What are some techniques to get some work done during the Christmas period? Given the fact that at the moment I am working with no strict time frames and I can manage my time and other activities on my own, I wonder is it possible for someone to maintain the concentration during the Christmas period and keep working on important tasks? And what are some techniques to enable that?

I am asking this, because I want to plan my vacations during December, but I am not quite sure if it is a clever idea to do the vacation in the first half of the month (so I can save some flight costs, because prices go up as the end of the year approaches),  and keep the latter part to work, having in mind that everyone gets into the festive atmosphere and it is hard getting things done?

A major perk of being an academic are the long breaks between terms, when we have the freedom to travel and make our own schedules.  However, this comes coupled with the responsibility to keep being productive during these breaks, and this is harder than it sounds.

You are wise to be thinking ahead about how to manage this.  I'm not sure exactly what you have planned, but I'm going to guess it may include extended visits to see friends and family.  Here are some things I have found useful:

Explain to them that, although you are glad to get to spend time with them, you're not on vacation from work the whole time.  (Non-academics often don't realize this and assume the entire break is free time for you.)
Look ahead to set aside specific times in your schedule for work.  Ask your hosts to check with you before planning any family activities, to make sure they don't conflict.  Again, they shouldn't assume that all your time is free.  ("Oh, but you can't work on your paper tomorrow!  I've just arranged for us to go on a picnic with Uncle Jürgen!")
Consider going somewhere else to work, such as a library or cafe.  Trying to work with relatives around is often distracting, especially if some are children.
Set specific goals for what you want to accomplish during the trip.  If you share them with your family (and can convince them that they are exciting) they may be able to help encourage you to work toward them, and to arrange things so that you have the time to do so.


Journal for machine learning applied in finance I've written a new paper where I'm proposing methodological improvements to neural network training. I have simulation data and empirical results in financial markets to backup my algorithm. I'm now looking for a journal to submit my paper. Initially, I've thought of submitting to a finance journal and have tried Quantitative Finance but was rejected. The nature of the comments from one of the reviewers suggest to me that perhaps he/she didn't understand my paper. Where should I try next? Should I try other computational/empirical finance journals or should I target an application-heavy machine learning journal?

Regardless of your specific context, there are tools that may help you with finding appropriate journals based on your paper's Title and Abstract.
For instance, if you want to publish in an Open Access (OA) journal, you can paste your Abstract here and to get recommendations for topically suitable OA journals: https://ojm.ocert.at/
Publishers likewise provide similar tools, such as:

Elsevier's Journal Finder: https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/
Wiley's Journal Finder:
https://journalfinder.wiley.com/search?type=match
Springer's Journal Suggester: https://journalsuggester.springer.com/


Submitting a manuscript that is not ready yet just to fulfil a contract I am part (working part time) of a research project that is funded by the government in another European country (not the one I live in). As part of my contract with that project, I'm required to submit a manuscript reporting the research to a peer-reviewed journal by a deadline.

However, because of unforeseen circumstances (mainly related to methods that didn't work as expected), the manuscript was not ready for submission by the deadline. In fact, it received very critical responses when presented at a conference earlier this year, and it is clear that major changes have to be done before it is ready to submit. That conference is organised by the same association that publishes the two journals that I had in mind when writing the paper, so I think that I should heed their advice.

Yet, I'm being forced to submit it by the deadline or I will face a fine. My co-author, who is from that other country, has been very clear that I have to submit the article, period. That co-author has been very helpful in buying me time, but the changes needed are very time demanding (I need to basically re-do the whole study), and I'm not working full time on that project.

What is the most sensible thing to do? Can I just submit it anyway? I thought about sending it to a journal where I expect it to be desk-rejected just to fulfill my contract, and then do the necessary changes to submit to the journal I originally intended to send it to. Would it be ethical? What other options do I have?

Contracts for scientific research can often be thought of as having two components:

A set of "minimum requirement" fixed deliverables that you must accomplish or else face penalties, and
A set of actual goals, which may or may not be able to be accomplished as anticipated, given the uncertainties of every sort of interesting research.

Typically, the fixed deliverables are things like "write annual reports" and "create a prototype implementation of X" that should be able to be accomplished as long as the research is progressing well.

"Submit a paper on this research," on the other hand, is a foolish requirement to have in a contract, because whether a paper should be submitted at a particular time or not is very dependent on context.  For example, you might have been doing wonderfully, but then be unable to submit as anticipated because of related work that other people have published in the mean time.  It is for this reason that in my contracts I typically propose something more vague like, "communicate with scientific community on results of the research" and put the fixed deliverable as reports to the funder on what we've done.

So something's already rather screwy in your contract, and you need to deal with it.  I think the most important thing to figure out is whether the pressure to fulfill the letter of the contract is coming from a program manager who cares about the research or an accountant who does not.  Talk to the leaders of the project and see if they can figure out, because my recommended path depends on which it is:

If the pressure to publish comes from an accountant or similar "box-ticking" authority who does not actually care about the research, only about fulfilling the ridiculous contract, then I would recommend fulfilling the technicality by asking something like Nature or Science to desk-reject your manuscript.  Confirm the plan with your co-authors and others on the team, and make it clear what you are doing in your cover letter, and I'm certain they will provide you the rejection you desire without doing any significant damage to your career.
If the pressure to publish comes from a program manager who actually cares about the research, then you are in a much more difficult situation, and the desk rejection ploy is unlikely to satisfy them.  At the same time, the program manager could likely grant an exception to the contract to allow you to not submit. In this case, I think that it is important to understand why there is so much pressure to submit (perhaps it signifies that the whole project or program is in trouble?), and for the project leaders to negotiate with the program manager.  If they've already done so and failed... well, you're stuck in a bad situation.

If you're in the second situation, negotiations have failed, and you really must submit, I would recommend not submitting results that you believe should not be published.  That is the sort of thing that can haunt you for your career.  Instead, I would recommend submitting the part that you are comfortable with---the study design---in a paper that clearly and honestly says this is all that is done right now and puts the completion of the new study into future work.  Make sure that anything you submit is something that you would actually be OK with seeing in print if it does get through the peer review process, and make it clear in your cover letter that you are aware that this is preliminary and will be happy to accept a decision by the editors to either proceed or not.

And then never accept a contract with such a horrible clause in the future.


Should I do a Master's degree if I am already employed in the field? I am very torn about whether to take the plunge to do a Master's degree. I graduated a few years ago with  BSc in Maths which I didn't particularly enjoy, only the statistics and programming courses. I then got a job at a big technology company in their R&D department doing research and applications of data science. I thoroughly enjoy the work I do but I am also interested in developing my skills further. I want to gain a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence and am also interested in spatial data science. I am not sure whether I should continue in this role or at a different company and learn on the job or invest some time and money into full-time education. I am also not sure whether in the future with only an undergraduate degree I would be able to progress in my field.
I am also concerned about age, whether it's wise to go back to university at 25.

First, research if your company has incentive programs for higher education. Many top companies offer partial/full tuition reimbursement to qualifying employees to pursue a masters. If this is the case, use the program to take 1 or two classes a semester. Frankly, a person with a bachelors can usually attain the same titles and salaries as a masters. The biggest difference in salaries/titles/responsibilities are between masters and PhDs. The main difference is that a PhD can be a PI on research grants/studies.
I went back to University when I was 30. Sometimes the market calls for a change in careers. But as I stated before, you may not have to "return". If your company is flexible, you could attain a masters on the side within 3-4 years by doing classes in the evening/weekend/online.


Which page range do you cite in an article in IEEE proceedings? In biblatex I have cited using @inproceedings with pages={3310--3317}. I myself only used a pdf of the article, which does not contain page numbers. Since I cite the article directly and not the book, do I cite the page range 1-7 or 3310-3317 in the text itself?

If the proceedings actually have page numbers, cite the page range in which the article appears.

However, it is becoming more and more common for many conferences to not have bundled proceedings with page numbers (also in electronic form), and so all the articles have no page numbers or they have the same fictitious page numbers (e.g. with starting page 1 for all the articles). In this case, page numbers don't matter, but the reader should be able to locate the article: therefore, whether you don't put any page range or you put the fictitious one, try to add other identifiers like the DOI, if supported. This is especially important if there are two version of the article with the same title, a short one published in the proceedings and an extended one published in a journal.


Is it reasonable to submit a paper to a journal that I have uploaded to the Arxiv 4 years ago? I have a paper submitted to the Arxiv 4 years ago (with another co-author). At that time, the only reason that we put the article  online was that someone asked us to do that in order to cite it.
 Since then it has been cited some times, including authors that claim that have found (independently) the same proof as ours.
The paper is the solution of a combinatorics problem.

I have been thinking lately that it would help my career to get this paper published in a Journal, but I'm not quite sure if this is a good idea, since it is certainly not a new result (and it is not super-interesting, just a nice solution for a problem).

What should I do? Has anyone been in the same situation?

Any advice is very welcome!

