Is it appropriate to use active and passive voice together in abstract? I am writing an abstract for my manuscript (with my mentor), and the abstract includes active and passive voices together, as below:

  In the present paper, we have proved [...] by using [...]. Some new results have also been obtained.

Is it a mistake to use passive and active voice together in the abstract?

I don't think there is any inherent problem with mixing active and passive voice.  However I would offer the following suggestions:

The passive voice is certainly unnecessary here, so you might as well avoid it.  You could simply say "We have also obtained some new results."
I think most people prefer to write abstracts in the present tense.  "In the present paper, we prove theorems... We also obtain some new results."
The last sentence "obtained some new results" is so vague that it doesn't tell the reader anything.  Either add more details ("We also obtain some new results on the reticulation of splines") or just omit the sentence altogether.


Is Characterizing an Algorithm's Behavior worth Publication? I am planning on characterizing the performance of an algorithm (specifically the DIRECT algorithm) with respect to a particular parameter mentioned in the original paper but for which I have found no usable characterization of the performance impacts of. This algorithm isn't the most popular in its field (nonlinear numerical optimization), but there have been several papers associated with it and it does have applications in other fields.

To be more specific, I am planning on characterizing the performance of the algorithm with respect to its number of iterations in a more specific way than "increasing the number of iterations increases the quality of the results," including a description of how exactly the performance impact scales.

Is this sort of characterization novel enough to be worth publication?

It may be thin, but you won't know until you write it up formally and submit it to some appropriate journal. The real feedback will come from reviewers and/or the editor.

The question here is just a hypothetical. Make it concrete and ask someone (the editor) who is in a position to make a determination. You will have to make your case there.

In general, to answer the topline question, it may be publishable or not, but the details matter.


Transition from university teaching career to curricular assessment type jobs? I'm curious if anybody here has ever transitioned from a teaching-strong academic career to a curriculum assessment type job (in calculus, for example)? If so, what would you be able to say about that? That is, what do you think a successful applicant to such a job should have on their CV, coming from academia? What would you be able to say about the types of tasks you were involved in, once hired? How did the lifestyle differ (or not differ) from your past academic experience? You know, the works. (If it matters, I'm coming from an American context.)

I should perhaps say a bit about myself to help clarify this question more.

I graduated with a PhD in mathematics in 2017, having worked as a part-time graduate teaching assistant for six years (two semesters as full instructor-of-record). I have now completed two years of an intensive teaching post-doc, with one more year to go. This position has given me the ability to teach a wide range of undergraduate courses: calculus 1, 2, and 3, linear algebra, complex analysis, topology, real analysis 2, abstract algebra 1, and four semesters of an active-learning/group-work/IBL style logic&proof course for non-math majors.

These last two years, I have employed various teaching styles running the gamut from teacher-centered to student-centered. In graduate school, I was fortunate to serve as a TA for various instructors who I observed, and assisted with, employing techniques like flipped classroom, IBL worksheets, group work, etc. I have written several creative quizzes, exams, and interactive proofs (further details upon request) in all of my classes, and have come to quite enjoy this part of the job. I am preparing a conference talk and paper about work I did this past spring semester to revolutionize my department's logic&proof course for non-math majors.

I know that I would like a math education-focused career, but I am lately considering the possibility that perhaps being more behind the scenes rather than constantly in the classroom might be a better fit for my temperament/personality. Assuming that a transition to a curriculum assessment/specialist type job (still learning the lingo) is even feasible for someone with my experience, would it be advisable? Assuming, down the road, that I wish to return to university teaching, would it be possible? It strikes me that having experience in developing unique, cutting-edge curricular materials might actually be a benefit for a university instructor. Anyway, this is a new idea that I'm beginning to explore, so I'm gathering all the information and perspectives that I can at this stage.

I suggest the following course of action when thinking about any non-standard career path:

Identify people who already have the job you would like to have. Get in touch with them, and ask them as many questions as you can think of (about their job, how they got it, etc.). If you can't find anybody, chances are that this job doesn't really exist in your area. For instance, I am not sure if my university employs anybody for "curricular assessment", although we have a few people who more or less work fulltime on program management and development (which may be close to what you have in mind).
Find out what qualifications these people have, and which qualifications they had before starting their job. It's well possible that you may need additional training before you can realistically apply for the job you are looking for (e.g., to become a program manager in my department, you typically want to be a mid-career academic with considerable pedagogical training and some publications in education-focused journals and conferences).
Let everybody and their dog know that you are interested in transitioning into such a position. One challenge with non-traditional career paths is that most people in your network may not even be aware that you might be interested in such a job if they happen to come across one. The only solution for this is to make sure that your entire network is aware that you are not looking for a standard faculty position.
Volunteer for every opportunity to take on a role in your department that comes close to what you want to do. Besides giving you valuable experience this will also help you become known as the person doing program development in your department (and, hopefully, beyond). If a suitable job opens up, you should be the first person that people are thinking about.

In a nutshell, it's really not all that different from how engineers transition into management positions in industry. First, you make sure that people know you are interested in a management position in the first place. Then you get the necessary training and take over more and more management tasks, until a suitable opportunity arises and you get asked to transition.


Dry erase boards: glass vs. white board I've been tinkering with the idea of installing several glass boards in the lab & offices instead of white boards. They look cool, and seem to erase better. But I do not have extended experience using them.

What are the pros and cons of using glass boards compared to white boards in general?

When I was a grad student, I mounted a 1x2 meters glass plane in front of a white wall at my place. It was great for scribbling stuff and for large drawings. I also developed the habit of drawing on the glass doors at my previous lab, because the closest whiteboard was in another room.

The big advantage: glass is very smooth, you will never have stains accumulating like on a white board. No matter how zealous you or the cleaning staff is, white boards are a bit porous and the material deteriorates with time (UV radiations, etc.) and becomes even more porous, making it harder to clean up.
For the same reasons, if you inadvertently use a permanent marker instead of a white board marker, it's easy to clean it up. Finally, existing glass structures also provide large surfaces for drawing.

The disadvantages: lighting (back lighting, shadows, etc.) can impede reading what you wrote. It helps if the glass is placed immediately in front of a white wall. Also, the cleaning staff might erase your brilliant ideas overnight because they were instructed to clean all windows.


Review lasting 6 weeks The status of my paper which is in review since 3/02 is "A review is overdue. Two of 4 Assigned reviews are completed". I read in the journal site that review generally takes 1 month and the minimum number of reviews to make a decision by the editor is 2. The number of reviews is 2 since 1 March and the editor didn't make any decision? What should I do?

It's not true that just because your manuscript already has two reviews that the editor will make a decision. For example, maybe the two reviews disagree with each other, or one of the two reviews is poor and the editor is waiting for the third review as a tiebreaker. The third review is ten days overdue which is not a good sign, but you can't tell from the outside. For example, maybe the reviewer had emailed the editor saying the review will be late, and the editor is (sensibly) waiting as a result.

As for "what should I do", the answer is always the same. If you're concerned/impatient, write to the editor and ask what the status is. Otherwise just wait. The review process for your manuscript doesn't seem that long to me, so I would wait, but it's up to you.


Studying at university How do I get the motivation to study for a test for university? I was a high achiever in high school but I just don't feel motivated to study.

What are you studying at university? Are you doing what you really want to be doing? Are you passionate about the subject?

There's no magic to becoming motivated. You personally have to want it. If you don't then you'll find the next 3-4 years of your life gruelling, potentially meaning you don't do as well in exams because you're not as bothered eventually coming out with a degree in a subject that you don't necessarily want to pursue.

If you aren't motivated then you need to consider why. Is university for you, is the subject for you? Its never too late to switch path and do something else if you realise that that is the case.


Major Revision on Experiment Conducted Context: A paper has been conditionally accepted (subject to my major revision). Main issues that have been raised by two reviewers are:

The author should compare the testing times of different algorithms.
Some  methods can be added for comparison.
Negative example used in experiment is 50%. According to the size of the dataset, the algorithm may overfit.
The algorithm should be evaluated according to the protocol of a known dataset.

It is clear that the main issues are related to the experiment.

Question: Is it mandatory to conduct new experiments to address issues made by reviewers? If I do not conduct new experiments, what is the probability of getting rejected?

I mean if reviewers are not convinced with experiments, the editor is supposed to reject the paper, but he didn't do that.

What should be done under such circumstances?

The editor has not rejected because (s)he believes that the shortcomings in your paper can be tackled by you. If this entails performing experiments, then further acceptance will be conditional upon that.

Whether or not you should do these experiments is a different issue and requires knowledge of the case- perhaps you can write a good rebuttal and justify why these added experiments are unnecessary. In general I would recommend against this, but you and your co-authors must make this call based on the issues raised.

Don't think that the editor will necessarily override the reviewers. You need to satisfy the reviewers, either through corrections, rebuttal or a combination of both. Once reviewers are satisfied, editor will be more inclined to accept.


