Should a professor discuss his/her reviews (given by students) in class? The question is inspired by this image posted on reddit. Would this be considered a constructive step towards improving the interaction with students and the teaching in general? To clarify, I am talking about the reviews that the department or college solicits from students towards the end of the course, aka student feedback.

When I was teaching at a German university and we received course feedback, we were required to inform the students about the feedback. So while the feedback was anonymously given by each student (online), the students should get general feedback on how the course was evaluated. For some that meant simply sending the questionnaire summary to the students, but many discussed the evaluation in the last lecture.

For me it made sense to discuss the results:

You get an opportunity to thank the students for positive feedback.
You get an opportunity to clarify contradicting or unclear feedback (e.g., talks to fast vs. talks to slow).
You can also address 'below the belt' feedback. I think you can say anything if you do it with respect. And giving feedback -- even highly critical feedback -- with respect is something that students should learn, if only to prevent huge problems in the future where a lack of respect is ... less tolerated.
You can show students how to constructively deal with feedback (if you can deal with feedback). I think you should both take the feedback serious and add some humor (i.e., take yourself lightly but the job seriously). Otherwise, you are not only alienating the current students but also future students.
You can get feedback in the very last lecture. In some courses, the feedback was requested during the phase with the highest stress levels. Students only saw what they had learned and how they had benefited later.


Reporting yet-to-be completed graduate study on CV I am currently enrolled as a graduate student and am working towards my PhD. I need to update my CV and was wondering how others reported ongoing graduate study when the completion date was uncertain. That is, I know that I'll be graduating in, say, 2019 +/-3 years, and therefore can't honestly list my graduate work as, say,

  XYZ University, PhD, (Expected 2019)

Would something like:

  XYZ University, Graduate Study, (2014-).

be clear enough? I think that most people in my field will correctly assume that this is graduate study towards a PhD. However, it is probably not ideal to rely on assumptions. Another idea is:

  XYZ University, PhD, (2014-).

But I think it could be read as though the degree is practically complete, which might come off as a bit presumptuous. What about replacing "PhD" with "PhD (in progress)". This seems to fix the "presumptuous" question but also seems less clean.

To be clear, I'm more concerned about the phrasing than the formatting of line. (Although I recognize that certain formatting styles may convey the proper message more effectively.) Any thoughts or additional ideas appreciated.

I would recommend a slightly different phrasing, to explicitly stating the start and expected duration of your program:

  XYZ University, PhD, (2014 - 2019 [anticipated])

This conveys clearly the important information of how far along you are in your doctoral studies.
Most people know that there can be a great deal of variation in the completion of a Ph.D., and nobody expects that you can predict the future, so if you later shift the date forward or back, it should not be taken amiss by anyone reading the C.V.


Getting into new field after tech career / PhD in STEM, should i start a new degree as undergrad or at postgrad level I have an undergrad and PhD in a STEM field (engineering), and a few publications in some decent journals. since passing my PhD, i've been working in a management position in a tech company for the last few years, but needing some mental stimulation / diversification, started doing some papers in economics and philosophy after hours. I've done pretty well and i'd like to continue diversifying. After many years of self guided research, being back in the teaching environment as a student has actually been very cathartic and enjoyable and it turns out social sciences / humanities seem to come more naturally to me than i had thought previously.
My question relates to whether it would be wiser to start in a new field 'from the bottom up' (ie undergrad) or try to get into things at a higher level. I dont want to be bored but i also enjoy the rigour of starting at undergrad level. I'd like to get some opinions on this since most of the academics i know  tend to stay in their research fields. I should note i never intended to do a PhD but was promoted from a masters after my field year. I also seem to believe that education is not only about specialisation as is more common in the modern era, but more in tune with academics who covered many fields during their careers for instance Liebniz (law, mathematics etc)
Are their any PhD's out there who have diversified effectively into a completely new field? What is your advice? Did you end up 'starting again' ?

I don't see any reason to formally do another undergraduate degree. And you may not even need a credential at a higher level if you already have a doctorate and some publications in your new field.
My perspective is the US, where an undergraduate degree has a lot of things not related to the "major" subject. That is different elsewhere, of course.
But there may be some gaps in your education. If you are at a university, there is little reason why you can't ask a professor in some other field if you can "sit in" on one of their courses. I've done this, actually. The professor even agreed to give me ordinary student feedback (but no posted grade) on the homework assignments and exams. It was all informal and just let me "scratch an itch" in his field.
Once you think you have the knowledge gaps plugged you can, if you need the credential, apply for some higher level degree. You probably need to ask for special treatment in the admissions process, I suppose, but can probably justify it.


Master's thesis results used to publish a new research paper? few years ago I did my Master's thesis at University, when I worked in a lab and was performing various experiments on different materials. The thesis defense I held officially in front of commission, and the thesis is available on Internet.

As I was looking for some research papers, I discovered that there is this new publication, which uses the results I got during the experiments, as well as few other Master student who worked on their thesis. Our names are mentioned at the end, where authors are thankful for our assistance. I have two questions:

Is is possible to use and publish results which were actually already part of someones Master's thesis?
If these results of experiments were used in the new publication, is it right just to mention names of persons who performed them, and not putting them as co-authors?

Thanks!

You should normally be a co-author if you contributed a substantial amount of data (and be invited to at least check the paper before submission), but apparently the authors of the paper decided that your contribution was not big enough. It is hard to judge if they are right without knowing the details of who contributed what exactly.

If you are not co-author, an acknowledgement is perfectly normal: A Master thesis is usually not publicly available so there is no point to cite it. This also answers your first question: yes, it is fine to publish results from an MSc thesis in a paper.


Using grants to make donations to institutions for using their resources/products? In my academic area I constantly use free software/products such as Linux, Python, SageMath, Octave, Wikipedia, etc.

I know that one can include software costs such as Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, Adobe stuff, Mac software, etc. But for free software/products I have not heard of anyone doing that. It feels wrong that if I use Matlab/Mathematica/Macs in my research, I can get public funding to pay MathWorks/wolfram/Apple thousands of dollars, but if I use Octave/SageMath/Linux they do not receive anything.

In other academic areas something similar can happen. I assume the same happens with "open" databases that operate with donations vs private databases that mostly operate as for-profit. Other examples could be Wikipedia, OEIS, LibreOffice, Gimp, etc.

I think that since a lot of research depends on that free software/product, they should receive funding (at least if you heavily use it). I know they receive funding elsewhere, but it is minimal compared to the money proprietary-software companies get (a lot from grants, by the way).

Do you know of cases where donations costs were included in grants?
Do you think it is the ethical thing to do?

It is ethical to pay the price you are asked to pay; I'm not sure if it's ethical to get a funding agency to pay more than the advertised price, and your example could be understood as suggesting precisely that, even if the cause is good.  I've never heard of an agency allocating funds for donations (imagine the potential for corruption!)

I personally feel there is nothing unethical about using a free product.  Academics have many occasions to give back to the community without formal compensation: refereeing papers, editing a journal, reading theses, sitting on grant selection committee, organizing or participating in outreach activities etc. It's all part of the broader duties that come with job, and for those who care to keep score I found in the longer term that service roughly evens out: you contribute for free roughly the same you get back for free.


What formatting guidelines should I follow for my bachelor's thesis if some of them are not specified by the university? I am writing my bachelor's thesis at a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands.

The university has provided me with a document outlining some of the guidelines I should follow (like what format of citations is expected and what the document should look like overall), but it does not specify anything about, for example, fonts, font sizes and color schemes.

What is the correct approach to formatting in this case? Do things like fonts and font sizes matter very much or can I make that choice as long as it is reasonable?

I would check other submissions and ask your mentor / supervisor. In any event, I would choose a font with spacing etc. that is clear and easy to read with suitable line spacing.

Some "cursive" fonts look nice but are not "easy" for extended reading.


marking scale between Egypt and the UK How can I convert marks in the Egyptian scale to marks in the UK scale.
for example if I got a mark of 40 in Egypt what is the equivalent mark in the UK.

According to Naric (the UK's national agency responsible for grade comparisons):

  [Egyptian undergraduate] grading systems vary between institutions and even departments. The table below indicates the different systems in use and the relationship between them:

  75-100     Distinguished / excellent / very good     A

  65-74      Good                                      B

  50-64      Pass                                      C

  0-49       Fail/Weak                                 F

For a UK undegraduate degree, grading is almost always as follows

70-100     First Class

60-69      Second Class Upper Division (often written 2.1)

50-59      Second Class Lower Division (often written 2.2)

40-49      Third Class

0-39       Fail

Naric suggests the following equivalency:

First class = A or A-

Second Class Upper Division = B+ or B

Second Class Lower Division = B- or C+

Third Class = C


Where does Computer Science background students fit in Theoretical Physics I am basically an Electronics student - background in Computer Science (that's where I want to work). I applied for an internship in USA in a research institute where the group is focused in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Chemical Physics, Physical Chemistry, Materials Science.

