Do we ever, in a research paper, mention methods we tried but did not get a satisfactory result? I have been working on an application where we have tried two alternative methods. Both methods are used for the same purpose, but the first one had several problems. Despite getting results we had to look for another method that solved those problems to some extent.

Can I mention the rejected method along with the accepted method in a research paper?

I cannot see any reason not to mention what could be labelled "negative results". If you have tried a method and it failed there can be two reasons, either the choice of method was bad (which is likely a trivial unpublishable result) or the method is in some way not appropriate due to reasons not before understood. In the latter case, there are clear advantages to convey this result to others. This may spawn new research or simply help others avoid using the method. Hopefully you will be able to provide deeper insights into why things did not work out as you first thought. In essence, anything that progresses our understanding is worth bringing forth in a publication.


Recommendation letter for application to CS graduate program from professors in math? I graduated from Dept A with a master degree, and then pursued a PhD in Dept B (which is applied math). But I left the PhD program in B this fall. I am now applying to some CS master programs (including some professional master programs and non-professional ones).

My research in Dept A used some computer programming and machine learning methods, although A isn't CS. In Dept B, however, most of my experiences were taking courses and doing TA, and very little research in stochastic processes.

I asked my previous research advisor in Dept A for a letter of recommendation. He politely say no, because we didn't have academic interaction in the last three years after I joined Dept B. Also I guess that the fact that I didn't finish PhD in Dept B may  be another reason. Note that he recommended me when I applied to PhD program in Dept B, and he knew little about computer programming.

So I find some professors in Dept B, whom I took probability and stochastic processes courses from  or was a TA for. I was wondering if their recommendation letter will help my application to a CS master program  (including some professional master programs and non-professional ones), given that these are two different areas and my experience with CS was mostly from my master study in Dept A?

Does recommendation from my previous research advisor in Dept A really not help much, because our collaboration was too old, compared to recommendation from the professors in Dept B?

What if I am applying to PhD Programs in Statistics, instead of CS master programs?

When applying to graduate school (either PhD or Masters level), it helps to have letters from any past research supervisors or graduate programs. The fact that your advisor at Dept A refused to write you a letter means that you probably do not want that letter. Letters from people who only know you from class or teaching are not as useful as research letters, but they can still be helpful.


What might the editor do if my supervisor contacts a journal to claim authorship of a paper? When I was doing my PhD project, I got an idea to solve a different but related problem. However, my supervisor said neither the motivation nor the initial result were interesting, and so he refused to offer me help on this topic. Then, I did a paper on my own with a lot of work afterwards, and submitted it to a high standard journal, and it was accepted.

My supervisor knew this, and he commanded me to add his name to the paper, otherwise he would write to the editor. I asked him what his contribution was. He had nothing to say, but insisted he had spent time to discuss the result with me.

So, if he writes to the editor, what would happen? Or if the paper has been published, then he has nothing to do with it? I am pretty much sure he can almost show nothing about the evidence of the contribution.

The short answer is that the editor will likely ask for more information from you and the adviser in response to a letter such as your adviser apparently plan to write. I doubt any action will be taken immediately and without some research if the editor is taking the task seriously.

As an editor, I would find this sort of case very difficult since I would (most likely) receive two conflicting pictures of the story. Editors have the power to take whatever action they find appropriate. Their decisions may of course be disputed and the story could go on. In a case that is relatively similar in parts (case link), an editor has turned to the Committee on Publication ethics to get support in a decision. Their case portfolio can also be of help to editors.

Obviously, following the linked case, an editor will try to have you and your adviser fix the problem yourself, it is after all primarily your problem. Hopefully the editor will come up with a plan for further actions, perhaps, as in the case, bring in a mediator and finally, if all fails, make a decision based on the existing facts that will be final. Some similar line of action seems appropriate and was also deemed appropriate by COPE. What route an editor will take may of course differ depending on the case but the aim will be to try to resolve what is right or wrong will be the aim and if all fails a suggestion on how the journal will proceed will follow.


Should I include having taken free online courses without credit or certificate in an application for a master's programme? I just finished my Bachelor in Psychology and the master's programmes I am interested in pursuing require some experience with at least one programming language. Of course, at no point in my studies was there a course related to programming and I am considering taking free online courses. Since there have been some questions on MOOCs with certificates, I want to make a question about MOOCs without enrollment, credit and certificate of completion.

Does one gain anything by mentioning attendance at such courses or will a reviewer of an application dismiss it as an unverifiable claim (since there is no proof that one has actually attended the course)?

There are many masters programs where programming is not formally required, but still very helpful. Beginning programming is definitely not a masters level skill (nor is it final year bachelors). From that perspective the most interesting questions from an admissions point of view is first of all: do you have affinity with programming (many people, even computer science students) hate programming.

To know that you did additional work shows that you know what programming is and that you are willing to invest some effort into your studies. If you fake this will make you miserable on the course.

The course will however not be relevant in assessing your intellectual abilities (your bsc will) as not only is it hard to verify, it was not designed to test them in the first place.


What are some uses for clickers/pollers? I've seen clickers/pollers/etc. used in classrooms for many things, such as evaluation and assessment and agile/contingent teaching.

What other uses are there for clickers in the classroom?

To clarify: I'm looking for a list of constructive uses for classroom teaching.

The question basically says, "I have a tool, tell me some uses for it." That's fine, but we could also approach this from the opposite side, and ask why the tool was invented in the first place. It's good to know that a flat-head screwdriver works as a makeshift ice pick, murder weapon, or hair pin, but its original purpose was to put in screws and take them out.

There was an educational innovation that was widely popularized by Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur in a 1996 book, Peer Instruction: A User's Manual. The book is still in print. It describes a particular active-learning technique, but it also contains a handy summary of the evidence that traditional teaching techniques work badly in freshman physics, and that active-learning techniques in general (not just this specific one) work better. The findings have been replicated in fields other than physics [Freeman 2014].

In Mazur's technique, a purely conceptual multiple-choice question is displayed to the students. The purpose is not to find out whether the students understand the topic already. In fact, the technique works best if the questions are carefully chosen based on past experience so that you know that roughly half your students understand well enough to get the right answer, and half don't. After a couple of minutes of silent thought, students are polled. Mazur originally did the polling using pieces of cardboard that the students held up. I currently do it by having them hold up fingers (one for a, two for b, etc.). If there is a total consensus for the right answer, the technique has failed and you move on. If some students get it right and some get it wrong, you have them break up into groups and discuss it. Once they've had 5-10 minutes to discuss it, you poll them again. If they now all give the right answer, then the technique has worked correctly. The purpose of the technique is to get students talking about concepts, in their own words. Regardless of the specific technique used, what the research seems to show is that the crucial thing is to get students to talk about concepts.

Over time, some people started using expensive electronic clickers to do what could just as well have been done using cards or fingers. As more time passed, the expensive electronic clickers became "edutainment" devices, designed to make students feel that sitting through a boring lecture wasn't quite such an unendurable waste of time.

Freeman et al., "Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics," http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/05/08/1319030111


How to indicate that I am an ERC reviewer in CV? I would like to indicate in my CV that I am a reviewer for the European Research Commission. Would something like this work?

Other professional experience
• Reviewer for Science, bla bla bla...
• Reviewer of European Research Council (ERC) proposals.

Thank you

I think it is pretty common to list such reviewing activities in CVs, at least I've seen it often. Usually, people list these activities under "Service", as in "volounteer service to the academic community".

However, I don't think these things are actually very important, especially at your (presumed) career stage: if you are an ERC reviewer, you must be pretty well known, maybe already a Full Prof. (or Associate), thus these details won't make your career any better, in my opinion. They might have more of an impact for junior people, as it means they are recognised as experts by the community, which, with less years under the belt, might be a relatively nice accomplishment.


Changing research group during a PhD I am currently PhD student, just finished 3rd semester. But it is just 5 months that I defended my proposal, and due to university rules, you are considered an official PhD student just when you defend your proposal. I would like to change my group, due to different reasons, one is financial matters. As my one year financial support from an external fund ( not offered by my current supervisor) is finished and my supervisor also said he has no money!

I already applied for a new open PhD position (not in the same university but in the same city). The new Professor invited me to his office for interview. Should I tell him that I am already PhD student? What if I say nothing?

It is crucial to tell the truth.

For your current supervisor, you will need to let them know that you are interviewing with the new Professor, and explain why you are doing this. This potentially could work to your benefit as your current supervisor may offer to be a reference and offer assistance to you going forward.
For the new Professor, let them know upfront that you are already a PhD student and the reasons why you are moving.

Most of all, as has been said in the comments, be honest - because if you are not honest, it can (and probably will) blow up in your face, potentially generating distrust from the old and new supervisors/Professors.