Mentioning advisor qualifications in statement of purpose I am doing my master's in a relatively unknown institution, but with an excellent faculty. Most of them are graduates from top universities (TOP 10) and my advisor is one of them.

Is it OK to mention this in the statement of purpose for PhD applications? I want to show that I have been under good instruction even if the university is relatively unknown. Basically what I am thinking of writing is "I had the prevliage to have taken courses under the instruction of alumni of [That university with big name] and worked under the supervision of Prof. X who has long professional experience in [Relevant industry]".

It should be obvious from your CV who your MS thesis advisor is, and you might want to mention it again in your statement of purpose as you describe your MS thesis, but I wouldn't mention where your advisor got his PhD.

There are basically two possibilities here:

Your MS advisor is well known in the community.  In this case, there's no need to talk about where the advisor did his PhD since the reputation of the advisor will already be established in the reader's mind.  The reader is likely to be more interested in your advisor's recent research activity than where the advisor got his PhD.
Your MS advisor is not well known in the community.  In this case, mentioning where the advisor isn't going to help much- having a PhD from a top institution means little if the advisor hasn't been active in the research community since getting that degree.


Have I waited too long to ask for letters of recommendation and when should I send a follow up email? I asked my 2 undergraduate research supervisors on Friday, December 22nd. This is five and a half weeks before the deadlines (they would each be filling out 2 separate recommendation forms). The deadline is January 31st. I heard back from one supervisor about 10 minutes after I sent the email. However, I still haven’t heard back from the other supervisor. I am worried I sent it at an inappropriate time (too close to Christmas). Tomorrow will be exactly one more before the deadline. Did I wait too long to ask for the LORs? When should I follow up with the second potential writer?

No. You gave enough time for them. However you can't count the holidays as work days, they are coming back to work in the next days and then they will have approximately three weeks to write the letter.

I would send an email at the end of this week politely asking the second professor to confirm whether he will be able to write the letter or not. In the negative case you still have enough time to ask to another professor.


Listing (peer reviewed) software article on CV I am a contributor to an R package, and we are preparing a submission to the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS). Submissions are peer reviewed (guidelines available here), and articles are typically ~5 pages in length.

However, I am a social scientist, and the JOSS peer review process is vastly different from that of journals in my field. Peer review is conducted publicly on GitHub via an issue thread, and the journal does not outright reject submissions as stated in their review criteria:

  We ask that reviewers grade submissions in one of three categories: 1) Accept 2) Minor Revisions 3) Major Revisions. Unlike some journals we do not reject outright submissions requiring major revisions - we’re more than happy to give the author as long as they need to make these modifications/improvements.

Given these differences, I am hesitant to include a JOSS article in the peer reviewed publications section of my CV if this article eventually ends up being published by JOSS. These are the options I've considered so far:

Include a link as part of the entry for the package in the software section of my CV
As an entry in the non-peer reviewed publications section of my CV
Don't include it in my CV at all

What is the best practice here?

I don't think this should be treated any differently from any other peer-reviewed publication on your CV. There is still some standard of quality that's applied before a manuscript will be published in JOSS. In practice, there isn't a huge gulf between "major revisions" and "rejection" - both indicate that the manuscript needs to be changed significantly before it can be published. The category of "rejection" just indicates that the journal editor does not want to be involved in that process. Even though you can't be "rejected" from JOSS, that doesn't alone indicate that the papers which are accepted are of lower quality. A low quality paper could receive a label of "major revisions" every time it's revised and submitted if it's still low quality - it never gets outright rejected, but it never gets published either. The fact that it's not rejected speaks more to the patience of the editors than to the quality of papers they choose to publish.


Diversity Statement for Faculty Position in the US? I am crafting applications for US faculty positions and Californian universities require diversity statements. Now, the problem is I have no idea what to write in it, since diversity can mean literally anything. I've seen various examples that are all based on personal struggles by people belonging to minority groups or active in some program related to mentoring/teaching to minorities, which makes writing such a statement much easier.

Now, I've never been involved in any "program" of this type. There's no research/teaching about minorities in my field (science). I'm no minority, since I'm a white european. I've lived here and there for various years (outside of my homeland) in my early life and to work these last 5-6 years, so I'm technically an emigrant, but I guess it'd be offensive to people emigrating due to serious reasons to pick on this to develop the statement.

I was wondering whether anybody can give me a solid to develop something tasteful. I thought about something about multidisciplinarity since I've worked and studied in various fields, but I think the purpose of such statement is to address racial/gender/sex diversity.

This comes off a bit to me like "this application asks for a teaching statement but I haven't ever taught or thought seriously about teaching, so what do I write?"  Well, if you haven't done anything or thought seriously about it, then you're not going to be able to write a very good statement.  The first steps (which it's probably a little late for) are to start thinking about issues around underrepresented groups and getting involved in some way.  Barring that you just have to resign yourself to this being a very weak part of your application.

That said, there are some other aspects beyond racial/gender diversity which you might think about and might have something to say about.  For example, maybe you have relevant experience concerning teaching ESL (English second language) students, or first-generation college students, or students coming from underrepresented rural areas.


Appealing failure in PhD qualifying exams For a student who has failed the PhD qualifying exams twice, is there usually any hope for him/her appealing to stay in the school?

Any advice from professors/students with experience in this will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

Edit: Just asking out of interest, I haven't taken the quals yet.

Extra info for those who saw my previous question: I am now on good terms with 2 of the admin staff. One of them regularly chats with me. Learnt my lesson, no intention to make any enemies / offend anyone.

Sure you can, however there are the following points to consider, before jump in to the next Ph.D. position:

Abstraction On Failure and Potential Side Effects: First of all, failure is not a bad thing, it just means the person is not ready yet. However, most people deal with depression after a failure, and for few suicidal thoughts come to mind. So in one hand, it is not a big deal, however it is a big deal in another hand; if the person does suffer from depression. The person needs to be very honest with him or herself about this. In case the person is not sure, he/she needs to talk to a psychologist about it.
Supervisors' Role: I saw students who were smart and determined, and finished their Ph.Ds through though times (a friend of mine, finished her Ph.D, where her supervisor had a cancer and needed to be absent the last 12 months of her Ph.D.). However, some students, throughly need supervision, through out their Ph.D. programs, and their supervisors play a big role in their success. If the Ph.D student in the question, belong to the second group; then he/she needs to find a supervisor who take care of his/her students and provide an excellent service. Starting at the same environment, does bring the chance of failure to 100% ... again.
Student's Role: If a Ph.D. student, does not have a good manner, and wastes his/her time; and/or does not listen to his/her supervisor, having the supervisor and getting another Ph.D. position, does not change a thing; and result in the failure again. This is one of those things, that the student him/herself need to commit to do. The Ph.D. student needs to throughly look at him/herself and see what traits he/she has that effects the outcome of his/her progress.


Regarding asking for writing about some courses in my CV in which I got bad grades due to my non interest in those courses I am a masters student in an Asian country and I am looking for applying for PHD Position in Europe in pure mathematics.

During my masters in my Institute I had a lot of applied maths courses and in some ( almost half) of applied maths courses I got 6 or 7 grade ( out of 10) despite the fact that I tried to study. But In pure mathematics courses I have very good grades and also the branch I wanted to do phd is not offered in my university. I studied it myself and did one internship and I am confident in that particular branch and I am really interested in it. ( so, studying a different topic also took considerable time from applied courses. )

My question is -- how to write this effectively in Cv and Whether it's right to right as I am not trying to give an excuse so that my chances of admission are not hampered.
Please guide .

My general advice in such situations is to stress the positive in any application. Show the reviewer that you are a good candidate for success both in background and in work habits. Don't focus on explaining things that aren't positive but be prepared to respond when/if asked about them.

While the competition for a slot in a good university is very strong, nobody is perfect. And you won't know how competitive you are until you apply.

If you have a fairly narrow focus you intend to follow in graduate studies, focus on that and how you are especially well prepared to work in that field. Be enthusiastic, not apologetic.

Caveat. I don't know how your grades are interpreted by your own university, not how they will be seen when you apply. But focus on the good stuff, not the bad.


Pursuing a second masters in a more established school Consider this situation,

I get accepted for a second masters degree at the University of Toronto, and just before that I graduate with a masters degree in a much less established university.

Both degrees are in the same field, Computer Science.

Further, UoT knows that I am completing my masters degree.

My plan would be: to use this opportunity to get into the PhD program at the University of Toronto, because this is what I applied for in the first place.

Would you pursue this second masters?

Thanks

Contact the department and ask them directly "How many students who applied to the PhD program and were only accepted into the masters program end up graduating with a PhD?" If this number is very low, I'd advise against this. Some professors will discriminate against masters students when looking for students to do research with, and if this is the culture at UoT, you should know about it going in. The worst outcome is you end up paying for a second masters and leave with two masters degrees in computer science, which will look unusual in job interviews. I know of at least one interviewer at a company who said he automatically views two masters degrees in the same subject (or even a highly related subject) as a big red flag.