I got selected. Now, I would like to know where area could someone with CS background  would actually work on?

I am looking for a detailed answer.

Given a background in CS, that probably means you have a sophisticated view of software development—at least one that is far more advanced than the average physicist or materials scientist.

It seems to me that you would probably find that you would be working as a programmer on a computational project: perhaps a new numerical method needs to be implemented, or the performance or functionality of the existing code base needs to be improved. Or perhaps they want somebody to help prototype new interfaces between experimental hardware and computer hardware or software? There are a lot of possibilities.


At which part of the paper is it better to cite R packages? I'm sure we need to pay credit to every R package developer. Just in line with this post.

My question is, how better to integrate the citations of R packages into my paper. Should it be part of the methodological part? I saw papers that just throw the citations into the reference list. But it just doest not seem right.

There is a similar question on Academia. My focus is on the way one should incorporate the actual citations into the paper.

You should cite the software packages that you use just like any other piece of scientific work that you build on. If they are significant enough to make it to your main narrative, then cite them there just like the other key techniques you build upon. If they are useful but uninteresting methodological detail (e.g., equivalent to a microscope model or reagent brand) then they should  in just the same way be relegated to an equivalent methods section, appendix, or other piece of supplemental material.


Graduate school admission: what is the point of having a waitlist of size 50 while intending to eventually offer a position to only a few applicants? At that time of the year, graduate schools in the United States are notifying applicants that they have been placed on a wait list.

I read this email sent by a top-ranked University's computer science department:

  Our Committee on Admissions has asked me to tell you that we have placed your application (along with about 50 others) on a "Wait List" for any openings which may occur. […] in the past several years we were only able to offer admission to only a few students who were on the "Wait List".

As a reference point, this University's department accept around 100 student every year.

What is the point of having a waitlist of size 50 while intending to eventually offer a position to only a few applicants?

In my experience, most members of admission committees usually agree on who the star applicants are, or which applicants are simply unqualified.  However, there's a lot of disagreement in the middle, and it comes down to essentially arbitrary decisions among a sizable group of applicants who might or might not be admitted.  This is a strong incentive to have a big wait list:

It can function as a polite form of rejection, to minimize hurt feelings among applicants who genuinely might have been admitted under other circumstances.
It plays the same role for admissions committee members.  If someone is strongly in favor of a particular candidate but there isn't a consensus for admission, adding them to the wait list can be a good compromise.  Insisting on rejecting them outright just leads to pointless arguments.

This role as a sort of "honorable mention" is essentially independent of the chances of admission from the wait list.  However, having a large wait list can have important practical benefits even if there's no chance of admitting more than a few people from the list.  The key insight is that the list isn't necessarily rank ordered, with the first few candidates likely to be admitted but the fiftieth having almost no chance.  Instead, who is admitted may depend on the department's needs, based on which of the previous admissions decisions were accepted.  For example, it may take into account the representation of different subfields in the entering class.  From this perspective, a 50-person wait list may effectively amount to 10 different 5-person wait lists, with no one knowing in advance which of the smaller lists will end up being used.


Master’s program rejection with no reason. How to appeal? I recently applied for a master’s program and I fulfill all their requirements. In addition, the application fee was around 100 USD that had to be paid in advance. I got the following answer today:

  I would like to thank you for considering XXX for your graduate study. We have very
  carefully reviewed and evaluated your application to the Master of Science in YYY program for the Fall 2020 semester and I regret to inform you that the
  Admission Committee has declined your application for admission.
  We hope that you will pursue all of your other options for continuing your education and
  achieve academic success in another graduate program.
  Best wishes for success in achieving your academic and professional goals.
  Sincerely,

Is this normal that they do not provide at least a very brief explanation on why they refuse my application, since I fulfilled all the requirements?
Now, how to appeal, i.e. I do not know why they refuse me so I do not know what I should tell them.

Yes, that's totally normal. For example, my department typically gets 150-200 applications for the PhD program every spring, but we only accept ~20 students. That is a process that is exceedingly time consuming already as is. It is simply not reasonable to write up an explanation why the other 130-180 students were not accepted.

That's no different than for most job applications: The company you sent your application to will simply say "Sorry, we didn't choose you because we found someone who is better qualified", rather than giving you feedback where exactly they found your application lacking.

As for appeal -- I don't think any university has a process for this, but pretend for a moment that there were: What do you think would happen? The university made a determination that you were not as well qualified as someone else. You can appeal a decision if you think that a process was not followed, e.g., if your application had arrived in time but was rejected because the department (erroneously) claimed that it was late. But your question does not contain any indication that you have any evidence to this effect. On the other hand, you can't appeal a rejection because you weren't as well qualified as some other candidate -- your "appeal" in that case ought to be to get more experience and more education so that on your next try, you are better qualified.


Keeping track of definitions I recently handed in my master's thesis (CS), and I did what you should not do for your own peace of mind's sake: I skimmed it again afterwards. I realized that I had not updated some statements to reflect the omission of some definitions that had existed in an earlier version, an error that I didn't catch despite proof-reading - I assume because I was in the mindset and knew what the statements were about, so I missed that some symbols were not defined in the relevant context during proof-reading.

I also recently came across this speech by Leslie Lamport on how to write clearly structured proofs, and the structure he suggests should lend itself very well to organizing mathematical publications in such a way that everything is easier to cross-reference as well as check for syntactical and semantic problems.

Has anyone else had the problem that only after they finished working on something, they realized that it had undefined symbols/statements that made sense in an earlier version, but need updating to the current one? If so, how to track those issues? An off-the-cuff way would be to have a dependency graph in the background, but I'm not sure something like that is available.

Whenever I am doing a mathematics-heavy piece of writing (in LaTeX, of course), I tend to track the formal notation with two tools:

Every piece of notation (symbol or otherwise) gets its own \newcommand, which is used religiously.
At the first point where formal notation starts to be used, I add a table of notation that includes all of the significant notation.

It is further typically the case that each of these is broken out into its file (e.g., notation.tex, symboltable.tex) that is input into the main document, so that there is no chance for the definitions to spread around into different parts of the document.

There are several nice things about using this approach:

Using LaTeX commands for notation ensure that notation will be consistent
It is easy to change notation by changing the contents of the command
When you remove a piece of notation, you can delete the old command and be assured of errors anywhere that the command remains
The commands file can be used as a checklist for completeness of the table, and the table as a checklist for completeness of the definitions in the text body.

In many cases, the table may not survive all the way to submission (though I very much like to have one, it is an easy thing to cut from an over-length paper), but adding or removing it is just one \input line to comment in the source file, so it can still be very much a part of the manuscript development process, even if it's not showing up in the final manuscript.


Alternative to google scholar in China Are there any valid alternatives to google scholar?

I am currently living in China. almost the whole internet is blocked, including Google. I tried to bypass the firewall, then google scholar tends to deny my access claiming that the traffic is suspicious.

Are there other valid alternatives to google scholar where I can easily search for random scientific papers from different fields and trace their citations Thanks!

For a mirror of Google Scholar:

https://scholar.glgoo.org/


Expecting students to use a code base that is known to be buggy? Suppose an instructor is teaching a course on a particular field in computer science. He uses a language that is popular for said field, but itself is not the topic of the course (though its use is still required).  The instructor provides a code base he wrote that the students may base their course project upon.  However, this code base is very buggy and does not follow many accepted "best practices" in the language's usage.  You are not technically required to use this code base, but to use anything else is most likely impractical given time constraints.  Is it justifiable to expect students to use a buggy code base you prepared, or is it lazy?  Or neither?

The answer to this question is "Sometimes."

Given that an instructor has roughly X hours/week to devote to this course (given their other responsibilities), sometimes the best way to utilize that time may be to write a code base for students to use in some fraction of those hours (even though it will be buggy and not up to best practices) and devote the rest of those hours to other things.

Sometimes improving the code base isn't the best way to utilize instructor time - sometimes that time is better used offering more office hours to answer students' questions, or writing better lecture notes, or something else that is of greater benefit to the students' learning than making the code less buggy.

It's usually up to the instructor to make that determination of what will best serve the pedagogical goals of the course.

(I'm assuming the professor isn't intentionally trying to give students some experience working with a buggy code base. But that's also a possibility.)

As a student, I didn't think about the time and resources my professors devoted to preparing their course materials. As an instructor, I gained a very different perspective.

For example, the first course I taught as instructor of record was a course that I was only assigned about a week before class started, in a subject outside my area of expertise, and I had very limited time to prep the first few lectures and assignments. I agreed to teach it despite knowing that my teaching would be underprepared (by my own standards) for the first part of the course, because I thought it would be better for my students than the alternative (the course being cancelled because the department couldn't find any other coverage.) As a student, I would never have thought about my professors being put in situations like that.


Should I inform students that there are cheaper alternatives to the on-campus book store? The bookstore at my American university is an outpost of Barnes and Noble, charges much higher prices than can be found on Amazon, and in my opinion offers very poor service. Among other things that upset me, they prohibit students from browsing the stacks of textbooks -- instead you are supposed to tell the staff what you want, so they can retrieve it for you.

