it is better to do nothing at all than to cheat:

20% grade loss (from their entire grade) per infraction, no matter the value of the assignment (most assignments were only worth ~5%).

Note, these are policies I established from the very first day of the class, and carried through the whole term. Yet, even in the final weeks, I continued to catch copied work and failed a lot of students.

What further steps can I take to reduce this problem?

It might be helpful if you can tell us what field you are in, or more specifically what kinds of class you are teaching. What is the subject, and is it a big lecture class or a small section, etc? Catching 50 plagiarists makes me think you are teaching big lecture sections.

Here are two things I do: First, I have a very harsh plagiarism policy. I automatically fail anybody I catch plagiarizing. This raises the stakes.

Second, I consciously try to design assignments that are hard to plagiarize. There are a variety of ways to do this. For instance, you can give fairly specific assignments. Don't say: "Write a paper about Shakespeare" but instead "Write me a paper on the role of ghosts in King Lear and MacBeth." This doesn't make cheating impossible, but it makes it harder to google and get a prefabbed paper.


Must a master's thesis fall within one's advisor's area of expertise? When I studied my bachelor's degree, my professors often let me write papers in whatever area I wanted, even if it was an area completely outside of their expertise. Within master's programs, is this still the case, or must students generally stay within the specific expertise of their professors or advisors?

In my particular situation, I want to study second language acquisition (SLA), however, none of the programs I can attend have professors knowledgeable in my particular language of focus. Is it likely that I'll face resistance from advisors in trying to write my research papers and thesis about a language which none of the school's faculty are familiar with?

Whether an advisor will agree to supervise a master's thesis outside of their area of expertise depends on the advisor.  It may also vary between fields or universities, but I believe the personal variance will be much higher, so the best way to find out is to ask a potential advisor.

As for whether it's a good idea, I see three issues.

You will not receive expert advice in your chosen area.  Of course, there's a trade-off here: would you rather study what you love best without expert advice, or get better advising on another topic?
You may receive actively bad advice.  To avoid this difficulty, it's important for you to read extensively and to choose an advisor who is open minded and flexible.
Your advisor may not write an enthusiastic letter of recommendation for you.  Sometimes an advisor will let a student choose to do whatever they want, but when the advisor recommends the student, it becomes clear that the advisor is uninterested in the student's work and unimpressed by it.  I've seen this cause trouble for several people, so I strongly recommend trying to find an advisor who is actually enthusiastic about your topic (even if it's not what they work on).

In your specific case, choosing to study second language acquisition in a language nobody on the faculty speaks sounds like only a mild concern (assuming you speak it fluently or have access to excellent informants), since I imagine much of the advising would be about research methodology or language acquisition theories, rather than language-specific issues.  However, I don't know enough about this area to say for sure.


Study expanded from three to five rounds: How to write this down? Update

I will suggest treating the email communication as a figure and adding a note to the figure caption. IMO a caption is overkill when the appendix title is sufficient, but it's an ok tradeoff to cover the bases.

Would still love to have other ideas to have another option or two.

(To be clear, I am not the student.)

Short question

When a study expands beyond the time communicated to participants, how does it affect reporting the results in the examples of communications with participants?

Background

The student conducted a study designed for three rounds. During Round 3 the study was expanded to four rounds; and in Round 4 it was expanded to five rounds.

All communication with participants up to Round 3 set the expectation that there would be only three rounds (i.e., letters to recruit participants, to select pilot study participants, and to give instructions for Rounds 1 and 2 in the actual study).

The appendices have copies of all of the communications. The earliest communications mention three rounds. None of the communications mentions the reason for expanding from three to four rounds or from four to five rounds.

Do you alter the early communications by inserting square brackets with corrected text as you would for a quote, such as “the 3[5]-round study”? Replace all mentions with a generic placeholder, such as “the  study”? Add an explanatory note for the reader? Or just leave everything as is? Or ...?

If it makes a difference, the paper follows APA style. The university has no standards for this situation.

Just describe what actually happened like you did to us. Also explain why this happened. There is no reason to slavishly adhere to some style that doesn’t fit special situations like yours.

In general, your thesis (and any other scientific publication) should contain everything needed to reproduce and assess the results. As the circumstances you describe are certainly relevant to this (e.g., participants may drop out of the study after prolongation), you cannot possibly leave this unmentioned.


Alma mater and alumnus status when dropping out Do dropouts have an alma mater and are alumni of the institution where they dropped out in the respective phase of their studies (undergraduate, master or doctorate)? Or are these terms only meant for successful graduates?

E.g., is a student dropping out from the master/PhD an alumni of the university where he/she tried the master/PhD or of the university where he/she graduated with the next lower degree (BSc/master)?

A person who drops out is technically an alumnus however the term normally is used for someone who actually graduated. It can refer to anyone who is a former student or even employee of an institution.


Supervisor used graphic without crediting me The following situation occurred:

I was asked to modify a figure (originally published in a paper) to be used in a non-further-determined publication by my professor.
I did substantially modify the figure: I redrew the figure from scratch in a vector program, added colours and decoration and made it generally more attractive.
Now, half a year later this same figure or graphic appears in a book and just holds the small remark © Name of professor. Neither my name nor a reference to the original figure is given.
I checked the general acknowledgements of the book and there is no mention of my name.

My question is: How to proceed from here? Naturally I don't want to deteriorate the relationship with my employer but I need to raise this issue, especially so that it does not happen again in the future (my professor asks me on a regular basis to draw graphics for him). Should I insist that my name should somehow be included (second edition of the book, online errata etc.)? What would the copyright implications be for a) not mentioning the creator of the graphic (me) and b) not referencing the original work?

Some context:
I work as a research assistant and I am not employed primarily to do these drawings though - when requested - I usually do them in my work time. The book in which the figure appeared is the output of a research institution (though clearly directed at the general public) and I am not sure if the book is to be sold, i.e. if it could be considered commercial use.

Edit: I may not have explained myself well. In my opinion the resulting image is not a mere modification of a figure but a piece of work that requires creativity and year-long practices with a graphics program.

How to proceed from here?

You don't do anything. You did something small your supervisor asked for, and he used the figure that you made for him.

It's very unusual for figures to be labeled with the name of the actual person that made it, and it would be a lot to expect this without asking / demanding this beforehand. Take the closest textbook and you'll find that indeed,  a lot of figures will be copied from publications and references are included. However, there will also be custom-made figures that don't have any note. And you can be quite sure these figures are not drawn by the authors themselves, but by their students or employees.

There would probably also be no copyright implication, as this sounds like you just re-created some schematic figure and you just copied the idea, not the work itself.


Applying early as a postdoc + two-body problem A recent question asked about applying for tenure-track jobs before the end of a postdoc.  I'm in a similar position, also in math, and would like to ask the same question with an additional twist.

I'm in the middle of a postdoc.  I've been advised to apply to places I'd definitely accept offers from this year, but my wife will also be looking for a job.  She is not quite looking for an academic job, but the ideal outcome would be for her to work at the same institution as me, in a non-faculty job.  (Let's say she wants work in the registrar's office.)  The hiring for her sort of job doesn't take place so far in advance.