It might be better to enter a PhD program at a different university or get a job. You can always apply to PhD programs next year. I know of several students with less than stellar academic performance who enter good PhD programs with work experience. As someone who has read a fair amount of personal statements before, those who have been in industry for a few years tend to write better ones. They tend to know what they want and are not going into academia just because it is the "next step" without thinking about it.

Computer science has the advantage that often you don't need a university to do your own research. Start doing research in your spare time. If you find a question you are really interested in and have made some progress, contact professors who work in that area at various PhD programs. You have a much better shot of getting into a good PhD program if a professor has notified the admissions committee that they want to work with you.


Word "believe" in scientific context I am trying to write a paper. We have done certain experiments and results from it are good. So, I feel that if our idea can be implemented in other sites, it can benefit those sites. Now my question is simple, how can I write in scientific context that the results of my study is useful to others?
For example,

We believe that the analysis results from our study can benefit bla
bla....

Is it appropriate to write as below

We feel/think/suppose that the analysis results from our study can
benefit bla bla...

Any scientific word equivalent for "believe"?

The word "believe" is a very fine word to use in a scientific article.
Generally, it's a good practice to separate factual information (data, observations, results) from subjective information (interpretation, speculation). The word "believe" clearly puts a statement in the latter category.


MathSciNet reviews license I have been asked to become a MathSciNet reviewer. I personally find the database very useful, but I am a bit held back by the fact the database is kept behind a paywall.

What is actually the licensing/copyright status of reviews submitted to MathSciNet? Do authors keep the copyright and are allowed to post copies on their websites (like the AMS license for its journals)? If so, does anyone actually do the latter?

The information is nowhere to be found on MathSciNet, and actually I have never seen anyone releasing their reviews somewhere else.

Here are some answers to your questions:  Yes, MathSciNet is behind a paywall.  Yes, we ask reviewers to give us copyright to their reviews.  Yes, you can post your reviews elsewhere.
 In return, for each review, we put US$12 on account at the AMS (up from the US$8 it was a few years ago) for the reviewer to use to buy AMS books, to pay (part of) your AMS membership, or to pay for other things (such as t-shirts).  The credit is in the form of "AMS Points".

Why the copyright?  This helps us to copyright the whole database.  Copyrighting a database is rather different from copyrighting a journal or a conference proceedings volume.

Can you post the reviews?  The reviewer letter says, "You may post your reviews on your website, circulate them to colleagues, distribute copies to your students, and make other customary scholarly uses. You may even include your reviews in journals, books, and databases in the particular field(s) of mathematics to which they relate, provided that first publication credit is given to the AMS."

Why the paywall?  Creating and maintaining MathSciNet is expensive.  It costs millions of dollars per year to run it.  The subscription model allows us to cover the costs.  It would take a lot of donations or ads to make up for that.

Why so expensive? We work hard to make sure that we get things right. In order to do this, Mathematical Reviews has a staff of 80 people.  That includes 18 PhD mathematicians who serve as editors.  We also have people with advanced library degrees and experience that ensure that our bibliographic data is complete and correct.  We have cataloguers who ensure that we correctly identify authors.  We have copy editors who help out with the reviews and check references.  We have a whole department who work with the reviewers (and their reviews).  We have an IT department.

I hope this is helpful.  If not, post a comment!

--
Edward Dunne
Executive Editor
Mathematical Reviews


Successful survival strategies for academic departments threatened with closure Every now and again, academic departments are threatened with closure by university administrations.
One current example: Pure Mathematics in Leicester is under threat of closure (making academic staff redundant).
What successful strategies have departments been able to use to see off threats like this?

Once you are threatened with closure, it is probably too late to fix your problems.
Increase enrollment of new students with marketing.
Increase retention of students with better teaching and extracurricular experiences.
Seek donations.
Find a new source of revenue.
Unionize.  A union contract can force cross-subsidies from money-making departments to money-losing departments instead of closure.  However, this will not work if there are no money-making departments.

These decisions are all about money, and there's no easy way to get money.
A more detailed answer: https://ep3guide.org/toolkit


Are sub-reviewers of conferences paid? My supervisor appoint me as a sub reviewer of one conference. Am I paid for this?  Should I tell him or negotiate about the cost of reviewing? I have finished my masters program and defended my thesis.

You will not be paid in money.

You might be paid in reputation. This depends on how the conference handles its review process and you can ask your supervisor about it.

If the conference organizers learn about your reviewing (i.e. if "being appointed as a sub-reviewer" is more than your supervisor forwarding you the manuscript and asking you to write the review that he or she will then send back to the conference organizers), that may lead to a slight rise in your reputation among those organizers. Results could be that you will at first be asked to review more papers, but on the long run, this might lead to you being considered for e.g. co-organizing a workshop (if one of the organizers remembers you usually provided valid input in a particular field etc.).
Some conferences publish their list of reviewers. This has basically the same effect as above, however with a much wider scope, as the fact that you contributed will be publicly visible.

And of course, you will gain some experience in reviewing and more awareness of issues in authoring scientific texts. Also, you might get some insight into the work of researchers that you may not otherwise have found. Sometimes, this includes becoming aware of research that you can use for your own publications (either as related work or as an inspiration in the first place), as seems to have happened e.g. here.


Can a maths undergraduate apply for a physics PhD? Can a maths undergraduate apply for a physics PhD without going into masters program? Given that during his undergraduate course he published a couple of papers on physics in respectable physics journals

It's hard to give a general rule as policies will vary between institutions and countries, but this would probably depend on the specific Physics related content of your course.

From my own experience (UK universities for undergraduate masters Physics and Astronomy and then PhD Astrophysics), it is not common but definitely acceptable to get a place on a PhD course straight from a Bachelor's. Exceptional candidates (eg. having multiple publications before graduation) would definitely be considered.

In terms of switching subjects, you would need to show that you have the background knowledge and appropriate skills (numerical, computational, logical problem solving) for the PhD you are applying to, but if your Maths degree covers this then it should not be a problem. I imagine aiming for theoretical physics or highly mathematical fields such as cosmology would be quite easy to justify from a Maths course that included mathematical physics. A practical or astronomy related PhD may be harder to justify as you probably wouldn't have the broad background knowledge or lab skills. For computational projects such as gravitational waves or theoretical astronomy, you would need to have computing courses in your undergraduate degree, to an acceptable level, though the language you learned wouldn't matter too much as you can easily pick up a different language.


Does giving an easily-understood talk make the audience think you did something simple? Alice and Bob both go to a conference. Alice gives a great talk, and most people understood it. Bob gives a much more technical talk filled with jargon which almost everyone failed to understand. Do people walk out of the talk thinking Alice must've done something simple while Bob did something profound?

I get the feeling that this happens - after all given two concepts, one which I understand and the other which I don't, it's intuitive that the one I understand is the simpler one. It also feels like the easier-understood the talk is, the more questions Alice receives that aren't directly related to her work. For example I once attended a talk where the speaker talked about aggregating samples of the sky, and someone asked "why do you use square samples? Why not circles or triangles?". This kind of non-specialist question is obviously hard to see coming, and the you-either-know-it-or-you-don't result is uncomfortable.

On the other hand, if it's indeed true that giving easily-understood talks makes people think you did something simple, it would imply that giving comprehensible talks is a bad thing. That not only sounds silly, it's also counterproductive.

I will tell you what I've observed in Math.  Similar to what Jordan Ellenberg says in How not to be wrong, one can think of depth and technicality as two orthogonal axes, so one has 4 rough categories of results:

Deep and simple (technically easy)
Deep and hard/technical
Shallow and simple
Shallow (unimportant) and technical

Some people like things that are more technical and some people like things are simple, but deep.  For instance, Atle Selberg thought that the most profound ideas in math are simple and said all of his ideas were simple ones.

Correspondingly some people are more easily impressed by technical talks and some people are more easily impressed by simple talks.  So my answer to:

  Do people walk out of the talk thinking Alice must've done something simple while Bob did something profound?

would be, while it of course depends on the audience, I think this depends largely on the talk.  If you can explain a simple idea that lets you solve long-standing open problems, I think most people will agree this is deep.  However if your talk doesn't make it clear you're solving long-standing open problems, then people will be unsure.  And you certainly want to avoid giving a talk that is shallow and simple, as no one will be impressed.

I myself generally prefer (giving and listening to) understandable talks, and here are a couple other pieces of advice:

Even if you don't want to present technicalities, make it clear to the audience that technicalities are present, and maybe make a few comments to the experts as to how you handle them.
What may seem simple to you, who have been thinking about these things for months or years, may not seem simple to others.  I've many times given talks and worried that it was too simple for the experts in the audience, and found out later that many of them didn't completely understand what I said beyond the introductory material.


