Balancing between finishing past projects and working on current ones Personally, I never feel done with projects, as there are always a few open projects, in which I'm involved in. (And typically 1-2 which "I should have finished year ago or so".)

First, what are good strategies of balancing between finishing past project and working on current ones?

On the one hand, concentrating only on current ones means that there will be a lot of "almost baked" project, in a form of partial results, never published drafts or papers stuck in the revision process. (Assigning second priority to something means that it is never going to be taken seriously.)

On the other hand, focusing only past projects would:

look as if I were slacking off (also, as some past projects are from previous afflictions),
have me stuck in working on projects, which are going to be "90%" for the eternity.

Second, being put in situation with constant (internal) pressure and no calm sense of finishing things (as even after polishing results, polishing a draft, going through a few rounds of revisions... there are still n-1 open projects), is there a way to feel accomplishment and not blame oneself when resting?

This is a very broad questions, so I’ll try to chirp in with some of the “tricks” I use to get things done.

Find ways to keep track. It can be very easy to feel that you have so many things going that you feel overwhelmed by remembering them or else. There are a number of hardware or software tools to do that. I have a list of ongoing stuff that I keep in the last pages of my notebook, which works pretty well.

If something needs to be done, which takes little time, just do it right now. More importantly, the critical amount of time depends on the life of the project: the more advanced the project is, the more you need to finish. This prioritizes finishing older projects.
For example, if I have a current project with a task that requires half a day of work, I'll try to find a time to do it later. If I have a one day task for a project that's almost done (such as revising a manuscript after reviewer comments), I'll just treat it as high priority to do ASAP.

When working on a project with others, be clear to assign someone to monitoring progress (and reminding everyone of their contributions). On some projects, you need to take the back seat, and just let someone more concerned about the outcome drive the project.

If some project isn't seeing any progress, try to break it up into smaller work units. Like: I'll write a detailed outline, then circulate it to colleagues or co-authors, then use feedback to write the paper (instead of trying to write the paper in one big piece).

Finally, some advice I have received as a young parent, and that is very applicable to academic life: academic life is a long-term game, you're in it for 40+ years. You being very productive right now, then extenuated for 6 months isn't a net positive. You are a better researcher when you are rested and (relatively) stress-free, so avoiding exhaustion and stress is actually your #1 priority!


What is the name of the text that might exist after the chapter heading and before the first section? In manuscripts, a text between the chapter heading and before the first section might exist. Does this have a name?
This seems to be a good community to know the answer.
Thanks in advance.

Text between the chapter title and the first section heading is usually called the "lead paragraph" or "lede". Despite the name, this can be one ore more paragraphs of text.


How Scopus CSAB plan to evaluate a submitted journal's citedness in Scopus? Our journal applied to Scopus for inclusion a few months ago and I, as an editor, would like to clarify some citations to our journal from articles already indexed in this database (as far as I know, the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board will be looking for the citedness of our articles in Scopus and the outcome will affect the result of the journal evaluation process).

Though there are some articles in Scopus that cite articles published in our journal, many of those citations are corrupted: Our journal's name is not given in full, sometimes author/article details are missing or misrepresented etc. I contacted Scopus Author Support but they informed me that they can only process my request once our journal is indexed in Scopus. Until than, they will not modify the incorrect citations.

Now I'm wondering how Scopus CSAB plan to evaluate our journal's citedness in Scopus if their database do not show these existing references properly? I was barely able to find them in Scopus and only succeeded because I knew exactly what I was looking for. If I've simply used advanced search and searched to our journal's name within the references (what I'm expecting the committee will do) I would have found no citations to our journal whatsoever.

Is there anything more I can do in this situation?

For Scopus, like for any organization, if you can't find anything out online and aren't getting information back via email, then the next step is to call them on the phone and be persistent in finding the right person to talk to.

Beyond that, they are a private organization owner by Elsevier (a for-profit company), and there is no mandate that requires them to have either a transparent or a sane process, and there is likely little more advice that anyone outside of the organization can give you.


What to say about somewhat forgotten studies? The matter of fact is, I graduated from university (physics and mathematics) more than 4 years ago. I remember myself enjoying most of the subjects, communicating with professors and study mates, researching other non-curriculum topics.

Ever since graduation I have been working in IT industry. IMHO, those are not directly correlated and most of the topics, subjects, research are forgotten now.

Q: What to could be written upon forgotten subjects/staff/research?

Revise them!

There could be possibly no other way to overcome the obstacle in your situation.

Sure you may be able to make out on what you already know and express your regret on what you forgot. But what is the end result? You don't remember what you ought to know.