I would be very reluctant to accept a job a year early if I did not know for sure that my wife would also be able to find something there, especially if we were not moving to a big city (and we would prefer not to, if we can help it).

I'd be grateful for any general wisdom, but here are a couple concrete questions:

If I get an offer and turn it down because she can't find anything, and finish out my postdoc instead, would this be a very bad move?
If I get an offer and she can't find anything, is it possible I would be able to defer a year to help her job hunt?

I'm a little confused about your thinking on this matter:  given that hiring for the sort of job your wife has generally happens on a shorter timeline, how could you ever know that your wife will have a job when you have to make a decision about an offer?  I think you may just have to go for it and hope for the best. You can always apply for jobs again if things don't work out (I've done this twice); if you can afford to be choosy about jobs now, then likely you can get another.  The one wildcard is that if you get an offer, you may be able to negotiate a job for your wife before you accept.  A non-academic position is an unusual request, but on some level its a smaller ask than, say, a TT position for her.  The situation might be clearer if you said more about your wife's experience and skills.  About your specific questions:

Well, it's not a good move.  Probably the interview and offer process will move too quickly for your wife to reasonably expect to have found a job for six months hence, and people in the department might reasonably ask why you applied and went through the interview stages if you weren't willing to take the risk of moving there.
If you make the decision before you accept the job, this is a reasonable (and often made) request, but probably not after (and I'm a bit confused as to why you would ask).  As with 1., the timeline on TT job offers (often 1 week) is too short to really know anything about her job prospects, so I assume you mean after accepting.  Negotiation about start dates should happen before you accept the offer; of course, you can try to organize it after, but that is more likely to be received poorly (of course, it all depends on the situation, how much they are counting on your teaching, etc.), and you've lost all your leverage.  Given that your wife's job search will be easier once she's in the location (and can network, etc.), it will seem like an odd request and will likely give your colleagues the sense that you already have one foot out the door.


Is it safe for a student to give negative feedback in student evaluations? It's common for students to be asked for their evaluations of a teacher/course at the end of the semester. Is it safe for the student to give negative feedback? After all, even if the lecturer will not see these evaluations until after the grading is completed, it's possible the student will want to work under the lecturer in the future as a research student, or take another course by the same lecturer.

In my experience, back when I was a student, nothing negative actually happened to me when I did this. The closest was an incident at the university housing, when I sent negative feedback about the catering. The warden came to my room threatening to expel me unless I apologized. I refused to send any more feedback when they asked for it at the end of my program.

However, this question (and answers) is making me wonder if I got lucky. Did I? How common is it for the student to suffer negative consequences for giving negative feedback?

Edit: about anonymity, I recall giving handwritten feedback, which is not likely to be truly anonymous since one can compare the handwriting vs. assignments. One university had an online evaluation form, but it warned respondents that the names would be revealed to the lecturer (although it also said it will only be done when the grading was completed). Truly anonymous online feedback forms seems pretty courageous because of the online disinhibition effect, I can easily see things like this happening.

I feel there are two different layers to that - whether, and to what extent, teaching evaluations are actually anonymous, and if they aren't, whether it's still "safe" to give a bad one.

  Are evaluations anonymous?

On a superficial level, all universities that I have taught at had entirely anonymous evaluations. At no point in the process was I ever told which student gave which feedback. However, in a small class (say 10 students or less), anonymous evaluations aren't really all that anonymous - in such classes, I often have at least an educated guess which student wrote which evaluation. In a larger class I usually have no idea which student wrote which comment - there are usually groups of students with similar concerns and troubles, and I also don't know individual students nearly well enough at the end of a 100-students class to divine which student may have written what.

Yet, even in large classes sometimes a teacher may have a hunch which student wrote a specific comment, if the raised concern or the way of expression is sufficiently unique. For instance, in one of my introductory classes last year, one student was struggling extraordinarily and it was clear that he was working all the time on this course to pass (which he ultimately did). When evaluations came in and one student remarked on the almost unsurmountable workload it's easy to at least suspect that this was this student.

In short, relying on anonymity alone may be a dangerous game. If I were giving some really negative feedback I would try to keep it general enough that at least a handful of students could have written the same comment.

  Is it safe to give a negative evaluation (assuming it's not, or at least not completely, anonymous)?

Clearly, teachers are supposed not to retaliate upon receiving a bad evaluation, and I expect the large majority of teachers in a reputable university will not. However, professors also being humans, a subconscious bias may still taint further interactions. I guess it depends on what you mean with "safe" - there is no 100% certainty that a negative evaluation will not backfire on you, but by and large I can tell you that many students give negative evaluations in all schools I have been at, and as far as I can tell nothing bad really happens to them.

  Anything else?

It's not really your question, but in my experience it is almost universally a good idea to try hard to phrase negative evaluations in the same way as you would also do when giving feedback face-to-face (that is to say: fair, polite, without unnecessary superlatives, and if possible strengthened by data). Ultimately you probably want your feedback to be heard / integrated into the next course iteration, and the less a teacher is annoyed by your comments, the larger the chance that they will actually consider them. If you want to use evaluations to vent, this is certainly your right - but you should be aware that your evaluation will then have virtually no impact on the course design.


update a paper after the deadline I have finished my paper for a computer science conference, and I submitted it, but after the deadline a discover the missing of a figure, what if I updated my paper on the Easychair conference organization platform?

If the conference uses the Easychair system for organizing the reviewing process for conferences, then you can check if you can still upload an updated version. This often works, as many conference organizers choose to manually disable the submission of updated versions after the deadline has passed. So if Easychair allows you to still upload an updated version, you can use this functionality. This is because in this case, the assignment of papers to reviewers hasn't been triggered, so nobody should have had a close look at your paper already.

When you cannot upload updated version anymore, the best course of action is to send a new version to the PC chair, asking her/him to update the paper on Easychair manually. Accompany the new version with a list of changes and an apology. If this change list really short and lists easy to recognize problems with the paper (such as a missing figure), the PC chair is likely to forward your updated paper to all reviewers, so that they can do the review on the updated version. They may choose not to, though, because your updated version is late. But if a reviewer hasn't even started looking into your paper (and printing it), they will normally not mind.


Philippine grade equivalent in the UK grading system My GPA for my bachelor's degree here in the Philippines is 1.4259 (equivalent to magna cum laude). In the UK system, to which honors class will it belong?

Converting from one grading scheme to another is a nightmare: How to convert from one grading scheme to another?. In general, you should try and avoid trying to calculate an exact GPA in another system. That said, many US universities have a hard cutoff of a 3.0 GPA and many UK universities have a hard cut off of a 2.1 degree classification. Within these constraints, it seems reasonable to ask if a particular GPA in one system is clearly above, clearly below, or near the minimum admissions bar.

In the UK, there is an attempt to normalize the degree classifications across different universities. This is done by having external examiners on the exam board to prevent grade inflation. At Russell Group universities, about 10-15% of students get 1st class degrees and over 70% of students will get a 2.1 or higher. At lower ranked universities, fewer students will get first and upper second class degrees. Assuming a reasonably respectable university in the Philippines without rampant grade inflation magna cum laude would be well above the 2.1 bar and would probably be close to the 2.1/1st cut off.