How is employment experience considered in PhD funding decisions in the United Kingdom? My question is about the extent to which one's employment experience can enhance or detract from a PhD application.

I received a BSc in Biochem in 2010, worked for 3 years in software sales and just now received an MSc in Synthetic Biology.

My BSc score was not great, but my MSc grade was the highest possible (distinction).

A professor has agreed to supervise me for a PhD in the area of synthetic biology - we are going to apply for funding together. I may not win funding when applying with that professor, so I am also applying for other funded PhDs. If I succeed in winning a funded PhD, it will start roughly one year from now.

In the meantime, I have been offered two jobs: junior software developer, and software salesperson. The developer job will provide useful knowledge and experience but has a very low salary. On the other hand, the sales job will offer almost no useful knowledge or experience (over what I already have) but pays a salary three times higher.

The sales role is attractive because I am in a fair amount of debt, having been studying full-time for the past 12 months. The developer job requires skills which are used in a PhD, so might support my application. However, I don't think that it will furnish me with any extra computing knowledge over that which I could learn myself during the PhD.

To what extent do funding bodies and academic departments look at one's employment experience when considering a PhD application?

This is all set in the UK.

I help to run admissions for a DPhil (doctoral programme) in the social sciences at Oxford. Professional experience is of very minor importance during the admissions process (except where it has some truly central role in the research project). The four important things we give significant weight to are

academic transcript,
quality of research proposal/statement,
admissions interview.
academic reference letters.

These will typically also be the main factors for funding allocated by the university (e.g. Clarendon, DTC). In particular, the panels that award these scholarships will have access to the same application material as the admissions coordinator, along with notes from the interviewer.

My suspicion is that a more vocational area might give more weight to practical experience. For example, someone with legal practice experience, or work as a laboratory intern might respectively have a bit of an advantage for a law/lab science DPhil. But the general understanding at Oxford is that academic excellent trumps all other considerations.


Found published work that doesn't reference previous related work I have been researching a specific topic in computer science for a couple of years now and a well established professor and his students have recently published a couple of publications in that topic too. In their work they do reference the well known and well cited previous work that basically everyone in that topic references, but I have noticed that they ignore (don't reference) a couple of publications that are doing essentially what they are publishing about, i.e. extremely related work. And I am wondering even though there is a gap of a couple of years between the work they have published and the available previous literature how did they miss referencing the relevant previous work? Was it done intentionally or did they just do a hasty job at finding more recent related work?

Either way my main concern here is if there is anything that can be done to remedy the situation now, since the paper has already been published?

Realistically, there is nothing you can do to change an already published paper. There are some options for extreme cases, but they are unlikely to apply.

What you can do is try to have the record correct in future publications. Unless you have hard evidence to the contrary (and usually even then), it is best to communicate on the basis that this is not an act of malice. You can write the authors of these papers (and authors of preprints on the topic) a polite email stating that you liked their interesting work and have done related work that you think might be of interest to them. What they do with that information is up to them then.


Why arXiv version disappeared from Google Scholar profile once journal version published Based on a question I asked previously Uploading a revised version of published journal article on arXiv I uploaded a new version on arXiv which included minor corrections and enhancement to published journal version.  Once journal article came online the pre-print version disappeared from my google scholar profile. As the current version of arXiv is advanced version of journal article I want arXiv version to appear on my profile.How can I make arXiv version to apear in my profile?

It doesn't disappeared, it is only grouped together. If you click to your article in Google Scholar, at the end of the page, you'll find "All N versions". Click on it, you will find your ArXiv versions, and some other mirror sites that you may not aware.

Next time, if you want your ArXiv version to be listed separately, change the title to "My awesome paper (extended version)". When the titles are different, the article will not be grouped together.

Note: it's never a good idea to inflate your paper count in Google Scholar with different versions of the same paper.


First-authorship was taken by my Master's supervisor; how to strengthen my PhD application? I have two papers in CS published during my Master's studies. The idea, the experiments and the writings were done all by myself, but my previous supervisor took the first-author place forcibly.

I am planning on applying to US PhD programs. My questions:

  Generally speaking, will these publications still carry the same
  weight as if I were rightly listed as the first author?
  Are there any general strategies I can use to maximize the impact that
  these publications will have on my acceptance?

(I assume here that you're talking about admission to PhD programs.)

I'm not in computer science, so I can't speak with authority.  We have a number of users here who are in US computer science departments and maybe one of them can step in.

However, I would think that first-author publications would not be essential for admission to good PhD programs in the US.  Keep in mind that in the US system, most students would enter a PhD program immediately after their undergraduate (bachelor's) degree, without doing a masters first.  These students would not necessarily have any publications at all.  The admission committee would expect somewhat more from a student with a masters, but I'd think any publications, first-author or not, would be a pretty good sign of your research ability and preparation to start a PhD.

Another thing to note is that recommendation letters are very important for admission to US PhD programs.  If your advisor writes you a letter which speaks highly of the work you did, that should help your application a lot.


How to make suggestions to professors on how to teach? This is my first time posting here and I apologize if this is not in the relevant forum or site.  My question is: is it possible to approach professors to changing their teaching style?   and if so, how would it be best to approach this topic?

It depends on what your goal is.

If you have a particular course and a particular professor, and you want to see changes before the course ends, you may need some political power or not.  Many professors appreciate feedback, some don't, and you can usually tell by noting which ones ask for it.  If they do ask, follow their format for giving feedback, and add a note saying that you have more specific suggestions if they wish to discuss it further.  If they don't, you will either have to drop it or try a different tactic.

If the course has teaching assistants, you can usually give some feedback through them, although to promote understanding, you might give them a copy in writing to hand to the professor.  If there are none, you may have to submit feedback through the department; there usually are people in that department in charge of the quality of teaching, and they can advise you at least as well as on this forum.

If the issue is more with a person than a situation, then I recommend getting advice from colleagues of that person on how to make such an approach.  Through the department is likely the best way, but it highly depends on the situation.

If the issue is more with a class structure than a person, you can make suggestions, but they will likely be referred to the next class.

The applicability of all of the above is subject to class size, level of instruction, and many other factors.  Without more specifics, I imagine your best answer in the long run is by using official channels.  That way if anything goes wrong, the process can be blamed and not you.


Should you tell grad students to apply for grants you know they won't get? I am a humanities professor at a middling university in the United States.  My department has a poorly funded Ph.D. program, which attracts second-tier students at best. (The good Ph.D. students go to programs that can afford to fund them fully, it seems.)

Each year, I typically have my Ph.D. students apply to all of the relevant major grants (Fulbright, Mellon stuff, etc.) that would fund their dissertation research.  None has ever gotten a grant, nor have I ever had a student who I thought had a remote chance of getting one. Their essays are usually poorly written, despite lots of editing help from me. (By poorly written, I mean there are really fundamental writing issues, like incomplete sentences. I point these out to them to the extent possible but I can't write their essays for them, and I don't catch every error they make.) Frankly, I think our Ph.D. students are just not of the caliber that are going to win grant contests where only the top 1 or 2 percent of applicants are funded.

I am wondering if I should continue to have the students apply to these grants each year. On one hand, it feels like a waste of their time (not to mention mine, and the application reviewers') to have them write grant essays for fellowships that they basically have no chance of getting. On the other hand, I can't know for certain that they will never get grants -- strange things happen -- and more importantly, I think that writing the application essays is good for forcing them to think through their dissertation projects. But maybe that time would be better spent doing research so they can finish our program without accumulating massive amounts of debt (because we have poor funding, many of them borrow money to attend -- for which reason I think we should not even admit students if we can't fund them, but that is a separate issue).

For the record, I do strongly encourage my students to apply for smaller-ticket grants -- the kind that pay $500 or $1000 to support a certain type of project, or go to a specific research site, etc. These grants are usually more obscure, more specialized and less competitive, and the students have a better record of getting them. (I also work very hard with them on these smaller grant applications because I know their chances are better.) But when it comes to the big-name, Fulbright-esque grants, the prospects just seem hopelessly dim, and I wonder if the time everyone spends on their applications is worth it.

If what you say about your students' writing skills and their chances of getting a major grant is accurate, I would say that it's a complete waste of everyone's time - theirs, yours, and the reviewers - to have them write such major grant proposals. Forget about using such proposal writing as a vehicle to improve their writing skills. The experience won't benefit them if their current writing skills are really as bad as you say they are. Instead, have them focus on the smaller-ticket grants. If any of them show evidence of more promise and growth after such experiences, then you can direct these more promising students towards targets that are higher up on the grant ladder.


Should I mention a magazine article written about my research in my CV? How does getting into non-submission based magazines appear?  For instance, if R&D magazine took an article about my work (NOT an actual research paper) and published it in their magazine, would this be something I would want to mention on my CV/résumé or would I even bother listing it at all?

I saw some researcher having "media coverage" or "general impact" columns in their CVs, see e.g. this example.