PS: In case that is a good idea to get it published it would be nice to have some kind of advise of which journal might consider articles of the types I described, as I guess that lots of Journals won't even consider it.

In math, it commonly happens that, for whatever reason, an unpublished work gets cited several times.  (This is rather annoying when it is something useful but not easily accessible, though this is not quite your case.)

I think that whether you can easily publish it depends on how similar the work is now to published work.  A collaborator and I were in a somewhat similar situation (though not the same), but our focus was different and we discussed some different things so it was publishable.  (He didn't think it was interesting enough to publish originally many years ago, but then we did some additional things that made it more interesting, even after someone else had published the main result with the same method independently.)

If you want to publish it, here are two suggestions:  1) try to publish as is in conference proceedings, or 2) incorporate your old paper into a new paper which does some other things (it could be expository, or with additional new research).

As for whether publishing it will help your career, my guess it won't make a huge difference, unless you only have 1 or 2 publications, though it may help some.  (It's not likely to get into a top journal unless you do something else.)  It sounds like people know about your work, so letter writers can talk about it if they think it's important (in which case maybe you should've published it! but one doesn't always know in advance what will be interesting), and on your CV you can always list it as a preprint.


Article that shows the complete publication history of acceptances and rejections of a successful academic I remember reading a journal article  where a researcher in psychology analysed their entire manuscript submission and publication history. The way I remember it, the researcher had around 40 publications, many in top-tier journals. A large number of the publications were rejected 2,3,4 or more times before they found a home. As an early career researcher, I found it to be a really interesting read for highlighting just how much rejection is a normal part of the publication process.

Does anyone know the reference to this article?
Equally, are there other equivalent documents written by other academics?

Update: I found the article. See answer below.

I don't know if this is the article you're referring to, because the researcher is in biology, not psychology; and the journal article doesn't include the list of manuscripts, only the recommendation to keep one:

  Stefan, Melanie. "A CV of Failures." Nature 468.7322 (2010): 467. Doi:10.1038/nj7322-467a. Web. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/nj7322-467a.html.

I can't seem to find the link to the author's actual CV of Failures (though I feel like I've seen it before), I can only find the article explaining it. However, if you search "CV of Failures" you will find some publicly available examples from other researchers.

P.S. I keep an ongoing CV of failures as described in the Nature article and  I highly recommend the exercise.


Finding it hard to find a Master's thesis advisor in mathematics, all the professors I've asked say they are too busy I attend a competitive mathematics department that is very active in research.  The downside of this is that it is hard to get any professor to agree to work on a Master's thesis with.

I have tried asking about 5 professors - all say the same thing, "thank you for your interest in wanting to work with me.  I'm afraid I have to say no, because I am very busy."

To be honest, though, I did ask the top researchers in our dept.  Partly because I should take that risk for my own career benefits, and partly because I just do not know much about the younger, less established professors / post-docs, people whom I am guessing I would have a better chance to work with.

What are some general recommendations from this community?  Keep trying to work with a tenured, well-known professor, or better to hedge my bets and just find someone who will say "yes, you can work on a project with me."?

In your situation, one might advise that you better forget about the elite faculty members, now, and the mere struggle to work with them. There are two potential options in my mind.

Firstly, expand your professor set to young fellows and try to grab their attention. You will be able to flourish by the indirect guidance of the elite professors, as your co-advisor; but right now, delay within pursuing the thesis might be considerably harmful for you.

Second idea would be taken into account, if even young and inexperienced fellows at the department, corresponding to your desired research field, show no tendency for your supervision. In this case, you may have to switch from your current research interest, in an either partially or fully matter, to be capable of cooperating with the people, who are looking for any graduate student.


How would you classify these types of research publications This question relates to medical publications but it is surely relevant to other fields. Consider the following publications:

The first is a textbook type of paper, its goal is to describe the best practice in a field and it contains minimal, if any, original research. There will be a vast breadth of citations from different topics.
The second is a medical study by a single team where they perform a repeatable process to learn more about subjects. They will mention N=500 or however many subjects they have.
The third is a medical study that reviews several studies of type #2 above. The goal is to aggregate multiple single case studies (N=1) and other studies with N>1. The goal of this paper is to increase reliability by having a higher N, or it may be to repurpose the data into different categories. E.g. it may take five studies of N=100 and then separate them into N=250 females and N=250 males.

Are there a commonly-used terms that describes these three situations?

Category #1 I would call a literature review (or survey.)

Category #3 is a meta-review (aka meta-analysis).

The papers in category #2 tend to be described by their methodology (case study, experiment, etc).


Emphasizing proper nouns and jargon What is the recommended way to ephasize proper nouns and jargon in academic writing?

I usually use italics to emphasize specific proper nouns (e.g., the name of a software: Gitolite). Until now, I did not emphasize technical jargon at all. However, my editor suggested to highlight jargon with double quotes (e.g., "the gauge hierarchy problem" or "spaghetti code").

Is this a good practice? If so, should I use the double quotes only for the first appearence of a jargon term?

Your question was tagged 'publications' - if you plan on submitting work to a particular journal, it would be worth checking to see if they have a house style for jargon.


How to address a professor that makes offensive comments (that they don't realize are offensive)? I am currently in a financial accounting class with a professor that has used offensive (in my opinion) commentary in her lectures since my first exposure.

Examples of comments she makes:

Financial accounting is a class everyone should take, because it's actually useful, not like forced electives such as sociology. (Whether or not you believe income statements and balance sheets are more important than understanding how and why the society around you functions, the tone of this comment was what bothered me at the time.)
Boys are bad at wearing work clothes for work instead of nice clothes.
Girls treat their clothes better because they find them more precious.
Woman have a shopping gene.
It's implied that women (or moms) do all the shopping and cooking.

I admit that I don't attend class often enough to know whether this is a pervasive or sporadic issue. I just know I've been put off enough to not attend classes more often and find out. I make up not going to her lectures by putting in extra effort other ways.

I can tell that she's not trying to be offensive. Her comments are meant to come off as motherly and humorous. I'm also not trying to be offended, as I gain nothing from that.

What is the most diplomatic way of addressing issues with a professor when you're in a large lecture hall setting? (As opposed to small classroom settings, which lend themselves to more personal connections with the instructors)
Or
How would a professor prefer I address them if I were dissatisfied with the nature of their off topic commentary? (As opposed to opinionated comments that relate to the course or field, such as economic policy preferences in a economics course)

Should I send a polite email to the professor explaining that I wasn't comfortable? It's quick and semi-anonymous. She won't be able to associate the name with my face. Presenting myself in an impersonal matter may result in an impersonal response.
Should I wait until the end-of-semester course evaluations and express my concerns? These are completely anonymous, but seems passive aggressive and rather too far after the fact.
Should I approach her directly if it happens again? It's more personal, but that can also seem to be more confrontational (especially if I go out of my way to meet her during office hours). I don't feel it's confrontational, or that I would present myself that way, but people receiving critique can feel that way.
Is there a better solution?

Switching sections isn't any more preferable than skipping the current lectures. The other available times didn't work well for me or my family on a regular basis. I'm also not sold that it's the best option for most students in a similar situation. I would see changing sections as a recourse only if other methods failed, or the lecturer was wildly offensive.

While the first class bothered me, I didn't drop attendance immediately. This was done after getting a feel for the course, when I knew I could balance not being in the lectures. It wasn't a knee-jerk "How dare she!" reaction.

Spotty attendance is admittedly doing nothing to address the issue. Thus, my inquiry.

I'm afraid you lose a lot of my sympathy by complaining about a lecture that you rarely attend.  I don't really understand what you mean by "the luxury of other options".  If you can take the class from a different instructor and would prefer to do that, do it.  If the attendance in the lecture is not required and you feel that you can get what you want out of the course without attending the lectures: that's your choice too, but is it a good choice?

You seem to be prioritizing sociopolitical beliefs over the material of the course.  It's very easy to be offended if you want to be.  I won't comment on the gender stuff, but I will say that the bit about accounting over sociology really doesn't rate as an "offensive" comment.  I think it's true that accounting is a more practical field than sociology and that most American adults need to do some accounting in their daily lives in a way that they do not need to do sociology.  Not knowing how interest and loans work will have a more direct negative effect on most people than not understanding the difference between mechanical and organic solidarity.  Of course "practical" is not necessarily better: it is a matter of taste and goals.  I am a mathematician, I have taken courses in sociology but not accounting, and I am fully content with that decision: in fact, I would be hard-pressed to imagine a university course that sounds less interesting to me than accounting.  But that's just my own personal taste: the idea that the accounting instructor prefers accounting over sociology is neither offensive nor even surprising.  We have a right to like what we do better and tell that to students.

Not everyone has the same views that we do.  But an accounting instructor's views on gender, shopping and clothing seem incidental rather than professional: it is very unlikely that she is pushing these views on the students or that she is holding herself up as an authority figure on them; they're just part of the way that she likes to present her lectures.  Ask yourself this: what are the negative effects of her expression of these views?  Is it likely that the men and women in the class will adjust their own behavior or views in accordance with hers?  Will men feel worried about their own cooking and shopping agency?  It just doesn't sound that insidious to me.