I prefer to mass e-mail my students in advance of the course and urge them to buy their books for my class at Amazon, used if at all possible.

Is there anything unethical, or that could possibly get me into trouble, about this?

Politically?

Sure, but there is always a chance that you will step on someone's toes if you do anything. I fully agree with Nicholas that you have subtle ways to do it.

Ethically?

In the given situation the bookstore is a for-profit entity that gives below-average service to your students on an above-average price. Whatever approach you use to define the main mission of a university, it should include a good and fair service to your students for their 10-20-30 k$/year they pay. So I would say it is unethical to not tell them that they are not obligated to use a sub-par money-sucker service, and they are free to buy from internet, e.g. Amazon. If anyone is unethical in this situation, it is the person who is supervising the B&N shop's license to run at your university. But it is again a politically sensitive issue.


What happens if I forget to add taxonomy topics when I submit my paper? I submitted a paper recently to an elsevier journal. During the submission, I forgot to add the taxonomy topics related to my manuscript. After I completed the submission, I received an email that the manuscript was received successfully. However, it has been 2 days and the manuscript status is still "With Journal". Is this because I forgot to add the taxonomy topics. If yes, what should I do to fix this.

Thanks in advance for your help ...

If this is an issue, it will most likely be flagged by the production staff when the paper is returned from review. But it typically takes a few days to get sorted through the editorial system, so it shouldn't be the lack of taxonomy holding it up.


Statement of research interest as an early Master's student I need to write a statement of research interest for internships in applied mathematics and computational science that I am applying for this summer.

Having just finished my first semester of graduate school, I feel that I have not fully defined my research interests. However, I have participated in several ongoing research projects and have already interned at a national laboratory.

How can I write a successful statement of research interest at this point in my education? Should I write about what I have already done, or focus on what I want to research in the future?

If I focus on the future, I feel that I will have trouble articulating where I want my research to go... because I really don't have an answer yet!

I would write about both.

I usually think the writing of a statement of purpose as a story I want to tell. Write about your past projects to introduce you and your research interests, giving the reader some context on why you are applying for the position and the reasons your profile/know-how fits well in the job description.

Even if you are not sure about the exactly subject of your next project, you must know the topics that are interesting for you and the ones you definitely are not willing to work ever. You are an early master's student, no one is expecting you to tell exactly to where your research will lead you. However, they expect you to give some clues in order to assign you with the appropriate supervisor and in a project that is best suitable for your ambitions.

I would suggest you to read this text where they summarise the main characteristics of a good statement of purpose.


Really short articles in good journals? I wonder in some good journals, there are articles that are quite short. Maximum 10 pages. How come such papers, with quite a short introduction with a brief lit-rewiew, are published? They are because of the quality, to do point conclusion and precise findings?

In physics, a lot of “letter” journals or sections of journals limit the contribution to a few pages.  The better known example is Physical Review Letters where the current limit is 3750 words, or about 5 pages depending on figures etc.  (The one recent exception is the initial paper on gravitational wave detection, which was allow to go well beyond the normal page limit).  PRL is currently ranked top physics journal
by Google and its Clavirate impact factor score is also one of the highest for a physics journal.  People read it precisely because it’s to the point and usually timely.


Getting a funded PhD vs starting up my own research idea What's your opinion on this question? I have MSc in Computer Science (spec. in Natural Language Processing) so I don't need any materials to work with that I can not get by myself. My fears of going into funded PhD is that I would be forced to publish papers that does not scientifically matter or have any impact. I've asked several scientists and they claim that it is called the "salami" effect where instead of publishing one good paper you publish multiple small ones (hence cutting the salami) mainly because the funding body puts pressure on you.

Personally, I would not like to spend 3-4 years doing this but at the same time I am not sure how serious the academic community will take my work. Also, funding my self would probably mean that I have to apply some of my research ideas in bussiness context. I am aware that there is possibility of me submitting research proposal but still I am afraid that some of my ideas will be rejected or stolen.

I've also heard that PhD is not about ideas and it's more about learning to become independent researcher. For some reason, this seems like a very discouraging statement since it lowers the bar about one having higher success with research during his/her PhD studies. I don't think I need this since I've already worked independently for my MSc, albeit I was not 100% satisfied with my results.

By my own research idea, I mean that I have an idea where my research field could be improved and I am curious about whether it will work or not. I have also done some research during my MSc in that particular field. Currently the idea is bit broad and lacks scientific rigour and is not formally defined. To do this, probably it would take me a bit more time to dive deep into the mathematics and figure it out. The idea can also have practical importance which means the method can be used in a Natural Language Processing app like a chat bot (to improve experience for example)

I would really appreciate your opinion on this matter since signing up for PhD seems like big life investment. Thank you.

Signing up for a PhD is definitely a huge life investment and I am glad you're not taking it lightly. I am getting mine in biological sciences, so we are similar in the length of a program, the funding mechanisms, and the publishing realm. I can't speak from experience of a masters program, though, or from computer science.

When you are getting your PhD you're working with an advisor on their funded projects. Now, that does mean that you are becoming an independent researcher, but I argue that it does not mean that I have not been contributing my own ideas. I am very involved with my experimental design, data collection, and spin off projects. It is like you pick a lab/advisor with a "theme" that you like - and from there, you can develop aims that will complement their focus, but are your own "flavor".
Many funding mechanisms require that you are employed by a university/government/company. Here in the US, this is shown by a DUNS number on your application. Since I have experience only with a university, I do not know of funding mechanisms/grants that are available for those who are not "in the system". Additionally, to get the rather large grants, you must have a PhD and gone through the tenure track.

I have a bit of knowledge of the "spin off" business side of things through a few classes, which makes me wonder maybe you are a great candidate for starting your own company. You could get funding from investors, still work on your own projects, and contribute to the community.

In my field (biological sciences), academic journals would very rarely, if ever, publish you in high tier journals as a MS without a PhD as the corresponding author.

Good luck - I can't stress enough how much I respect you thoughtfully considering your career path this way. I am confident you'll make the right choice for you.


Possible to put online a PhD dissertation under a Creative Commons license, as some text is (c) by publishers? It is inevitable that several parts of a PhD dissertation come from published papers. The publishers who claim copyright (or exclusive right to publish) of articles are aware of this, and they allow authors to include their papers in dissertations.

As an example, the following is an excerpt from a typical Springer copyright transfer agreement:

  Author retains the right to use his/her Contribution for his/her further scientific career by including the final published paper in his/her dissertation or doctoral thesis provided acknowledgment is given to the original source of publication.

Furthermore, in the case of monographs the paper contents are often split up to become part of the new text. You do not even use the publisher's PDF, just your produced articles. You sort of include pre-and post-prints.

Now, provided that all the publishers' demands (e.g., acknowledging the source of publication) are met, can one put online a PhD dissertation, which contains both original text and text from copyrighted material, under a Creative Commons license? In particular, the CC-BY license.

If the copyright in the material is held by someone else, you cannot license the entire work CC-BY. The Springer (etc) permission for a doctoral thesis is a specific exception and does not extend to allowing you to relicense the underlying work.


Advisor isn't advising I'm having the problem that my advisor isn't providing me with any real guidance. To avoid making this a rant post, I'll just state the facts: my advisor is an MD/PhD, working almost full-time as an MD. He comes to the lab once a week for lab meetings, and often doesn't have time to meet. He seems to have lost interest in doing research, and isn't being helpful at all regarding how I should proceed with my research.

So far, here's what I've tried and how well it worked out:

Talking to department graduate chair: marginally useful, scheduled a useless meeting with me and my advisor. Nice meeting, but no results.
Talk to other members of my committee: pretty useful, gave me some very good advice about my research, but I wonder how often I can use them as a resource

Any other suggestions on how I can handle this?

My answer depends on how far along you are in your research and whether you are in PhD or MD?PhD program.

If you are in a PhD program and you are less than a year in leave the lab. If you are more than a year in at you next Thesis Committee meeting, if it's scientifically reasonable, try to either set a date for graduating or ask for a co-PI.

If you are in the MD/PhD program, you will have to consider your PI's position and whether a lukewarm letter from someone in his position is worth your staying in the lab. If you plan to go into a competitive surgicial or medical subspecialty, it just might be.

I, sadly, think that checked-out PIs- even those without the excuse of having to go see patients- are increasingly the norm. Getting to be a professor is a great way to age rapidly and burn out, especially in the biomedical sciences. Also, professors aren't selected for their mentoring skills so much as scientific productivity. Often scientific productivity means exploitation or disregard because of self-involvement rather than nurturing.


Disclaimer in an academic paper I have a question about a paper of mine, which is highly likely to be published. Do you think I could put the following disclaimer: "This paper gives the views of the author, and not necessarily the position of the...(name of university)"?
If yes, where is the right place to put it?
Thank you in advance!