In your comments to the question, you mentioned that you are not sure as to whether or not you are going to leave your current position - before you progress any further, make sure you are certain in what you are doing (at the very least to be sure you're not wasting anyone's time).

An acquaintance of mine did something very similar, and was caught out a few months later - he had to overcome significant suspicion about the reasons for his move, as he had not explained it to both parties.


Should I suggest a time when professor want to schedule an interview, or just say I always available ? I applied to a lab and a professor want to set up an interview (for the first time). In the reply email, he said that:

  "Please let me know when you are available. I am available on
  Monday-Friday, after XX:XX."

I would say when I am available:

  "I would available everyday from XX to XX".

Should I also suggest a timeblock or not ?

  "I would suggest that we meet on Friday at XX:XX."

In this situation, pick a preferred time within the professor's constraints, and suggest it.  To be safe, propose a back-up (perhaps the following day) in case anything goes wrong.

Additional tip: Suppose the professor said he's available after 10 am.  Then to give him a little margin for error, I advise choosing a slightly later time, such as 10:30 am.


What percentage of admitted phd students have peer-reviewed publications? I'm interested in knowing what percentage(a rough estimate) of admitted phd applicants in top-60 university have peer-reviewed papers.

I'm particular interested in theoretical computer science.

I don't have statistics on that particular number, but my anecdotal evidence is that most PhD students in my field (chemical engineering) have zero publication when they start, while a small (but nonnegligible) fraction has one paper.

However, you can gather such statistics yourself! Publications are, by definition, public... And you can sample admitted PhD students by looking at current PhD students. So, take a random sample of CV from PhD students in your field (from the web) and look for publications prior to PhD start in their publication list.


Experiences with air travel CO2 emissions offsetting funding rules? The human-induced climate crisis happening right now is no longer news. While many people urge their governments to change policies to reduce our carbon footprints more easily, there is also the possibility of individual action, or change - such as less frequent flying.

In academia, flight can be reduced by some amount (decentralized conferences, etc.) but to many people it seems difficult if not detrimental to science or mankind in total to stop flying altogether.

It is possible to offset the CO2 emissions of a flight by spending money on some carbon capture project or some project that reduces future emissions (e.g. by renewing technical machinery in third world countries). Where does this money come from? I know from colleagues that they asked their university administration to use their travel funding for some CO2-offsetting agency, and were told that this was not possible.

If I understand the rules in Germany correctly, it is not the funding body who makes such a decision but the states general travel rules for state employees.

The question I have is:

Does anyone have experience in negotiating (with a positive outcome or not) such a use of academic travel funds for offsetting the carbon emissions? If so, how did it go? What were the stumbling blocks?

If you thought about the issue but had reservations on why this might not be a good idea at all or why it is hard to actually implement, I would also appreciate your comments, though I'd prefer if you could phrase it as answer to the question(s) stated.

In general, grant or contract money cannot be spent on anything except the designated purposes permitted by the funding agency.  If the funding is coming from an agency of the US Government, those purposes probably are not allowed to include carbon offsets.

That said, it does appear that at least one university has figured out a way to pay for carbon emissions.  The key seems to be imposing the cost as part of departmental overhead, such that it's not directly associated with any grant, but mixed in with all the other things the university supports and the funders have no control over, like pencils, daycare benefits, on-the-job injury insurance, and deans of student happiness.


Plagiarism checker for mathematics paper I recently accepted to referee a mathematics paper. This is my first referring assignment and was wondering if there are free plagiarism checkers more suitable for math papers.
side note: Several years ago I saw a paper stating a theorem which sounded so familiar to me. I happened to have a reference book in that topic. Long story short, "their theorem" in that paper was verbatim from the book without referencing it. Unfortunately, I did not contact the publisher that was surprisingly the mathematical society of country X (I should have).

As in jakebeal's comment, if there is actual plagiarism, it will be picked up in the text, so you could use a generic plagiarism checker.  Note the arXiv checks for text overlap and picks up quite a few things (the stated purpose is not to catch plagiarism, but it still does, though mostly "self-plagiarism" as far as I am aware).

That said, having done a fair amount of reviewing in math, this is not something that's typically done.  Ideally, as a reviewer, you should be fairly aware of what's already been done in the area, and at the least, literate enough in the area to search for what has been done.  (One tip: look at the crucial references, and check for papers citing them.)

What is much more likely than outright plagiarism is that some or all of the main results are already published, but unknown to the author.   This may be because the results are not stated in the exact form the author is proving, or just the author wasn't aware of the appropriate papers.  (I once pointed out that one of the papers the author referenced contained stronger results than the author proved--the author just didn't realize it!)

In any case, a proper literature search in the process of reviewing will turn up plagiarism almost all the time if it happens, and moreover is important for a good review.  So my advice is don't worry about using a plagiarism checker, just do your homework.


Does FERPA apply to university teachers when they are working as private tutors? In addition to teaching at a U.S. university, I also do some private tutoring on the side.  I am always scrupulous about observing my university's conflict of interest policy, which prohibits tutoring a student who is taking a course that I am currently teaching (even if he is in a different section of the same course).  When I'm wearing my "university hat", I know I am bound by FERPA, which prohibits me from (among other things) discussing any student's academic performance with his or her parents, regardless of whether or not they are paying the student's tuition.  (Some parents have a hard time with the idea that they are not allowed to be kept informed of their student's grades.)

It's not clear to me, though, whether the same prohibition applies when I am wearing my "private tutor" hat.  In particular, if a parent is paying for private tutoring for their college-aged child, and that parent wants updates on how those private lessons are going, am I allowed to divulge that information?

On page 3, "FERPA applies to educational agencies or institutions that receive funds from programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education." Because you are a PRIVATE tutor and do not receive funds from the US Department of Education, you are not subject to FERPA. However, there is a fuzzy line on when you're tutoring as an agent of the University or when you are acting on your own. I would recommend as to not juggling the two, that you stick with FERPA laws and respect the student's privacy. Best would be to get written consent from the student to discuss his/her progress with his/her parents.


Decision and PhD. Take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or pursue a life dream Young male student soon to receive an Engineering Degree unsure about the next steps to follow. Undecided whether to go for a PhD directly or do a Master studies first (if he goes for the Master, he will first have to do a thesis work anyway). Has to decide between a PhD position to which he has promising chances to get a scholarship funded by a top company in the world, or apply for a prestigious scholarship for a Master's degree to which he stands good chances and that could probably lead to study in a top US university. His goal is to study at a top university and do research at the highest level. Seeks advice from experienced or knowledgeable advisors and academics about what to do next.

It seems like you're choosing between

A (nearly) guaranteed PhD offer at a middling university.
A fully funded master's program that you may or may not be accepted to, but may offer you the opportunity to jump to a better PhD program if you get the Fulbright scholarship and perform well in your master's.

Some factors you may consider are

If you take the master's offer you will spend a lot of time preparing for a PhD.  You will need to perform extra well for two years to secure your letters of recommendation, and it will look bad if you don't accomplish anything significant during that time.  In the end you might not get into your school of choice, and then you will have worked very hard for no visible gain.  How confident are you that you can (1) get the scholarship, and (2) perform consistently well once you're actually there?

A master's degree will give you more background in computer science, and you will learn more about theoretical CS than "it involves both programming and mathematics."  A lot of things involve both programming and mathematics, and getting more experience (in coursework and research) will let you better evaluate your options before jumping into a long commitment.  Most theoretical CS students I know entered their PhD program knowing they wanted to study "approximation algorithms," "cryptography," etc, not just "theoretical CS" or "some field that involves both programming and math."
It's also kind of a red flag that you're undecided between a PhD and a master's, and I think before you go for a PhD you should have a stronger opinion on this.  If you are uncertain about your career and your research area you will be at a significant disadvantage compared to your classmates who aren't.

If your first choice is the PhD offer, you can easily apply to both and turn down the Master's offer, but if your first choice is the Master's offer, it would be awkward to apply to both and turn down the PhD offer.


What are the arguments for "reviewers see each other's identities" conference reviews? I have recently accepted to review for a machine learning conference. It's a conference with chairs, area chairs (AC), and then reviewers who are managed by the AC's.

This conference is double-blind, with a rebuttal phase, and what follows was never mentioned in the invitation to review, the review instructions, nor on the website of the conference. But regardless of this, I would like to understand what could be the rationale for it:

reviewers are assigned papers. Each paper is assigned to an AC, and reviewed by 3-4 different reviewers. Reviewers do not know the identity of the authors.
each reviewer sends their reviews
the authors get the reviews (do not know the reviewers' identities, nor the AC's), and write a rebuttal
the reviewers are given the rebuttal for the paper (still do not see the authors' identities), and see the other reviews. Moreover, they now also see the identities of the other reviewers for the paper. (The authors still of course do not know these.)
the reviewers (managed by the AC, whose identity is also known to the reviewers, discuss and update their reviews in light of the rebuttal and the other reviewers' reviews and comments.