Although this isn't something to be embarrassed about (as this happens to even to the best of us at some point of time), this isn't something you should ignore either.

Going through your ancient notes may bring nostalgia (personally that's why I keep them) but it's intent on effective revision depends on the quality of the notes themselves.

The Internet should be filled with tutorials and crash coursers to bring back what you once knew. It may also allow you to learn more than before too.

Forgetting doesn't necessarily mean memory erasure. Note that if you really did study your subjects with passion back then as mentioned in your post, it might not take long to remember them through revision.

Best wishes to remember your once forgotten subjects and hopefully learn new this in the process too.


What is the logic behind definition of 1-year master programs in UK? People always consider universities like Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College etc. among the best universities on the planet, with centuries of experience in research methodology. One would assert that their policies to conduct 1-year master programs (versus their 2-year counterparts at rest of the world, specially north america) sounds a little odd and vague.

This article has tried to address some Pros and Cons. Seemingly, "Shortness" of the program might not be a true advantage, where the depth of the education might be endangered. Moreover, the students might not be, deservedly, flourished by the target program, because it will be supposed to be finished, when the students have just focused on the case, primarily, without acquisition of the all of the desired educational and research profundity. On the other hand, the investment does not sound to be a considerable factor to justify this policy, because most of the students (and their parents) realize that paying for graduate studies will construct their future and the investment on this case will, fairly, be compensated with the upcoming achievements, such as successful recruitment and so on.

So, I, personally, can not understand the real underlying logic behind taking such decision into account by UK universities. It is undeniable that a multitude of international students would not discern these short programs as efficient steps to build a robust future for them in either further academic progressions or professional job sector.

Why don't UK universities manage their master programs in 2-year periods, instead of current short 1-year ones?

What motivations could convince a typical international student to prefer a 1-year master program at UK to a 2-year one at north america?

PS. There is a, typically, similar question within the community, has which not asserted on the intrinsic facts, under the aegis of this policy. It's content, globally, demonstrates more reasons to revoke the credibility of the case.

The article you link to lists 3 cons to a 1 year program: not enough time to take electives, not enough time for a work placement, and not enough time to get good letters of recommendation. It also lists duration, and the decreased costs, as the major benefit. The cons, however, are not particularly important in the UK (and many parts of the world) while the pro is important worldwide.

Electives:

The UK educational, and employment, system does value electives. Students start specializing at age 16 when they take their A levels. Undergraduate programs typically have no "general education" type requirements. Many MSc programs are so specialized that there are not enough electives offered to fill a second year.

Work Placement:

In the UK, work placement opportunities are not limited to students. In fact, in my field, work placements are only available to graduates and students cannot do a work placement.

Recommendations

Letters of recommendation are just not that important in the UK. For example, for permanent academic positions, letters of reference are not part of the decision process until the very end. Many jobs do not require any references at all.

Duration

For self-funded programs, a 1 year program saves you money. Even with funding, there are still opportunity costs associated with the 2nd year.

To get to your questions:

  Why don't UK universities manage their master programs in 2-year periods, instead of current short 1-year ones?

In general, as with most things, finances rule the day. While 2-year programs would theoretically bring in more money to a school, the fear is that a 2-year program would not meet the needs of UK students and student numbers would drop. This would result in decreased revenue for the school/department.

  What motivations could convince a typical international student to prefer a 1-year master program at UK to a 2-year one at north america?

My UK school pitched our MSc program to US students as: if you know what you want to study, why waste money and time studying other things


A Question about Pass/No-Credit I currently finished my undergraduate studies and I plan to apply to PhD programs in the near future. In the mean time I will be starting a masters to get additional research experience and take some advanced courses in my field of interest. I plan to go into Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) and I plan to take masters courses in CMP and get research experience in CMP. During my undergrad I was a Physics and Mathematics major who had taken some classes in Engineering to get some "hands on" and "practical" experiences. I did well in these classes and learned a lot. During my time as an undergrad I also have taken some grad courses in physics; all but one were CMP-related or CMP pre-requisites and I did well in these as well. Although I did well in my Physics, Mathematics, and CMP-related classes, I originally wanted to go into a different area of Physics and so my last graduate class was in this non-CMP area. I found out during that semester that this area was not that interesting to me after all and that CMP was something I really enjoyed. This class was also stressing me out and was going to affect my performance in the other CMP-related classes I was taking. As a result, I decided to take this class as Pass/No-Credit (Covid Pass/No-Credit); this lowered my anxiety and I was able to do well in my other classes. In the end I performed well in my graduating class and received some honors and accolades from the university.
During that semester it seemed to me that this was the right thing to do. Looking back now, I am wondering: will grad admissions frown upon the Pass/No-Credit in this non-CMP graduate course? Will they think I slacked off, or will my other classes counter this? Or should I not sweat it and move on?