This is likely to be fine. You should look a the most recent 1-2 volumes of the journal you most want to publish the paper in and copy the disclaimer wording and placement that is used there.


Author title for ex-student in research paper I have graduated from a Masters program recently. After graduating, my Masters thesis supervisor and myself decided to write a paper based on my dissertation. I have a question about the format in which my name should appear in the paper, given that I am now an ex-student of the university. Is something like below acceptable?

  John Doe, MS in XYZ, University of ABC, Current
  Residential Address, me@gmail.com

Do I need to remove/add anything?

For a definitive answer: check issues of the journal you will submit to, see what they do. If you still have doubts: contact the editor (I would wait until after acceptance of the paper, because it's not such a big deal).

My take on it:

First, it's very rare to mention the diplomas hold by the authors. Even the titles (Dr, Prof, etc.) are often not listed at all. The exceptions seem to be (at least in my field) some journals edited by German societies, academies or publishers (Angewandte Chemie lists all titles, for example, in a footnote along with full affiliations). So, I'd remove the “MS in XYZ”.
Secondly, your main affiliation is the institution where you carried out your work (or most of it). This means, list “University of Nowhere, Department of Procrastination” as your main affiliation.
Thirdly, you can indicate your “current address” in the author list. Depending on journal style, it might be a footnote or listed as other affiliations. It will start with: “Current address: University of Big Name, Department of Corrections”. But… given that you don't have a new institutional address, I would advise you to skip it altogether. Simply don't list your home address in the paper, it's not really useful for readers. If they want to contact you, they will use email anyway.
Finally: if your former university didn't provide an email address that will last, using your gmail address is perfectly fine.

I hope this covers it!


Rights of authors who withdraw peer reviewed manuscript due to refusal to transfer copyright Many (traditional) journals request copyright transfer upon acceptance.

A group of librarians suggested that authors negotiate the copyright transfer and prepare to walk away if the journal insists on full copyright transfer.

Suppose the authors refused but the journal insisted on the transfer, and therefore the authors decided to publish elsewhere.

Generally, what are authors' and journals rights in such a case?

What happens to the peer review the authors received from the first  journal? Can or should they present it when submitting to another journal?

The authors should check when the journal transfers copyright. As mentioned by Andrés E. Caicedo in the comments, some journals assume the authors transfer copyright once a paper is submitted, not after acceptance.

If the authors withdraw a paper because they do not want to transfer the copyright, the journal's likely reaction would be to remind the author about the possibility of publishing open access. If the authors decline that too, then the journal will probably think, "why did you submit it to us then?" Getting the paper reviewed involves a nontrivial amount of effort. If the journal decides the authors submitted the paper knowing that they will withdraw it if it's accepted, effectively wasting the journal's time, they might blacklist the authors.

As for what happens to the peer reviews, from the journal's perspective, nothing. The reviews are left on the manuscript's record, of course, but nothing beyond that. The authors will still have access to them, and they can do whatever they want with them (such as use it to improve their manuscript). They should not, however, present them to another journal. As I wrote in an answer to another question, these reviews don't help the new journal:

  We can't use the original journal's reviewer comments & your responses. We don't know who the reviewers are. We can't tell if the reports are legitimate. We can't see if confidential comments were submitted.


How should I interpret a promising preprint that was never published in a peer-reviewed journal? There have been a couple of occasions in my research in which I've come across a preprint that is several years old and is very relevant to the work that I'm doing.

Often these preprints have very promising initial results. However, when looking at the CVs or Google Scholar pages of the authors on the preprint, I can't seem to find a version that ended up getting published in a peer-reviewed journal, even if the preprint is several years old already. Why would would a researcher abandon a manuscript that they obviously put a lot of time into?

Do researchers sometimes just abandon lines of inquiry because they get too busy?  Or, is this an indication that their promising initial results were not robust enough for peer-review, and I should be wary of attempting a similar study?

There might be any number of reasons. You might try to contact the author(s) to get more information. But... (not all with the same likelihood)

They might have left academia for various reasons and not bothered. Is the CV also old?

They might have incorporated the key ideas into another paper with a very different title. You search is then fruitless.

They might have discovered errors.

Reviewers might have considered the results trivial.

Their attempts to publish might have been rejected by journals for other reasons.

They might have changed sub-fields. (This one less likely, I think.)

But you should be wary, at least, of following up on unpublished work and, at least, be sure that you can verify the claims independently.


Why do professors give 'updates' about their unpublished, ongoing research? Why do some professors arrange meetings to give updates about their ongoing work?  The updates are certainly exciting, especially for the other people who have been in the lab for awhile and was involved in the work in some small way.  But these meetings are also open to visitors, and visiting professors and post docs come too.  Isn't there a fear of outsiders (or even insiders) scooping the ideas and beating them to publication?  Although I highly doubt that, but I'm curious to know.

The main reason is to attract interest to their current and future work, in terms of both public interest and potential students, scholars, and postdocs who might want to work with their labs. Talks are a good way of accomplishing this. Research isn't meant to be conceived, designed, done, and published in a cloistered off world. Anyone who believes this shouldn't be in research.

If the point of research is to advance/exchange knowledge and to improve life, then it deserves to be made a public, accessible resource. Perhaps even work that hasn't been completed. It's important for researchers to be transparent about their work, rather than trying to hide it, especially when they accumulate so much funding, some of which often comes from public, taxpayer sources (i.e. government funds).

You might think visitors are outsiders, but it's important to keep sight of the fact that they likely helped fund the research in some way, and more importantly, that they're part of the people your research should be trying to help -- and there shouldn't be such distinctions on this account between outsiders and insiders.


What is a "Junior Faculty" position? I have seen an ad from Columbia University for a "Junior Faculty" position. The ad had no details on whether it is a tenure-track position or not.

  Are these tenure track positions? Is this term common in US universities? Is it equivalent to assistant professor?

Generally it would mean a tenure track assistant professor position. There might be exceptions, but for Columbia, I'd expect it to mean just that.

But they might even be willing to entertain a lower level (non tenure) or higher level (associate professor) position for the right person. I can't think of any other reason for a US university to be non-specific.

But even an associate professor offer would likely come with some probationary period prior to granting tenure. Probably two years or more, but less than seven.

Contrast it with "senior faculty" position. Here it would mean a full professor, even a distinguished full professor or someone able to take over a leadership role.


How do I stop assuming that someone is male? Consider the following situation. I'm talking to a friend who says "One of my friends is a student of so-and-so,", and I immediately ask, "Oh, what's his name?", before being told "'her name', actually, is Alice."

How do I stop doing that? The underlying problem I want to fix is the bias in my own head -- I'm not just looking to fix the problem by replacing "his name" with "their name" in my question. I would hope that sufficiently many episodes like this would be enough to fix it eventually, but I fear that there are too many situations of the other kind, wherein I ask "What's his name?" and get "Bob", for my subconscious to ever fully absorb it.

Regardless, my question is this: are there any concrete, actionable things I could be doing to get rid of the bias in my head?

I'm not sure how much my own gender is relevant, which I'd like to keep hidden to encourage broader answers.

I'm also aware that this question isn't strictly academia-related, but it is worth pointing out that this only happens to me in an academic (possibly field-specific) setting, i.e. if told "One of my friends recommended this book to me," I am fairly sure I would respond "Oh, what's their name?".

Edits, for more detail: I work in a male-dominated field, and I think/speak primarily in American English.

Is your academic field male-dominated? I imagine that this is what might encourage you to make these assumptions, if you do not make them in other areas of your life.

For me the main thing was to try to systematically use gender-neutral pronouns, in writing and in speech. Training yourself to do this forces you to confront your bias, and eventually this should become a habit. You will also notice such assumptions made by other people, especially in papers.

This being said, if you are aware of the problem and of these assumptions, you are probably already halfway there. :)


Failed PhD qualifying exam, must it be mentioned it in SOP? can I ask my advisor not to mentions in recommendation letter? I failed my written PhD qualifying exam twice in Computer Science from a middle-ranked university. Instead of kicking me out, I can get a terminal master's degree. Please note that this will be my second master's degree.

Now I am planning to re-apply to PhD programs at other Universities. My questions are:

Since I am getting a master's degree, is it okay not to mention about failing in the PhD qualifying exam in statement of purpose (SOP)? Please note that the Graduate committee informed that it will not be reflected in the transcript.
If the answer is yes for the previous question, then my advisor is ready to give a strong recommendation, so can I ask him not to mention about failing in the PhD qualifying exam in his recommendation letter?

Please note that the written qualifying exam is about getting good grades in 4 subject areas of Computer Science, it has nothing to do with research. This is one of the main reasons I do not want to mention in SOP, I wanted to highlight my research potential saying that I submitted a 10-page research paper in a top tier conference in one year. I have industry experience of more than 5 years.

Please help, since my goal is to get into academics, help students and do independent research. I want to pursue my dream irrespective of this setback.