Is a journal based on extending Wikipedia articles feasible? A large part of the work in writing a paper in my field (theoretical CS and economics) is writing the introduction, the problem description, the motivation, and the related work. A large part of this writeup repeats in different articles studying a similar problem; thus there is a waste of effort. I thought of initiating a journal in which the authors will be instructed to base this part of their papers on relevant Wikipedia pages. Each article would start with a paragraph such as the following:

"This paper extends the Wikipedia article ABC (version from date of submission). Our contributions are as follows: (a) we prove that the ABC theorem is valid not only for $n=2$ but also for $n=3$. (b) We refute the ABC conjecture for $n=4$. (c) We present an efficient algorithm for solving the ABC problem for the case $n=2$.

The authors are responsible for ensuring that the Wikipedia article at the date of submission is uptodate, contains a complete problem statement, and all relevant related work.
The referees will have to verify this. Then, the rest of the paper will be verified as usual.
If the paper is published, then the new contributions will be added to the ABC page.
Advantages:

The literature survey will be done only once, and it will be kept uptodate.
The notation will be uniform (based on the Wikipedia article).

Current journals will probably not agree to this scheme. But can it work with a new journal? Is this scheme reasonable?

There are already three journals very similar to this idea:

WikiJournal of Medicine
WikiJournal of Science
WikiJournal of Humanities

There is even a UserGroup in which these are operated.


Academic cv items: chronological order or most recent first? I'm curious about the common practices. I'm compiling an (academic) cv. Should I order items chronologically or place the most recent first? What are the considerations?

Edit: And does the recommendation extend to publications and presentations too?

Thanks!

In the UK I've always seen it done in reverse chronological order (most recent first). This may vary from country to country.

A few links seem to indicate that reverse chronological CVs are the norm. The last link there seems to break it down well, element by element.

And for the record, mine is also reverse chronological.

  Publications: a reverse chronological list is a prerequisite, best presented as an appendix. Include journal articles, books or chapters of books, reports and patents
  Research experience: in reverse chronological order. Emphasise specialist/technical expertise, IT skills, plus any skills required for the job. including project and people management
  Education: in reverse chronological order. Focus on higher education onwards. Include awards and scholarships. Include the name of your doctoral supervisor and funding body, if appropriate


I discovered a new analytical integral. How should I present this knowledge? During my research in theoretical physics I encountered a problem that required integrating a space of functions that I don't think has ever been done before. I discovered that these integrals are analytic and can be represented by a linear combination of elliptic and non-elliptic functions which I believe is a rather non-trivial result.

I think this research, while rather esoteric, is nonetheless important enough that the world should know. In my paper this result is buried beneath other more physics-oriented results. My question is this: how should I present this pure-mathematical knowledge to the world? Is there a journal that this kind of result would be suitable for or some mathematical database of known analytical integrals? Not being a pure mathematician I am unfamiliar with the correct protocol.

Thank you!

Edit: After discussing with a pure mathematician I decided to have another look thought Gradshteyn & Ryzhik and I think the result I obtained is probably just a linear combination of known integrals, albeit in a hidden form.

You actually have three choices: physics, pure math, and applied math. It might be useful in any of those domains.
But there are two questions to ask, and they are related.

In which domain is this result most useful?
How is it connected to other things within each of those domains?

A pure mathematician will find the result most interesting if you have strong connections. A physicist or applied mathematician will find it most interesting if it is useful outside its original application.
That's not to say, of course, that any of them would find it uninteresting. But they are all looking for things that can be used to extend their own work.
So, I would try to figure out where it fits most naturally and write it up accordingly, focusing on either the connections or the usefulness. Then send it to any good journal in that domain and listen to the feedback you get. Reviewers may agree that you have chosen correctly or not.


Percentage of PhD's in mathematics with no publications I have recently read the following statistics in the book "The Survival of a Mathematician: From Tenure to Emeritus" by Steven G. Krantz, which seems a little odd:

  It is a hard fact that more than 90% of American Ph.D. mathematicians
  never write a paper. Of those who do, most write just one paper based
  on the Ph.D. thesis and that’s it. Nothing more.

I have seen several new PhD's (graduated in Canada, US, or Europe) with no publications, but my estimate for the rate of such fellows was way more optimistic than the above quote. So, I would like to know:

How accurate is this statistic? Is it documented anywhere?

Are there similar statistics about Mathematics PhD's in other countries?

I sent an email to Professor Krantz mentioning the present discussion and asking him whether his numbers are "supported by published or rigorously gathered data, or your own observations, or are simply meant rhetorically".  Here is his response, posted here with his permission.

Summary: he does not appear to have data at hand to support those numbers, but he believes they are accurate.

  Dear Nate,

  Your question is a good one.

  Certainly my statement is well supported by my own personal
  observation---after forty years in the business.  But I have seen
  sources even recently that say pretty much the same thing.  I'm sorry
  that I can't say what those sources are.

  You can think about the matter this way.  The vast majority of
  academic jobs in this country are at what we call comprehensive
  schools.  And those are places where teaching is the thing.
  Generally speaking, people don't do much research there.  They have to
  publish a paper or two to get tenure, and those papers tend to be
  fairly close to the thesis.  But then that's about it.

  A lot of other people get jobs at the National Security Agency, or Los
  Alamos, or another government think tank.  Generally speaking,
  publishing is not the thing there either.  Sometimes people publish in
  special classfied government journals.

  Other people get jobs at Microsoft or Hewlett-Packard or what have
  you.  And publishing is not the thing there either.

  Those of us who are lucky enough to be in math departments at true
  research universities are definitely in the small minority.

  I believe that, at the time I wrote those words, I consulted some
  people at the American Mathematical Society and they had data to
  support what I was saying.

  Feel free to quote me to others if you wish.

  Best,

  Steve Krantz


In a PhD program of study, what does "emphasis on descriptive material" mean? For example, an interdisciplinary PhD program that I am reading about says this about their program:

"The program differs from the regular departmental offerings in science mainly by its interdisciplinary approach and emphasis on mathematics and physics, with less emphasis on descriptive material from any one discipline."

What does descriptive material mean here?

I'm guessing, but the way I read it is 'you're going to have to do proper calculations, not just waffle'. That is, I would take the 'descriptive material' to be in contrast with 'mathematics and physics'.


How to do research in two very different fields? Most research profiles I've seen focus on a set of similar topics.
Does anyone have experience in partaking in / conducting research in 2+ disparate fields? (especially if 1 of the fields is pretty different than what they studied in an institution)

For example:

Pure mathematics and biology (e.g. solving an open math problem and studying purring in cats)
Aerospace engineering and psychology (e.g. modeling vortices and researching psychological effects of isolation)

If a person had interest in researching a multiple, ranging topics, what advice would you give them? How do you think they should go about doing it? (if you'd recommend they do it at all)

Edit - I'm an undergraduate mechanical engineering student. I'm interested in eventually researching two topics, one in my chosen field, one in genetics.

You can find a way to tie math into damn near any field or topic. Often at the graduate level you end up working with tools from "outside" of your discipline to solve a problem within it, or using the machinery of your field to solve otherwise-untenable problems in another. It's getting very multi-disciplinary out here, and very translational, and whatever other term you like for that kind of thing.