Or should I not sweat it and move on?

Very much this. As Buffy said in the comments, there is not much you could do at this point either way, so time to move on. But in a larger sense, you clearly have an absolutely excellent undergraduate record, no one is going to "frown on" you taking one elective course P/NC (and passing it).


Increasing the number of authors in the research article after uploading it on arxiv I have done some work and want to upload that research work on Arxiv. The problem is that the second author wants to work more on this and doesn't want to upload the result to Arxiv. I am thinking that I will upload the result on Arxiv and then I will keep doing research on that thing, so if get more results, then along with the second author I will submit the result to a conference.

Question: Suppose I upload an article on Arxiv as a single author and after that I work on the same problem and get some results. Will it be possible to submit again the additional result with two authors on Arxiv and to a conference? Is there any problem with the process I have described above?

I imagine that there is no problem from the side of arXiv: submissions there are versioned, so you can always update a preprint there. arXiv also explicitly allows you to submit the same work to a different venue later on.

The problem with your process is that you do not seem to have a trust relationship with your second author. If your second author does not want your joint paper uploaded to arXiv and (i) you do it anyway, and (ii) do not even make him an author even though he was part of the research, then what does this say about the relationship the two of you already have? And what does it say about the kind of relationship you hope to have with him in the future? If I were that second author, I would consider uploading a joint paper over my objections a major breach of trust. I would not ever want to work with you again.


How to add self-study workload in the ECTS credits? I'm applying to a Master's program in "Mechatronics", in Germany. One of the program requirements is a ECTS credits form for some specific fields.

According to the university I'm applying (Tuhh) the workload indicates the time students typically need to complete all learning activities (such as lectures, seminars, projects, practical work, self-study and examinations) required to achieve the expected learning outcomes.

I'm not sure how to convert my degree credits/hours into ECTS, given that ECTS points do include studying and assignments hours.

In my university the credits assigned in the transcript of records correspond ONLY TO LECTURES (classroom hours), where 1 credit is equivalent to 15 hours, even though all lectures are accompanied by homeworks, exams and self-study time.

I can convert the credits on my transcript but there is a clear lack of required ECTS credits. This is because only the workload of lectures are included and the self-study hours are not explicitly incorporated in the university transcript which leads me to consult how to proceed to complete the form.

I'd appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Please, let me know if more information is needed in order to calculate the ECTS.

You can estimate it: if your previous programme expected you to work full-time on it (40 hours a week), and let's say you have 3 courses per semester, then each of these courses would be 10 ECTS (assuming equal load). As there is 60 ECTS in one year, i.e. 30 in a semester. 1 ECTS is equal to 28 hours by the way.

But calculating ECTS is hardly something you need to be doing on your own. You should approach the German university about this, chances are they have conversion tables, or at least some precedence on how to convert these figures. Moreover, the ECTS requirements is just a metric of what they actually want to measure: relevant experience. So you can also discuss your personal case with them and provide them with the study guides of the relevant courses you've followed to see if you fullfill their requirements.


Personal Life Dealbreakers for Academic Jobs There are certain academic jobs such as Baylor or BYU that require a certain way of life. BYU, for instance, requires one to adhere to the Church Educational System Honor Code and Baylor typically requires a letter of recommendation from your Minister/Rabbi (their words) with one's application. For example, being in a gay relationship would be enough to be expelled from BYU.

These require a certain type of personal life choices and lifestyle, and, while they are very religious schools, there are other possible dealbreakers at secular universities. For example, secular schools have retracted offers due to the fact that the applicant for a faculty job is on the sex offenders registry.

There's a huge amount of gray area between these two data points that I have. Where is the line drawn on how much one's personal life matters at a secular school? What would have to be publicized about a faculty member's or applicant's personal life in order for the person to have an offer rescinded or tenure revoked?  Is it only about the research/teaching/service, or is there any examination on the person's life if that common knowledge in the community?

My question is mainly about the United States.

I am not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt.

In the US it is illegal to take information about a candidate's membership in a protected class as a basis for hiring or firing, except in circumstances where that information concerns what the law calls a "bonafide occupational qualification."

The idea is that certain kinds of employers get to discriminate in ways that would otherwise be illegal because of their status as private entities dedicated to a particular mission. For instance, a Jewish synagogue can discriminate against non-Jewish applicants when it is hiring a rabbi. If the state prosecuted synagogues for religious discrimination because they only considered Jewish candidates, this would effectively be the state saying that Jewish Synagogues can't exist.