Other way to go (which I do) is to append to the respective publications "featured by [The Economist/Technology Review/2014 Highlights of [this journal]/John Smith's blog]".

IMHO as long you are not overdoing it, it should be a plus.


Advisor says I shouldn't expect to finish thesis soon, but won't offer specific feedback on what is missing; how to react? I have a rough draft of my PhD dissertation, on which I was working on and off for about a year, but mostly I was doing other coursework. I have about 90 pages so far.

My dissertation advisor tells me that what I should do is pretty much make sure it is well-written and apply the theory to a few examples. By my estimates, if I go berserk on this, I can finish all that in under one month.

However, the dissertation advisor says that usually, it takes about 3 years to complete a dissertation in my department, and I should not expect to complete it soon. Also, he says that the level of my draft was intermediate (some time ago) and not yet advanced (but he hasn't reviewed the current one yet).

When I ask or suggest about expanding the scope of the dissertation / adding additional chapters, the dissertation advisor says he does not think it is necessary.

So, it appears that the dissertation is almost complete, but I should not expect to complete it soon. How should I interpret this apparent contradiction?

My PhD advisor once told me that one aspect he considers when rating a thesis is how much the candidate did try to go beyond the initial idea or goal. If they are like "I solved the initial problem, here's the thesis, I just want to finish a fast as possible" then they will earn an intermediate grade at the end. Only if they try to go beyond the initial problem, try to at least estimate the further implications or steps or apply the outcome of the initial problem to further problems, they really can earn a top grade.

To my experience, to successfully finish a physics PhD within roughly a year, you have to have had really great luck to find something really excitingly new that provided a huge progress to your specific field. In most cases after one year you can't even tell for sure what the final focus of the thesis will be. Those applications of the theory to some example cases can easily take up more time than the whole development of the theory as there might come up issues and flaws that you were not expecting. Also their importance is not necessarily reflected in the number of pages they make up in the final thesis.

Therefore it seems to me, that you are somewhat belonging to the first type of people mentioned above who are just heading to leave before really having understood the implications of what they were working on.


If my research is applying methods from field X to field Y, should I do my PhD in field X or field Y? Let's say I'm a PhD student in a field, let's call it X, and my research is all based on taking the methods developed in field X and applying them to some other fields, let's call them Y, Z, and W. Let's further suppose that I do not make any contributions to the theory of X, I only apply it to Y, Z, and W. Is X the proper fit for me, or should I really pick my favorite of Y, Z, and W?

A PhD is meant to extend the knowledge within a field. It's obvious that you can contribute knowledge to Y, Z, and W, at least if you apply the X methods to solve some research questions in these fields. It's less clear what you contribute to X.

You state that you don't contribute to the theory of X, but maybe you extend or generalize the X methods alongside applying them? If you do that, you could get a PhD in X. Otherwise, Y, Z, or W would seem to make more sense.


Low GPA, any chance of grad school for math? I have a cummulative 3.5 GPA from a top 20 school but a 3.1 GPA in my math classes. In particular I got a BC in linear algebra and a C in abstract algebra. My goal was always to go to graduate school but I fear these two classes are going to crush that. Also my school doesn't allow for retaking of classes (BOO!). Any advice besides the obvious of trying to raise the GPA, ace the GRE, get great letters of recommendation or do research? Or will this be too much to overcome?

Take the graduate version of abstract algebra. Do incredibly well in it, and ask the prof for a letter.

Hopefully it will read something like the following: "X's performance is extremely strong, and his (her?) homework assignments are flawless. I was astonished to learn that X had previously earned only a C in undergradate abstract algebra; whatever X's weakness was, he/she has left it completely beind him/her."


Status regarding co-authorship for a computer science research paper I am employed as a student in a theoretical computer science research group and part of my job was to assist my supervisor with a scientific paper he has been working on.
Concretely, my job was to implement the software that was used to conduct the experimental part of the research paper and also to gather and put together a dataset in order to empirically test the theoretical framework developed by my supervisor using real-world data.

Before the first submission attempt, I was mentioned in the list of the co-authors. However, the paper was not accepted on the grounds that the empirical results only weakly reflected the theoretical claims.

My supervisor thought that the rejection was due to a bug in the code I've developed and afterwards he removed me both from the list of co-authors and from the project. I am very sure that the code didn't contain any bugs.

Afterwards, my supervisor contacted a fellow student who was already working on a different topic, and asked for his permission to use the data from this different topic in order to test the theory.

The second submission attempt of the research paper was successful and the paper was accepted. My fellow student appeared in the list of co-authors but I didn't.

The version of the paper that finally got accepted differed from the first one that got rejected, in that it contained only an extra experiment, using the data from my fellow student. However, the initial empirical experiments that I put together were still there. They have not been removed, nor modified.

Regarding this situation I have a series of questions:

Is it normal to feel that I have been treated unfairly? I feel that the only reason why I have been removed from the list of co-authors is because the dataset I have compiled simply didn't confirm the expected theoretical results and me getting fired was simply a way for my supervisor to vent his frustration about being rejected.
Is it legal to publish a paper that uses data and software that some other person developed and not mention this person as a co-author (or at least as a reference)? Are there any laws or rules of conduct regarding such situations?

I'm aware that a variation of this question may have already been answered before:

What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?

My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent

My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?

Most of the answers suggested that I should try to approach and discuss this problem in private with my supervisor or with some other member of the research group. I have tried doing exactly this and both my supervisor and 2 other senior members simply refused to discuss this issue with me. The only response I've got was: "what's done is done, let us focus on the future now".

What can I do, or what would be ethical to do in this situation?

To answer your questions:

Based on what you say, it does sound like you were treated unfairly.

Leaving you out from the paper given the circumstances is at least unethical. I don't know about legal.

Your collaborators don't sound like nice people. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in academia, where abuse of junior people is certainly not uncommon, though for obvious reasons statistics are hard to come by.

An obvious option is to write to the journal's editor explaining the situation. If you have contributed significantly to the paper, you certainly have a claim to be considered a co-author. Obviously, make sure you have documentation backing up your claim. If you don't, it is just your word against theirs, and you will quite likely get nowhere. If you have good documentation, it will be more difficult for the journal to ignore your claims, though it is obviously hard to predict what people will do. Given that you were on the first submission attempt, I think that first submission should count as part of the documentation, and should really help your case if you appeal to the journal. It would be easy enough to compare the two versions of the paper. In the first submission, is your contribution described? Also, were the two submissions to different journals?

It is not completely clear from your posting whether the paper has been officially published. If it has, it may be too late to add your name to the list of authors.

Bear in mind that your collaborators will quite possibly try to find a way to get back at you, for any number of reasons. People who behave in the way you described can get extremely petty and unpleasant when they perceive you as "going against them". They also have a remarkable capacity for not taking responsibility for their own actions, and in their own minds will find a way to blame you for the situation. This is not meant to discourage you from standing up for your rights, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.

Personally, I think people should stand up for their rights, but at the end of the day it is your decision.


Is there an association for academic managers? I there an international society/association for building a community of academic managers (such as department heads, deans, etc)?

I found Association of University Administrators, but it is for administrators (e.g., directors of offices) rather than academic managers.

The Association of Deans and Directors might fulfill what you are looking for: it is not clear from their website the degree to which it is international, but there also seems to be nothing that indicates it is not.


Are there any journals that pay reviewers? Being a young researcher myself I received a comment from my colleague that some of the journals are paying reviewers for the reviewing process.

When I gave it a thought, it started to make more sense.
In case of high quality, respected journal, an institution may consider itself privileged to have a reviewer of such journal and allow the reviewer to dedicate small proportion of his/her daily activities just on the reviewing process.

The reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review.

Does that hold true for some journals or is it just a myth?

It's not a myth. There are/have been some journals that pay peer reviewers. For example:

The New England Journal of Medicine used to pay $5 per review, until some reviewers complained that "if that was the price that this eminent journal placed on their opinion, the New England Journal of Medicine should seek referees elsewhere"
The Lancet reportedly pays for peer review "sometimes"
Reviewers for journals published by the American Economic Association earn $100 for each "timely" review.
Zentralblatt MATH (zbMATH) pays 2.56 EUR per review, although this is for post-publication reviews that are then published.
The Journal of Medical Internet Research offers "a review model in which selected peer reviewers may be paid to deliver high-quality and speedy peer-review reports" (if authors pay an extra fee for the fast-track option)
The Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering has offered an honorarium of $100 for each "timely" review
Drugs in Context pays its peer reviewers an honorarium of unspecified amount, supposedly "to motivate rigorous peer review"
The International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (which is on Beall's list of allegedly predatory open-access journals and publishers) pays reviewers for its journals $60-$100 per review

Whether the reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review is true or not is entirely uncertain, though.


How to figure out timing for working on and submitting independent research? I am a PhD student in mathematics and have an idea for a general theory, which in a sense is an intermediate case between two opposite ends of well-understood theories. This intermediate case has gained little attention in the literature.