In my opinion, if you disagree with the views and feel strongly that the lectures would be improved by not sharing them, then have the courage of your convictions and convey this to the instructor, either in person or by email during the class, or after the class is over.  But not attending the lecture because you don't like the incidental views that the instructor expresses?  I'm sorry to say that I don't find that to be a very mature reaction.  In so doing you are compromising your own educational experience in exchange for...what, exactly?  What is anyone gaining by your failure to attend the lectures?

Added: If from the first day of class you have a problem with the instructor which is severe enough that you can only bring yourself to attend the class sporadically because of it, you have an excellent reason to drop the course or change sections right away.  Staying in a course with an instructor that you find personally offensive doesn't seem like a very good plan.  In fact, if you tell your advisor that you want to change sections for this reason, you can probably get additional help with the particulars of that: it is in everyone's best interest for you to take a different course.


If an author declines authorship, may her co-authors publish without her? This question was raised in discussion of answers on Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name?  There seemed to be a significant difference of opinion, so I'm asking it here as its own question.  I'll phrase it as a hypothetical.

Suppose that researchers X, Y and Z have collaborated on a project.  Each has made major contributions which were essential to its success, and would ordinarily be entitled to co-authorship on the resulting paper.  However, X decides, for some reason, that she does not wish her name to appear on the paper, but she is willing for Y and Z to publish it under their names alone.

May Y and Z ethically do so?

Of course it seems clear that X must consent to have a paper published with her name on it, and she has the right to withhold that consent.  It's less clear whether Y and Z may publish anyway, effectively claiming credit for X's work, even though she consents to them doing so.  It could be argued in this case that Y and Z may not publish the paper at all.

Another possible concern is that, if X has the right to decline credit for her work, she could be pressured or coerced or bribed into doing so, effectively reducing her to a ghost writer.

It seems to me that if authors B and C write in the acknowledgment section that the contribution of person A was sufficiently important that they think A should be listed as an author but that A declined and especially if authors B and C provide a description of the reasons leading to A's refusal which is satisfying to A, in other words if B and C report accurately what has been happening, then no one is behaving unethically.

For a real life example, one can look at the acknowledgment section of S.Bloch and K.Kato's work on p-adic étale cohomology, the third author being in that case O.Gabber and the reason invoked (if I recall correctly) being that Gabber did not think the work was ready for publication (I'm unable to track the precise reference at the moment, it is not Bloch and Kato's article at the IHES in 1986).

UPDATE: Because I haven't been able to track the reference of Bloch-Kato, let me point out Beilinson-Bernstein-Deligne which starts with

  Il avait d'abord été prévu que O.Gabber soit coauteur du présent article. Il a préféré s'en abstenir, pour ne pas être coresponsable des erreurs ou imprécisions qui s'y trouvent. Il n'en est pas moins responsable de bien des idées que nous exploitons et le lecteur lui est redevable de nombreuses critiques qui, nous l'espérons, ont permis d'améliorer le manuscrit.

which roughly translates as

  It was first planned that O.Gabber would be coauthor of the present article. He chose to abstain, so as not to share the responsibility of the mistakes or imprecisions to be found in it. He is nonetheless responsible of many an idea we exploit here and the reader owes him numerous criticisms which, we hope, allowed for improvements of the manuscript.


Citing "p. x" to mean page ten of a book looks confusing since "x" isn't clearly a Roman Numeral By theory, I should cite page x (page ten) like [Krusche1999, p. x]. If it were on page iii or page xi, it would look better, such as [Krusche1999, p. iii] or [Krusche1999, p. xi]. However, it is on page x, so we end up with p. x. At least to me, I won't understand, what p. x means at first sight. What do you think? Any good ideas?

You shouldn't be veering from the style guide (you are of course following a style guide, right?), and style guides cover such meticulous points as this. Even if you feel their advice is a little off and you might have a better solution to a readability problem, you should never contradict it. (Why you should not contradict it is a lengthier topic, and I think this answer stands without going into it.)

So, the right thing to do is consult your respective style guide whether it's AMA or Chicago or anything else, and do what it says.


What is the purpose of letter of recommendation? I have completed 2.5 postdocs in the US. In all of my applications plus a Green Card application, letters of recommendation were a great deal. In all cases (overall, about 10 letters signed by professors at top US universities), I was asked to write the draft and my supporter did not change more than a sentence or two.

I wonder if anyone really reads the letters of recommendation. And if yes, the judgment is simply based on my words about myself.

My interest in the answer is that I am applying for Assistant Professor position now, and my references asked me to prepare the draft. In the past, I thought that it was because of a special trust in me and I wrote the letters with modesty to respect their trusts. Now, I found it is the norm and professors/PIs do not have time to write such letters (there are about 20 postdocs in my current lab). How should I write the drafts of three different letters of recommendations for myself (sounds funny)!

I hate that this is a legitimate question, but it is. Yes, letters are weighted heavily, in my experience. The fact that you (and many others) are often asked to write their own letters is very troubling. For one thing, it's biased. Secondly, confidentiality is absolutely violated despite most such letters being assumed as such. Now you are in the awkward position to have to write 3, and feign separate ghost writers.

It is impossible to defend this from any logical or ethical standpoint, particularly if confidentiality is assumed.

The best course of action is to thoughtfully ask the recommender to write his/her own letter. But you can make it easy on them by providing a CV, papers, manuscripts, etc. Give them the information you'd like to highlight but not the words.


Losing hope in securing a decent postdoctoral position This is my first post in this community, which stems from desperation and what I could only refer to as a state of hopelessness.
I completed my PhD in August and have been looking for postdoctoral positions in my field of research ever since. I have obtained my PhD from a top UK university (not quite Oxbridge, ICL or LSE, rather one tier lower than the said universities) and my supervisor is very well known in the field. Unfortunately, there are currently very few postdocs on the job market in my field and I had to resort to applying for projects that only loosely overlap with my field of research.
It may also be worth noting that in my field, it generally takes time to publish. Most people, including my PhD supervisor, as well as some renowned scholars in the said field, have published their thesis chapters sometimes as long as 2-3 years after graduation, after heavy editing and polishing.
My intent is to secure a decent postdoc at a respectable institution, but that dream seems dead. I have had 4 interviews so far and was offered a position at a random institution, which did not particularly publish well; so I declined that offer with the hope of securing a better one. One of the said interviews was with a very reputable Italian university, which I have yet to hear the outcome of, but I have little hope in securing that postdoc. The competition was fierce, with one candidate already having 4 years of postdoc experience under his belt and numerous publications in top journals, whereas I have none! Additionally, I have been invited for my 5th interview next week at a yet another reputable university, but having looked at the list of the applicants and their CVs for that position, the situation is not much different: for some of the candidates, this would be their 2nd postdocs and most have publications under their belt. Additionally, there is a Columbia University graduate in the list of applicants whose work is more related to the advertised position than mine - these are the people I will be competing against.
To say that I am feeling low is an understatement. If this is the sort of competition that I will be facing at interviews at each relatively respectable institution, I do not stand a chance in securing a decent position. I am incredibly motivated and was looking forward to get on board a project, publish, and also polish my thesis chapters in the process. But at this rate, it doesn't seem that I will be given the opportunity.
I was hoping to get the views and the experiences of more senior members. Is the situation as dire as I think, or am I blowing it out of proportion?
Thank you in advance.

People on their second postdoc don't automatically look better than first postdocs just because they have more publications. Second postdocs are seen more as known quantities, but many institutes like gambling on the promise of new PhD grads, so you won't be compared to them in terms of straight publications. Your letter of rec will carry more weight, while their track record of publications will be considered more. The Columbia grad would give me more pause, but there are still many factors to be considered beyond exact research match.
Still, I think overall you have hope as your search has generated a lot of interest from nice places. Talk to your advisor about whether you can get a paycheck somehow at your current institute to tide you over through the job search, and about whether you should be expanding your search to include less prestigious places. If you're coming to the end of the line, your advisor will hopefully tell you that too (though ask around with other senior people for a more well-rounded view).
In some fields, no job by graduation basically weeds you out. Others have qualitatively similar deadlines that fall on different dates (for example a year gap from the PhD with no new position). Some fields are more flexible. Talk to people in your field about whether you're continuing a fruitless search past the point you would be expected to have been placed. From what you wrote you don't sound like you're there yet.


What is being done to make the academic environment more women friendly? The number of women in some academia disciplines like computer science remains low despite the continuous efforts to increase it. What is being done to make academic careers in computer science (and related fields) more appealing to women? Are there any studies on the ways of improving the working conditions for women in academia?

I imagine actual studies will be few and far between - they'd be difficult to conduct, and I suspect the reasons behind many of the outcomes would be near impossible to establish with a degree of certainty. For example, if a woman leaves academia because she got saddled with tons of committee work, student advising and other activities, and is denied tenure, was she just unproductive? Did she get saddled with those duties because she is a woman?