So, in certain kinds of religiously affiliated schools, it is legal for the school to hire only members of a certain religion based on the same principle. But this only holds if membership in the religion is an explicit, advertised condition of the job, i.e. if the school is dedicated to being a school exclusively consisting of members of that particular religion.

Most religious schools in the US are not actually like this--for instance there are dozens of catholic schools in the US which are open to students and faculty of any religious tradition, or no religion at all. Schools like that are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion, because clearly at such schools membership in the religion isn't a "bonafide occupational qualification".


Is it bad form to use the word “novel” when describing your own work in a paper? Ideally any research paper should contain novel thoughts, ideas, procedures, observations, methods, etc. of some form or another. That being said, is it really necessary to remind the reader about it by using the words novel, revolutionary, or never been done before as opposed to just comparing it to existing studies and noting the differences between the two?

Yes, I would advise against using the words novel or new for the following reasons (which overlap with what you already argued):

It’s almost impossible to fully ascertain that something is new. Even if you just discovered some outstanding and surprising effect like superconductivity, somebody else may have discovered it a month earlier and is just about to publish it.
At the same time, you are expected to have ascertained the novelty of what you are doing as well as reasonably possible and to document it in your introduction or literature review. To quote JeffE:

  The message you want to send is "I have read every paper on this topic, and none of them do this thing that I'm about to do."

If you have any reason to believe that what you are doing is not novel, you should either document this (e.g., “we tried to reproduce this experiment”) or not try to publish at all. Thus, there is never any reason to claim something is novel – it is implicit that everything you write that is neither common knowledge nor equipped with a citation is novel to your best knowledge.

The following memo by the American Physical Society (one of the most prolific publishers in physics) argues similarly:

  Physical Review adheres to the following policy with respect to use of terms such as "new" or "novel:" All material accepted for publication in the Physical Review is expected to contain new results in physics. Phrases such as "new," "for the first time," etc., therefore should normally be unnecessary; they are not in keeping with the journal's scientific style. Furthermore, such phrases could be construed as claims of priority, which the editors cannot assess and hence must rule out.


PhD requires technology - is this something I will have to fund? I'm applying to do a PhD in Computer Science at a UK university. While I'm up for some funding I've been told it's very competitive so I shouldn't count on it. That's fine, and I'm prepared to self fund.

However my PhD proposal will require wearable tech, and my supervisor had advised that I think about having a group of 15 or so in the initial test stages. Does anyone have any experience of whether or not I'll have to purchase this myself, or if this is something the university will help cover the cost of? I appreciate it's probably the former, but it's something I need to know prior to starting.

On top of the PhD costs it could easily be another £3000 or so in order to buy all the tech - so I'll need to work out whether I can afford it!

As a student, you should not be required to fund equipment purchases yourself.  Rather, it is your supervisor's responsibility to work with you to scope a project that is within the funding that they wish to allocate to it.  So if your supervisor wants to do a study with 15 people, your supervisor needs to have a sufficient budget to support it.  Otherwise, you might end up, say, doing your work in simulation instead, which is much cheaper but less convincing in its results.

Now, some students do buy small things themselves, especially if it is a low-cost "toy" that they want to play with themselves (e.g., a Raspberry Pi or a phone sensor pack) and they don't want to go through the delay and hassle of university purchasing.  That's an exception, however, and certainly not to be expected for a multi-user study.


How should I complete the "Statement of the problem" part of my thesis proposal if it there are very few similar works in the literature? I don't know how should I state the lacuna in the discipline. If there were researches worked on my topic before, I could cite them and say that they have worked on A, B, C, and I want to work on D, but there is not.

My MA thesis is sort of a following to a PhD research conducted 4 years ago (but not following one of those 'suggested for further research' questions, of course), and the topic is relatively new.

To help me with writing this part, what questions can I ask myself and find answer to?

I major in Translation Studies, by the way.

For my money, you won't be able to describe your contribution in terms your audience will understand until you can contextualize it in related work. Literature review is both an opportunity to adopt the established language of other researchers, and one to sharpen the contours of your idea.

Cast your net a bit wider. Certainly related work exists, and once you find it, you will see lots of ways to compare and distinguish your ideas from those of the authors that came before you.


Does doing a PhD in a small/simple university make sense after getting a Master's from a very prestigious school? I got a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from a school which is among the top ranked of Europe. Nevertheless, this is a pure coincidence, I did it here because it was the closest to my home.