Now, I do not understand the point of the part I emphasized, and it seems to me it breaks a key premise of peer review (even single-blind). Namely, now you have implicit and explicit pressure among reviewers.

  What are the arguments for this? ("This" being: divulging the identities of the reviewers to the other reviewers of the same paper -- not only to the AC)

Historical reasons: Many conferences have switched to online PC discussions only recently, after having had physical PC meetings before. Since anonymity is not an option at physical PC meetings, a non-anonymous online discussion is closer to the experience of physical PC meetings.

Incentives for PC members. PC members do a lot of work without monetary compensation. There are some reputation-related incentives offered by a non-anonymous online discussion:

Junior PC members can "make themselves a name".
Senior PC members can prove that they are still good citizens of their community.
All PC members can get an impression of whom to invite and not to invite as reviewers for their own conferences and journals.


Checking with co-authors on status of a not-yet-submitted paper? In the spring, I briefly helped with a decently sized project. Shortly after it wrapped, I was asked if I wanted to be co-author on the paper being written on the project. I agreed, and subsequently haven't heard anything back. It's a database project so there will be a long list of co-authors, and I don't want to be a bother, but I also don't want to be left off.

Is five months a reasonable time to wait before asking after status?

Publications plans can end up going into limbo for a long time.  In my experience, this can be especially true for publications with lots of authors, because you can easily end up in a situation where nobody's really stepping forward to get it written, or where everybody thinks somebody else is the one dealing with the current road-block.  One paper that I am an author on spent three years in un-submitted limbo for such reasons.

As such, checking in every few months is totally reasonable, as you may in fact provide the stimulus to keep it moving forward.  Be warned, however, that if it's ended up in limbo and if you actually care about the paper, that you may well find yourself one of the ones getting handed tasks for actually writing it.


How do i advance my research career and publish papers without university affiliation? I am a recent masters grad from a US institution as a foreign student. As of now I have no university affiliation. My work as a grad student was mainly research oriented. Hence now looking for a job seems redundant as many research jobs in US require US citizenship or field experience. So as a researcher my options are limited. Nevertheless I am working on a theoretical paper. The question is

What are my options at this point considering an academic career where I could become a teacher/lecturer/professor or academician carrying out scientific work.
If I have a paper ready how do i publish it in a good journal with a decent impact factor without a university affiliation.

I could not find published research in reputed journals by any independent scholars.

Short answer: Simply write your paper and submit it and wait for feedback. If it is good enough a conference will publish it.

Longer Answer: A contribution is a contribution, and conferences and journals are always hungry for a good content. Affiliation does not mean much, as most high ranking conferences only allow double-blind submissions; and after acceptance you can put your name, email and the company you are working for. You then will be considered an independent researcher on the subject matter. I have seen many submissions from big to small companies over the years, on subjects that were important to them and their work, who decided to submit their contribution to a research conference and get feedback.


Switching from academia to industry-software I am an associate professor at a university in the US and I teach Computer Science. I am feeling stuck in my career and want to switch to industry. I have given many interviews but they only ask for programming and they consider me for only similar jobs (the same kind that my own students are being considered for). With my experience managing several student projects at the university I feel that I can do a lot more than just write code. I have so many ideas but I feel frustrated that nobody is willing to give a chance.

Anybody here switch from academia to industry successfully? any pointers?

If your primary goal is to be a software engineer, then I think the first problem you might be having is that you are defining "successfully" transitioning as you getting an offer that is at a higher rank than those of your students. If your goal is to be a software engineer, then taking a position that is close in rank to those of your students is not you being "unsuccessful". Also, your downplaying the importance of making the shift by thinking that "just writing code" is a bad thing.
If your life goal is to be in industry, dont look for others who have similar stories as yours : Instead, define your own story. Make YOUR dreams come true. Nobody has the same story as you, so go out and make the change now if thats what you want in life!
Its much better to accept a position that is at a same rank as your students TODAY, than to wait until its too late, just because you dont think its fair. Life is filled with trade-offs.
If you are a competent professor, then youll be a competent engineer, and youll eventually transition to a position of the rank you deserve. Its that simple.


Miscited in a bachelor thesis I recently discovered, to my delighted surprise, that my bachelor thesis had been cited in another bachelor thesis - however...

my bachelor thesis has been entered in the reference list as an PhD thesis, which it clearly isn't, and
I have been attributed a conclusion that I didn't draw, that is indeed counter-indicated by the data I've collected.

Should I care about this? Is there a course of action I should take?

A bachelor's thesis is only a bachelor's thesis - it may be used as a source by other researchers (or students, as you discovered), but it is commonly agreed on that they are certainly not error-free. At least some universities do not even have a process for allowing the student to submit a corrected version for archival after the review by the examiners. Hence, such errors would still be in the thesis even if found by the reviewers.

The misattribution of your thesis as a PhD thesis should be ignored, as it is likely a simple error. Also, it the author used BibTeX, the author of the other thesis may have had the problem that there is no Bachelor's thesis entry type - and rather than doing the right thing (using entry type "misc"), the author went to use the entry type "PhD thesis".

Misrepresenting your conclusion is a bit more problematic, but may very easily be again a simple error. Either you let it slip, or you write the thesis author an e-mail clarifying your conclusions. Either way, don't accuse, just inform - the misinterpretation is often just accidental, which is not misconduct, but just sloppiness. There is also the possibility that some of the text in your thesis invites misunderstanding it, which led to the present problem. Again, this would not be a case of academic misconduct.


How to deal with professors who don't respond to emails? I am an undergraduate student in India who is struggling to get professors to reply to my emails. I believe that my emails are well-drafted. Here is an example:

Dear Professor X,
I am Y, a student in your Machine Dynamics and Vibrations
class.
Is it possible to make the recorded lectures on MS Teams available to
us so that we can revisit the lectures in case we have doubts, sir?
Thank you.
Warm regards

I never received a reply to this. Some other emails that I have sent were related to technical issues during online tests, a result that I got as part of research, and an email to my department head which addressed questions regarding extra credits transfer, thesis work etc, all of which are important and urgent. I never received a reply to any of them (these emails were all sent to different professors).
This is not just my experience. Other students who try to contact professors in my department via email, be it a question about the course material or a question about the exam syllabus, some of the professors simply don't respond.
It is common for students to directly message the professor on WhatsApp. I try to avoid this since it feels like I am impinging, but I have found that some professors respond exclusively to WhatsApp messages and nothing else. But some others don't even respond to this.
I avoid calling as much as possible. In the few situations that I have had to call, the professors didn't seem very irritated, but since I have not done this much, it's hard to generalize.
Due to COVID, a face-to-face conversation is out of the question.
Some options I have considered:

Contacting the department head, but he is also quite similar in this regard. I contacted him about information regarding extra credits and such, but never received any reply.

Making this issue known in our class committee meeting (a meeting between a few student representatives per class and the professors to discuss class progress and any issues faced by either the students or the professors) but I find that in these meetings, simple suggestions go unheeded (after repeated begging to add a lock to the girl's washroom, it never happened) or professors become outright hostile if any problems against them are raised.

I can probably take it up with the academic Dean (a sort of head to the various department heads) but again, professors here are generally serious and don't take criticism well. I am worried that this might affect my grades (this has happened to other students in the past).

At this point, I am happy with the rare monosyllabic responses I get from professors. What do I do to fix this? I appreciate answers from anyone here but if there is an Asian POV, I would specially appreciate it. Thank you.
Other info that might be useful:

Some other colleges have policies regarding not responding to students' emails, but mine doesn't.

I cannot give an Asian perspective, but the situation you describe was quite common in many universities thirty or more years ago, at least in my country. Students were not supposed to have rights, and many professors would simply ignore most of the students queries or requests, whatever the medium used to deliver them (emails were not so common in those days). And the situation was even worse in the humanities where I had some friends (and I've been told that a few bad habits have survived to the present).
Since also the university was unresponsive to complaints, the most common solution at the time was to ambush a professor at their department, frequently sneaking into the department (since one wouldn't know when the professor was in, students would sometimes take turns to avoid missing them). Indeed, this is not a fix to the problem: it's just a survival strategy, which would hardly work and be recommendable in these COVID-19 times.
I'm afraid, though, that alone you would not be able to do more then the above survival strategy. In my experience, the only thing that works—at least partially—when a university shows such generalized level of unresponsiveness is when students unionize en masse and make a strong action (common actions are occupation of the university, contacting media and such). Indeed, the possibility and the chance of success of such an action depend on the political climate in your country, in the willingness of all students to participate in such an action and in the possibility of finding a strong leadership within the union.
A base action, suitable for these unlucky times, would be that of preparing a document describing the problems, and signed by as many students as possible, to be presented by your representatives at the class meetings. The representatives should go well prepared and should be able to choose the right time to present the complaints (in my experience, students frequently miss the right moment and are frequently out-of-phase with respect to the agenda of committee meetings). Send your document also to the Dean and, possibly, also to the media, finding someone who would be willing to side you and follow your cause if nothing happens. Indeed, before doing any of the above, you should estimate the probability of success on the basis of your knowledge of the situation, the chances of retaliations for those involved and whether it's worth it, taking also into account the time that doing all this would take: pick your battles carefully.