I came up with this idea for a more general theory by studying an explicit example in this intermediate case. The theory includes the two well-understood opposite ends in a trivial way.

I have checked with my supervisor, and he said it was a good idea and "I should write up the details". I have done so, but it has been sitting like this for almost two years. It's very tangential to the research of my supervisor and, as far as I can tell from trying to get his input, he is more interested in this particular example and not in the theory that should be built around it.

I read in "How to protect your unpublished ideas?" that the best thing would be to put this idea on the arXiv and try to submit it as a paper.

I obviously can't ask you here whether my idea is really good. But other than my supervisor, there is no faculty with this area of expertise at my university. I also don't know any other professors well enough to simply write an email asking for an opinion.

Developing the theory in all generality would be time consuming. So I'm wondering which of the three options would be best:

Submit a paper now, co-authored with my supervisor, using just my example and hinting at the more general theory.
Working out the details for some other cases and try to publish alone.
Wait until I have more time to focus on this project (after my PhD).
Put a preliminary version on the arXiv, running the risk that it contains some errors (errors on the order of magnitude of forgetting additional hypotheses, I know it works in a few examples).

In any case, I would confer with my supervisor to see whether it would be okay for me to try to publish something by myself.

I should also say that, for my taste, I'm a little short on papers (I have two short papers in B-grade journals) and I'm looking for a PostDoc soon.

I can not give you a fully fledged answer at all, but some things to take into consideration:

Where do you want to place your article? This determines the amount of time you will have to spend on it. This has to be in-line with your idea about being short on papers (because it might not help the issue if noone reads the journal).
I personally would find it a tad rude to publish alone, if the idea has spawned from something connected to your work for your insitute (and might also not be allowed depending on your contract).
If you are not pleased with option 1 with respect to your ideas about the paper's benefit for you I would go with 3. You could also think about finding a PostDoc position which includes the work on this subject. If you do this intelligently, you could also use this as a selling point for yourself. Ideally this also would be the general idea of a perfect PostDoc position, allowing to develop your own ideas and research. You could try doing so with a research stipend while going abroad.


applying after bachelor's degree which factor is the most important for top 10 I am a student willing to apply for top 10 universities(MIT, Stanford, etc).
I have recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering field with GPA 4.5/5.

I have read about important factors for applying and I found out that these factors are the most important factors ( from most important to least important)

GPA
Recommendation Letters
GRE Scores
Research/Getting Papers Published
Industry Internships
Being a TA

(Main Question) I want to how much GPA is important for example a person with GPA 4.8 is far more likely to be accepted than me or not. for example, students with GPA above 4.5 are all the same.

and my second doubt is about the rank of papers. If you publish a paper in famous journals is it that much unimportant to them?

what about doing something extraordinary. I am developing an AI program that is really professional and I am writing a paper related to this program. I want to know how much these sorts of activities are important for them.

I think it's useful for this question to step back and think about it from first principles.

What a top graduate program wants in a graduate student is high likelihood of becoming a leading researcher in the field.  There are some exceptions, but for most applicants at most leading departments, this is the only consideration.

The problem with putting this forward as a criterion is that no one can predict the future.  You really don't know whether you're going to become a leading researcher, and neither do the people reading your application.  Everyone is trying to make their best guess based on the information available.

At this point, someone is going to ask for a data-based solution, but the problem is that there really isn't that much data.  There aren't that many leading researchers, the factors that make leading researchers likely change quite a bit over time, so the kinds of people that did well twenty years ago might not do so well now, and the variables probably interact with each other in complicated, nonlinear ways that are hard to tease apart statistically without large amounts of data.

This means graduate admissions boils down to a committee of people reading applications and making their best judgement as to who is most likely to become a leading researcher.  You can now ask the psychological (or maybe sociological) question about what factors professors on admissions committees think correlate with probability of becoming a leading researcher, but there seems to be quite high variability between individuals, and you don't know who is sitting on admissions committees that year.

Given how difficult it is to determine how all these proxy measures work, I think it's best to believe that admissions committees will get it right and look at what they're really trying to measure - your probability of becoming a leading researcher - with the caveats that you should consider the judgement of other people you trust to have an informed opinion (your current professors) and that your own judgement is highly likely to be biased by imposter syndrome and or the Dunning-Kruger effect.


Is there an implied requirement to include citations? As part of a freshman Computer Science course, I've been assigned the task of writing an MLA-format essay on a relatively fundamental subject within the field. The instructor stated that "This essay may require additional research outside of the text." However, I'm able to completely describe the topic entirely from my own knowledge and experience.

In this sort of situation, is it implied that I must cite at least a few external sources, or is it acceptable to write an essay entirely from my own personal knowledge?

And, if so, do I omit the Works Cited page entirely or just put "None" under the Works Cited heading?

(this might strictly speaking be out of scope of this site, but I'll answer anyway as I think the question in general comes up quite often)

Generally, when one is asked to write a scientific paper of some sort in university, there is an explicit or implicit expectation that you will use references. Often, students think this is unnecessary because they feel they know already "everything", or at least enough, about the subject without searching through the literature.

This is usually a fallacy for a number of reasons:

Oftentimes, students check web pages like this one and learn that in a published research paper, a certain level of common ground can be expected and does usually not need to be referenced. However, what "can be expected" is clearly dependent on the type of paper you are writing, and a published research paper works differently than a term paper in a freshman course.
Further, there is an underlying misunderstanding of what one needs to reference. References are not only required for what you are learning from literature "right now", i.e., in the current class. The things you already know you probably did not research on your own, entirely independently. You learned them in a previous course, and (maybe long before that), there was a paper or textbook that introduced these concepts.
Keep in mind that any paper writing assignment in a course is foremost a learning experience. One of the goals is that you should learn to research additional material (hence the "This essay may require additional research outside of the text."), and to cite it correctly. Circumventing this learning goal by basically just writing down what you feel does not require citation usually does not make instructors happy.
Generally, writing (only) about your "own experience" is a bit of a fallacy in itself. You should understand that you are in that case basically generalizing from a sample size of 1 (you / your experience). Let's look at an example. Maybe you have, for instance, worked a bit as software engineer, and hence believe that you do not need to read the literature in order to write a paper about software engineering processes (I am making examples up here). However, in that case, you know exactly your own company processes, and know little about how everybody else is building software. This is where you would look over published papers for more rigorous studies.

All that being said, in the end Dave Clarke's comment is accurate: It would be worth asking your instructor.


How to find published article from arxiv preprint I just came from here and have a related but different question. My question is, is there an online tool that will allow me to definitively check if a published version of a preprint exists and locate the published version?
Take, for example, this paper. Perhaps it was never published in a journal. But is there a way to definitively know?

No, this is impossible to determine definitively because there is no complete list of publications.
The correct solution is for the author to update their ArXiv submission with a citation.
The practical solution is to use Google Scholar to search for an article with the same text.
You can also ask the author, who will know if there is an authorized publication.


Should I admit to cheating when it appears I cheated but I did not? One of my TAs is accusing me of cheating.

The professor had shared a 2-question quiz through our online portal (Google Meet). One of the questions contained a 9-digit sequence. Somehow, I misread this sequence and ended up solving the problem using a different 9-digit sequence. My incorrect sequence exactly matched the sequence used on a different version of the quiz, which had been administered to a different section of the class several days before. I do not know how similar the two sequences were; I assume they were very different.

I understand how bad this looks, but I actually did not cheat. I am baffled as to how this could have happened given how careful I normally am about reading the question. I have no history of cheating in other classes.

I don't understand how I can prove that I did not cheat. The other question of the quiz was, of course, exactly as given on my quiz, so I'm thinking I may argue along the lines of "if I were to cheat why would I do it on only 1 question", although this seems slightly weak to me.

One complication is that the professor said that anyone suspected of cheating will be required to take an incomplete on the class and do the exam whenever university resumes. This is not ideal, as I am bound to forget a lot of material. On top of this, the classes I am taking next semester require this one as a prereq and this will derail by entire class schedule. I don't think there are any classes I can take for my major without this prerequisite filled.

The professor is offering that I can admit to cheating and then he'll give me a warning for the final and get a 0 on the quiz. Assuming the warning for the final does not come with the above requisite of webcam, should I falsely admit to cheating?

While I am normally against false admissions, I need to resolve this quickly, as the final is the day after tomorrow. Also, given how bad this looks, if I don't accept this and am found guilty, then I will probably fail this class and have to retake it anyways.

Update: For anyone who finds this later, I requested the Prof to let me take the exam without a webcam, given that it may be dropped later. He agreed and also stated there would be no need to drop it later. After the exam, I laid out many of the points given below, which the Prof said he would take into consideration and look into overturning the decision. I had an easy out, where I could take the 0 on the quiz and still get an A in the class, but there is a lot of good advice below for those who are still stuck.