Essentially, if the tools are applicable across fields, it's no big deal: your literature familiarity just has to have more breadth than typical. If they're legitimately unrelated and you aren't interested in trying to connect then or your solutions to the problems in the fields, it will be a very hard row to hoe.

From a fellow MechE, take further classes in both and see which field looks most promising and exciting to you and follow that one professionally. Keep up with the other casually and consider how your understanding of one facilitates your work in the other.

Good luck!


What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper? I arrived at the printer room this afternoon to collect my printing and I happened to notice that someone was yet to collect a printout of the gravitational waves paper that has been all over the scientific news the last few days/weeks. Of course, I was curious, so I had a peek.

It struck me that there was only one author... until I saw the asterisk indicating a full list of authors could be found at the end of the article.

There I found three full pages of authors. I have no intention of counting the exact number, but a quick estimate by word count suggests there are over 1000 authors from 133 institutions.

You always need to give credit where credit is due, that is a given. But to put it in context, there are at most 7 words of article per author. In fact, I can think of a number of problems coming from so many authors (like who do you contact if you have a question - the list is alphabetical and there doesn't appear to be a designated contact person).

What is the value of listing so many authors and why should (or shouldn't) it happen?

Update:
Thanks everyone for the thoughtful answers. As much as I want to choose an answer, I honestly cannot decide between the two most upvoted, so I'm going to abstain from choosing one.

The "point" of 1000 authors is to recognize that 1000 people contributed to the paper at a level sufficient to be considered authors, according to the standards of that particular field.

In some fields (including high-energy physics), large numbers of authors are not unusual. See e.g. the 2015 paper estimating the mass of the Higgs boson with 5,154 authors. This kind of research often involves very large teams spanning multiple institutions. Typically papers published as a result of a collaboration are credited to all members of the team.

For more information see Report by the Working Group on Authorship in Large Scientific Collaborations in Experimental High Energy Physics.


Second round of review is taking longer than the first one Few months ago, I have submitted my manuscript to a very reputed journal. After 80 days, I got the first decision (major revision) with very simple comments from 3 reviewers. The status in the last 15 days was "Awaiting Editors Decision".

After submitting the revised version, I am still waiting for almost 3 months with one status "In peer review". Up to my knowledge, the second round should be shorter than the first one. In addition, I checked published papers in the same journal, where the second round was very short in all of them.

I am wondering, what is heppening with my submission.

Lots of things can happen to delay the review process. For instance, heavy teaching commitments in the winter can slow things down, although they should now be over. Also, there really should be no correlation between the reviewing times for an original submission and a resubmit after major revision. The referee has to essentially start from scratch.

But after three months, I would say you are entitled to a polite reminder letter to the editor.


What is the term for a list of interviews? If 'bibliography' is a list of literature and 'discography' is a list of musical recordings, is there a term for a list of interviews?

Of course I could just cite everything under 'references' but my research is varied and covers many different media, and it would be good to know the term for a list of interviews [of course, I could just write "interviews" but I would prefer to know the proper term if there is one].

I don't know how they call a list of interviews, but in practical terms, I would simply use "Interviews" as heading for the relevant section. I've seen this quite frequently.


My CS teacher thinks I'm cheating for some reason, what do I say? I took a computer science test today and finished it by using lists, and it worked fine. We didn't actually learn lists yet, but I sort of understood how they worked, so I used them anyway. My cs teacher just came into my breakout room and asked me the functions of the code, and I explained it, and for some reason he thinks I cheated?? What?
I showed him my history and there wasn't anything suspicious about it. I just figured out the answer within 10 minutes which was apparently really fast. I quite literally explained each function of each individual word, and he just said "I'll think about it." I have a meeting with admin and parents real soon, and I don't know what to say, because I didn't use any outside sources. I already explained the functions of my code, and even though I may have been a bit suspicious since I used code we haven't learned yet, he never said we couldn't, and even said it was fine when he entered my breakout room.
He also doesn't have any proof that I cheated off of anyone, so I'm pretty sure I'm fine, but I'm still really worried. What am I supposed to do?

You seem to have done exactly the right thing, explaining your work. Just keep insisting that you didn't cheat. It isn't your job to prove your innocence.
And no, there is nothing wrong about learning things other than what has appeared already in lectures.
I'll guess that the professor had an idea about what answers "should be" based on the current point in the course and didn't anticipate using tools not yet introduced. But unless there are clear instructions to the contrary, there is nothing wrong with using what you know.
If you are really accused, then next steps might be to see a student support office or escalate to the department head. But hopefully it won't come to that.


How to reference observational evidence? Talking about work practices at a business, and hearing first hand from the manager how the employees conduct their work - how can I reference this anecdotal evidence in an academic paper? Alternatively, I could discount the anecdotal evidence and instead conduct an analysis of the work environment myself (i.e. looking at how the work environment operates) - but then I am left in the position of referencing myself! Please advise.

One idea is that you can perform some formal or informal interviews with parties involved in the subject of your research / interest. This is pretty much a standard research method for qualitative studies. Then, you can reference those interviews in a traditional way (in accordance with your preferred publication style guide), in addition to placing them in one of appendices of your paper as well as summarizing and analyzing the facts toward discovering some patterns or other findings.


How to keep up with new publications and conferences. RSS feed? I'm curious to know how you keep up with new publications in your field and various conferences that are happening. I seem to miss really great conferences and find articles a year or more after they have been published.

How do you keep track? Have you tried an RSS feed?

Yes, the sea of information is immense, but you can keep a pretty good handle on it, especially with the tools available today. And one key to remember is that research is done by people. Often there is a core group of scholars in each field that do the most to move that field forward. Here are a few ideas of what you could do, and certainly there are more:

Use alerts on Google Scholar or other search engines
Follow other researchers in your field on social media
Meet some of the other researchers in your field, if you haven't already, and keep in touch with them
Do a search every so often just to see what is out there. You can also search in other ways, such as for a particular researcher or group and see the direction their articles is going in.


Should I put a disclaimer on the first page of my thesis after making some corrections which are not allowed by the university? My university doesn't let me make any corrections to my PhD thesis manuscript after defending it because all the members of the jury signed that no corrections are necessary. Not even typos.
My supervisor is insisting I make the corrections we mentioned during my defense because he finds them necessary and to leave a few copies in the lab's library.
However, since this is not technically allowed. I'm thinking of putting a disclaimer on the first page, something like: "This is a private copy".

My university doesn't let me make any corrections to my PhD thesis manuscript after defending it because all the members of the jury signed that no corrections are necessary. Not even typos.

You must follow your university guidelines.

My supervisor is insisting I make the corrections we mentioned during my defense because he finds them necessary and to leave a few copies in the lab's library.

You should explain to your supervisor that the university has forbidden such changes. Presumably they are either unaware of the university's ruling or they know some exception.

However, since this is not technically allowed. I'm thinking of putting a disclaimer on the first page, something like: "This is a private copy".