Beyond funding initiatives, which StrongBad discussed a bit, I think there are some very serious "quality of life" considerations that impact the retention of women in academia:

"Mommy Tracking" (A "mommy track" is when a woman is put on a particular career trajectory as a result of having, or planning to have children. While it may involve flexible work arrangements, it is often at the expense of her professional career and may involve limited advancement opportunities, being regarded as "less serious about research", etc.) While now notorious enough that it ought to be a thing of the past, penalizing female academics for having children - or the possibility that they might have children - forces women to make a Family vs. Career choice that most male academics never have to make. Faced with this dilemma, some female academics will choose family, resulting in a higher attrition rate among women. Worse, some promotion committees, etc., will effectively make the choice for them.This report goes over some of this.
For those female academics who do have children, consider providing things like breastfeeding rooms or daycare at major conferences.
Actively questioning our own implicit biases. If your field has a large number of women in it (like my own), the panels at conferences, the awardees, society officers, etc. should have a fairly large number of women in them. Even for fields with less women in them - if 10% of your field is female, but none of your invited speakers for a major conference are, that might indicate some implicit bias in how people construct panels, think about the luminaries in their field, etc. Looking at things like panel composition and asking "Do we have any women? If not, why not?" is a useful exercise. Note this is not a quota system. The answer may be that no women applied for an award this year. Or that everyone who published on this aspect of a subfield this year happened to be a man. But it also might not be. This kind of thing will impact both the careers of the women chosen, but also allow women who are junior in the field to see "people like them" as big names in the field, which has been shown to be important.
Stemming from the above, avoid tokenism. The female faculty you do have shouldn't have higher burdens of committee work, etc. because "We need a woman on the X committee and you're the only one" while their male colleagues are left free to do research.
Make academia unfriendly to sexist statements. Actually speak up when you hear them. Don't dismiss it as "Oh, X doesn't have any social skills, but they're a brilliant researcher..." when it's driving away other brilliant researchers who don't want to be treated as if they are sex objects (unwelcome flirting, comments on their appearance, etc), or have their accomplishments and contributions dismissed because of their gender.


Should I explain a bad grade that is not directly related to the program? I am applying for a M.S in Statistics in North America. I received a "C+" for my undergraduate topology course.

I am not sure whether I should explain that or not for two reasons. First, topology does not seem to be related to statistics anyway. Second, even if I explain that I was not feeling well, I have no evidence (since it takes forever to see the doctor here), so explaining it might actually make admission officers think I am lying. What should I do?

Explain even though I do not have proof from doctor
"Explain" but not mentioning the cold, just say something like "I will grow" (which I think it's technically lying?)
Say nothing

I'd say that there is little to gain by attempting to explain the C+ grade. If you are offered an interview for the position, or are otherwise invited to discuss your application, you could then ask the interviewer if they have any concerns over your grades. If they raise the topology grade, then you can explain then. If not, you've offered the opportunity.


Ethics for trip reimbursement from multiple parties When doing e.g. a seminar talk, it is customary for the hosting institution to pay for the speaker's trip. If it is just an isolated trip to a point A, life is simple; so far, so good.

However, I usually try to lump different talks together. The simplest case is where I go from home to A (where I do a talk) to B (where I do a talk) to home. In this case, I have to choose between having the A -> B segment reimbursed either by institution A or by institution B. (Assume that every segment is on an undivisible, nonstop ticket. I think it is usually not possible to split 50/50 in such a situation.) Based on what criteria should I make this choice?

For example, what if B is much closer to home than A, basically a small detour on the way back. Is it more fair to charge the intermediate leg to A (on the grounds that if I did not have to go there, I would not have made such a long trip) or to B (out of a desire to split the costs evenly)?

Or if A and B are roughly equidistant from home, are there any factors I didn't think of that could tip the scales in favor of one or the other?

(There are countless other configurations one can think of, possibly involving much more than two institutions!)

(I am aware that I am probably overthinking it, and that I probably not such an important decision after all. However I would be curious to know what are the possible arguments to consider, if only out of purely academic (ha ha) interest.)

I would imagine that there are jurisdictions where getting reimbursed for costs that you have already been reimbursed for is illegal. It is at the very least unethical, so I think that thinking about this is certainly the right thing to do.

If you make a trip that includes more than the bare minimum "getting there and back" in travel (e.g., a personal detour on the way home, staying for the weekend after a conference for sightseeing, etc), many reimbursing institutions require you to hand in the receipts for your actual travel, plus estimates of what the bare minimum trip would have cost. For example, you could have printed out a screen shot of looking up a flight that just gets you there and back. They will then reimburse you for the smaller of the two amounts.

Likewise, if you have a multi-stop trip, you can certainly ask to be reimbursed for an even smaller amount, as long as the total reimbursed amount does not exceed what you actually paid. How exactly you split the total is up to you, as long as no institution pays more than it would have if you had just traveled there and back. That's also ethical: if they invited you to a talk, they did so on the understanding that they will cover your travel cost to get there and back; if you are asking for less money (whichever those savings are split among all institutions), it's to their benefit, whether or not they get exactly half of the savings, or a different amount -- it's money they had budgeted for you, and are now getting back, nobody can complain about that.


Getting accepted to present at a conference, but choosing not to go - including this in SoP I am a masters student who has just had my extended abstract accepted to the largest conference in my field, however, I am faced with a very difficult decision that requires perspective.

The Problem Context: I have made plans with a long lasting friend of about 12 years to go away together on a trip during a period of the Summer in which the conference that I have been accepted to is also occurring - I made a mixup in the dates which has gotten me into this position in the first place. The likelihood that we will be able to make this trip happen in the future is very slim because he's going to be having children shortly. On the other hand, presenting at this conference (especially as a masters student), would really help to boost my application when applying to doctoral programs.

I think that if I didn't go on this trip, I would regret it, so I am leaning more towards this than the conference. However, I am wondering if it would be worth mentioning in my SoP that I was admitted to the conference - to signal that I have potential - but due to my previous commitments (without being too specific as to what they are), I chose to decline the opportunity to present.

From the perspective of a graduate admissions committee, I am sure that they would prefer to see on a CV that you attended and presented at the conference. But I wonder if being transparent in the sense that I was accepted and chose to decline presenting at the conference if this could be a net-negative for the application to the schools that I apply for.

Problem Definition: If I were to decline the opportunity to present at this large conference, but made mention in my SoP that I had the opportunity to do so and chose to decline, would this signal a net-negative to graduate committees? Alternatively, would it be better to not mention that I had the opportunity at all?

It's not unheard of for someone to be unable to attend a conference after having their work accepted. This can happen for any number of reasons that may be seen as having varying levels of validity in someone else's eyes, ranging from "death in the family" to "I have better things to do". I don't see a compelling reason to open yourself up to such value judgments about your reasons for choosing to not go to the conference. Having your work accepted at a conference is an accolade in itself, so it's worth mentioning, but you could simply say that you were "unable to attend" and leave it at that. Your particular reasons for not attending aren't relevant to the point you're making (that your work is good enough to get accepted), and may or may not be viewed unfavorably depending on the individual, so there's not much of a reason to go into the details.


Is it normal for collaborator to rerun experiments himself? So I'm a few months into my PhD. It's built on top of previous work that has not been published. My supervisors, collaborators, and myself are working on to get this published. Now here's where things get a bit weird for me.

I found some problem with the previous work. Discussed the problem with my supervisors and have fixed them. For the publication, I'll need to redo the experiment.

So far I'm not getting a satisfactory result as it's tricky to get right. Not gonna go into why, it's just tricky.
My collaborator has been impatient with the result I'm getting. So now he has decided to rerun the experiment himself and double checking that he's getting the result I'm getting. Turns out it's quite similar. So now he's trying his own idea he has only briefly disclosed to me and one of my supervisor. When asked indirectly why he's doing this, he said he's just trying to understand the experiment better.

I found this disturbing. Why are you repeating my experiment yourself only to come and tell me you found exactly the same problem and result?

What's everyone take on this? I would like others opinions first before I discuss the issue with my supervisors.

I don't find that behavior strange at all. If I want to understand problems with algorithms (I don't do experiments with anything other than algorithms) I need to run them by myself and sometimes even implement the method from scratch. It's not that I do not trust other people's code, but if I want to understand all the mechanisms well, it's much easier to get a grip on it when I've done it myself.

The other way round, I do not have any objections if a coauthor of mine re-implements a method I already provided just to see how it works. On the contrary: Usually I benefit from this in one way or another, e.g. by learning new tricks or getting rid of bad programming style…


Present tense or past tense for presenting someone else's paper? I am supposed to present the famous Gregor Mendel's 1865 genetics paper.
So what tense I am supposed to present it in? Whether I must use present tense or past tense? A general advise regarding presentation viewpoint would be helpful.

It depends on your sentence construction. Use the past tense when talking about what Mendel did, since he did it 150 years ago; use the present tense when talking about what the paper says, since the paper still says that now.  For example, "Mendel did experiments on pea plants. His paper describes the results."