How to get students to use the course forum? Forums are common features of online courses. The software is usually provided by the institution. It is in everyone's interest to make a course forum useful, maybe even lively; generally we want more posts rather than fewer, and more interaction between those posts, rather than a bunch of individual observations.

Using the forum is sometimes counted as part of students' grades. There are a great number of ways of measuring participation, though; I previously asked How to score class participation, correcting for natural outspokenness?

That said, making forum activity part of student grades is not necessarily key to making the forum useful. What is the most effective and practical way of getting students to post in the forum?

I think the key to a forum being somewhat lively, at least from my experience, is a blend of the following:

There needs to be instructor/TA participation in the forum itself. This is both a boost to the "signal" of the forum.
Incentivize interaction not just posting. If you're requiring forum posting, require not only an original post, but also one or more replies to existing posts.
Start broader topics early and help keep them running. Many forums are organized by chapter, assignment, etc. which kills any participation (even if you have it) the moment people click 'Submit' on the assignment.

That being said, I cannot yet think of an instance where I was actively glad to have the forums for an online class.


Opportunities in the private sector for a theoretical PhD in physics still interested in physics I just read this post What are paths that physics majors/PhDs can follow? where most people discuss that PhD in physics (and sciences) are very competent in the private sector. I get that, and I get there are plenty of opportunities out there but I wanted to know if there are research opportunities that need more physics (quantum mechanics, gravity, electromagnetism) than just statistics, or computer skills.
Background: soon to be PhD in theoretical solid state physics, programming skill are barely above basic (mostly plotting, basic calculus and algebra with Python), my subject is not very focused on hot topics in electronics, also I do not have any experience in a lab (aside from university courses).
I am having family/financial issues and I wanted to understand if there is any opportunity in the private sector (meaning a better salary), but where my knowledge of quantum mechanics is still relevant. Looking at sites like IBM (where they try to build real quantum computers) they need more cleanroom and machine learning scientists than a pen-and-paper theoretical physicist. (I really want to avoid cleanrooms)
What else is out there in the private sector where quantum mechanics, solid state physics or other physics advanced skills in theory could be desirable and that would not distance myself too much out of physics ?
Edit: to be clear, I am looking for the opposite of non-profit organizations.

There are employers our there that hire PhDs to do something that looks more or less like research. However, research positions for a single small topic of research are incredibly rare, and will usually be filled by hunting high-profile established researchers; a typical example would be computer security departments of big IT names. This happens when a company calculates that throwing large amounts of money at a big problem (or multiple related problems) is rational because the value of solving it is very large. In that case it is worth paying top salaries even for a small increase in the probability of success. If you are a PhD student, not on a "hot subject", and nobody contacted you (or one of your colleagues) after reading publications to fill such a position, your chances of finding one are basically zero.
The bulk of after-PhD industry R&D positions, from my experience (job-hunting and working in such for 2-3 years), require you to be somewhat flexible in your research topic. Of course this is extreme in smaller companies, where the "R&D department" can be one or two persons. Even in large companies you need some flexibility: my current employer has >100k employees, including ~3000 in entities dedicated solely to R&D, and my job title is "thermal transfer researcher"; yet, I regularly have to do material science, mechanics, electrical engineering, statistics, sometimes algorithms and even chemistry (yuck!). The ability to pick up quickly a basic understanding of a new topic is one of the big reasons the industry hires PhDs; if you do not you have the willingness to use that skill, I would avoid industry positions.
I expect this aspect of my experience to be quite universal due to the financial incentives at work. Both in industry and in academia, you get funding if someone who holds the purse is convinced that you spent well the previous round. In academia, funding committees care essentially about how many citations your papers get and in which journals you publish (maybe they should care about other things but that is another debate); they do not care about what your research is about. Working on topics where you are the best or the most interested in is often a near-optimal strategy under those incentives.
In the industry, good output means you solved someone's problem. The ability to do so is somewhat correlated to domain-specific technical skills but many considerations take precedence:

sometimes, the actual solution to the problem is very different from the solution that was considered when funding occured, which determined who the task would be assigned to; yet re-assigning the task once the new solution is identified would be too expensive (in money, delay, or human resources)
sometimes, someone close-by in the flowchart died or was run over by a bus, and managers cannot be too picky about who will finish the job they left;
sometimes, the funder already worked with you, and your skillset is close enough that you are a safer bet than a top-notch technical expert that might be impossible to work with; or there is no such technical expert that the funder knows of.


I recently enrolled in masters in AI after doing my bachelor in CS, I'm overwhelmed how to start research So as someone who started  aiming for PhD and enrolled in masters , I'm really confused with how someone could move in the AI/ML research domain... I see outstanding papers published round the clock and it really makes me feel how anything I would do would even match the lowest standard worthy of publishing, not to mention the single biggest problem I don't have a problem in hand.
It increasingly looks like to me that I'll publish a review paper instead because I feel I'm decent enough in doing literature review (which really helped me with previous publications), but it feels like a shortcut, that I am not doing actual research and I am nowhere good to warrant a publishing.
PS I had some experience of publishing papers in my bachelor and know the general process followed in the academic writing, but these were often papers I really think were not worthy enough to be published. They had stemmed out of mostly the project I was involved in undergraduate.

TL;DR. Search this forum, and beyond, for impostor syndrome: What you're experiencing is perfectly normal.
At masters-level, you're just entering the amphitheatre arena. Of course everyone looks better, you haven't started yet. I see outstanding papers published round the clock, that's great! You're looking in the right places, finding the best stuff. It really makes me feel how anything I would do would even match the lowest standard worthy of publishing, that's impostor syndrome. Hang around, absorb the knowledge, learn how to compete.
[N]ot to mention the single biggest problem I don't have a problem in hand, many students get handed problems by their advisors, only later do they identify their own problems.
Look in the mirror, ask yourself, do I want to do research? If the answer is yes, go learn how to do it. Don't worry about not being able today.


Is it a good idea to join a second group as an undergraduate researcher if I don't feel challenged enough? I'm currently a second-year undergraduate physics major, and I joined an experimental nuclear physics (astrophysics primarily) group a few months ago. I joined the group wanting to work extremely hard to learn new things, apply them (and my intuition and previous knowledge) to solve problems, and present my findings and progress on a weekly basis, reporting to the group head on a more frequent basis though. It started out like that at first - the head made me solve a problem, write a GUI/applet for it (just to show that I fully understood the problem), and then implement that into a particular framework that would be used for an actual experiment later on down the road. I noticed that the head also didn't like to be a mentor too much - that is, he only liked to tell me what I needed to know for my task and nothing else, leaving extra learning for myself.

The problem with this is I'm left mentally starved. I've been assisting this other person in my group (relatively new graduate) on preparations for that actual experiment that I mentioned earlier, and that feels good. I've learned more of what's going on behind the scenes (significance of the experiment, theoretical implications of the results obtained, detector and equipment [and setup]) through publications, other people within the university, and asking the group head, but all of this was essentially on my own. As a result, I feel that any average joe with minimal work-ethic and intuition could thrive in a group like this. I've learned a lot more about nuclear physics/astrophysics (hence, more about this universe we live in) through sources that I might have otherwise not come across had I not joined the group, so that's good.

Also, just quick side note, the experiment is coming up soon, and I'm sure I'll learn a whole bunch through that process, and sorting out and analyzing the data after the experiment will certainly put me to work.

I've been thinking about possibly trying to join another research group, just so I can quench my mental thirst. There is a nuclear theory group at my university, and even though I know nuclear theory is probably way over my head, I'm willing to put a lot of time into working hard.

Here is my question: Is attempting to join another group a bad idea? Should I instead tell the group head how I feel, and see where to go from there, or would that be far too disrespectful?

Please excuse any ignorance of mine.

Is attempting to join another group a bad idea? Should I instead tell the group head how I feel, and see where to go from there, or would that be far too disrespectful?

These two options are not mutually exclusive. You can do either, both, or none of them.