You are free to make unofficial versions of your thesis available. Suitably marking such variants is advised to avoid confusion and a disclaimer is suitable for this purpose. Rather than This is a private copy, I suggest something more informative, e.g., The official version of this thesis is available from the university's library. This version differs from the original as follows: xxx.


what is the best email type to request for Phd position Recently I have found a great PHD position which on some aspect exactly fit with my CV.
I am looking for the best email type to introduce my self to the professor? what information are necessary on my email.

Do you show me any examples or links?

Answer the 5 W's: Who, What, Where, When, and Why.

Honestly my thought is skip the full introduction in the email. Instead, state that you are a phd student, and you believe the position fit in with your cv and you wish to have a in person meeting/or phone meeting to discuss this. Keep the email short and sweet. Once you meet the professor, discuss with him.


Potential conflict-of-interest: Submitting a paper to a conference with advisor (and co-author) as keynote speaker and on the advisory committee? We are planning to submit a manuscript to a conference. However, my advisor (and co-author on this paper) is a keynote speaker in the conference, as well being a part of the advisory committee (not the program committee or organizing committee). Will there be a conflict of interest if I submit the paper to this conference? I don't think either of these roles (as an advisory committee member or a keynote speaker) has anything to do with the reviewing of the papers submitted, but I wanted to confirm this. I have asked my advisor, but haven't received a response from him yet.

Maybe if the aim was to be completely pure, then this would be considered a conflict of interest.  However, it's unlikely that your advisor would have any role in the reviewing of papers, though I suppose it is theoretically possible he could put unfair pressure on the program committee.
In fact, it is quite common for conferences to allow authors to submit papers even when there is someone on the program committee with a genuine conflict of interest.  They put in place measures that try to keep program committee members from participating in decisions on those papers.  Generally, program committee members with a conflict of interest on a paper do not even see any discussion on that paper, much less participate in any decisions on them.  (In the old days, they left the room if that paper was discussed.  Now they simply do not have access to the reviews of that paper or the discussion thread concerning that papers.)
This became necessary because no one would serve on program committees if it meant none of their advisees could submit papers.  Many conferences have had to further relax this rule and allow program committee members to be non-presenting (non-first) co-authors of papers.


Why do some conferences ask authors whether a paper they are submitting to the conference was published in arXiv? Why do some conferences ask authors whether a paper they are submitting to the conference was published in arXiv?

Example:

  Submitted elsewhere or arxiv? Is the paper being submitted, or has it been submitted to another conference/workshop? If so, put the name of the other conference/workshop in the box below. If your paper is on arxiv.org or similar place please mention this here.

Presumably some reviewers check for plagiarism, so it is useful for them to know that there exists a preprint out there that is expected to significantly overlap with the submission they are reviewing.

From the CFP for the conference you gave as an example:

  Reviewers will be told: “The author(s) have notified us that there exists a non-archival previous version of this paper with significantly overlapping text. We have approved submission under these circumstances, but to preserve the spirit of blind review, the current submission does not reference the non-archival version.” Reviewers are free to do what they like with this information.


Should I cite my supervisor in a thesis? I am currently writing up a thesis and was wondering if one should cite the PhD supervisors on insights that were solely their idea?

As an example I have a sentence in the thesis that looks something like this in the outlook section at the end of the thesis:

  We noticed {cool new phenomenon}, which we suspect to be a result of {awesome effect/explanation}. The details are currently under investigation.

Now my supervisor and I discovered this phenomenon together, but she came up with the explanation without my input. One could say that "we" means "my supervisor and I" in a thesis, but then the author of the document is just me.

I was wondering what proper citation practice is on something like this?

Options:

Maybe I can put a reference to "superviorName, date, private communication"? Is that enough though
Explicitly putting their name into the formulation, e.g.

  My supervisor {supervisor name} and I noticed {cool new phenomenon}. {supervisor name} found this to be a result of {awesome effect/explanation}. The details are currently under investigation.

I think it is common and well-known that the supervisor sometimes helps the PhD student. In fact, the main work of the supervisor is giving ideas that they come up with due to their experience and knowledge. In many cases, this ideas will not work, in some cases they may. It is up to the PhD student to work out the details and see what comes out in the end.
Thus, I don't think that you should cite your supervisor at every idea she came up with. It should of course be clear in the document who supervised you and you might want to add an acknowledgement.

Two small points to finish:

If the result is important enough for a stand alone publication, i.e. if you are writing a paper out of it, your supervisor deserves to be one of the authors (then again, this should be rather common for most papers written by a PhD student...).
If you are in doubt, ask your supervisor about it. She will know how to write it and you can be sure that she agrees with your choice.


Research related questions from industrial researchers to academic researchers If an academic researcher wants to ask research related question or to start a collaboration etc. with another academic researcher, it is usually a matter of a polite and specific email. I have seem such initiatives from academic researchers towards industrial researchers (e.g., a postdoc asking about technicalities of a paper written by a Google researcher directly to the Google researcher).
Is such research correspondence, without any prior research contracts/agreements between the academic institution and industrial researcher's company, also common from the other way around (i.e., an industrial researcher initiating a correspondence to an academic researcher)?
How about research correspondence between researchers in two different companies?
I am thinking of transiting to industrial research from academia and genuinely curious about this.

Disclosure: I am a researcher working in industry.

I think that the rule of thumb is: make it as simple as is wise, but not simpler (paraphrasing Einstein).

Always make it clear who you are (name, company, etc), and what your intent is (e.g., better understanding of a paper, creating your own implementation of an algorithm in a scientific publication for research purposes only, developing a new product based on a scientific publication, writing a patent, etc).

Be open and honest (e.g., do not claim that you just want to understand something, when in reality you want to use it in the development of a product).

If you are asking about quite generic technicalities (e.g., something you might also publicly ask to a speaker in a conference), you might just drop an email and ask. As long as you do not disclose any confidential information, and you do not expect so from the researcher, you just can ask the question.

When you do need to disclose confidential information (e.g., specifics about a product your company is developing), you will need to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).

Also be aware that if you are asking the academic researcher to do work for you beyond just answering an email, or provide you with something of value (e.g., working code belonging to a scientific publication) a monetary reimbursement is in place.

For the latter two items it is quite likely that you will need to involve other people within your company (the legal department, a budget holder, your boss, ...) before reaching out.


How to Approach Students with Different Expectations on Coding Lab Sessions as a TA I am a TA for undergraduate Introduction to Programming class at freshman level. I usually have around 30 students per semester who have two hours of lecture earlier during the week with their professor then the applied three hours of lab hour with me. The labs start from how to compile and run code to variable assignments and arithmetic operations, flow control, arrays and very brief introduction to object oriented programming.

My problem stems from the fact that my university does not admit students into particular departments. They start as engineering students and select a diploma programme at the end of their freshman year. Furthermore, only computer science has a class for freshman year, all other departments start their department courses after students have picked their programme. This creates a bias for students who will pick other majors, such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, even electrical engineering. I often get asked, "Why am I taking this course?"