Should I agree to submit a paper with my name as coauthor although I did not read and understand the whole paper? I finished my PhD in natural sciences in 2015. At some point during my PhD studies I did some measurements for some other scientists.

Now they are about to submit a paper containing my data, and I am listed as a coauthor.

I barely remember the experiments. I did not read the paper (yet).

Do I have to read that paper? Do I have to read it often enough to fully understand it? Should I disagree being listed as a coauthor?

Although doing a "service" by providing measurement data does not usually warrant co-authorship, some groups still decide to do so to show appreciation.

Many people in academia would accept this as it boosts their CV, and if anything wrong was found in the research after publication, the corresponding author has the highest authority.

I would give it a read and accept it if you are happy with the paper. If you are really worried, you can ask the authors to remove your name and explain you feel you did not provide a significant contribution.


Are journal back covers, inside covers (i.e. not front covers) worth the cost? In two recent submissions, after acceptance the journal contacted me to see if I was interested in submitting an image for consideration as back cover, inside back cover, or inside front cover. The cover image would need to be produced by our side, but then we additionally would have to pay the journal a fee (~$1000) for the "cost of producing the cover."

While I know front covers are generally seen as a mark of prestige (at least in my field, physics/engineering), are these additional "cover-lite" opportunities worth the cost in increased citations, views, prestige, or other intangibles?

I should stress that the journals are established and well-regarded (i.e. not predatory journals). One is explicitly a for-profit owned by Wiley, the other is a society journal.

I would assume your question can not be answered without a personal perspective - what makes it "worth the cost"? Someone liking it? Two more people reading your paper? An invitation as invited speaker? 2 million [insert a currency of your choice] of additional funding per year?

To be a bit more serious: I would check how the pages are included in the digital version of the journal. Most readers do not read the journal but go to the website and pick specific articles. If the images are not shown, very little people will notice them.


Does a PhD student get paid without a TA/RA job? Can a PhD student be paid simply for doing research?
If yes, is it applicable right from the beginning?
I am talking about UK and the US specifically.

Can a PhD student be paid simply for doing research?

Yes, in the US, this is often called "being on fellowship," when the research is your own, and an "RAship" if you are paid to work on another project at a professor's discretion. Fellowships are often prominent national opportunities, but can be funded locally by the university, college, or department.

If yes, is it applicable right from the beginning?

This is entirely dependent on what the program offers you. It may be, it might not be. Some departments offer first-year fellowships so that you can get settled in your program.


Format of In-Text Citations for Military Publications? Though I've scrutinized the APA 6th Edition and online examples, I remain confused about how to format military publications for in-text citations.

In text, is it sufficient to cite just the military branch as the author; or should the citation also include the type of publication; or something else?

Example 1

... (U.S. Army, 2005) ...

vs.

... (U.S. Army, Army Mentorship Handbook, 2005)

vs.

neither of the above; format as [your example] instead.

Example 2

... (U.S. Army, 2012) ...

vs.

... (U.S. Army, ADP 6-22, 2012) ...

vs.

neither of the above; format as [your example] instead.

Added Background 10 Sept. '16

I'm the editor; not the author. This is my first experience with a military-laden dissertation.

As best I can tell, the only APA guidance is the first sentence on p. 174: "References...are cited in text with an author-date citation system..."

I did find more information at
  http://libguides.gwumc.edu/c.php?g=27779&p=170369
  where Example 4 affirms APA p. 174.

That would indicate that "(U.S. Army, year)" and nothing more is sufficient. But the sheer quantity of similar citations (i.e., the lack of variety) makes any one in-text citation seem somehow insufficient.

Maybe I just need to ignore my discomfort?

Apart from the guns and stuff, the United States Army is an organization just like the American Psychological Association. The United States should be abbreviated when it is used as an adjective and not when it is used as a now. When it is abbreviated, it should be abbreviated with periods but no spaces. Further, it does not need to be defined prior to using.

One then needs to ask who/what is the author and who/what is the publisher. If available, I prefer to use an Administrative (e.g., Headquarters Department of the U.S. Army) or Operational (e.g., U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) unit as both the author and publisher (unless the document has something more informative). See wikipedia for some possible units to look for.

This means in text citations might look like Headquarters Department of the U.S. Army (2016a), Headquarters Department of the U.S. Army (2016b) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2016). Not that APA style is pedantic about making sure in-text citations are not ambiguous and has rules about how to handle "twin" (use a, b, c, ...) and "not-quite twin" citations (expand the authors until the ambiguity goes away while being careful with et al.).


When to get a doctors note if I might have to miss an exam? I've got a midterm tomorrow and have been increasingly ill for the past few days. I need to decide whether or not I'm going to write the midterm, and if I don't I'd need some sort of proof that I was in fact sick. My question is, how sick should one be to not write a midterm? It is possible I could push through it.

Any advice on when to get a medical note to be excused? The way I see it 99% of the time it is technically possible to at least be present for the exam; even if one has the flu or strep throat they can still write it (though poorly). The institution only asks for a medical certificate, but even unintentionally one could fake being sick for example if I go to the doctor and tell them I'm here to get a note, they would probably give me one even if I'm hardly ill.

When should someone make the call to stop doing the work and get the note? A couple of my recent assignments weren't done to as high a standard as I would've liked because the illness is making it hard to concentrate and work, but I thought I would get better in a few days.

The other thing is I'm having trouble finding a doctor or nurse. I don't have a GP where I'm going to school and the campus medical is fully booked. I've phoned around to some drop in clinics and they have wait times of over an hour and charge at least $10 for a note.

UPDATE: I managed to get a note from a drop in clinic and scanned and e-mailed it to my professor. The course policy is that missed exams cannot be taken at a latter time and a mark for them will be calculated based on everything else in the class excluding the final exam.

Check your course syllabus.  Often, policies for exam makeups are documented there.  It also might say here whether you need a doctor's note or not.
Contact your professor right away (by email or phone) to inform them that you are ill and may miss the exam.  As a professor, the further in advance I know about situations like this, the easier it is for me to make arrangements.  You could also ask at this time about whether you need a doctor's note (or confirm what you read in the syllabus), and/or explain the difficulties you would face in obtaining one.  The professor may be willing to make an exception.
Obviously, go to the doctor if you are in need of treatment.  Also go if the professor insists on having a note; this is probably not ideal if you don't otherwise need to see a doctor, but you really don't have much choice.
our i
Only you can make the decision as to whether you are "too sick" to take the midterm.  My feeling is that any of the following would be sufficient reasons to stay home:

you think you would significantly risk your health by attending
you have a contagious illness
your illness might disturb other students (coughing, running to restroom, etc)
you think your illness would significantly reduce your ability to do well on the exam (e.g. you are in pain, excessively fatigued, have distracting symptoms, etc)


After Major Revision what is the decision? I submitted an research paper to Elsevier journal after 4 months i got major revision
i submitting my revised paper,
After one month i receive comments from reviewers. Editor letter stated that "I am pleased to inform .....favourable reviews from reefers....Some modifications to be implemented before the manuscript is published"

I submitted my paper at the end of march but still journal status shows that "under review".

What will be the decision i expect from the journal? pls clarify.

The status is "under review" because the editor decided to ask the reviewers to look at the paper again. Since there's no way to tell what the reviewers are going to say, there's also no way to tell what decision you can expect, either. The fact that the initial reviews were favourable means there's a good chance your paper will be accepted, but reviewers can change their minds, and there's no way to be sure.


What is the meaning of “Review process will be blind to review”? I am new to publishing and want to publish a paper as an independent researcher. The conference I want to submit this paper to states the following on their website regarding the review process:

  Review process will be blind to review.

Does it imply that the review process is double blind? If not, would stating my affiliation as an independent researcher have any negative impact?

I am currently working for a startup company and worked on this paper in my spare time. Since the company is not associated with my research, I decided not to put in the company as an affiliation.

This sounds like it means double-blind review, but it is not really clear; the phrasing is not standard nor grammatically correct.  If it is important to you, you should contact the conference organizers and ask for clarification.


Is it a good idea to include the writing of a wikipedia article(s) on your CV before grad school application? I am considering applying for graduate school at some point, and I am wondering how academia looks upon contributions to Wikipedia.

Essentially, the article will be a dedicated to a very specific subfield of the physics of spin glasses, with seminal papers written on it in the 1980's. It has somewhat of a "cult" status within a small subset of the field, and the inspiration for writing it is:

(a) This aligns strongly with techniques I aim to use for my further research, so it seems like a good way to share what I know with the community.

(b) This seems like there is a legitimate need for advanced undergraduates/new entrants into the field who want a surface level introduction to this technical area.

Of course I am not the authority on subject by any means but nevertheless I feel that there is something here to contribute. My question is mainly whether or not this could be used to my favour in future graduate admissions processes, or even academic applications beyond that? Assuming of course that I have written it at an acceptable level to the "real experts" who might read it.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am in no way under the impression that this would replace legitimate academic work (hence in a CV this would go under "other interests",etc.) - indeed it should not. I am simply wondering whether it would be an added bonus (and if so, to what extent) that academia looks favourably upon.