As you see it, you believe your choices are

Talk to your current supervisor - You should absolutely do this, regardless of what you decide to do with respect to the other group. Your mentor has no way of knowing what you're thinking unless you tell him; it's up to you to let him know if you need more from the supervisory relationship. Of course, you should do this in a respectful and adult way.
Join a second research group - You should consider doing this if you're interested in the research the second group is doing. As an undergraduate, it's to your benefit to experience different kinds of research, different advising styles, etc, to help you understand what you need when applying to graduate school. Note, however, that research is very time- and energy-consuming, and if you spread yourself too thin, you will experience "research" only on a superficial level and won't get much out of it. Only you can determine whether you really have enough free time and energy to participate in two research groups in a meaningful way.

Finally, I'd like to comment on your statement

  ... all of this was essentially on my own. As a result, I feel that any average joe with minimal work-ethic and intuition could thrive in a group like this.

You seem to think that because your mentor gives you a lot of independence and doesn't tell you exactly what to do, that standards and expectations in the group are pretty low. That's not necessarily the case.

The ability to work independently is a highly valued skill in supervisees, and it's great that your advisor has given you the chance to show your capabilities in that respect. This means that he'll be able to write strong recommendation letters for your graduate applications - much, much stronger than a supervisor who could only speak to your ability to follow focused, specific instructions.

Research is not like coursework. It's supposed to be highly self-directed. If somebody is telling you exactly what to do and what to learn next at every step, you're not doing research. If you feel like you're not sufficiently challenged by what you're doing now, you are supposed to take the initiative to speed things up.

In other words, don't confuse a hands-off mentoring style with low standards. If the group in general is productive, does good science, and writes solid papers, then standards are what they're supposed to be. From your description, you are learning a lot of new things, starting a new experiment, finding out how research works, and overall describing a pretty excellent research experience.


Employer contributions deducted from quoted salary—is this normal? In order to help in future salary negociation, I wanted to know whether it is condiered normal in North America to be quoted a gross salary that does not take into account employer contributions to things such as a a mandatory pension plan.

Specific example situation

This question is based on a situation I am experiencing right now, so I will use this to illustrate more specifically what I mean. I have just accepted a postdoc position (in a Canadian university, in case this is relevant), for which my advisor offered a salary of $40,000.

He wanted me to start working very quickly and I was available, so I started working without having signed my contract. Two weeks after, he explained that the work contrat was ready, and that the amount I would see in it (ca. $36,000) was the $40,000 he had quoted minus the contributions towards the pension plan and group insurance.

It was not obvious to me whether the deducted contributions were my contributions, i.e. $36,000 minus withheld tax would be my net income, or whether he had deducted the employer contributions and my net income would therefore be $36,000 minus my own contributions minus withheld tax.

I sent an email asking just that, and my advisor came to my office, slightly on the defensive I thought, to explain that the grant he had for my salary covered only $40,000 per year in total but that he had decided he would pay for the employer deductions with money from a different grant, and therefore that a new contract would be drafted.

And here I am, wondering whether there was an honest mistake or misunderstanding, whether I'm being a diva and my advisor just doesn't want to deal with it, or whether someone has tried to screw me.

Your answers will help me address this concern but mostly, as I wrote, will be helpful to me and I suspect to others in knowing exactly how to negociate their salary in the future.

Disclaimer

And before anyone tells me, I do realise that I am getting an adequate salary in the current conditions and that I should consider myself lucky to have a pension plan and group insurance.

To deduct employer contributions from the salary as well as employee contributions would be highly unusual, I believe. (If it were the norm, then there would be no need for a terminological distinction between employer and employee contributions.)

EDIT: Here is my guess about what happened (purely speculation).  Perhaps there are contributions that are classified as "employer contributions" for tax purposes, and the university requires these contributions to be made for postdocs as well as regular employees but only makes the contributions for regular employees, so for postdocs the money has to come out of a grant instead.  This situation has the potential to be confusing, so perhaps your advisor simply forgot about this until you reminded him, at which point he realized that he made a mistake.

In any case, the question you asked him in your e-mail was completely reasonable.


Trouble coming up with a title for PhD dissertation - strategies? This may be a question that is too open-ended for Academia SE, but I thought I would ask here. I have already consulted some online resources, but the solutions were not that helpful.
How does one come up with a 'good' title for a dissertation? My first attempt at a dissertation title was along the lines of:

Developing a [methodological] understanding of [this important phenomenon]

Understandably, this title was a bit broad and generic. My supervisor suggested I make the title a less generic to help specify the contribution of the dissertation. I'm feeling a bit stymied - titles have never been my specialty.
Would any advisors on this SE be able to share share strategies on how a student can arrive at a successful dissertation titles?
For clarity: this is the 'final' dissertation title.

Quickly write down a dozen possible titles, in short varied combinations of the key words you'd want someone to use to find your thesis.  Avoid fillers like "developing" and "understanding".
Prune the list and add to it the next day.
Then perhaps look over the list with your advisor.


How GRE score affect your acceptance rate Suppose you are very bad at undergraduate but did well on your GRE test. How would that affect you application?

Maybe a little, but don't count on it putting you over the line. Admissions isn't a numbers game at most institutions. Lots of bits of evidence suggest that you will, or won't, be a good candidate and a success in the program. You need to build a complete picture that has enough good points to outweigh any bad ones.

If you were a bad undergraduate that is a problem that you need to overcome, or at least explain. What were you bad at? Good? How does math fit in here, assuming that is your field? What else have you done? Do you have any research experience? What are your goals and do you have a plan to achieve them.

All of these things can matter, but a good GRE is positive, at least. What else have you got?


Quote on testing, checking, and verification I'm in the habit of putting a motivating quote on the top of each of my syllabi. For my introductory programming course, I'd like to focus the class on the theme of testing and verification. Of course, this is also an important theme in non-CS disciplines, as well.

So I'd like to find the best possible short, positive (not sarcastic or negative), informative quote on the issue of testing and verification. Ideally this would be from someone fairly well-known or influential in the CS field, but that's not necessary. Web searches for this tend to dredge up pages on automatic testing suites and the like, so I'm hoping that someone here knows of a good one.

What is the best motivating quotation on the importance of testing, checking, and verification for freshmen college (STEM) students?

Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of
  bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.

  Edsger W. Dijkstra


Writing a research paper I am a 16 years old high school student. I want to publish a new piece of work. Writing a research paper is quite difficult for me. If some body has any idea about how to do that then help me.

I am glad to know that you are interested in publishing a new piece of work in the field of mathematics. Here is what I would suggest: Look at institutions such as MIT RSI and PRIMES, as well as the Simons/Google/Intel science fairs, and also opportunities in your locality. Look at examples of mathematics reports submitted to them, and then copy that format and write your paper. It may be difficult to submit to an actual journal though for publishing. Academia is a bit brutal, and so it is better to work through the institutions that I mentioned. If your work is actually a breakthrough, then you will still be recognized, and these are good opportunities for students like you.

If not, I would suggest emailing or getting in contact with a mathematics professor (possibly at your local university, and one who focuses in that area of mathematics), and talk to him. Ask him if he would be willing to look over it and send him what you have.


I feel left out from the group My supervisor had a surgery. She notified the other doctorate student other than me and the other members of the group. I have no information. No one in the group said this to me. I feel like an idiot and can't understand why she didn't tell me. I don't know, what should i do?
edit: Thank you very much for your answers. I can think better now. I'm the only foreign student in the group, a small group. When I first arrived, I saw discriminatory attitudes from the head of the group (I was not invited to group meetings but there were all other students). But my supervisor always treated me well, we did not have a problem but when she did not inform me, I was very sorry, she informed the others by phone.

There is really nothing to do. Most likely it wasn't an intentional slight. An oversight, perhaps, caused by stress.
You can get some information about what happened that required surgery and send a get-well note.
Don't overthink it.


Is it common practice in the US for students to propose master thesis topics themselves, or do labs have a list of topics to pick from? I'm currently doing a masters in electrical engineering (image and video processing, machine learning, etc.) at a renowned European university.
For my masters thesis, I'd like to go to the US (or Canada).

Now, at my university (and at a lot of European universities) it is usually the professors that create a list of thesis topics. The students can subsequently pick one.

However, during my search for suitable thesis topics I could pursue in the US, I didn't find this kind of lists.

Is it common practice for students to propose topics themselves to relevant labs and hope to get them approved?
Or could anyone shine some light on the usual procedure to find a thesis topic and advisor?

It's usually somewhere in between: the thesis topic is negotiated between the student and advisor.

Usually an advisor will have some topics already in mind, and can suggest them. The student can also suggest topics in which he or she is interested, and the advisor can decide if they would be appropriate. In the end, of course, they both have to agree.

It could also fall closer to one end of the spectrum or the other, depending on the advising style of the advisor. Some advisors might insist on one of the projects they have in mind, as they may not have the expertise or interest for any of the student's suggested topics. Or they might think the student's suggestions would be too easy, too hard, too obscure, etc. Other advisors may not have many topic ideas of their own, or consider that it is good experience for a student to find their own topic.