During my lab hours, I have a quarter of the students who are eager to learn and want to discuss programming with me, mostly composed of those who will pick computer science programme. The rest feels like they don't even want to be there, will get vocal when the assignment challenges them, disrupting the entire class (they are in the majority anyway). A lot of cases of cheating happen regularly which is automatically handled and they get a zero grade, after which they find ways to cheat the similarity detection by altering the shared code. My solution, which I am not definitely happy with, is giving into their demands, spelling out or sometimes typing the solutions. While they distribute the code among themselves and alter it to avoid cheat detection, I have enough time to tend to the first portion of students who actually benefit from the lab sessions.

This is my third semester, all of which were almost identical regarding this issue
As a TA, I have very little control over the content of the course itself, I do prepare lab material but according to guidelines set by the lecturers.
The professors are aware of the issue, I have brought it up numerous times. they are not happy with the universities policy either but the problem is often brushed away
It feels like discrimination towards students, which is a concept I don't want to have in my classroom
I know what I'm doing is not ethical and I'm not happy with it, yet there doesn't seem to be a better solution.

My questions then would be: how can I approach the class and handle this issue. I really would like to reach the majority of students who think programming is not beneficial to them as well as help the minority of the students to prepare them for the upcoming (and much harder) classes.

I often get asked, "Why am I taking this course?"

There are some courses that are required regardless of major. Similar questions could be asked of mathematics faculty. However, it turns out that not only math majors are obligated to attend calculus courses.

I come from a institution that is similarly organized, namely, the first year is the same for all engineering students, which afterwards chose their respective major. This common year contains introductory courses: math, physics, computer science and electronics.

The school's curriculum is as it is, it can be good, it can be made better, but neither you or the students are in a position to influence it, let alone change it. So, stop thinking badly about you or your course, there is nothing wrong with either (at least nothing deducible from the question).

My advice to you is to stick to a medium curriculum, i.e. one that upholds the criterium of the course but is of reasonable difficulty for the average student,  and, if required by your TA agreement, make yourself available for (again reasonable) office hours, where struggling students can find help. And by help, I don't mean that you solve the problems for them, but to help them understand the material.

Students that are on a more advanced level can be motivated with additional assignments, projects or literature, while those "dissatisfied" need to provide the bare minimum effort for passing the course or fail. The same as with any other course.

The same approach is applied to cheating. The fact that someone doesn't want to attend a compulsory course does not entitle them to cheat and such behavior should be reported to the proper authorities.

In short: Don't give in to guilt or sympathy, you have a course to TA and nothing to be sorry about. Uphold the institution standards in teaching, grading, helping and maintaining discipline.


I'm applying to transfer, and am filling out the Common App. Should I put Yes to disciplinary action? I am currently applying to transfer colleges, and one of the questions the Common App asks is:

  Have you ever been found responsible for a disciplinary violation at any educational institution you have attended from the 9th grade (or the international equivalent) forward, whether related to academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct, that resulted in a disciplinary action? These actions could include, but are not limited to: probation, suspension, removal, dismissal, or expulsion from the institution.

Last April, I attended a dormroom party at which there was alcohol. This party was broken up by the RA. A lot of people fled, although I remained and cooperated. I was not drunk at the time.

The consequences were that I (along with a few others who remained) had to help plan a study session. At the time the hall coordinator told me that I was being placed on a probationary period of 3 months, and that if I wasn't caught attending another party within that 3 month period, the incident would be expunged from my record. There have been no other incidents since then, so I assume it was removed from my record.

Should I provide the details of this event to the Common App? Will this affect my chances of admission to another college?

This is likely to be closed, as we do not discuss undergraduate admissions here. Still, I'll take a stab at it.

My understanding is that the whole point of "expungement" is to allow you to answer no to questions like this (unless the question specifically says to include expunged matters, as is sometimes the case, e.g., with law students). That's certainly the case when  legal matters are expunged; I assume it is the same for in-house educational matters.

Still, I would recommend doing two things:

Don't just "assume it was removed from my record" -- verify. Ask specifically whether other colleges who request your records will learn about this. Note, this is the kind of thing where it's easy for someone incompetent to just say "nope, it won't show up" to get you off the phone -- so keep asking questions until you're really satisfied. Getting an in-person meeting with a career employee (not a student worker) or the associate dean might be better than just calling on the phone and asking the receptionist.
Contact the college you want to transfer to (anonymously, if you like) and ask whether they require you to disclose expunged matters on the common application.

If you can get it in writing that you don't have to (and save this
reply in permanent storage), that should be sufficient to protect you
if you are accused of anything later.
If you discuss this over the
phone and are told not to report it, but can't get it in writing,
send admissions an e-mail, in which you say "This is just to confirm
what I discussed on the phone with Name at 8:00 AM on 12/1. As we
discussed, expunged disciplinary matters need not be reported on the
common application for transfer students. Please let me know if this
is incorrect." Then retain this e-mail and their reply, if they send one.

As to the second part of your question, yes, if reported this could certainly adversely affect your changes of admission (and improperly concealing it could lead to your degree being revoked).


What should I do if the lab I am studying at uses a language that I do not understand? The lab I am studying at is using a language which I completely do not understand at the current time. Almost all of the discussions and presentations are in this language. Sometimes the lab members explain what they are going to talk about before starting their presentations but is it extremely brief compared to what they present in their native language and I think I am missing a lot of knowledge because of this.

It is the official language of the country I am studying in. But because of the fact the the lab is researching at the area of computing and my supervisor and some of the lab members have participated in international conferences, I did not expect the communication gap to be this huge to the degree that is hard for me to understand the research environment at my lab.

I understand that I should learn the language my lab is using but it takes time and I am currently spending most of my time studying for my master degree (in computer engineering) and doing research and I think this has more priority than learning the language...

One of the reasons of joining labs is to get a chance to discuss things with people who have almost same research interests as yours and I feel this goal has not being accomplished because of the communication gap.

Let's assume you want to stay where you are.  (If not, well, then the problem disappears when you change institutions.)

You are right that it would take a big time commitment and many months to master the language.  However, a reasonable time investment can yield a partial pay-off.  Attend class for three hours a week, put in six hours of practice and study per week at home.  That should be doable, don't you think?

What would this accomplish?  This would show good faith.  This would get you somewhat better connected to people.  This would enable you to understand a few words here and there in the discussions.  Which would help you be more engaged in the group sessions.  The people in your working group will view you differently, more positively, when they see you struggling to say, "Where can I buy a pair of gloves?"

The main things that are going to help you in a direct way:

Prepare for the group meetings.  Have someone explain to the group that you would like to read documents related to each date's topic(s) ahead of time.
Find a meeting buddy or two.  The meeting buddy will be sitting next to you in meetings, jotting down helpful notes.  It is surprising how helpful it is to know what is being spoken about at any given time.  Work out a signal with your meeting buddy, to indicate a reminder to write down the topic.

To recruit your meeting buddies, you will need to be outgoing, fearless, and friendly with your colleagues' children.  Perhaps offer to babysit, tutor them in English.

If you can afford it, you could hire a translator to attend meetings with you.


Will doing a master's thesis in an unrelated field hurt my job prospects? I am having trouble with this study situation. Recently I was offered a master thesis topic at work where I work a part time student job.  My role is Java Developer and master thesis topic is related to software development.  However, the master study I am currently enrolled is in Electronics Engineering.  My bachelor was also in Electronics.  But my all previous full time work experiences are in the software industry.
Now I am wondering if it is a bad thing on my resume if my master thesis topic is not directly related to Electronics. Am I hurting my profile here if my goal is to find a full time job quickly?