I'm panicking right now, as I was supposed to be studying for finals

If you did not cheat, you do not need to be panicking.

I recommend these steps:

Tell the professor that you did not cheat.
Tell them that right now you need to focus on studying for your exams.
Tell them that you look forward to straightening the matter out after the exams.
Request to take the exam at the normal time.  Point out that the professor can always require you to take the in-person exam later, so it is possible to resolve the accusation later.
Go back to studying.

After you have taken your exams, then learn and follow your university's procedure for resolving these disputes.  Keep it calm and logical.

If you are still feeling panicky when you need to study, talk to your university's counseling service.


Why are footnotes expensive for publishers to reproduce? According to the Purdue OWL APA guide:

  APA does not recommend the use of footnotes and endnotes because they are often expensive for publishers to reproduce.

Perhaps this question belongs on a printing SE, but what could make footnotes expensive? Is it because it will take longer to arrange the small letters on a letterpress?

thank you @user2768; your comment is excellent:

Steven Krantz writes "in mathematics we do not usually put bibliographical references in footnotes (however...it was fairly common in mathematics one hundred years ago). This habit came about in part because typesetters objected to the expense and trouble of typesetting copious footnotes. With the advent of TEX, that particular objection is moot. However, the rule persists." -- arxiv.org/abs/1612.04888 Perhaps APA does not recommend footnotes for historic reasons too.


How to balance studies and part time job I am an undergraduate student of software engineering, second year now, in a foreign country. My family's economic background isn't very strong; so I need to work in a restaurant for part time job in order to balance my personal finance. Recently, I got so much involved in my job that I stopped paying much attention to my classes. And since the language problem in this foreign country is a black spot for me, the classes are too difficult for me to be handled. Now, I am about to fail two main courses in this semester. Should I just cut off my job load and take these subjects next semester again or just give up with this place and look for some other place, where the communicating problems don't exist?

You should take two cases into account, simultaneously:

Concentration on the courses, deservedly.

Keeping on earning some money.

You might be lucky enough to be recruited for an academic-driven working position in the university, as either TA or RA, instead of working out of the university.
Such approach (as a potential solution) could lead to some accomplishments for you:

Your work is in the academic atmosphere... It not only lets you keep
yourself in the mood of university, but will be considerably helpful
to improve your academic linguistic skills, as the right thing you
need, now...

Your current working site might be far from the university. Transporting
back and forth does waste both your time and energy (and even your money!). Involving in a job within the university lets you share your energy, in every aspect, within all of
your plans, in a more optimized way.

Your salary could be even more by working in the university, if you
could prove your both enthusiasm and capability to handle the tasks.

Such academic activities in the university (putting aside the
acquired financial outcomes) will strengthen your progression within
the path of studying and potential research; because, as an
instance, you can find your research path, under the aegis of a RA
position. A TA position would also lead to deepening all of the subjects,
were which unresolved for yourself, partially, in a complete manner.

...

It does not sound to be a bad idea, does it?!..
Best


What should I write in a personal history statement (diversity statement) if I am not at all diverse? I am applying for a PhD program in Computer Science. The university asks each applicant to hand in an optional personal history statement. I have detailed my research experience, career goals clearly in my statement of purpose. Hence I don't really know what I should write in a personal history statement. I am an average Asian student and do not have anything special. Any ideas on this essay?

EDIT: below is what they actually require:

  The purpose of this optional essay is to get to know you as an
  individual and as a potential graduate student, and to understand how
  your background will add to the diversity of our school. Please
  describe how your personal background has motivated you to pursue a
  graduate degree. You may discuss educational, familial, cultural,
  socioeconomic, or personal experiences or challenges; gender identity;
  community services, outreach services, first-generation college status
  or other matters relevant to your decision to pursue graduate
  education. Please note that the Personal History Statement is not
  meant to be a general autobiography.

Concisely and honestly.

You'll look like an idiot if you cite your love of [insert minority] or your [questionable claim] heritage or your vast experience with [sympathetic cause].

Instead, just write a brief statement that explains how you'll bring "diversity" to the program through your interests and experiences. You can also briefly mention your cultural background. The key thing is to keep this concise and not to say things that you wouldn't feel comfortable saying to a professor in person over a conversation. The common trap is to "pour your guts out" or to pander by making tenuous claims.

If this is an optional statement, you can skip it (particularly in STEM fields), but most people use this as an opportunity to "humanize" themselves by telling non-work-related stories.


Is it acceptable to email the author of a paper that you cannot follow? I am reading a paper that I find very hard to follow.

This is partially due to my lack of experience in the subfield, but also I think because the paper is unclearly written.

Is it acceptable for me to email the writer of the paper, and ask for explanations of basic concepts in the paper? i.e. I would ask for things that I think could have been explained more clearly.

It's okay, and more than okay, to ask for clarifications on specific bits that you were unable to follow. Academics love talking about their work, and they love spreading knowledge.

It's less okay to email someone out of the blue and say "explain yourself better". As SolarMike said, this paper has already been peer-reviewed; people in the field have looked over it and said "yep, that looks good". It may indeed be true that the paper was not written clearly enough to be understandable to someone without extensive knowledge of the subfield, and it may also be true that a better written version of the paper would have been more widely understandable without compromising its concision or its organization, but that's not a sin the author is required to atone for.

Try reading a few of the papers that paper cites, particularly ones sharing one or more authors; authors will often introduce and explain formalisms in one paper, and then take them "as read" in later papers (either accidentally or because they see the later paper as incorporating the earlier one by reference). If you still can't follow it, definitely contact the author... but make sure your request comes off as a request, not a criticism.


How should I decline a referee request for the paper which I refereed before? I have received a referee request for a paper that I refereed and rejected a few months ago. I would like to decline the request because although the recent journal's rank is lower than the previous one, I will reject the paper again for the same reasons I gave last time. Hence it would be better to decline the request to referee. What should I write to the editor in this situation?

A friend suggested I write to the editor.

I recommend against declining. You've already refereed the paper once, which means you can referee the paper again much quicker than a fresh set of eyes can.

Instead, send your original comments back. If the authors have updated the paper, send an explanation of why it's still not publishable as well. Then write in the "confidential comments to editor" box that you've reviewed the paper before, you still recommend rejection, and your original comments are attached. The editors will know what to do.


Making latex sourcefiles publicly available by default Question: where can I find (legal/pragmatic) information about having latex source files for scientific articles publicly available on github?
Or, how would you deal with it?

Problem description:

I like using git for collaborative tex'ing. So why not use it for scientific articles as well? Put up a github repo, collaborate, submit to arxiv while tagging the corresponding commit, incorporating reviewers suggestions, etc. Also, it comes at the additional benefit that not only a compiled preprint on arxiv is available but also your latex sourcefiles. This I think is desirable in terms of transparency and also others can easily reuse/extend complex latex bits you have in your articles.

Most publishers don't have a problem with arxiv preprints. But what about github repos? They don't contain the pdf, but in general, everyone would be able to compile the stuff from the source files on github. Would the source code on github then considered the same as the compiled preprint on arxiv?

I feel like the authors I know, that are using github, they might even just use github without thinking about the potential legal consequences (yes because it seems rather unlikely someone searches through the github repo). Also, if one knows upfront where the article might be submitted to, one can check the legal situation for that particular conference/journal. But sometimes one doesn't know beforehand, so one could end up having the latex source files publicly on the web, for a publication where this is not allowed?

I am looking for a pragmatic answer to this problem, as I think using github for scientific writing is just very efficient and good. Having the sourcefiles in addition to the compiled preprint available seems also desirable to me.

If you upload your papers to arXiv, then your Latex source is already publicly available there (click "other formats" and then "download source").  So the only difference is that the source would also be available on Github.

There is no legal issue with this unless you sign an agreement that forbids it.  In that case, the publisher could ask you to remove the manuscript from Github.


Publication- rejection with advising to resubmit I have received a decision letter from a Q1 journal with following remarks:

  Reviewers' comments on your work have now been received.  You will see
  that they are advising against publication of your work.  Therefore I
  must reject it.

  However, you may submit in the future better revision after resolving
  all these drawbacks mentioned by the reviewers, and as new revision

While a reviewer has mentioned "major revision", is this decision advising for resubmit after revising the paper? Does this mean "Reject and resubmit"?

While a reviewer has mentioned "major revision", is this decision advising for resubmit after revising the paper? Does this mean "Reject and resubmit"?

Yes, this means your manuscript is rejected, but you are free to submit a new version once you addressed the mentioned problems.

Note that whether one of the reviewers voted for Major Revision rather than Reject is completely irrelevant - it's the editor's decision that counts.


Book publishing or a peer review journal I have written lately, a theory about the whole existence. Do you guys think that I should publish my writings as a self-publishing book or aim for peer-review and publish in a journal?.
Keeping in mind that I want my writing to have an impact
I am an engineer, specialized in classic physics, my writing contains concepts of time, gravity, elementary particles, cosmic inflation, gravitational collapse, and lensing.