Should I be content with poster paper or should I try again? A  research paper of mine has been accepted at an IEEE conference.  Although I submitted my best work as a research paper, my best was not  good enough and the reviewers threw it with the poster papers. So, it  will get published in the conference proceeding but will NOT get  uploaded to Xplore Library.

Now  if I go with this, can I try submitting the same paper (as it won't be  online) to other IEEE conferences or reputed journals or do I have to  change it substantially before submitting to other publishers? This  would be a problem because I can not work on it any more without a  top-notch laboratory with chemical equipment; I already did what I  could with just a PC and a lot of time (I am an undergraduate student in a  developing country btw).

Or keeping this in mind, should I simply  withdraw the paper and try elsewhere from scratch?

I would recommend to take the chance to visit the conference and discuss your poster content with others. This will give you good feedback and show you how your work is regarded in your field.


Can a faculty on a 12-month appointment apply for grants? I'm wondering if a 12-month appointed faculty (mainly teaching but also research duty, R1 university in the US) is allowed to pay him/herself from grants (especially NSF or NIH). I heard that they may buy the time with grant money, but I haven't heard if they can be paid extra. Also a rumor says agencies sometimes don't like to trade course loads.
Does anyone have experiences with these? Thanks.

This will entirely depend on the nature of the position, and "12 month position" isn't actually precise enough to answer it. There are several factors to consider:

There are 12-month faculty positions (including my own, and many positions at medical schools and other institutions) where not only can you bring in research funding, but you are expected to do so. The most extreme version of this is 12-month positions with 100% soft money. In my experience, this is actually the type of position the NIH is used to dealing with, in contrast to the NSF.
"I haven't heard if they can be paid extra" - this will again depend on the position. One institution I was considering a job at had incentives in place such that you could indeed pay yourself extra if you brought in grants (and one place actually automatically paid you more if you brought in more grants). My current institution only covers 75% of my salary, so covering the other 25% is technically "paying myself more", but it's capped.
Buying out coursework time is contingent on the department among other things.

Basically: Yes, but the nature of how falls under "It depends".


How to know I have done enough work in one semester? I am a PhD student in computer science (theory). I am worried about my productivity. I try to do as much as possible. I used to take four courses per semester during my first two years of studying. Now I have started doing research. In the last 4 months, I have only read 2-3 proofs and one research paper. It took 2-3 weeks to go over each mathematical proof.

Question: How do I know I have done enough work in one semester? I mean is there any parameter to measure the work that I have done in the last semester? I have heard some students read only one research paper per one semester.

I can get feedback from my research supervisor, but the problem is he might say I did enough work just to keep my motivation high.

Everyone works at their own pace; moreover, the pace can fluctuate a lot depending on the time of year, your personal life, and "position of stars in the sky". Even though the semester seems like a decent amount of time to average out those fluctuations, I don't think it is.

I would try to use the following criteria to estimate the term success:

feedback from your advisor
how did the term go compared to the original plan (yep, here I assume that you make the plans for your term/month/week and correct them accordingly. Hopefully, some milestones are discussed with the advisor as well)
feedback from your committee (in some universities, Ph.D. students meet with their committee regularly or send them the progress report to hear their feedback)

I would certainly not recommend comparing your progress with other students because they are different, they have different goals, and you don't have complete information about their progress either. It is very easy to get discouraged for no reason.

To sum it up, I would stress the importance of initial planning and correcting the plans throughout the term. Then, you will have a very good measure of your success. You will end up with a different question of "how to plan", but that is a totally different problem.


Can personal projects that required reading other's research make up for lack of my own? I graduated from my undergrad program last December.  My grades and GRE scores are good but my school is relatively unknown.  I don't really have research in the sense that I haven't published anything, and I don't believe anything I've done to be particularly novel.  The school I went to was a teaching college, there wasn't a strong emphasis on research.

That said, I have been known (as my recommendation-writing professors will surely vouch) to do projects wherein I pick a topic, read a bunch about it, and then implement what I've read about.  At present, I'm writing a ray-tracing renderer, and I plan to implement a lot of advanced features by the time I actually apply to grad school, such as photon mapping and an BVH data structure.  I also plan to implement a few more shiny bells and whistles based on techniques I've read from different SIGGRAPH papers, but I don't believe I will be doing anything that no one else has done before, especially in the 4 months left until my application is submitted.

For what it's worth, however, this project is 100% my own.  I never took a graphics class while in college.  I work 40 or more hours a week a software developer, and I do most of my work by waking up at 5:30AM and working until I start work at 9.  I do most of my research (into papers and topics) when I get home, and during the work day when I have a few minutes.

My question is, how valuable is the information I just listed?  Does the attitude demonstrated above make up for the fact that I don't really have terribly original research?  What about the fact that my professors probably aren't that well known?

This applies mostly to the top tier of schools.  I will be applying to several non-elite schools as well, but it is with the top schools that I am most worried about my lack of research.  Do I have even a small chance to get into a top school, or am I simply noncompetitive as a candidate?

-- As for work experience, I have 8 months of experience as an intern at a fairly high profile research institute, but the truth is the work they had me do while there really wasn't research.  My current job is developing mobile applications and websites.  I find it very underwhelming, and I imagine graduate schools will as well.

How valuable is the information I just listed?

Very, since it shows that you are capable of reading and understanding the literature, and capable of implementing what you read (the true test of understanding).

  Does the attitude demonstrated above make up for the fact that I don't really have terribly original research?

I doubt that any faculty, anywhere, expects undergrad students to have published research. I think the attitude you describe is very valuable for grad school.

  What about the fact that my professors probably aren't that well known?

Well, having a famous professor vouch for you certainly counts for a lot. But not having that network at an undergraduate level shouldn't preclude you from getting into a good graduate course, especially if you have some nicely implemented projects up your sleeve.


Why are dates (of writing or publication) missing in scientific papers? When I read a scientific paper I usually would like to know the point in time when it has been written or publicized. I would expect such a date written near to other meta data like the the author's names.

Unfortunately often these papers lack in such a date. I can't see why. Okay such a paper may be the work of years, but it is publicized at a single point in time. When I wrote my thesis I wrote down the date when I have submitted it to my university for approval.

Such a date is very useful for finding, classifying and evaluating papers.

An example would be this:
https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/6487/pwvault.pdf

The papers I read are in the field of computer science. This may be different in other areas.

Scientific papers are usually published in journals and conference proceedings. Publishers report at least the publication year and month, but may also report more information, like the submission date, the revision date and the date of the first online publication.

Your example is just a preprint, not the publisher's version, and does not contain any information. However, you can find the published paper at this link, where you can freely download the pdf with the publication year. You can also read the front matter of the proceedings to find further information.


What author changes are acceptable after paper acceptance in the camera-ready In a conference in the CS field, what sort of changes are acceptable from an author of a paper in the camera-ready version over the submitted version?
Can the author add few new related findings?

I can't speak for all parts of CS, but I have seen authors improving theoretical results, fixing bugs (both bugs discovered by the reviewers and bugs not discovered by the reviewers), changing the presentation (both following reviewers' requests or not), and adapting experimental results to the latest version of a tool, and I have done so myself, and nobody has ever complained about it.

On the other hand, if you have any reason to believe that the reviewers would have preferred the submitted version to the updated version, or would have rejected the paper if they had seen your changes, you should probably not change it.


My h-index is very low and I want to increase it Nowadays universities judge faculty based on their h-index, to be promoted from assistant to associate or to be hired as associate in some universities you need at least a h-index of 10. I am struggling to increase mine, I have tried all the tips I found online, shared my papers on social media such as Research Gate and Linked In.

How can I increase my h-index otherwise?

Write papers that people will want to cite. In particular:

When you come up with a new concept/technique, write a good explanatory section, so that people will refer to your paper for in depth explanation.
Make something useful, like a piece of software or a benchmark that people working in your field can use. Write a paper that people using your work can cite. For example, the introductory page of PonyGE2 contains a "how to cite PonyGE2" text.
When you make something people can cite, make it easy to cite it. Include snippets for BibTex and other citation systems that people can easily copy-paste. (BibTex in particular is unpleasant to do entirely by hand; so take that work off your readers' hands.)
Use good titles for your paper, good abstracts and pay attention to the keywords. These things matter a lot for whether people will find and decide to read your paper, and that's necessary to get them to cite it.
Collaborate with a lot of different people in your field. If you write something good with X, chances are X and X's colleagues are going to be citing that paper later on. Also, people looking at X's papers also get to see your paper.
Collaborate with famous people in your field. They probably got famous by being good at it (so learn from the best!), and they get published in the more prestigious journals. That's good for increasing your citation odds.
Write about interesting things that other people will want to follow up on.
Supervise good students, teach them well, and co-author their publications sometimes the student exceeds the master, but the master also gets a boost from the student's success.