For purely personal reasons I am tired of living in a place where there is such high population density, and having to suffer city life, crowded trains, traffic (even though I do not drive, I suffer the noise and pollution a lot), and spending so much time every day in queues is very annoying. My dream would be to return living in the countryside in a small village where people know each other, like when I was a kid (the village where I grew up is now today part of a suburb and mostly lost its soul).

I'm considering applying for a PhD position in a very small university in a medium sized town, in order to relocate and live in a rural village near the town. That university would be quite small and barely large enough to offer PhD programs, and definitely does not have much international reputation or anything. The exact opposite to the university where I got a Master's, which is high ranked and has amazing international reputation.

What I'd be doing would be the exact opposite of the mainstream, where people are always more willing to live in cities despite the disadvantages, and also are wanting to have their PhD from a school that is prestigious. I am afraid to kill my academic career because of a caprice of mine ("live in the countryside") would have taken up all the other advantages over staying here in the same School for a PhD.

I guess the first question is What do you want to do with your PhD?

If you want to stay in academia, you will have the same problem after graduating all over again (and, speaking from personal experience, as a young postdoc/faculty, one does not generally have the luxury of choosing where one goes next). Further, going to a (presumably) under-funded local university with weak research programme is going to severely reduce the probability of you doing world-class research. While Moriaty is correct in saying that "It's the quality of your individual work that counts.", said quality is definitely strongly correlated to the excellence of your advisors and fellow students and collaborators. Another problem may be funding (e.g., for going to conferences), which may not be plentiful in a small university.

What I am also wondering is whether you actually need to switch university, or should just live off-campus? I work in Zurich, and I have one student who used to live between Zurich and Bern (about a one-hour car drive away), in an area that was pretty much as rural as it gets. He just did a lot of home office, and took the train approximately 3 times a week. Maybe an arrangement like that helps you more than throwing out the baby with the bath water?


What to do when a referee wants to criticize someone else through me A couple of months ago I submitted a paper for which a referee review came back recently, recommending minor corrections. There are two methods to calculate some quantities in the literature which do not agree between each other. My paper agrees with one of them and not with the other, which I know is incorrect. However, in my paper I did not point this out (that it is incorrect, I do mention the other method), but simply focused instead on the method I use.

Now, the referee seems to be eager for me to profusely comment on the incorrect method and specifically refer to several papers written by people from the same group using this particular method. I get the impression that this referee is trying to use me to criticize them. I would prefer to be as diplomatic as possible, and remain in good terms with the others who use the incorrect method, who I have met in person several times. However, openly stating their method to be wrong, even if choosing the wording to be as nice as possible, would make that difficult.

What should I do in this case?

In my opinion, having a proof that a method is incorrect and keeping it to yourself due to diplomatic/social concerns is neither the scientific nor the friendly thing to do.

If I was working in a group which uses a method frequently I'd expect a friend knowing that it was flawed to share his/her concerns with me in a constructive and friendly manner, knowing that the next researcher who discovers such flaws might not be friendly about it. I'd also hate to be putting time and effort based on something flawed.

Once that was done by that friend, we could find out between us whether the method is really flawed. If it is, I won't be offended if it's published in a paper he wrote.


Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses? Lately lots of courses like udacity, coursera, and MITx are provided online. I attended most of them; also I have attended courses in OCW provided by MIT. Now I desire to earn some credits for whatever I have learnt so far, so that I can apply for a degree (in electronics and computer engineering).

Could anyone suggest some place where I will get accredited for the courses I do?

Most of the courses that I've seen explicitly state that you obtain no credit for doing the course. More explicitly, they may offer certificates of completion, but these certificates do not convey academic credit. For example, from Coursea's Term's of Service:

  This Letter of Completion, if provided to you, would be from Coursera and/or from the instructors. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, if provided to you, may not be affiliated with Coursera or any college or university. Further, Coursera offers the right to offer or not offer any such Letter of Completion for a class. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, and Coursera’s Online Courses, will not stand in the place of a course taken at an accredited institution, and do not convey academic credit.

So the short answer is that you will be unlikely to obtain such credit. Certainly, read the terms of service to be sure. Nevertheless, you could add such things to your CV to demonstrate your interest in a particular field.


Scientific Research Publishing - Unspoken Rules I would like to know more about some (unspoken) rules in scientific research publishing. More precisely, i am interested in computer science field.

Can someone expect his papers to be published in any top level journal (M23, M22, M21) without completed bachelor studies or master studies?
Is it true that professors have better chances their papers to be published than graduated students or it is just a justification for academic exploitation?
Can someone who works in IT industry or is unemployed expect his papers to be considered or even published?
What are the differences between the first author and other authors? Taking the academic exploitation into account, is it profitable for a student to be the second author after the professor?