If your advisor is happy and the local job market is aligned, then do which ever you want. For longer term goals it might be different. But your employability is probably determined by what you have done recently.


Are there any drawbacks in adding hyperlinks in PhD application email? I'm writing an application email to a professor for a PhD program. One dilemma that I have is whether I should add hyperlinks and if there are any problems in doing that. Consider the imaginary paragraph below:

  ... and I currently work under supervision of professor
  Foobar in laboratory of blabla at
  University of ...

Is this a bad practice? Is there any chance that they neglect the convenience of a single click because of a the visual incoherency of the text?

P.S. Are still any email client that shows the actual url instead of hyperlink text?

My personal remark:
I am not particularly fan of clicking all around links in an email I just got from a stranger, however natural and official looking it is.

From reader engagement point of view:
Links directly included to the text actually invite the reader to interrupt their reading and click and go to the website of another university, reading this and that there, instead of reading your mail! It is exactly you don't want, becasue you want her/him to stay and read your mail from start to end. If you really want to link, I would make a separate short paragraph at the end or in P.S., something like "for your convenience, here are links to blablabla". That way the reader easily can reach those websites, IF she/he chooses and AFTER she/he read your message.


Do professors discuss about grad students (not necessarily their students)? Do professors discuss about their PhD students or other PhD students and their performance or likelihood of being successful? Grad student community is much smaller than undergraduate community and often a professor has just handful of PhD students under them. So, it is possible the other professors might know about an underperforming or overachieving student from a different group.

If yes, what is the nature of discussions that they have? How often do they feel the need to advise or provide assistance to a student that might have caught their eye?

Yes, faculty do this all the time. They talk about their progress, their attitude towards research, and actively seek advice on how to deal with some situations. This is a positive thing in my opinion, paraphrasing: it takes a village to raise a grad student!


What is meant by a "permanent working paper"? I just came across an Oxford University Associate Professor's personal webpage. After the sections of "publications" and "working papers", he also happened to have a section (with only one paper in it), titled "Permanent Working paper". While I do have a guess, I was hoping if someone could shed some light on the meaning of this. I imagine it is a paper that the author thought does not publish well, or that it has some interesting ideas, but it is not worth publishing. However, I may be wrong.

Without knowing what the paper is, it's hard to tell, but here is a situation where that might make sense:
Many permanent organizations -- say, the National Labs in the United States, NASA, or large research organization in other countries -- have an archive for papers that might not be research-y enough to be published in journals, but are still useful to be kept in a permanent archive. Think articles that provide very specific data about the aerodynamics of a particular wing shape that someone has investigated in the 1960s. Or an evaluation of certain materials to build a nuclear reactor. These are in essence the outcomes of engineering work, not of research, and are often not published in research journals.
These archives go by different names. "Permanent working paper" is one of the names that one could use for this. The point is that they are "working papers" in the sense that someone is "working with the data shown therein", and they are "permanent" in the sense that this is not work in progress.


Miswritten reference in (in press) paper A paper A has been published recently with a big publisher. The article is available as early access, but it is still in press, i.e. not yet assigned to a volume. In that paper, our paper B was cited, however, the reference in text and in the reference list is written completely wrong - to the point that other researchers would have a hard time finding B, or understanding who wrote B.

I contacted the authors of A, without getting a response. Is it appropriate to contact the editor of the journal that published A, and ask him/her to correct the mistake? What other action should be taken, if any?

Definitely yes. It's in your best business to have your work cited properly so that it can be disseminated in the community, and the editor's/publisher's responsibility is to provide texts of highest possible quality. Even if they say (some journals indeed do this) that they are not responsible for authors' mistakes, it's a situation where the journal might gain a reputation of one that doesn't care about the quality of its content (so people won't take the research published there seriously), makes poor editting and is sloppy. That's exactly what I thought when trying to find a cited paper with completely messed up metrics (and couldn't, eventually; also the authors didn't respond to my e-mails). So in fact the editor should be grateful for pointing out such a mistake as you're partly doing their job - and for free, even!


How does a suspended student deal with an unprofessional university counselor? I am a suspended student and I have been getting counseling for three months. During those three months, I have noticed extremely unprofessional behavior from my counselor.

When I started counseling, he was late each time. The first time he was late 10 minutes, the next 20 minutes and the third time 30 minutes.

Last week I had a counseling appointment and I drove 35 minutes to get on campus only to find out that the counselor was absent. He didn't email me or tell me not to come, nothing.

After my suspension period ends, the counselor has to decide whether I am fit to come back to the university or not, and many times I get literally threatened with not coming back - if for example I do this or that behavior. I literally get told "then, you're not coming back to the university".

Often, I see the counselor is eating while with me and he has no respect for the appointments for other students as well. Phone calls aren't answered. Emails aren't often answered except some few after three or four days.

There was couple of times when our counseling session was about literally 5 minutes. I came in, he asked me what I did in the week, then he said "Okay, I'll see you next time". And, he went on to work on the computer.

Additional Information: My counseling session was in the morning around 9:00AM every Tuesday. Suddenly, once day, without even taking my opinion, he says that someone else took the appointment at 9:00AM. He switched my appointment till 5:00PM. I objected. He said he had an emergency and it was more important than me. He said he had no other time than this time, at 5:00PM. I found out later that the person who took my appoitment was a customer for him, who is not a student.

What should I do? On one side, I can't ditch the counselor since that would jeopardize my coming to the university. On another side, I do not want a counselor to help me deal with another counselor.

For those who are asking, my suspension is behavioral suspension and not academic suspension, and the counselor stated that I suffer from depression based on tests that I took.

I suggest getting another counselor, not to help you cope with the first one, but to help you with the issues that got you suspended in the first place.

The combination of counselor and gatekeeper for your return to the university seems to me to be an inherent problem. It would be difficult to be really frank with the gatekeeper.


How should I cite 3 images that were used to compose a new image? I used three images from Wikipedia to compose them to a new image. All other images (not that many) are created by myself.

How should I cite them?

The images are:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Computer-aj_aj_ashton_01.svg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Server-multiple.svg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Server_by_mimooh.svg

I currently use the following text below the description (within the caption):

  The image of a desktop computer on the top left is from
                \url{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Computer-aj_aj_ashton_01.svg}
                and was created by an unknown artist,
                the server image on the top right is from
                \url{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Server-multiple.svg} and
  was created by RRZEicons and
                the images that was used three times for classification workers is from
                \url{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Server_by_mimooh.svg} and
  was created by Mimooh.

The first image is sourced to OpenClipArt.org, which releases images into the public domain specifically to simplify your life in cases like this.  OpenClipArt specifically releases under the Creative Commons Zero license to enable this.  For such images, as well as anything else in the public domain (e.g., most images published by the US Government), there is no requirement for specific attribution.