The issue is that schools know about other programs in their field. If you are applying to another school while you are still enrolled, the obvious assumption is that something has gone wrong at your current school. This will act as a potentially big problem—particularly if the other school is known not to have a separate master's program, but instead admits directly to a PhD program.

I would recommend not hiding this from schools to which you apply; doing so would be sufficient grounds to revoke your admission, if it were to come to light, since you are lying by omission in your application.

Moreover, if you have done good research, and your advisor is willing to testify to that, and your only significant issue is that you struggled with the qualifying exam, then you should be able to find a new department. (Perhaps you should look for departments where you won't have to take a qualifying exam—there may be some in your discipline, and more and more schools are dropping them.)


Discouraged by advisor to take courses, is there a way to navigate through this situation? Graduate schools in North America usually have a required number of courses that you need to pass. Afterwards, the school is usually pretty flexible at the student taking more courses (and it is often free of charge), but it is another story with advisor/PI/supervisor.
After I passed my courses, I have been either explicitly or implicitly reminded by my advisor that I should not take more courses. None of any other graduate students are taking courses either in some sort of tacit acknowledgement. Taking courses takes away time from research and performing badly could cause serious problems, so it is understandable.
However, I find that after a year or two of not taking any courses, I feel less mentally "sharp". And sometimes I say to myself "I wish I had taken information theory/blackhole physics/statistical methods!" because I think they could open up more research ideas and plus some subjects are just hard when studied on your own. Finally, taking courses open up more employment opportunities, either through TAship or working in industry. I get the feeling that some/many advisors in academia (such as mine) are fairly indifferent about transitioning from graduate school to industry and do not appreciate the importance of courses/technical skills to these future opportunities.
Has anyone been able to successfully navigate through this dilemma? There are pro and con to each side of the argument and I could't make a move in fear of jeopardizing my relationship with my advisor.

Audit the courses that you like, i.e., take them without receiving a grade/credit for it. You might not even need to formally audit courses, most professors will let you informally audit them. But as mentioned by others, research takes priority.


Republishing an article on a second journal (with permission) I have recently published an article (written in English) in a Finnish scientific magazine (for outreach mostly). This magazine reaches only a few thousand people in Finland. Most of the articles are not made available online and, those that are, are so behind a subscription paywall. It is thus extremely unlikely that the wider potential audience in my field will be able to access it.

Because of this, I have asked the publisher for permission to post the article on a repository (likely to be the arXiv), to which they have agreed after a 6 month embargo.

I am now wondering if it would make sense to publish this in an international scientific journal as an outreach piece.

Assume that the original publisher in Finland grants me permission to do this (with attribution, linking back to the original source, etc). What about the international publisher? Are there journals, specifically in physics and chemistry, that would consider republishing an article whose copyright belongs to a different publisher and that does not represent an original contribution?

You can't do this and it's not because of copyright, but because journals generally don't accept unoriginal contributions. For example from Elsevier's policies and ethics page:

  Originality and plagiarism: The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Springer's publishing ethics page:

  Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include ... The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’)).


Contacting professors about research: if they don't respond to my emails, how long should I wait to follow up? I am starting a MS in CS program this summer. My department is small and my particular concentration is both narrow and new. Currently only 3 professors at the school are listed as having research interests in my area of interest.

I have contacted 2 of them. One is tenured and one is an assistant professor.

I know that the tenured professor has lots of published work in the field already and would probably be the better recommender come PhD application time.

I'm not eligible for assistantships yet until I finish some prerequisites I lacked from my undergrad. But I want to get in and prove what a good little research assistant I can be as soon as I can so I can beat out the other assistantship applicants when the time comes.

My question is: If they don't respond to my emails, how long should I wait to follow up with them as not to be annoying? Should I just wait until classes start and go talk to them then? I'll be taking a class from the assistant professor this summer in a subject outside my research interest. What's the best approach to get people collaborate with me?

(Sorry this sounds like lots of questions in one, but I only have a year and a half to become the best PhD applicant ever and I want to make sure I do it right!)

I agree with badroit's answer. I would also like to add the following:

I don't know what was in your original email, so this may not apply.

However, if your email requires some thought or effort on the part of the professor to respond to, then it will sit in his inbox until he has a chance to sit down and compose a proper response. Since you are an unknown student and he is very busy, this is low on his list of priorities and he may never get to it.

On the other hand, if you politely follow up a week or two later with an email in which you ask to meet:

  Dear Professor Y,

  I am going to be a student in your department next semester.

  I have been reading about your paper on Y and I am very interested in talking to you about it; do you think we could schedule a time to meet next week?

This email is easy and quick to respond to ("Yes, how about Tuesday at 10?"), so you may be more likely to get a response.

(I know this doesn't make sense, since the professor would still have to expend time and effort to meet with you. But spending a half hour on a meeting on some future date seems much less of a burden than spending ten minutes right now to send an email to an unknown student.)


Ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly? Six classmates and myself have been in the same program for the past 2 years and one of them just informed me of another classmate that sits beside him of cheating on exams, so I informed the professor, and now that person may be kicked out of the program.

Did I do right?

Why did that classmate inform me of the other persons cheating? I felt an ethical obligation, because of the program we are all in too disclose this information to the professor and did not want the burden of knowing on me.

For many types of moral situations, university rules actually require that you inform a superior as soon as you find out yourself, or you are also in violation.  It may be that the classmate who informed you didn't have the civic courage to report it but knew that you did.  It is precisely to break cycles of no one saying anything that the rules are set up in the way I just described.

Or of course it may be that they were lying.  As long as you passed the full information to the professor about how you knew what you knew as well as what you believed you knew, it is now the professor's responsibility and not yours.  If there's anything you haven't already told the professor, I'd suggest contacting them again.


Negotiating boundaries with a conflict avoidant advisor My PhD advisor is someone who values workplace/personal life boundaries. Sometimes I feel that he gets mad at me for accidentally crossing those boundaries in small ways. The problem is that he doesn't explain when he is mad at me, and this can cause problems in our working relationship - for example, he tries to avoid me online and in real life, probably in order to avoid confrontation.

I confronted him recently about why he was acting mad at me, and it surfaced that he expected me to figure out why he was angry. This is a waste of my time and energy. How can I manage my relationship with him; in particular, what are some steps that we can take so that we understand clearly what the boundaries are in our relationship? How can I encourage him to communicate his boundaries to me, without such a question seeming overly personal?

Has anyone been in a similar situation? What insights or advice do you have to offer?

Thank you!

We all initially learned boundaries as children by testing them individually and then receiving feedback when we crossed some imaginary line. You can learn your advisor's boundaries the same way - by generalizing rules based on specific interactions. Every time something comes up where it seems that your advisor is angry, ask him directly if x behavior of yours was a problem, apologize if necessary, and ask if he would prefer you not to do it again. As you do this over time you'll get a more solid map of what is and isn't acceptable to him. You already have the beginnings of one based on what you already know about him and the advice given in the comments, so you are off to a good start.

(I'm assuming here that you've already tried multiple times to have a general discussion with your advisor about boundaries and it didn't go well. Depending on the situation, you might be able to arrange a meeting with your advisor to talk about the problem the way you would with a manager. Because he's your advisor, it would be best to frame it as you humbly seeking counsel from him on how he would like you to behave, rather than as a mutual problem for both of you to solve.)


Reapplying to PhD program after Master's Two years ago, I applied to PhD programs (in Physics, if it matters); my undergrad was characterized mostly by underachievement, so my application was pretty weak (poor GPA, generic LORs, no research experience, etc.) Understandably, I did not get the response I was hoping for, and I decided to go for my Master's, both to put myself in a better position and to make sure academia is really what I wanted.

Fast forward two years and I'm in a bit of an awkward spot; I've done well in my Master's and I want to apply to PhD programs, but I'm not sure how to characterize my less-than-traditional path (it is relatively uncommon, at least stateside, to attend a terminal master's program in Physics). All aspects of my application are much better on paper (research, GPA, recommendations; except my GRE scores, which were already quite strong), but I'm worried about coming off as a second-rate student who couldn't make it the first time. Even my advisor, who thinks my application is otherwise quite strong, said he's unsure how it will be received.

Many of the schools I'm applying to are ones I applied to previously. Should I emphasize the upward trend through my Master's and how I've improved since my previous applications? Or is it not even worth mentioning (I could always use the extra space to talk about research) or possibly harmful?

Your masters program experience will likely give you a boost if it will make your letters less generic and you can demonstrate research experience. It's possible some programs will not think you worthy, I don't know how self-absorbed those programs are in physics, but in biology a commitment and talent for research are prized above classroom performance.

I wouldn't stress so much your former poor application and instead focus on your recent successes, and use your personal statement/whatever equivalent is available to make clear your goals, and you could also use that space to reference your goals for your masters. Paraphrased, "In my masters program I set out to accomplish _______. Now I would like to continue/add to/expand towards ________."


Can a routine in R be published in academic journals? I have developed a routine in R for longitudinal analysis of networks. I was wondering whether it can be published on an academic journal as a dedicated article?