In order:

Theoretically, sure. Practically, almost never going to happen. The chief reason for this is that graduate studies are designed to instruct you on how to conduct and report on original research. Even a bachelor's degree alone will usually not be sufficient; anything less than that, and you probably don't have enough expertise to conduct cutting-edge research.

As @lighthousekeeper pointed out, being a professor usually means you have more experience in producing papers. As with most things in life, practice makes perfect.

Someone in the IT industry -- most certainly. Researchers at Facebook, Google, Amazon, HP, and many other companies have dozens of papers (if not more) published every year at top CS conferences.
An unemployed individual certainly could get published. But see #2 for why this is unlikely to happen. In addition, not having access to research databases and journal databases will stymie most individuals looking to conduct independent research (though not all).

Entirely depends on the field. In some fields, author names are listed alphabetically, so it doesn't matter who is first or last. In other fields, the first author is usually the researcher who wrote the majority of the paper. As a student in CS, there's nothing wrong with having second authorship on several papers. You'll want to eventually have first authorship on at least one or two publications, but any authorship is valuable when you're starting out.


How do I write a reference in my reference list which has various places of publication with different editorials? I am writing my reference list for my final paper and there is a book, which has different places of publication with different editorials in each one

You reference the one you actually read.


Is there a definitive list of style guides? Almost every publication, journal or conference series seems to have its own style guide. Is anyone keeping track of these ? IE, is there a website which keeps a list of style guides - specifically citation styles - for various publications ? The most definitive (ie all-encompassing) list would be what I'm after.

This Wikipedia may be a good starting point.

There are the international ISO series. And just in the US there are style guides for general writing, legal documents, academic papers, journalism, electronic publishing, business, and computer industry. It may be better to limit your scope of study.


Scoring GRE analytical writing practice essays I took the GRE and my analytical writing score wasn't what I hoped for. During the exam, I thought my answer was good. Having read about argumentation and practiced writing, I wonder if there is a reputable service that will score essays and give feedback?

You've got a few options:

See if your school has a GRE preparation course (you may have to pay for this) or other writing tutorials.
As Tirath said, look at ets.org for strategies.
If you're still in undergraduate school and have at least another semester, enroll in a writing class. The practice you get from the class should improve your overall ability.
Look online for test preparation courses. These can be expensive, but sometimes they have "guaranteed results," and you can probably figure out the best ones by looking at reviews.
Advertise on Craigslist (or similar) for a tutor. If you are in a college town, you may find someone willing to tutor you relatively cheaply.
Look online for GRE writing samples, and read as many as you can.
Practice writing every day. The more you practice, the better you'll get (and read as much as you can, too).

Keep in mind that while you always should strive for high scores, your field of study will partially dictate how important the writing score is. If you're going for a history PhD, you'll need a high score, but for a science degree this tends to be less important (for admissions--being able to write is important for any PhD!).


Is it possible to replicate the experience gained in a grad school on my own without attending one? Is it possible to become a researcher on my own? How do I replicate the grad school experience through self study or being an autodidact?

I came across these two sites: How to Become a Pure Mathematician (or Statistician) and How to become a
GOOD Theoretical Physicist.

I came across such a thing on CS Theory Stack Exchange too.

Is it true that if I follow actively what has been given in these sites I’d be a physicist or mathematician or an independent researcher? I don’t know about publishing papers. At the best, I can access arXiv and Google Scholar on my internet connection. I don’t think I’d be actively ‘contributing’ to research or advancing the frontiers of knowledge. At the best, I guess I can try answer questions on SE sites.

The short answer is: you can't replicate it.

The longer answer is: yes, you might be able to talk intelligently to someone who has a background in the field, but as previous poster mentioned, the reason why one goes to grad school is not just to learn the material, but to have access to resources. These resources are physical, but they are also mental. Part of what grad school gives you is access to people who have extensive knowledge in the field, can help direct you in your research, as well as provide crucial feedback. Without this one-on-one and group interaction, it is IMO impossible to become a researcher on par with a professional academic.


Conference claims they have indexed proceedings and publisher denies it There is a conference which says that the proceedings will by published in Springer. Normally, Springer conferences mention the series of the volume that the proceedings will be published (LNCS, CCIS or LNBIP). This one doesn't mention any thing, all  they're writing is "Approved by Springer". When I emailed the organizer of the conference, he said the the series are LNCS. So I thought I should I check the official conference list by Springer, but I didn't find the conference. I wrote an email to Springer and they said that the conference has not been accepted for the LNCS series.