Publishing a book is not that hard, but getting people to read it is. Publishing in a journal would work, but based on the description of what you're going to write about, it seems unlikely that any reputable journal will publish it.

I'd say first get some confirmation from an expert that your ideas are correct. Try talking to Sabine Hossenfelder (costs $50 for 20 minutes, which will still be cheaper than self-publishing a book). If she says your ideas are credible, then ask her how to publish them.


Extending a result submitted to a conference before acceptance/rejection notification I recently submitted a paper to a conference whose notification of acceptance/rejection is due to 3 months from now. However I realize that I can extend my results in such a way that it gets much more general and such that the results of the previous paper follows as a special case. The generalization however is non-trivial, in the sense that I will need much more advanced and esoteric techniques, and somewhat more 20 pages to write it properly. It also fits in the scope of a conference whose deadline is in 2 months.  Here are my options.

1) Put the first paper at arxiv. Write the second paper citing it and showing where things get different. Submit the second paper. But then the second paper doesn't get self contained enough.

2) Put the first paper at arxiv. Make the second paper self contained by rewriting all results that I need from the first one, but specifying that it is a generalization of the first one. Submit the second paper.

3) Write the second paper and wait for the result of the first conference. If accepted, write the second paper as an independent extension of the first one. If rejected, merge everything into a new piece of work and resubmit to a new conference whose deadline is in 5 months.

Problems:

a) There are two groups working in a very related subject, and I'm afraid putting the first paper in arxiv would lead them to a similar generalization before me. So I wonder If I should wait to put the first paper on arxiv until having finished the second one.

b) If I write the second paper and put it at arxiv before the notification from the conference, could this make the first paper be rejected because the program committee would argue that there is a possible generalization of it? Even though highly non-trivial?

c) If I submit the second paper to a new conference but don't put it on arxiv, would I fall in the case of double submission?

What is the best way to proceed in this case? I believe several researchers might have faced similar situations.

Firstly, this question is relevant to your considerations.

In my community it is quite common to publish a (possibly extended/revised) submitted work as a technical report or a pre-print right after, or before the conference submission. The idea is to get a useful reference for future work falling exactly in the period between submission, notification and hopefully publication. ArXiv, or a TR with ISSN is fine for that.

Having said that, the option 2 is something I myself often resort to. Also to consider with this option, if the publication date of the "generalization" is after the submission deadline, such a rejection would be baseless.

As you yourself note, option 1 leads to a non-self-encapsulated paper and option 3, even though fine and correct, prolongs the period between invention and publication.


What happens after my paper is accepted? Today I was informed by a journal that my paper was accepted.  So am I done with it, i.e. is my input no longer needed? Do I just sit back and wait for it appear?

After your paper is accepted, it is passed to the publisher's production department. They'll do things like copyedit it, typeset it, proofread it, organize the references, and so on.

Your involvement as an author isn't completely over. At some point in the production process, the publisher will show you proofs (which is what the paper looks like after all of the above has been done). You get to make final changes at that point, e.g., the editor might have decided to accept your article with some minor comments still outstanding from the reviewer - now is the time to make those changes. It's also possible the copyeditor will have questions about the text; this is also the best time to address them.

Your involvement usually ends when you approve the proofs (very uncommonly, problems might be found even later in the production process that requires author input). After you've approved the proofs, you can sit back and wait for the paper to appear.


Undergraduate vs. Graduate Research Brief Context:

I am a high school student having difficulty choosing between two undergraduate programs.  My goal is to eventually work with quantum computing (computer science+physics) at the postdoctoral level.  My question concerns whether undergraduate or graduate school is more influential for a given field of study.

The first university, Stanford, offers the possibility of getting a dual degree in both CS and physics, but has no serious quantum computing research.  The second, Harvard, has a cutting-edge quantum computing research lab and is right next to MIT where there are other opportunities for research/classes.  Harvard only offers joint degrees in two fields, not dual degrees.

I was considering attending Stanford for undergrad to get a solid foundation in both CS and physics, then applying to Harvard for grad school to do research.

Here’s my question:

How important is doing research in your specific field of interest as an undergraduate?  Is it better to just take the opportunity to go to Harvard’s lab for undergrad, then look elsewhere for graduate school?  Or, is it more advisable to get separate degrees in CS and physics and then apply for graduate research in Harvard's lab?

My main concern is that the lack of quantum computing research at Stanford will be a major hindrance.  Will doing other unrelated research in CS or physics as an undergrad suffice just as well in the long run?

You're still a high-school student and you may find that your interests change in university or later.  Mine did, at least twice.

In any case, one's graduate research is often in a quite different area than one's undergraduate research (if any).  (And then one's post PhD research may go far afield of one's thesis.)  Neither school should limit your graduate options significantly.  So go to the school you're most excited about.


In APA style, How should rough financial numbers be written? If I have approximately five million dollars, should it be written as such? Or is one of the following more appropriate?

5 million dollars
$5 million
$5,000,000

4.31e stipulates:

  Use numerals to express numbers that represent time, dates, ages, scores and points on a scale, exact sums
  of money, and numerals as numerals.

(emphasis mine)

As this isn't an exact sum, I might be more inclined to spell it out.  This would also play along with the exception listed right below 4.31e:

  Exception: Use words for approximations of numbers of days, months, and years
  (e.g., about three months ago).

Is there another option I'm not considering?  Is this addressed somewhere else in the guide?

Your question has two components: 1) Whether to write out the number as a numeral or in words, and 2) whether to indicate "dollars" in words or with a symbol.

I did not find a direct answer or example in the manual, but a discussion on the APA style blog may provide some guidance:

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/04/feel-like-a-number-part-3-the-earth-day-edition.html

To address issue one, look at the question in the comments sectiom (comment #7 from the top) where a student asks about the proper way to write about an approximate number of people. The author of the style post states that the correct answer is "Almost 3,000,000 people." She provides the explanation that because 3,000,000 is larger than 10, is should be written as a numeral. She does not comment on the issue of this being an approximate amount, but because the question is about an approximate number of people, it seems she interprets the exception to rule 4.31e as only pertaining to the units of time listed in the exception. Also, note that in the body of the blog post, the author refers to approximate units of time rather than approximate numbers in general.

To address issue two, look further in the comments section, at the bottom two comments on the page. Here, someone asks how to write about an amount of money that is less than $10. The author notes that in prose, she would recommend writing out the word "dollars," while in tables or with mathematical operators, it might be more appropriate to use the symbol (referring to rule 4.45 about describing statistics in text).

In sum, this discussion seems to indicate that "I have about 5,000,000 dollars" would be the correct form. The number would be written in numerical form because a) it is over 10 and b) it is not an approximate amount of time. The unit of money ("dollars") would be written in prose text and appear as a symbol on tables or when discussing mathematical operations.


Should I feel obligated to include my advisor as coauthor? I've been working on a project with a faculty member (let's call him S) that is not my advisor (let's call him A).
They are in different departments, and have little overlap. I am working on something with S (actually I am doing it mostly by myself, with a bit of advice from S) and am planning on publishing the results. I have shared the project with A, but since it's not his field, I know he has at best a vague understanding of the contents of the paper. However he did give the idea for the methodology, which I used.
S has continued giving me advice about this paper, mostly relating to expanding on the theory of the methodology he suggested. I don't think it's very useful (he doesn't understand the context) and would prefer to just go in the direction set with S.
However, when it comes to authorship, should I include A? It feels wrong to not include him when he has been giving well-intentioned advice (and supplied a crucial suggestion for the methodology). However, it also doesn't feel right to include him, since he isn't familiar with the rest of the contents of the paper beyond the methodology section.

I am a mathematician, but I did co-author a paper published in a chemistry journal. The paper was co-authored by seven people from the lab where I worked at the time:  two mathematicians, two physicists, two chemists and an engineer (the lab director). I understood (and still understand) only the math part of the paper, I am sure that non-mathematicians, including the lab director, do not understand the math part. Nevertheless, certainly, there were no objections to including all seven people as co-authors.


What are some innovative publishing layouts to depict a scientific debate? Typically, scientific debates are published in the form of "letter to the editor" to comment on or criticize a previously published paper. Alternatively, papers within the same volume can refer to each other. In both cases the actual nature of the debate that takes place is rendered incompletely.

Are there some viable alternatives or experimental forms of publishing scientific discourse? Maybe on the level of layout and typesetting?

Some of my work involves development of international standards, on which it can be quite valuable to record the debate leading to a decision.

Originally this was done in a very ad hoc fashion, via mailing list archives and notes from meetings, then attempting to write "rationale" into the standard.  We are now trying to be more intentional about recording significant debate by using a bug-tracking system on Github.  The jury is still out as to whether this will really work or not, but it seems to be an improvement over not having any system in place.