Depending on the extent of your work, you may be able to get a paper describing your package and methods in PLoS One or a similar journal, or the Journal of Statistical Software.

Alternately, The R Journal is a peer-reviewed journal covering R software, which may be an appropriate venue if you don't have enough methodological material to build out a full paper for another journal

Finally, many journals accept code supplements for papers describing the use of your method, so you may be able to publish your routine's in a paper about the actual work you are doing.


What to do when asked to do something that seems unethical by a co-advisor which might result in losing credit for my work I am doing a course project, and my co-advisor contributed to my design with tips and comments - nothing major. When the system started working he told me no to reveal all the details while presenting my work in the class.

That didn't feel right. I believe that the course instructor has the right to know all details about my design, and naturally, his name should go on any publication that comes out of this.

I heard my co-advisor telling another professor that my work is "his vision". I hate being in a such weird situation. I feel like my co-advisor is willing to unethical things for his own benefit (As an example, he refused to write me a recommendation letter to prevent me from leaving the university).

Also, because designs have to go through a fabrication step which takes along time, I feel that if he put his hands on my design I will lose credit for my work. He already told me that he will have one of his other students complete the other step. I am afraid that he will say that the other student did more work so he should be the first author of any publication coming out this or even remove me from the whole picture. Given his history, I cannot trust him now.

Moreover, I intend to leave the university for PhD somewhere else in about six months (he doesn't know that), so I won't be there when the work finishes.

How to handle this issue ? Should I reveal everything to the course instructor and start a fight with my co-advisor ? or accept this which is byound my tolerance?

You shouldn't start a fight with your coadvisor, but you shouldn't let them push you into an ethical compromise, either. (Or perhaps into a deeper ethical compromise — most instructors expect course projects to be the work of the students, not the students and their advisors.)

If you're not comfortable hiding details from your class/instructor, say so. Directly and professionally, without accusing him of shady behavior. Exactly as if your coadvisor were a responsible, ethical, adult human being.

  he refused to write me a recommendation letter to prevent me from leaving the university

This is where I would normally write "Walk away". Your coadvisor is using you. Fortunately, it looks like you've already figured that out.

  Moreover, I intend to leave the university for PhD somewhere else

Good.

  (he doesn't know that yet)

Not so good. Why are you keeping this a secret?


How to confront advisor about the expectation that I will support another student's project for extended period of time? I work in a collaborative scientific research group at a public university in the US.  Specifically, my lab has two graduate students: myself and another who is expected to graduate shortly.

I'm told that once the "senior" graduate student stops working in the lab (to start writing dissertation) the remaining graduate student (myself, in this case) is expected to finish off the more senior graduate students' data-taking (whether it be for a month or a semester, has not been made clear).  The more senior graduate student would be the first author on the paper resulting from this data.

I have been assured that the current senior graduate student did his fair share of data taking for the graduate student who preceded him.  I would like to talk to my advisor about this, but I have serious doubts about whether she would care about my opinion on this matter.  In  fact, I feel like by bringing it up I could only make things worse.

Although this is the "lab culture", it seems unfair to me.  Has anyone had success confronting their advisor about this sort of thing without being too hostile?

UPDATE:
I should mention that I spent the first 2.5 years of my research time supporting his (the previous grad students) project full time.  It is not until after he is gone (and 1-5 months more of me supporting his project) until I can even begin my project.  This is the primary concern: I will have spent over half of my graduate career supporting his project full time, meanwhile my advisor says she thinks I can graduate in five years--- that leaves between 2 to 2.5 years to complete my own project.  I will have spent more time on his proj than my own

Has anyone had success confronting their advisor about this sort of thing without being too hostile?

Fundamentally, I wouldn't view it as a confrontation.  If someone is doing something unethical or abusive, then confronting them could be appropriate, but it's not clear that that's the case here.  Instead, I'd approach it from the perspective that you'd like to learn what your advisor expects, his/her reasoning and motivation, and how much flexibility there is.  Right now, you are unsure whether the amount of work required would be a month or a semester.  That's a very reasonable thing to seek clarification for, and there are plenty of other natural questions.  For example, how should you deal with any interruption to your primary work?  Is there flexibility if you're at a particularly crucial or delicate point in your current project?  Will your advisor help make sure it doesn't derail your work or delay your graduation?  You could also ask about the motivation.  If doing this doesn't seem valuable to you, instead of starting with complaints about that you could ask about structuring things to ensure you got valuable skills or experience out of it.

If you take this perspective, I don't think it will come across as hostile.  You're just asking reasonable questions about what's involved and how it can be handled smoothly and productively.  I hope the answers will be reassuring.

Of course this may be fruitless: your advisor could be a control freak or jerk who won't respond well to friendly questions.  However, if that's the case you've got worse problems than just this issue.  I certainly wouldn't start with the assumption that a confrontation is the first step.

It's also worth carefully thinking through why this arrangement seems unfair.  As a mathematician, I have no experience with this style of research, but it doesn't sound unreasonable for the sort of lab in which students are assigned projects.  You would be broadening your research experience, and your contributions would be recognized with authorship (but not first authorship since the senior student would have contributed much more to this paper, the same way you'll be first author on the paper that comes out of your main project).  This sounds potentially worthwhile, so you need to articulate more clearly what's wrong with the particular situation you face.

If this is far outside the norms of your field, then I hope you'll be able to convince your advisor to do things differently.  Otherwise, I'd just accept that you and your advisor don't agree about everything and, within the overall constraint of how the lab is run, focus on fine-tuning things to fit you better.

  In fact, I feel like by bringing it up I could only make things worse.

This is the part that bothers me the most.  Maybe you are just worrying too much, but it suggests something's wrong.  Perhaps with how you tend to bring things up, perhaps with how your advisor responds to reasonable concerns, perhaps with your overall relationship with your advisor.  Whatever the cause is, this is something worth trying to understand and fix.

In response to the "update" on the original question": I don't know enough about your research area to say how unusual or inappropriate that is, but it does sound worrisome. Do you have a mentor other than your advisor to discuss this with? That could be helpful for determining whether it's a major career danger or just a frustrating but manageable situation.


Would it be inappropriate to cite wikipedia for something trivial in an academic article? Edit: I believe this is not a duplicate of Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?, because that question asks about citing Wikipedia for knowledge that is very basic but is nonetheless highly relevant to the core subject of the paper. My question is about citing  Wikipedia for something that is, by contrast, unrelated to the core subject matter of the paper, and thus is trivial in the sense of being unimportant rather than trivial in the sense of being common or basic knowledge.

Many previous questions on this site touch on citing Wikipedia, but none of them seem to me to address this specific issue.

I am writing a statistics paper. The focus and original work of the paper is abstract and theoretical. To introduce some of those ideas, I have a silly little thought experiment involving golf, and choosing which properties one wants one's club to have.

To be clear, nothing about the paper's actual focus is relevant to golf. The golf example is just a helpful, concrete way to introduce the perspective I am taking in the paper on certain statistical techniques.

To flesh out this example, I need to be able to describe the various options one has when choosing a golf club (head material, shaft length, etc.). I have learned from Wikipedia everything I need to know about these options in order to describe my silly little thought experiment. Would it be inappropriate to cite Wikipedia in a case like this? Would reviewers/readers raise an eyebrow at my doing so? Do I really need to spend time reading primary sources on various golf head materials just to be able to include this silly thought experiment in my paper?

The real question is whether you should cite anything at all. You're not writing an article on golf clubs. You're writing an article on statistics.

Is your example so complex that you need explanations upon explanations about why you're choosing this parameter, and that, etc, and if a reader doesn't know all this then the example is not understandable? It it really that important? Then you're wasting your reader's time with a digression that's largely irrelevant to your scientific work.

Is the example sufficiently simple that to understand it, very vaguely knowing how golf works is sufficient? Then why would you want to cite anything? I don't need a scholarly article to explain that if I were to choose a golf club, I need to consider its length, its weight and so on. It's pretty much common sense. Do I know more than that? No. Do I care? No. Is a statistics article the place to learn about such things? No.


Why do US/Canadian universities make you do master even if you have a first class honours from Australia? In Australia, when you want to do a PhD, you only would need first class honours (some universities even accept second class honours upper division). For instance, please see the self assessment for the Australian National University:

I guess that most of the UK universities have the same requirements (at least Cambridge and Oxford).

Why do almost all US/Canadian universities make you do a Master's (before doing PhD) even if you have a first class honours from Australia?

I think the time that is spent for studying masters, can be saved for postdoc; on the other hand, UK/Australian PhD programs takes 3-4 years but US/Canadian PhD programs are much longer.

The principal difference between degrees in the US and Canada and those obtained in other countries is that the bachelor's degree in the US typically contains fewer "technical" courses than a comparable bachelor's degree from other countries. For instance, a student in economics may only have twelve courses total across four years that are economics courses; the typical international student may have twice as many. This is because most US and Canadian schools incorporate a "general studies" requirement into their degrees, which reduces the amount of credits available for the major.