One of the main things why I considered this conference is that they're have a best paper session where 2 papers will get an invitation to send an extended version to another journal (Also in Springer). But I am not sure if that's also true now that I know the organizer wasn't honest about the series of the conference. I also think that my supervisor will ask me to submit anyways. I don't know what to do.

PS: It's really sad, that anyone can use a publisher name just like that. Does the publisher can't really do anything about that ?

There are quite a lot of predatory journals, and some of them organize conferences. Some of these organize conferences with information that is outright false, in order to get money from academic in exchange of "academic credit" i.e. publications. Stay very away from these organizations, as most reputable academic institution would see worse having a publication in these places than no publications at all.

Can Springer do something about it? I assume their lawyers are on it, but its the same for any institution that is based on scamming. Its hard to get rid of them because they are playing outside the law already.


Should I put my supervisor as coauthor of a paper? I was working on a problem in the field engineering. I have used one approach and it turned out that it does not work well. After that I got into conflict with my supervisor, and realized that it will be hard to publish the original paper with him. So, I have redone everything with another approach, wrote a paper, submitted it and at as soon as my paper have been almost accepted, my supervisor wrote to the editor claiming that he also should be an author of the paper. He haven't even seen the new paper nor haven't analysed or interpreted the new results. What should I do in this situation?

This entire situation is an ethical quagmire that both you and your advisor are responsible for.

The reason why I say that you share in the creation of this situation is the following. Let's replace your advisor with an external collaborator. The sequence of events, as you have outlined here, runs as follows:

The two of you collaborated on an initial version of the paper.
You had a conflict on some issue (seemingly related to this paper)
You then proceeded to go behind the collaborator's back, redo the analysis, rewrite the paper, and submit it without informing her.

Under such circumstances, it is clear that you would bear a large percentage of the blame for the situation. The fact that it's your advisor instead of an external collaborator doesn't change the ethical considerations here.

Your advisor probably feels that because you were previously working on the problem together, you have cut him out of the loop without his consent. You should have showed him the preliminary results of your new analysis and let him decide if he wanted to collaborate further. If he was to be an author on the original paper, he was entitled to at least that much.

Of course, at this stage, it's hard to say what to do—your advisor has also complicated the situation by asserting his author rights on a paper he allegedly has never seen, which is also wrong. I would follow JeffE's advice here and take the path of least resistance. Getting out of this mess of a relationship is the critical step right now.


Do you need to state that you have written permission from the copyright holder of the image I use as cover I am using a picture for the cover of my thesis. I received written permission from the copyright holder of this picture that I may use it for this purpose.
Do I need to make a comment somewhere in my thesis that I have this written permission and if so, where shall I make this comment? Or do even I need to include the entire written permission, perhaps in an appendix.

It is common in book length material to give a citation of the photo, perhaps in a footnote. The title page, if present, or a page just following, is possible. So is a footnote on the last page, which is probably a list of references. Another possibility is on an "Acknowledgements" page, if present.Just mark the citation for the photo as "used with permission".
The citation is necessary in any case since the work isn't yours.
It isn't necessary to include the entire permission statement. But keep a copy of the statement.


Is it common for a managing editor of a University Press to solicit book proposals from PhD students at a conference? I am a PhD candidate in the very early process of writing my dissertation, and I'm presenting my first chapter at an international humanities conference soon. I received an email from the managing editor of a well known University Press that was impressed by my topic and wants to meet to discuss possibilities. How common is this?

Is it quite common for University Presses to solicit meetings with PhD students? Or is this a rare opportunity? His interest was so unexpected (because I always assumed you approached editors if you wanted to publish) that I'm not sure if this is a promising opportunity.

So how often do managing editors of University Presses solicit authors that are ABD?

I interned at a university press, and it was common to go through conference programs and identify interesting topics/papers written by PhD candidates/early-career scholars. It sounds like it's a little early in the process for you, but it is definitely worth taking the meeting.


Determining student understanding of a question based on given answer I am asking this in regard to all levels of education, however, I am aware that this forum is primarily for higher education. I would like to know what elements of an answer are indicative of the level of understanding the student has of that question. The sophistication of their language? Length of their answer? Use of meta language? Succinctness?

Thanks in advance!

You are barking up the wrong tree.

I can’t speak for all instructors and graders (and it wouldn’t surprise me if your question gets closed for that reason), but, when I’m grading essay questions, I want to know: Can the student answer the question clearly and in a way that demonstrates mastery over the material?