The notion of authorship in wikipedia is rather antithetical to the notion of authorship in "standard" academic works.  Wikipedia articles don't have "bylines," and the point is that anyone in the world is welcome to make constructive edits and/or additions to an article at any time.  Even if you feel that you are the primary or sole author of an article at time t_1, at some time t_2 > t_1 this may no longer be true. Finally, the ethos of wikipedia is such that other wikipedians would not necessarily be happy to see a given person claiming "credit" in this way.

If you are motivated to write such a wikipedia article, I suggest that you give it a go -- it has the potential to be both a learning experience for you and result in something of interest and use to many people.  However, if you want academic credit I suggest you write something more substantial, formal and/or independent.  As the head of a graduate admissions committee (albeit in mathematics, not physics) I would be more impressed even by a sequence of blog posts than by a wikipedia article.  Still probably not crucially impressed by the way, but more impressed.


Is it peculiar for a department not to have any of its own PhD graduates as professors? I have been doing research into graduate programs and have noticed that some departments have a representation of their own PhD graduates as professors while others have an absence.

For example, a department I have looked at in a top university in Canada had a faculty completely composed of PhD graduates from top American schools, but none from its own.

I can see this as a signal of either two things -

That the department may not want to be seen favouring its own candidates.
That the department may not have as much faith in its own graduates as that from other schools.

I understand that this may differ from field to field.

But in general, what is the majority view-point on a department that has no representation of its own graduates on its faculty?

It's common in computer science for a university to have few if any of its own graduates as faculty, and should not be taken as a bad sign by itself. This low representation is for two main reasons:

The best five or ten universities in the United States produce a disproportionately large number of strong academic candidates. In practice universities that have research departments at all (let alone the exceptionally strong ones) tend to be filled with professors with Ph.D.s from the elite few.
Going somewhere else leads to cross-fertilization of academic thought. Presumably after 5+ years of graduate school one has spent a lot of time learning from the expertise available in their department. Going somewhere else allows a professor to transfer her knowledge to a different group of researchers, and to get fresh insight from them in return.


Clarifications on American graduate school for an European student My advisor strongly encouraged me to check out two (highly renowned) American universities for my PhD study.

Her collaborators in these two institutions are good people and great mathematicians, so, assuming I can get in, working there would be very pleasant.

However, I'm confused by the structure of these graduate schools. In the first two years I'm supposed to follow courses and do a comprehensive written exam and an oral one  which are mostly about topics (complex analysis, basic functional analysis, ODEs) that we do in the first two years of undergraduate study in my current institution.

The exam questions from the past years appear to be quite difficult, but revising those relatively elementary topics and spending a great amount of time solving difficult problems on them  seems like taking a step back after a Bachelor's and a Master's degree (which had a quite significant research component).

So my questions are the following:

what is the rationale behind this structure of graduate school in the US?
why is it effective?
should I be concerned about "wasting time" revising basic topics in my area instead of diving directly into a research program after a Master's degree?

Added context from comments:

"Students who already know the material can take the exams in the first month of their Ph.D. program" is exactly what my advisor's collaborators told me. However, although the core material is well-known to me, it appears that the exam consists of many problems in a short amount of time and that such problems are mostly about clever ways to sum series, evaluate multiple integrals, do contour integration, solve tricky ODEs, and so on. That is, it is about elementary things but requires lots of exercise. That's why I'm concerned that it could be an unnecessary detour.

Speaking as a long-time graduate program director and adviser in a mid-level US department (at a big public university), I'd emphasize that most of our Ph.D. students in past years have had a less-than-adequate preparation in some basic areas.   This is true especially for US students coming from a typical 4-year college math major but is also true for some international students.   On the other hand, most of our students aim for a college teaching career, or perhaps a non-academic job, rather than aiming for a research career in some kind of mathematics (or statistics, part of our department).   At the most elite departments, it is taken for granted that everybody plans to do research.    But my own contemporaries in the 1960s Ph.D program at Yale actually went in many different directions.

Like most other US departments, we have had an evolving procedure involving written (and perhaps oral) qualifying exams.    Anyone applying to one of the top few programs should certainly ask questions about how and when such exams are administered, and how they are evaluated. Typically no one wants to hold back a talented student, but sometimes a student overestimates his or her own talent and knowledge (and future job prospects).    Even Harvard and MIT Ph.D.'s sometimes end up teaching at small colleges or out-of-the-way universities.

In any case, identifying a potential thesis adviser (or two) is equally important, though obviously it's difficult to predict one's future interests precisely or to predict the future logistics of an active faculty member (sabbaticals and other leaves can upset plans as can personal crises).   Good luck navigating the US system, including the evolving immigration rules!


Does an Israeli PhD grant you the right to call yourself Dr. in Germany? I am a German citizen currently studying for my master’s in Germany. I am thinking about pursuing a PhD in physics in Israel (TAU) and I am wondering if the PhD in Israel is fully equivalent to the doctorate in Germany. Will I be able to use Dr. as part of my name when I eventually return back to Germany?

I would guess possibly, but the only definite answer will come from the relevant authorities.

A quick search turns up the following results:

https://www.anerkennung-in-deutschland.de/html/en/assessment_of_higher_education_certificates.php
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/06-anerkennungd/606684

Leading to:
https://www.kmk.org/de/zab/central-office-for-foreign-education.html

This suggests there is a service that will assess foreign degrees regarding their equivalence for a fee.
There is also a website (in German) that will allow you to determine if your desired institution is recognised by the German state or not:
https://anabin.kmk.org/anabin.html

And lastly: You can always ask your local embassy/passport-issuing office when in doubt. They either know or can find out if the degree is recognised.

(Degrees from other EU countries are normally recognised within the EU without any additional fees.)

Edit:

Using the search of the Anabin website, "TAU" is listed as "H+".
Use the search here to find it: https://anabin.kmk.org/no_cache/filter/institutionen.html

Edit 2:
I have "two letters" in my Passport/ID card from a PhD in the UK, nowadays living in France. I did not need to pay any extra fees at the German embassy in France and my PhD Certificate from the University of Leeds was sufficient - which is also classed as "H+" in the database.


Is my irrelevant field of work experience a negative when applying for higher studies? I am currently working in TCS as an Oracle analyst. I did my bachelor's of engineering in Mechanical Engineering in 2017. Now I want to pursue my Master's in the same field. I am planning to apply to universities in Germany. Will my two years of working experience in IT sector affect my admission?

If you are applying to schools in Germany, your work experience is largely irrelevant whether or not it is in the discipline you want to study at the master's level. This is because the prerequisites for master's study at German universities is generally an equivalent bachelor's degree at the undergraduate level. However, if your bachelor's degree was not completed at a German university, you will have to petition to have your degree recognized as "equivalent" before being allowed to enroll.

There are some exceptions for "international" programs and special master's programs that do not require a specific degree program but their requirements and procedures must be investigated on a case-by-case basis.


At conferences, why are there usually a few days delay between decisions and notifications? At conferences, there is often a delay of a few days between decisions and notifications. In a particular case, the decisions were made on a Sunday (according to a reviewer who tweeted details about the decision process) while the publicly announced notification day was a Thursday.

Notifications at this conference do not include any additional information on top of the reviews that would justify additional processing time.

As an impatient person, I wonder if there is a reason for having this delay, rather than sending out the notifications immediately.

EDIT: @a3nm's comment prompted me to review the post-mortem of the last conference we helped organise.
The scientific panel met to consider about 1,500 submissions. It took them 2.5 months to reach a decision. The decisions were entered into a database by the secretariat. This took two days because the members of the panel wanted hard copies. The spreadsheet was double checked by the chair of the panel. It took eleven days for him to get back to us. During this time, we were busy with timetabling, which we actually completed in four days. The letters were sent out two days after we received the chair's confirmation. Contrary to my response below (which I wanted to preserve to demonstrate my own error and bias), the main delay we experienced wasn't to do with timetabling.

Imagine this:

1,474 submissions for presentations

355 accepted: 120 oral, 235 posters

1,119 submission rejected

These were the results for the last conference I helped organise. Now imagine having to send the correct letter to all 1,500 people. For the 355 people accepted, the letter needs to contain details such as the date, time and place of their presentations or poster displays.
We needed a team of 9 professional staff to assist us, including three wholly focused on timetabling and venue management.
I'm impressed that they managed to inform you in four days.


How to cite a paper that has compiled many others I want to reference a fact from a piece of literature. This fact has came from a literature search by the author and has used information from 150+ other sources and compiled this into a table. Now I know for most things I am to read the original paper but this literature search was part of the beginning of their research and is what they used to get all of their results from. Am I okay just to reference the main paper? Thanks.

What you're describing is a meta-review, since the review is critiquing and analyzing a collection of existing papers. Because the results are newly derived based on the authors' original work, you do not need to cite all of the 150+ other articles the authors of the meta-review cited, but only the meta-review itself, as well as any of the 150+ papers you directly use elsewhere in your paper.