Consequently, the coursework phase of the PhD program is to bring everybody up to the same level—also a necessity, given the diversity of undergraduate curricula—before moving on to the research phase.

Also note that this is not a universal requirement. Some programs will admit directly to the PhD with only a four-year undergraduate degree, with no expectations or requirements of acquiring a master's degree. (This is my case—I have no master's.)


Good student but terrible test taker? So I am gradute student in theoretical computer science.

Throughout my education path up to highschool, I have all been praised a big lot by my teachers, some of them even went to such lengths as to say I was the most intelligent student they have ever taught. By dint of all that, I took it for granted that I must be cleverer than average and before I noticed, I might have gotten on a very high horse.

Then I got into college, and things started getting harder. The higher the horse, the bigger and harder the fall. So my grades stopped being close to full score, but not bad at all. Until I decided that I wanted to do a PhD later, and for that, I have to get very good marks and hope to get a scholarship.

Ever since, at the dawn of every test/exam, as opposed to the relaxed and cool mindset I'd be in before, I get very, very, VERY anxious and very flustered, either out of fear that I run out of time (because of a lived experience), or of not having the answer. That anxiousness would get lifted immeditely when time is up, and on my way back home, all answers or most of them, would start flowing in my head.

Only this morning, I had a test which I failed like never before. I quickly glossed over problems one by one in order, my mind would go blank for a few seconds, then I would deciddeto move on to the next problem and that it is no use wasting time on this one (because I wasn"'t going to find a solution), and that for every exercise. It is for a reason I say I failed today's like never before because I literally could do nothing; my mind was paralyzed and started weating and how I was going to not get to what I want to (PhD). But as soon as I got home and sat down for a few minutes, I solved prefectly 5 problems out 7  in 30 minutes (the test was to do within 90 minutes).

I was one of the most confident people in themselves before, but now I lost every bit of that confidence and wouldn't stop thinking I'm too dumb to make it. I have been struggling with this for two years now, and after today's huge blow, I decided to take to the internet and this board in order to try and find a solution. Chances are Academia is not the right board to ask this question in, but it must be the closest to that out of all other SE boards.

What can I do about my test taking so that my scores are more reflective of my natural ability?

I too went through a period where I panicked when taking tests. I saw a psychologist for help. Even if you choose not to go that route, you might find my experience helpful.

The problem began when I started taking the kind of tests where even the best students may not be able to answer all of the questions. I'd look at question one, not know how to answer it (at least, not right away), and begin to get nervous. Question two might seem daunting as well, so I'd become even more nervous. By the time I'd looked at question three, I was convinced that I would fail. Eventually I might realise that I knew how to do part of one of the questions. That gave me confidence to tackle another piece of another question, and so on. But I spent too much time panicking to do well on most tests.

The key for me in overcoming this was to realise that it was normal to not know how to answer any of the questions at first. I learned to expect it, but also to expect that after a couple of minutes I would begin to get ideas for solutions. By expecting that I would draw a blank at first, while realising that this wouldn't mean I'd fail the test, I kept myself from panicking.

Part of what the psychologist did was to help me understand this. The other thing was that he worked with me to visualise the test-taking procedure:
sitting down at the desk, turning over the paper, scanning the list of questions, not knowing how to answer any of them, then getting an idea, and so on. He talked me through the scenario while I did some relaxation exercises that he taught me.

Take comfort in the fact that your test-taking days are almost over. After you get a postgraduate degree, no one cares whether you passed with flying colours or barely squeaked by. Your publications will be far more important.


How to cite lecture notes? (and should I even do this?) When learning a new subject, I would frequently use lecture notes found somewhere in the Internet. When writing a paper (or a master thesis, as in my case, but the rules should be similar, I believe) one should give some reference for used results which are not common knowledge, if I understand correctly. This make me wonder: what do I do if I want to reference a result I found in some notes?

The natural thing to do would be to just add these notes to bibliography. What format would be preferable for this? Note that there will generally not be much publishing information, perhaps not even a definite year and place. (A BibTeX template would be .)

Secondly, is it OK to cite such materials as a reference?

You should make a good-faith effort to find and cite original source of the results (to give proper credit).  You should only cite the lecture notes if (1) they are the original source, or (2) the original source is inaccessible, either literally (out of print or unpublished) or figuratively (written in a foreign language, with excessive generality or formality, or just badly).

Finding the original source may require significantly more scholarly diligence on your part than the author of the lecture notes, since most lecture-note authors (including myself) are fairly sloppy with references.  Such is life.


What should I do with a paper I've translated? Aside from reaping the personal benefits, what should one do after translating a paper? It would be nice to offer it to others, but I assume it is a copyright violation to post it online. Sending it to the author(s) to deal with seems like a safe but potentially presumptuous option.

(Motivation: I recently tried my hand at translating a paper from French into English,  Quasi-positivité d'une courbe analytique dans une boule pseudoconvexe by Michel Boileau and Stepan Orevkov.)

If the paper you are speaking about is a published research paper, you should contact the publisher (e.g., Springer), as they do deal with copyright issues. If the paper is a technical paper, written by a set of authors about a subject, and those papers are hosted on an university website or a research-based company, then you need to contact the authors.

If the paper is not a research or technical paper, then well the question is not related to the Academia section.


How do I deal with sending low GPA to a potential supervisor? A professor offered to meet with me later this week to discuss some potential projects, and asked for my transcripts to see what courses I have taken and how well I am at them.

I have done decently in my mathematics courses, however, one semester last year was exceptionally bad for me and I ended up getting a C-, C+ and a D- (in discrete math, Introduction to C, and a biology course respectively). The only course that has some sort of relation to the research I'm interested in doing is the intro to C course.

I honestly don't know how to proceed with this. I don't want to keep making excuses for myself because I'm not doing incredibly well in my professor's class, but I know I can get better at the software being used (MATLAB), as I've used it before for maths classes and haven't had much trouble with it. I know he thinks I'm not the best programmer and I don't know how to deal with that idea and this situation.

How do professors deal with this? I don't want to waste his time, and more importantly, I don't want to become disinterested in the project and end up giving up halfway.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but the only thing that can fix a semester like that is more recent semesters with better grades, and the more of them the better.

Irrespective of the current situation, I think what you need is to focus on getting several solid semesters between you and this rough one.  Then when someone who is interested in your academic performance asks, you can show them that, yes, you had a rough semester, but you've gotten back on track.  In my experience, recent good performance will very quickly outweigh more distant struggles.  This is true regardless of the reason - you could have the best excuse in the world, but if you haven't shown you're past it and doing better now, who's to say you won't continue to struggle with whatever you're being considered for?

Given that your rough term was just last year, however, the only recourse you have right now is to be open and upfront about it; explain why you struggled and what happened to address the cause.  If you have no excuse, then just say that too.  It was a rough term, but you're back on track.  This is totally reasonable and far from uncommon in undergrad.  Unfortunately it may be a hard sell if you're currently struggling in this professor's class too.  Do you know why the professor made this offer to you in spite of this?  That might offer some insight into what they're looking for.

In short, send the transcripts, point out that you struggled but mention what you did to address the cause, and then the ball is in their court.  Be prepared for the possibility that the professor is alarmed by what they see, and know that it may take time for you to build up this kind of credibility again.  Then focus on your grades.

Good luck!


Societal impact of research As someone who conducts research that is unlikely to be of any relevance to the common man, I would like a little perspective on the impact that pure research plays in society, and how I can, in some sense, feel better about my research contributions.
In a field such as pure mathematics, one can argue that most people are unlikely to understand, or even be interested in recent results. In my opinion, pure mathematicians are attracted to the unhindered joy of research and the challenges it brings, and this is a major factor in the field being active today. (For the record, I am not a pure mathematician.)
In contrast, research in fields such as medicine and environmental science seem to have a larger impact on the common man. A simple example would be the Covid-19 vaccines that will play a major role in bringing the world back to a semblance of normality. Even if it can be argued that today's mathematical results will shape the science and engineering of tomorrow, I continue to feel that these will not have as large an impact as medical research will continue to.
My question is simple: Though I am someone who conducts research motivated simply by the challenges it brings and the joy of achieving a solution, I do occasionally feel that I would like my research to have a larger impact on society (which it really does not). I would like to know if there are others that feel the same way, particularly from a field such as mathematics, and if so, how I can obtain a new perspective on this.