Is it acceptable for university to ask for detailed financial report? I'm applying for a university in the USA and one of the section requires to enter up to five previous employees, their contacts, start/end dates, hours per week, and salary. I mean, that some of the previous aspects are considered personal in Europe.

Is it acceptable for university to ask for financial data and should one provide full, candid answers?

I'd say those details are a bit too detailed for comfort, especially for a graduate admission programme. However, the technical rationale behind could be that they might have some consideration for scholarships based on the financial details you provide. In the end, it is your decision.

If you are still concerned about the necessity of those details, you may request the respective department of the University for a clarification of the reason behind them.


What are the legal obligations of "Editorial Board Membership Agreement"? Basically, I have two questions.

First question: Anyone knows EnPress publisher is just a scam/predatory publisher or not? Cause they sent an email to me to invite me to join editorial board of a journal, which is related to my field. But I'm wondering is this a predatory journal, which is called OA-Coating Journal, cause their website looks unprofessional to me besides that there is no any published article in their journal!

Second question: They (EnPress publisher) sent an "Editorial Board Membership Agreement" to me and somewhere in this document they mentioned: "By this agreement, you acknowledge and agree that all ideas and improvements conceived by you in performance of your service shall be the property of the publisher". I don't understand what they're pointing to exactly! Can any describe what's the meaning of this sentence? Which service that would be provided by me will be their property?

Any idea or suggestion is appreciated.

This publisher appears on the updated Beall list. John Baez (a famous mathematical physicist) reported that he got what looks like automatic spam from this publisher: an invitation to get on the editorial board of an architecture(!) journal. It's my understanding that it's very rare to be surprised by an invitation to an editorial board. It's also written in your bio that you are a PhD student; don't get me wrong, but PhD students are not qualified to be on an editorial board, and the fact that they invited you is a red flag. These facts combined would not make me want to touch this publisher with a ten-foot pole.

(There are further questions that you can ask yourself: do you know the current editors of the journals? Are they recognized researchers in their field? Do the publisher's other journals look legitimate to you? Etc.)

As for the legalese they have written - it looks terrible to me. It says that "ideas and improvements conceived by you in performance of your service shall be the property of the publisher". But ideas don't belong to anyone! So this text is just meaningless junk. Even if the publisher is legitimate (which I doubt), they should seriously consider hiring actual lawyers.


What's the best way to find where a paper is mentioned in a paper that cites it? Sometimes when I read a research paper I want to read what later researchers said about it because I find their summaries helpful. So I look on Google Scholar at who cited the paper and take a look at those papers. What's the fastest way to find where the original paper is mentioned? My current approach is to search by the last name of the author until I find the citation number down at the bottom. Then I search for that citation number. This doesn't seem like a good approach and is especially bad when the citation number is a single digit. What's a better way? Is there some software that can help me with this?

scite does a great job at that.
Additionally, It's able to show you where in the paper to find such statements.
"...uses deep learning to classify citation statements in three categories: those that provide disputing or supporting evidence, and others, which mention the cited study without providing evidence for its validity."


Is this an experimental or observational study? We are conducting a study to validate an educational game on PC. A number of subjects are invited to use the game to go inside a virtual office room and put markers on the places where they "like" and "don't like". Then, the places where subjects'  left markers along with their rankings (like or not) are compared to a quantitative indicator of comfort (calculated by an algorithm based on various parameters of the place in question). For example, if point A was evaluated as (liked) by a subject but the algorithm says it should be (disliked), then there is a discrepancy between the subject’s opinion and the algorithm.
The puzzling question is would this be classed as an observational study (as we don't intervene or create control groups), and in this case, how the variables should be defined? But if it is an experiment, what would be the independent and dependent variables?

This is not an experiment, as you do not have experimental control (the ability to manipulate an independent variable, or to randomly assign participants to different manipulations). The point of an experiment is to demonstrate causality: that the independent variable determines (at least in part) the dependent or outcome variable. In your case, there is not even a question of causality to be addressed: the participants’ judgements can’t affect the algorithmic rating, and vice versa. What you are seeking to demonstrate is whether there is nonetheless an association between the judgments. ie For a given location, are the answers similar to each other?
So yes, this is simply an observational study, designed to test whether two variables are associated with each other. As there is no causal relationship between them, the terms “independent” and “dependent” variables aren’t ideal. In your case, it might be best to say that you are seeking to determine whether your automated rating is a predictor of the outcome variable, which is the participant judgments. But you could just as validly phrase this in the other direction, and see if the algorithmic ratings differ systematically across values of the human ratings.
Don’t worry that your study can’t be described as an experiment. Entire scientific disciplines (eg a lot of astronomy, anthropology, archaeology) are largely non-experimental.


I got admited to a PhD program without a master degree. Does it hurt when I apply for a postdoc? I am a graduate student in Sweden, and will present my PhD thesis next semester, and have several articles accepted/published.

However, when I applied (and got admitted) I had only studied at the university for three years, and only written a bachelors thesis. Me being admitted was sort of an "error" from the department, (and I had no idea what really was the requirements, since my thesis advisor encouraged me to apply).

Might this look bad on my resumé when applying for a post-doc position?
(Or is young age an advantage, in my case, 25)?

Edit: To follow up, I am now 32 and not as young anymore. I had no big issues finding post-doc positions, and I am still in academia.

In most places I know (Europe mostly, France and UK in particular), a Master's degree is nothing more than a tiny blip on your CV by the time you have a successful PhD (diploma, publication, good recommendations, involved in your community, …). Your lack of a Master’s degree will not hurt one bit (but it probably will come up in an interview, so you want to have something decent or funny to say about it). I suspect the same will be true in most places: by the time you are a post-doc, Master's degree is not a good predictor of your future success.

Regarding age, it's a very good question, and should probably be separate. As a post-doc, it shouldn't hurt your chances (I defended my PhD at the same age you are, so I have given it some thought!). For a staff position, things are very different.


What are possible legal ways to obtain a textbook for free? I'm not sure whether this is such a great question, and I'm not looking at illegal ways, but is there any way to obtain textbooks for free (legally)?

Answers very much appreciated.

Here are a few ways that you should look into:

Check your university library
If your library doesn't have it, ask them about doing a interlibrary loan
Talk to your professor. They can be insightful and understanding about these things so they might be able to lend you a copy.
Search online for ebook/PDF versions. I found that an old edition of a statistics book was available on the author's website for free.

If you are out of options with obtaining it for free then you can usually find a used copy at your book store or online for cheaper.

Books certainly can be pricey, so in the future it helps if you factor these costs in when you apply for student loans/scholarships.


Over-qualified candidate for a master programme? Yesterday I had an interview with a professor. She was trying to show me that I am a over-qualified candidate for the master program... I asked her would it affect my chance? She told me she wouldn’t definitely introduce her ‘personal opinion’ in this decision and she emphasized that will be my decision... After the interview, I think I couldn’t convince her why I applied to the master program (I couldn’t apply for the Ph.D. program this year at that school).

However, I’m too worried... I haven’t yet received any email regarding my application... Should I send a followup email to her telling what my reasons are for applying to the master? Is a ‘over-qualified’ candidate meaningful in a master program in natural sciences like physics, chemistry and etc.?

Should I send a follow-up email to her explaining my reasons after the interview? I really don't wanna lose this position...

I doubt that a follow up would be needed. I interpret her reluctance to tell you her decision at the time as just an ethical requirement. She would, I hope, say the same if you were under qualified.

You might want to send that follow up if you didn't discuss the reasons in the interview. But make that note mostly a note of thanks for her consideration. That would be a very natural thing to send.


Academic affiliation: which to choose? I am actually working for two different universities in my country, and the problem is that they do not give too much support to academic research. I mean for paying the costs of tickets, travel expenses or accommodation when one paper get accepted for a conference.

I usually work as an independent researcher, but the problem that I have is that if I put my author affiliation as Independent researcher maybe I will be not be considered "serious" enough for the reviewing program committee of the conferences that I plan to submit my work.

Now what should I do? should I put the name of one of the universities that I am working at random, and at the end change my affiliation and put the name of the university that will give me the funds for the travelling expenses of the presentation?

What would we the best way to act in this way? I remember that for one paper that I was submitting, the Dean of my past faculty told me that he could give me the money, but if I put him like a co-author. Actually it was his way to get publications to his name without working on them. Of course, I did not accept that.

Any suggestion would be of great help

Thanks

My immediate reaction is to put them both on; It is not unusual to have two affiliations. I then mean to state "A and B" to show a shared affiliation. That way both departments could benefit from your publication. The question is then how to get the different departments to losen up their purses. In my system no such funding is typically given out by departments/university, one has to apply for money from different sources oneself. I could possibly convince my head to provide the money if the reason was particularly well deserving. So I cannot comment on how such support would be provided.