How should I cite something learned second-hand (eg, from Wikipedia) when I haven't seen the primary source? I want to cite something that I have learned from a Wikipedia page. However, I'm loathe to cite Wikipedia because of the perception of it by my tutors, so I try to cite the original source.

What should be the correct thing to do when I'm unable to have sight of the primary source myself, or find it in a collection (for clarity, I should add that I have the details of the source - I just can't find it in collections available to me)? Should I just cite as much original information as I can, or should I defer to citing Wikipedia? I'm hesitant to do that, because a glance at the citation would suggest that I was 'too lazy' to source original material or just dig deeper.

For additional clarity - I know that citing Wikipedia is 'bad' etc.  The emphasis is on how to cite something that has been learned via Wikipedia (as an example) but for which the original material cannot be seen or retrieved from available collections or searches.

What you're referring to is an indirect source. In general, you should always work as hard as you can to find the original source. If that is not possible, all of the major style guides include a way to cite indirect sources. Note that you should not cite Wikipedia (see the "do not cite Wikipeida" note at the end of this answer). If an indirect citation is absolutely necessary, it should come from a reputable, peer-reviewed journal or other academically respected source.

According to Purdue University, the MLA rule is to name the author of the indirect source in the text and cite the work you have in-hand:

  For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

    Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as "social service centers, and they don't do that well" (qtd. in Weisman 259).

  Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source...

Williams College further clarifies that the indirect work should be included in your Works Cited list:

  ...include the indirect source in the Works Cited.

The APA rule (also from Purdue University) is to exclude the indirect source (called the "original source", below) from your reference list and only include the work you have in-hand (called the "secondary source"):

  ...name the original source in your signal phrase. List the secondary source in your reference list and include the secondary source in the parentheses.

    Johnson argued that...(as cited in Smith, 2003, p. 102).

  [...] Also, try to locate the original material and cite the original source.

The Chicago rule (once again, from Purdue) is to cite the indirect source, followed by the in-hand resource:

  ...Chicago discourages the use of [indirect sources]. In the case that an original source is utterly unavailable, however, Chicago recommends the use of "quoted in" for the note:

  Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 103, quoted in Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society (New York: Continuum, 2006), 2.

That said, do not cite Wikipedia in a formal document (unless, perhaps, you are actually writing about Wikipedia or collaborative editing techniques). I love Wikipedia, and I believe it is reasonably well-maintained and has a lot of good information. However, you have no way to verify if the information in an article is true -- or, if you do have a source to verify it, you would just cite that source. Aside from the tired, "Anyone can edit it!" complaint, two severe issues with Wikipedia as a citation source are:

You get whatever version of an article stands at the exact moment your web browser fetches the page. No matter how hard Wikipedia's editors work, they can't stop a bad edit from reaching your web browser if it was made seconds before you fetched the page. Wikipedia doesn't undergo any kind of pre-publication review; all review is post-publication, which means you may see totally unreviewed information. (You can mitigate this by citing a specific past revision, but it still stands that a post-publication review process means that any given revision of an article could have claims that have been reviewed by absolutely no one except the author.)
In order for a reader or reviewer to ascertain the usefulness of a source, it must have an identifiable set of authors (or, for anonymous works, at least a consistent, reasonably small set of authors). Wikipedia makes that requirement incredibly difficult to satisfy. (Again, it's possible to satisfy this requirement if you cite a specific revision of a page and find out what contributors wrote each part of a page, but it is still difficult since a potentially huge number of contributors have helped build that revision.) It's hard for a Wikipedia article to be reputable where there are no clearly identifiable authors to which a reader could attach a reputation.


Is there a "scientific" online source for famous direct qoutes? I'm searching for an online source that is considered "scientific" to look up some well-known quotes such as "There's no such thing as a free lunch." (Milton Friedman).

I may want to use kind of an insinuating quote about risk in my term paper.

How about Quotedb? It seems awfully relevant although risk might be quite a specialized area to be included in it. Quotes tend to be rather general.


Difference between internal and external doctoral studies in Germany As I am looking for a PhD scholarship in Germany, I've come across an internet site which contains a database of scholarships. One of the questions asked there is whether I am pursuing "interne Promotion" or "externe Promotion".

According to my colleague, the internal doctoral studies might mean that I am fully occupied at the university, whereas the external studies would occur if I were employed in industry and had to visit the university occasionally for getting feedback from my professor.

Is the explanation of my colleague correct? Are there any further nuances?

Also, why would it be asked for a scholarship?

Keep in mind that most German PhD positions are not funded through "scholarships" but instead through standard labor contracts. Consequently, any listing of "scholarships" will likely include all forms of funding for graduate students. Filtering by internal or external positions will allow the database to select if you are being "employed" by either a university (internal) or a company (external).

There may be some nuances and particular issues depending on the school and faculty with respect to residence time, composition of your thesis committee, and format of the defense (among other issues) according to whether you're doing an interne Promotion or an externe Promotion. However, it's hard to say in advance if you'll run into this or not.


How should I deal with being harassed by my supervisor in a non-work situation? I'm a female student in some huge and popular university in my country.

I have a supervisor who is much older then me. He is a very respected person in our community.

We worked together a lot, it was fine. We communicated about personal issues as well, but nothing sex-related and/or inappropriate. No physical contact, hugs or even handshakes.

There was nothing special until the day we were celebrating something along with a lot of other teachers and students. I had drunk more then I should and stopped realizing what was happening. Then I found myself face to face with my supervisor and he started to harass me. I waited for a lucky moment and ran away.

Now we are ok with this and go on working together. This episode is ignored but not forgotten. I feel responsible for this but not guilty. I know that I'm not the first student he had close relationships with. And I know that he thought I would not mind it, so, now he is sorry. I know about two very alike situations with my friends in two other universities in my city.

Should I blame myself for this episode? I think that only for my careless and non-professional behaviour, not for the sexual issue.

Do you think I had to leave the university or communicate to the authorities or something?

How can you prevent yourself of having such a person as your supervisor? In my opinion, if he wasn't interested in me that way, I could drink even more and nothing would happen.

First, I would recommend that you put away any feelings of guilt and responsibility, and instead begin planning to protect yourself.  Unfortunately, it appears likely that your supervisor is a predator and abuser given several red flags in your story.  In particular:

Your supervisor waiting until you were impaired by alcohol before making unwanted sexual advances.  This is a massive red flag of abuse: safe and respectful people talk with prospective partners when they are sober.
Your supervisor appears to have sought an isolated environment in the midst of a group event where he could assault you and where you could run away without others noticing.
Your supervisor appears to be manipulating your interpretation of his sexual assault on you: you say things like "we are OK with this" (taking a collective view) and "I know that he thought" (taking his view) and "he is sorry" (how did you feel?) that indicate that your view of the situation is being strongly influenced by his view.  To be blunt: it doesn't matter what he thought or felt; what matters is what you thought and felt when you were sexually assaulted.  Making you feel responsible for his feelings is an abuse tactic.
It sounds as though your supervisor engages in grooming for abuse, by picking certain "favorite" students and violating professional boundaries with them (talking about personal issues).  Some people just have minimal filter with everybody, but the picking favorites is a red flag: abusers often do this in order to identify people who will be good victims for their abuse, and then may wait quite patiently for an opportunity to switch into their preferred mode of abuse.
Your supervisor chose to make a sexual advance on their student, over whose life they have a huge amount of power and control, rather than waiting until you were no longer their student and could be more of a peer as a partner.

Now, it's possible that your supervisor is not a predator and abuser, but that's a lot of red flags, including an actual sexual assault.  Furthermore, most abusers do not believe that they are abusers, and can often be very persuasive to others, including the victims that they ensnare.

So, what would I recommend that you do?  Unfortunately, the student/advisor power dynamics make this a tricky situation to navigate without doing harm to yourself and your career.  I would thus recommend that you start by protecting yourself and then find resources or otherwise get professional support to help decide how to proceed.

Never drink or otherwise impair yourself when you may encounter your supervisor, even if there are other people present.  He has isolated you for assault once, and may do it again.
Find some good resources on abuse and familiarize yourself with their information and recommendations.  One site that I would recommend as helpful is: http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/.  Even though you are not in a sexual relationship with your advisor, a) your supervisor just attempted to start one, and b) you are in an important relationship due to the student/advisor connection.
If you can, begin consulting with a professional therapist or counselor with a good reputation for helping victims of assault and abuse.  Having a trustworthy and professional third party will be very valuable for helping you get a clear perspective on your situation and figuring out what is the right path for you, as well as helping deal with any emotional repercussions of your assault.

Once you've taken all of those other steps, you will need to decide which of several paths you want to take, ranging anywhere from filing formal charges against your supervisor to quietly changing supervisors to simply protecting yourself and carrying through to graduation.  Unfortunately, all of the choices you make are likely to risk serious negative consequences to you, and only you (hopefully with aid from an experienced and supportive therapist or counselor) can decide which path and which risks are the best choice for your situation.