You need to think longer term. Decades, and perhaps centuries. Research done today may seem to have little immediate impact, and that is true. But over time, it contributes to the general knowledge that makes things possible. Think of any scientist from the past whose name is known today, even, say, Euclid. Some of what they did may have had some immediate effect, but much of it laid the groundwork for later advances.
In pure mathematics and theoretical physics, for example, an interesting question today may be vital in the future. Isaac Newton's calculus work was so unimportant that he put it in a drawer for years. Leibniz did "interesting" things in understanding real functions, but without their work, and what came after, much of engineering in the past 150 or so years would be impossible.
Think Mendel or Darwin. They studied and thought because certain questions were "interesting" to them. They laid the foundation of modern understanding and that led to "useful" things.
Note that Einstein's work took years to be accepted because the "great minds" of the day were focused on a different theory that turned out to have no basis - the aether.
Moreover, many of the advances of the "great minds" of science were only possible because of a general advancement in understanding, much of which was contributed by those whose names we no longer remember. The current state of understanding the world can be thought of as an advancing front with many contributors, some of whose contributions we remember specifically, but it is the front itself that makes them possible. All of us push against that frontier in our small, perhaps, ways.


Not invited for on-site interview after phone session I had the chance to talk to two professors last week regarding admission to the PhD program. After I was done, I was told that I would be invited for an on-site interview, if admitted.

After not receiving any feedback from the school, I emailed them and found out that I was not invited to the interviews on the campus. Now they're just telling me to wait and I may be invited for another visit in the future.

This is a problem for me as I need to start looking for funds in another programs that I have been already admitted to (The one I am waiting on is my first choice).

What would be the best approach to handle this kind of situation?

Thanks.

Exactly what they told you to do: wait.  If you're at the point where you'll need to make an irreversible decision (like accepting an offer somewhere else), you can tell them that, and see if they react, but it doesn't seem to likely to me.  Otherwise, what's wrong with waiting?


How to get the best of the last half of a PhD? I'm a PhD student in Physics with one year and a half to go. My project is at the border between physics and computer science (I am developing a new method to analyse materials). I'm fascinated by computer science and I would prefer not to work in a research center, which seems to be the natural prosecution of what I'm doing. I did research in a number of different field (biophysics, x-rays, neutrons, algorithms), finding out I'm not super talented, but I learn fast and I have some intellectual stamina. I also have some experience as a reporter/journalist.

I like doing research, even if sometimes I find the academic environment a bit boring and alienating. I don't have much working experience outside academia, but I don't exclude the possibility of a non-academic job. I started studying machine learning books to expand my computer skills and employability.

Is there anything you suggest to do to maximize my possibility to land a nice postdoc (ideally in physics/computer science, which should be a way to keep open the possibility to work in the industry, and ideally in the US) or a job as a data scientist?

Postdocs are typically useful for two types of things:

They build experience as a (semi)independent researcher that is now typically required before you can be considered for a faculty post
They are a chance to broaden or shift focus of your research

For example, I know somebody working in robotics whose thesis worked was entirely in simulation due to grad school circumstances, and used the "focus shift" opportunity of a postdoc to get into hardware.  So a postdoc is worth considering if you feel that your current work is too narrow to be noticed by the type of organizations you might like to join.

As for where to go next: if you aren't absolutely driven to try to do a faculty job, don't try for it.  There is a huge world of non-traditional scientific opportunities out there, which are often hard to be aware of from inside traditional academia.  Some things to consider, with a lot of strange ecological niches that you can't even be aware of until you start talking to people in them.  Do note, however, that if you aren't a US citizen or permanent resident, then many of these opportunities may be harder for you get due to visa issues.

For pursuing all of these questions, however, the big thing you need to start doing is networking.  Get to know more professors in your department than your advisor, especially any ones who have had non-traditional career paths.  Go to conferences and meet people.  Look for events in your field that are also attended by non-academic researchers (this will likely be more in computer science or material science than physics), and look for the more informal and discussion-oriented attached events like Ph.D. symposia and workshops.  If your advisor can help you get introductions, that's the best help you can possibly get, but since you're interested in a non-standard path they might not be able to.

As you meet people, be honest about your situation.  There are always a lot of people trolling for good possible hires for non-faculty positions, both in academia and out of it, and there's a word of mouth network. If you've got good core computer science skills and don't come off as needy or desperate, there are a lot more possible matches out there than you might imagine.


A grad school professor contacted me about research before I applied I haven't finished applying to one of the grad schools I'm interested in. But, one of the professors emailed me asking if I was still applying. He said I had strong letters of recommendations and told me a little bit about a project he is working on. Says he has student positions to fill. I assume he's partially interested in me because of my degree in mathematics where other applicants probably have degrees in other fields.

I want to know a few things. One, if I havent actually sent in my application can he see it? Or can he only see the letter of recommendation? Two, is it common for professors to be the ones to reach out to a student? I know most people encourage contacting professors you potentially want to work with but was surprised when a professor contacted me. Three, would this increase my odds of getting into the grad school? I.e. if this professor decides he wants to work with me could he have influence over my admission? Lastly, he said if there's enough interest on both of out parts he'd be willing to "support a trip to his lab". How should I interpret that?

This isn't very common in my field, but my field doesn't involve labs so I'm confident our fields are different.  I can see why you would feel skeptical of what seems like, on the surface, such an important stroke.  Always investigate things that seem too good to be true.  Here's some steps I would take:

Talk to your undergraduate advisors and letter writers.  This is the most important one; knowing you, your work and your field, they can help you with your specific questions, and possibly suggest things to find out that you haven't even considered.
Research the facility and professor.  It sounds like you've already done this, or at least started on it.
Ask the professor how your work came to his attention.  You don't have to make it challenging, just tuck it in with a reply along the lines of "Thank you for contacting me, I'm very interested.  Can you give me some more information about (research specifics)?  Also, what brought my work to your attention that made you feel I would be a good fit for your lab?"  The answer to this should help you answer your questions about whether he's seen your letters of rec or your application, or something else.
If everything looks good and you feel you're a fit for this lab, don't sell yourself short!  Most grad students go through some form of imposter syndrom, so this can actually be an obstacle you'll need to overcome.

Good luck with grad school regardless; applications can be stressful and a lot of work.


How to cite papers that are in submission and don't have preprints? I'm writing a paper right now to soon be submitted to a workshop venue. The way the review process works for this particular workshop is that it's a "rolling review process," in that people publicy submit their work on OpenReview and receive feedback and a decision within a couple of weeks.
Due to the public nature of the submission process, everyone has access to the information of the work (PDF files of the manuscript, comments from anonymous reviewers containing feedback and decisions, etc.), and I've been fortunate to come across previous submissions and further tune my manuscript.
The predicament I'm facing is, when I cite these papers, how exactly should I go about it? Many of them don't appear on preprint servers like arXiv nor on Google Scholar. My initial thought is to just make the BibTeX file myself and fill in the relevant information (e.g., title, author, submitted date, URL), but I'm just not sure how to go about a work that's still under review and in submission.
I've asked other senior members at my lab, but was hoping that the community may be able to provide some other opinions or experiences. Thanks!

One option could be to use the BibTeX provided by OpenReview, if available, and adapt it if necessary. A quick glance suggests that this is available for most submissions, including those that are anonymous or under review.
Screenshot for reference:


Asking a past professor to teach a workshop/short course I would like to ask some of my former professors to come to my country and teach a small workshop, with undergraduate students, for a couple of days. I am doing this because I would like to raise the interest in my career, which is computer science, inside the faculty that I am currently working in. So the question that I have is: what would be the recommended things that I should offer to them, so that they are more likely to agree to pay a visit to my faculty? I ask this because I believe that I must submit like a report of expenses to my faculty dean or coordinator, so he or she could see if its feasible or not.

What expenses should my faculty cover? I was thinking of:

Plane tickets
Accommodation and meals
Material for the workshop

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

In general, the expenses you've listed above (travel costs, local accommodations and meals) are typically sufficient. Registration fees for the workshop would also usually be waived.

One other thing you might consider offering, if funds are available, is a small stipend to be used by the faculty member to sponsor a "young researcher"—a graduate student or postdoc—who can also attend the workshop and take part, perhaps by offering a poster or contributed talk. (Or, if it is not possible to offer a stipend, perhaps the registration fees could be waived for the young researcher instead.)


In the writing phase of masters thesis, is it advisable to take a course that is unrelated? I'm supposed to be writing my master thesis now in numerical optimization and I have a chance to attend an online course in Analysis. It is unrelated to my thesis topic and the course will require me to work hard and I can't withdraw from the course. I want to take this course because I'm planning to shift afterwards to mathematical analysis and I might need a recommendation letter from the lecturer.
I'm hesitant because I'm afraid to get behind in my writing?
Do you think it is advisable to take the course?

This is more a way for you to think through your dilemma than an actual answer. Only you can provide the answer.
In theory, there is no reason why a single course should interfere. But in practice it depends on how much time you have and how close is the deadline. Only you can evaluate the parameters.
It is good to keep flexible, and a good analysis course might serve your long term interest well. But so will finishing your thesis on time.
It depends on the level of risk you are willing to take on, and whether you have any safety valves if you get backed up.
I'll also note that focusing too much for too long on one thing doesn't use your mind very efficiently. Sometimes if  you get blocked on one thing it is good to take up something else for a while and you mind may well work through the block unconsciously. It is also why physical activity is good at "block" points.