It is courteous to add a discrete note on the sourcing, and it would be dishonest for you to claim to be the artist, but the a major part of the reason that people build public domain image repositories is to let people build them into diagrams and other images without dealing with the attribution problem that you face. Since there are lots of these sorts of server diagram images on OpenClipArt.org, I would strongly suggest that you see if you can replace your current images with public domain images.

If you don't do this, then for the attribution-required images the figure caption should include the website references, just as you would reference a paper that you reproduced an image from.  For example, you may phrase it: "Server images adapted from [cite1,cite2]" where the citations give the appropriate online document citation, just as you would if you were citing any other webpage.  This is kind of a pain, and easy to lose track of if you reuse the images in other contexts, which is why I strongly recommend using non-attribution licensed images whenever possible.


I wonder if my PhD from Turkey is recognized in Germany or not? I have got my PhD on Production management and marketing from Marmara University in Istanbul. How can I check if my PhD is recognized in Germany? Please help me by introducing an organization in Berlin that I can go and ask directly.

According to the anabin database ("The database provides information for evaluating foreign education certificates and supporting authorities, employers and individuals to classify a foreign qualification in the German education system."), Marmara University is recognized in the H+ category, meaning that:

  Die Institutionen dieses Typs sind im jeweiligen Herkunftsland in maßgeblicher Weise als Hochschulen anerkannt (akkreditiert, attestiert ua) und ausgehend davon in Deutschland als Hochschulen anzusehen. Besonders für Länder der ehemaligen sozialistischen Welt sind auch Forschungsinstitute erfasst, da an ihnen Promotionen und Habilitationen möglich sind.

or from Google Translate:

  The institutions of this type are recognized in their country of origin in significant ways as universities (accredited, certified, etc.) and starting it regarded in Germany as universities. Especially for countries of the former socialist world and research institutes are recognized as promotions and Habilitation are available to them. Since these qualifications are equivalent to universities, research institutions are also assigned to this category. Attention! The classification as H + simply means that accounts which have been achieved in this device can be subjected to equivalence study in higher education. A preliminary decision as to whether the financial statements of these means can be assimilated German university degrees, thus is not connected.

So, it would seem that your qualification is recognised in this sense, but if you are thinking of applying e.g. for a postdoc, you should write to your prospective employer(s) detailing your situation and what this equivalency relates to in terms of your job search.


I had a "quarrel" with my bachelor thesis advisor, should I ask him to be my one of my referees for grad application? Last year this happened to me :
I have asked a professor if he were available for being my graduate thesis advisor, now my bachelor thesis advisor is angry with me

After that, I decided to apologize with professor X: I sent him an e-mail in which I said that it wasn't my intention to offend him by contacting Y. I said I was sorry things went that way, and I thanked him for everything he taught me nonetheless.

After a month or so, he sent me an e-mail in which he said he pursued the research he meant to assign me on his own, and published a paper in which he mentioned my contribution. He said he was sorry that we couldn't make it together, but if I have to be honest it sounded to me as if he wanted to show me the occasion I lost: I could have authored another paper...

I switched to another field of study (same major, but different topic), and I have an excellent advisor. He knows what happened with my prievous one, and blames X, not me.

However, I need three recommendation letters for grad. applications, and I don't know whether to ask X or not for one. After all, I wrote a paper with him, and that's one of the strongest points of my application. It would be even stronger if the co-author could write on my behalf. In addition, its absence among the referee would be suspicious.

On the other hand, I don't trust X anymore. He already said "yes" to me smiling, whilst was thinking "no". He could act as if he wasn't angry with me anymore, and instead write a terrible recommendation letter...

So, any suggestion?

Based on your history with him, and the fact that he insinuated that you were "mentally unstable" in a previous email - no, you should avoid this individual like the plague.

Perhaps ask the head of the department for a recommendation, explaining the situation?  They may be able to write about your work in the department and explain why your first adviser was not asked to provide a letter.


I need to change PhD topics. Should I pursue one of my advisor's ideas, or one of my own? I had an idea for a PhD proposal and found a supervisor for that topic. My supervisor is pretty busy and is reachable only once every month or two at best.

Unfortunately, I saw that my research topic could be usable only for publishing a paper, but not to develop something really novel that could justify its presence in a PhD thesis. Thus, I feel like I've "wasted" a couple years of my PhD.

When I realized that my current research was not enough for a PhD thesis, I came up with another idea related to the same field and topic, but the problem is that my supervisor is not an expert in the field that I am proposing. To discover this other technique I spent an additional year.

Now I have the following courses of action:

Since my supervisor is not an expert into the field that I am proposing, then I should try to find a co-supervisor at another university. This is not so easy because a lot of professors have their own set of students to advise.
My supervisor has a list of projects that could serve ås PhD research topics, but I'm not so interested in those topics. However, I need to graduate so I am seriously thinking of picking one of them. The problem is that I am very rusty in the background of the topics he has because since I haven't looked at those topics since my bachelor's program.
I am pretty confident that I can continue to develop my new idea by myself, even though I know that is going to be pretty difficult. The problem is that I will have to do it all by myself, and my supervisor will not be able to give me any advice because it is not his field of expertise.

If anybody is curious my PhD is in Computer Science.

So what should I do? Should I aim for a new topic or should I stick to my "feelings" that I can make my proposal work, even I have to do it alone.

Big Fat Note On Timing: First and foremost here, make sure to changing your topic is allowed by your supervisor. Then your supervisor will check the time you have left and will point out if you can do it or not. You don't want to change a topic while your supervisor do not know about it.

Answer On Changing the PhD Topic With Your Supervisor Agreement

Ok, I did my PhD in CS as well; also was very close to change it for two times as my supervisor was not as an expert I thought he would be. So here my takes on changing your topic as a CS PhD student:

1.What you have gained so far?: Without comparing yourself to anyone else, are you deep down happy with your progress and how much did you gained, knowledge wise, so far? The conclusion in this point brings me to the second point.

2. Problem is Environment or Yourself?: After thinking about how much you have done, if the sadness relates to the environment (such as supervisor) or yourself (such as the issue of focus).

2.1 If the problem is you: If the problem is you then, changing your topic does not change a thing. Now you might say well "I will change myself"; this is not as easy you might think and you might need professional help on this. If you see you need help and the supervisor is not helping either or even recognizing that you are having an issue, then you need to think seriously on how to get help. This is very important, as you might get depressed without doing anything wrong. You see what I'm trying to say here?

2.2 Problem Is Supervisor: It is more common as you might think, so in this case, if you have the ability to do the PhD, then YOU need to inform the supervisor about the changes and YOU need to decide what you want to do. This might get ugly at times, because if the supervisor does not know the topic and tells you, your thesis is total rubbish, you should know "well I'm submitting it and defending it regardless". So basically, take the control of the situation from start to finish.

2.3 Problem is Topic: To be honest I doubt it, because most of the time the problem is based on the first two sub points. Anyway if this is the case, then change the topic. Don't listen to supervisor to do a topic in a field he/she did not publish a thing for the last 5 years. Be honest to yourself and your supervisor ability before choosing it. This should be also discussed with your supervisor as well, don't accept anything without knowledge. I recommend to choose a topic that your supervisor is known for. If your supervisor works on software testing and you want to do a topic on code generation, things might not go well.