Is it a bad idea to take a research position unrelated to my desired area of research? I'm currently trying to get an assistantship / funding for my masters degree and was recently given an offer from a professor I previously worked with.  Although the position is in same department I intended on attending the work is unrelated to my research interests.  I wouldn't say that I'm uninterested in the work, it's more that I've never seen a graduate student that did work unrelated to their research and that lack of overlap with my own interests might increase my workload.  In the meantime I'm contacting other professors to see if they have anything available.

Anyways, how bad of an idea is this if it is a bad idea?  Also, is it generally assumed that by accepting an assistanceship in a specific subject that I'm also planning on doing my thesis in this area?  If I can't find any other funding my only other option would basically be not going to grad school.  Sorry if this is a stupid question.

Anyways, how bad of an idea is this if it is a bad idea?

This is a matter of balancing your own intellectual interests with your career goals. In terms of career goals, not only is it probably not so bad, it's actually probably a good thing; it looks great at this stage and later on if you have experience in multiple areas, as this will increase your breadth of expertise and your ability to collaborate with other researchers down the road.

However, in terms of your intellectual interests, you must carefully decide how much you are willing to sacrifice. It may be that you are only passionate about topic X, and working on anything else you would just not be happy. Or it may be that you are flexible, and you would in the long run be just as happy working on topic Y. Also note, that switching to topic Y now is likely (but not guaranteed!) to mean that later on down the road, at least if you are successful in Y, that your research interests evolve and become more related to Y. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, it is up to you to decide. Above all, you should never choose to work on something that you have no passion for.

  Also, is it generally assumed that by accepting an assistanceship in a specific subject that I'm also planning on doing my thesis in this area?

You should check with your program (how many years away is your thesis?), but likely yes. It could also be a flexible blend of topic X and topic Y; have you talked to the professor about your research interests? Are they willing to mentor you even though you want to retain some interests in topic X? Are there possible opportunities in the future to do some research that is "between" X and Y?

  I've never seen a graduate student that did work unrelated to their research

This is very surprising, because in my experience this is extremely common. While you may think that graduate students were always "set" on the topic they work on, in actuality many of them who work in some field actually started out in another field, but then started working with a professor and ended up switching trajectories. Research interests often inevitably evolve. Keeping an open mind with your research interests and directions, if you are willing and happy about it, can be a huge asset in academia as it opens up the number of possible professors that you can work for.

  and that lack of overlap with my own intererests might increase my workload.

Yes, this would be true if you continue research X while working on Y with the professor; that is something you should talk to the professor about.


What does "ADM" stand for on an article submission information page? On the information page of my article submission, there's a column titled "ADM", listing the name of two persons that I can email.

What does this stand for?

In this context, ADM probably means "administrator."  In other words, those are likely the people you are expected to contact in case of questions and problems with the submission site.


Five handling editors changed in a span of 1 month. What could be the reason? The submission system shows the name of editor assigned and the name has changed 5 times till now. Its been a month since submission. what could be the reason and does it say anything. Its a mathematics journal.

Most likely it means all the editors invited have declined to handle it. For example, the person most appropriate declined for whatever reason (too busy, sick, etc), and all the others don't feel confident enough to handle it.
In any case there's nothing to do except wait.


Citing article where listed author is pseudonym If one wanted to cite an article where the listed author is a pseudonym and it is well-known that the name is a pseudonym then which name ought one use?

Normally I would just use the name listed on the paper, however there is the following situation that made me wonder: there is a paper by one Maurizio Boyarsky which is a pseudonym of one Bernard Dwork. It is somewhat 'well-known' that this is a pseudonym as it is listed in the Wikipedia article and in the MathSciNet review of the paper. However, in a certain textbook there is the line

  On the other hand, Dwork in [Bo]...

and the reference at the end of the book corresponding to [Bo] is the paper of Boyarsky.

So it made me wonder, should I follow the example in the textbook or not?

EDIT: to clarify, I am not debating the entry in the bibliography, I am debating whether one should write "On the other hand, Dwork in [Bo]" or "On the other hand, Boyarsky in [Bo]".

Always use the name that is used on the article/book you are referring to.

If someone searches for an article referred to as being written by Dwork, but the name on the article is Boyarsky it will only cause confusion about whether this is the article they are looking for.

Regarding the pseudonym: I would not mention it at all. It is up to the author when or where they reveal that they use a pseudonym. Even when it is commonly known I would still not do this, except when you have explicit permission from the user of the pseudonym. This way you avoid spreading awareness of the use of the pseudonym in a situation where the user may not desire this. One exception could be when there is suspicion of the pseudonym being used with ill intent. Generally though I think it is good to be cautious about such revelations.


How is a Masters different from the first two years of a PhD in the same field? I'm interested in Neuroscience research but haven't quite made up my mind about what sub-field I want to specialize in. I think taking courses from various sub-fields will help me take a decision. Should I go for a Masters first or a PhD directly? If I go for a PhD, will I have enough time at the beginning of my PhD to explore different areas and then choose a supervisor, say after around 2 years into the program?

There are two different types of Masters - taught masters and research masters.

In England, a research masters allows you to work, on rotation, around 3 labs in the year, and you can pick and choose from different sub-fields. This is hugely beneficial because it exposes you to different sub-fields, but more importantly because it exposes you to different work dynamics and environments, allow you to cope better in your PhD; furthermore, you'll make more contacts (which is all that matters in research - reputation and recommendations) and learn from different people. It'll give you the confidence to know, during your PhD, whether you are right or wrong.

The downside is that it takes you one more year and there is no guarantee you'll get a PhD after, and there is also the extra cost - most funding bodies do not fund a one year masters. However, if you apply for a 4-year Masters with PhD, funding options are more generous.

I can only speak for England, unsure about other countries, but the same principles apply. (my own opinion is that MRes is good if you can afford it)


Can we submit accepted and online published IEEE journal (IEEE-JBHI) article to arXiv? I was reading that submitting a research article to arXiv gives it better visibility. I was wondering if I can submit a research article that is accepted and published in the IEEE-JBHI, to arXiv?

Based on few research on the question, I found the following:
As per the IEEE policy,

Can an author post his manuscript on a preprint server such as ArXiv?
Yes. The IEEE recognizes that many authors share their unpublished
manuscripts on public sites. Once manuscripts have been accepted for
publication by IEEE, an author is required to post an IEEE copyright
notice on his preprint. Upon publication, the author must replace the
preprint with either 1) the full citation to the IEEE work with
Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or a link to the paper’s abstract in
IEEE Xplore, or 2) the accepted version only (not the IEEEpublished
version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with
a link to the final, published paper in IEEE Xplore.
What other steps are necessary for authors who would like to post
their accepted articles?
The following copyright notice must be displayed on the initial screen displaying IEEE copyrighted material:
© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission
from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or
future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for
advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works,
for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any
copyrighted component of this work in other works.

And as per ArXiv,

Note on IEEE submissions. Please note arXiv will currently take the
'Accepted' IEEE version but not the 'Published' IEEE version. For more
information on IEEE policies.

More Info:
IEEE Author FAQ 1, IEEE Author FAQ 1, arXiv Submission


Ways to manage something like a 'work-life balance'? According to a recent international study on work-life balance within academia

  "a majority of researchers and scientists had conflicts between their work schedules and personal lives at least two to three times a week."

Nevertheless,

  "about 60 percent of scientists were happy with their work-life balance. The rates for women were lower, at 52 percent."

I wonder what differentiates these 60 percent 'happy people' from the remaining 40 percent. What do you think are good strategies for a healthy work-life balance? How do you balance your academic work/life with your personal life?

Disclaimer 1: I know the two worlds : academia and the outside world ;) I worked in public and private universities, and in a consulting firm.

Disclaimer 2: I can only speak about life for people involved in theoretical areas, I know that science involving living things / big experiments has real constraints.

I heard a lot of people in academia complaining about the conflicts between their work schedules and personal lives (me included, because I'm grumpy). But we have to face it, most of the time there is nothing to complain about it.

"I have a deadline today at midnight" : I do that all the time, but the calls for papers are out several months before the deadlines, so the problem here is planning, not the nature of the work.
"I have to finish this grant application before midnight" : hum, grant applications and conferences deadlines seems to be of the same kind.
"It's 3 AM, I just got that email that needs an answer" : I don't think this email is that urgent. An BTW, if something is really urgent, phone still exists for that matter.
"Someone (supervisor, head of the team, dean, etc.) wants me to work more/at night/etc." : Slavery has been abolished. If you have good results, the thing is that in academia you are master of your schedule.
"I cannot stop thinking about that problem" : yep, here this is true, we bring our work everywhere. If a researcher cannot live with that aspect of the work (which can be quite stressful), then he should probably consider finding an other job.

My point is that working in academia is working in one of the most flexible field.
This is where there is a big difference with the "outside world".
This flexibility is the problem: many people have difficulty dealing with it, and thus are giving themselves very strong constraints, so strong that they cannot handle them.