I would suggest communicationg with both univesities stating that you will publish the paper with them as an affiliation to see if anyone would provide funding. I would obviously put any funding source as my first affiliation afte the fact.

Finally, to get a request to put an extra name on the paper in order to get money sounds terrible, in fact unethical. It is of course easy to say that when you are not facing the situation so thumbs up for standing up to that behaviour.


What is the purpose of the centralized CollegeBoard instead of individual universities giving their own entrance exams? Why does CollegeBoard (the organization that does the SAT, GRE, etc.) exist? Why don't universities just give their own entrance exams? It seems such centralization of power in CollegeBoard would be a bad thing for diversity in the universities.

Applicants to a particular school may be widely dispersed geographically, which makes it infeasible for all of them to be at the university in-person to take the exam (appearing in person may be particularly problematic for foreign applicants), and at the same time infeasible to find space and proctors to give exams in every combination of (student location, university).  Besides, trusting a local party to administer it would eliminate most of the control you propose to give a university over their own exam.  As well, different degree programs at the university would probably want different exams.

Besides that, there's the cost of so much redundant exam creation.  Do you think individual universities would have the resources to normalize year-over-year difficulty of an entire suite of exams?


Use of a book for a continuing education course Can I lecture on a subject that references (as required reading) a book that all were required to read? I am not reproducing any portions of the text, and assume they all legally procured the work.

Yes, you can require your students to read a book for a class. Where the students get the book is then their problem, and as long as you don't provide them with pirated copies, the origin of their copies needs not be your concern.

The only concern many of us have these days is that many books are expensive. This may not be true for a softcover copy of some classical literature, if that happens to be your area of teaching, but it is an issue if your area is some advanced topic in the sciences where many textbooks can run at $100 or over. I have generally avoided requiring my students to have a particular textbook for these reasons -- going to college is expensive enough these days.


Why do some Elsevier journals use a single column format? I believe that the majority of Elsevier journals use a standard dual column document class.

However, some journals that are owned by Elsevier use an alternative single column format (e.g. J. Comput. Phys.; J. Sound and Vib.).

What is the reason for using a different format for these journals? My first guess would be that since historically those journals were single column format they may keep this format, but why then did Elsivier move them to their own single column format (narrow margins and smaller font) instead of moving to dual column (easier to read) or just keeping the same words-per-line that the journals had beforehand?

Personally I find it more difficult to read the current single column format (post 2002)

(Copy Editor speaking ;-) )

When designing a journal's typesetting style, there are several things to consider:

What are the paper size restrictions? Can you choose any paper size or choose from a short list, or is it fixed? For instance, Springer uses it's own paper size for many publications, The journal I typeset is stuck to A4 because it's the cheapest to print here, etc.
What font size and family is going to be used? The smaller the size, the more characters per line you get, as well, sans-serif fonts make it harder to follow a line of text in a long paragraph.
What are the typical contents of the papers? For papers with many long paragraphs, it's almost necessary to have narrow columns (I'll explain that later). For papers with lots of colour photos and graphics, you want to allow graphical appendices since colour printing is then cheaper and printer handling easier. For lots of math formulas, you prefer wide columns so that they fit better. For lots of very small graphics and tables, you might prefer two columns so that you can put more easily two of them next to each other.
Who is going to use the final template and how? Do you have a professional typesetter to carefully typeset all the papers? Do your audience use Word or LaTeX more? If they use Word, you think twice to make the journal two-column since you can be close to sure that people will mess the template up.

What is "narrow" and "wide":

Narrow is basically anything with less than 66 characters per line on average. It's been proved over centuries that this is the limit width on which the eyes are able to follow the line correctly and switch to the next line correctly. With sans-serif fonts, the width should be a bit less since the serifs significantly help to follow the line.
Wide is anything that allows you to conveniently typeset long formulas. The rule-of-thumb I know is: At least 50 characters per line on average. Remember that being too wide makes it difficult to follow the lines correctly. However, this is not much an issue if the only long text in the typical articles is the introduction and most of the other paragraphs are less than 4-5 lines.

The decision of Elsevier to make some journals one-column and another ones two-column on the same paper size might be, seeing the arguments above, quite justified.


How does one become an Affiliate Professor? I've noticed that several faculty members (both in my institution and beyond) are affiliate professors in some other institutions (beside being a professor in their own institution, of course). What caught my attention is that the vast majority of them wasn't in any way affiliated with the institution prior to holding the affiliate professor title (the source are their biographies). Afterwards they naturally collaborate on a regular basis.

Example: The professor did their BSc and MSc at my university X, went to university A in the US for a PhD, returned to my institution X (where they are now) and became assistant professor but in the same year became an Affiliate Professor at university B.

So, how does one become an Affiliate Professor?

A wide range of "Affiliate" and "Visiting" titles are often used to simplify bureaucracy in a long-duration academic interaction.  For example, you may have a collaborator who frequently visits, and want to give them access to buildings, networks, and other resources so that their visits are less of a hassle for everybody.  A "Research Affiliate" or "Affiliate Professor" or such status allows the institution to officially put the person into the system so that they can be issued keys, ID cards, access permissions, etc.

The mechanism for actually doing this is typically that a sponsoring professor just calls the appropriate department or fills out a form, and it just happens.


Demonstrating capacity for independent work in light of parasitic co-authorship I'm applying to a prestigious funding program for early-career researchers* that places a heavy emphasis on the "scientific excellence" and "intellectual capacity and creativity" of the PI.  To demonstrate this, the proposal is required to include a section on "early achievements" that lists five top publications, "highlighting those as main author and/or without the co-authorship of [the applicant's] PhD supervisor".
My problem is that my best publications overall, as well as the publications most relevant to my proposal, list my PhD supervisor as the co-author, even though they had no significant involvement, neither in the formulation of the research questions, nor the planning and execution of the experiments, nor the writing up of the research results.  This is because I worked in a fairly large research lab where the more experienced doctoral candidates and postdocs were granted considerable autonomy in pursuing their research, but it was the official, documented policy for the lab head to be credited as co-author on all publications, irrespective of their involvement.  There was a minor kerfuffle when a colleague of mine pointed out that this policy was at odds with the ethics and authorship guidelines of the journals and proceedings we regularly published in. This resulted in the deletion of the policy from our lab's internal handbook, but the policy continued to be applied in practice.
So I'm wondering what to do about my publication list in the grant application.  Should I focus on the publications without my supervisor as the co-author, even though these aren't my strongest or most relevant work?  If I do include one or more publications that list my supervisor as co-author, should I explain in the proposal that the co-authorship is purely nominal, or will this come across as suspicious, egotistical, and/or desperate?  What course of action is most likely to leave a favorable impression on the reviewers?

*The program is the ERC Starting Grant, though my question is probably relevant for others applying for an ERC Consolidator Grant (which has the same evaluation criteria) or to similar programs from other funding agencies.

Assuming that you're not already too close to the 7-year maximum of post-doctoral experience for the ERC starting grant, I think the usual approach would be to work (and publish during) at least one postdoc contract in a lab other than your Ph.D. supervisor's before applying for the grant.


advisor seems to have taken my work I'm a PhD student, and my advisor published what appears to be the theoretical frame I came up with for my dissertation as a standalone paper with some other people (not me).  It seems (to me, though who knows) like I was going to make a reasonably important contribution to my subfield, so I'm even more cut up than maybe I would have been. And now I have to finish my dissertation as other people are now using this theoretical frame on data similar to mine. There is also, of course, a small chance that my advisor came up with the same idea as me, but it smells wrong, since we don't work in quite the same area. (My feeling that something is wrong is bolstered by knowing that he very definitely screwed me over in another incident.)  How do I handle this? Do I have to cite his paper? I cannot switch advisors --my department is small, so there isn't someone else who can advise me in it. I'm also too close to done. I have no desire to fight; I only want to survive, preferably with some of my dignity intact (i.e., some way not to cite my advisor's paper). I'd be grateful for comments from folks who are well along in their careers in academia, since I think part of my problem here is really not understanding academic culture.

Context: I did a masters in another subfield before starting my phd; my idea is basically drawing a common set of ideas from the master's subfield into the new subfield (where they are almost never used); I cited all of these things in my dissertation proposal, which I turned in before my advisor's paper came out, and which my committee read. The tricky thing is that I could still see my advisor saying the idea came from him - which is false and unlikely, since again, they don't know my other subfield. But still, I am terrified as well as angry.

How do I handle this?

Most likely there's nothing you can do (beyond coming to terms with it), unless there's reasonable evidence that "[your] advisor published [the] theoretical frame I came up with for my dissertation."

  Do I have to cite his paper?

If you publish related work or you want to build upon his work, then yes, since his work is required to be cited in the usual way.