That being what I’m looking for, most of what you listed is smoke and mirrors.

Sophistication of the language? That means nothing if the answer isn’t accurate. And if your answer is way off, you’ll sound like a pompous ass.
Length of their answer? Not necessarily. I appreciate depth much more than length. If an answer is long because it shows a deep understanding, that’s fine. If it’s just repeating the same facts over and over again, that can get annoying.
Use of meta language? Ah, that old trick. Throw enough buzzwords at an answer and hope one of them matches what I’m looking for. (A student tried that on me one time, and I wrote in the margins of the exam: “Your jedi mind tricks do not work on me.”)
Succinctness? That’s probably the only one that you listed that has a shot at impressing me, but it had better be a very good answer if you’re not going to say much.


What is wrong with continuing to publish with my PhD adviser? I have heard that it is 'bad' to continue to publish with your adviser after you get your PhD. Or is this something that is debated in the academic community?

In my situation, after my PhD, I can get a job in industry, but I am allowed time (half a day a week) to continue my research at my local university. This allows me to continue researching something that I am interested in, rather than researching something that someone else is interested in.

I can understand that every publication should not be between myself and my adviser. And I can understand that I should show that I am an independent researcher. But does that mean I should stop publishing with my (ex-)adviser?

There's nothing “wrong” with continuing to publish with your (ex-)adviser. You have correctly identified the issue to avoid: after getting your PhD, the next step in your career is to establish yourself as an independent researcher. Thus, of course: depending on the context, publishing with your adviser might send the wrong signal!

So, you should continue to publish with her, but you should make sure that it's not 100% of your research (and publications). Another point that makes a big difference is if you can, maybe now or maybe after some time, take the lead in that collaboration.


Outcome of journal as out of scope I got the outcome of my paper after 2 months from IEEE Transaction. The editor said its out of  scope and suggested to submit in a sister journal and he cc the outcome to the editor of that journal.
There were 5 reviewers, 2 said minor revision, 1 said i dont have any question. 1 reviewer asked one question. And 1 reviewer said the idea is not very novel and gave same major comments.
However, associate editor summerized that the quality of work is recognized by the reviewers but encouraged to submit in the sister journal.
Here, i want to know that what could be the reason of having 5 reviewers when there are usually 2-3 reviewers and i also reviewers of this IEEE TRANSACTION?
Secondly, do i need to talk to editor that it could be major revision but how they decided out of scope with reviews?
Lastly, does out of scope means rejection and editor encouraged me to submit to sister journal of that transaction does it means it will go through complete review process of that journal?

One at a time:

Why are there 5 reviewers instead of the usual 2-3? There're many possibilities, the two most likely of which are 1) they routinely invite five reviewers because historically, not all of them will accept. This time they did. 2) Some of the first reviews received were poor (your description makes it seem like so, but I don't know the details) so they invited more reviewers.

Do you need to talk to the editor about how they came to an out-of-scope decision with major revision reviews? Probably not. The editor's decided that your paper is out of scope already, which is usually equivalent to a rejection.

Does the editor suggesting you submit to a sister journal mean you have to go through the review process of that journal? Yes. The sister journal will have different requirements, and the editor might not even be a member of the editorial board of the sister journal.


Contact Professor before applying for Phd scholarship? I am applying for Phd. funded scholarship in Australia here is the link, in this link it is mention that you should contact professor before applying for the scholarship. I emailed him and his response was "There are selection criteria.  It would be worth responding to each of these as well as providing a CV".

My question is how can I provide proof about the selection criteria. Should I provide a cover later about that or just CV.

Actually, send three things. The cover letter is introductory and speaks about your desire and basic qualifications for working with that professor. It is a sort of a Statement of Purpose. Also send the CV. But the third document is one that specifically addresses, in order, each item in the stated selection criteria and how you meet that criterion or that you have little to no experience with it. Make it an honest statement, not just empty claims. Point to items in the CV as necessary.

It is probably expected that you meet the criteria in general, but also expected  that each candidate will meet each item differently


Optimize lab report grading rubric to minimize grading time I will be teaching a new course with a new grading rubric. All of my students will write a lab report at the end of each 3 hour lab session. Each lab report will have an abstract, introduction, data, results, and conclusion sections. How can I prepare my grading rubric to minimize grading time for all lab reports I will grade at the end of each week?

When I was teaching physics classes in grad, grading got easier after creating a key (or rubric) that was really concrete. By creating a specific set of things to look for, grading took less time and students were happier with their grades.
Here is what worked for me.

Explaining figure etiquette: axis labels, include units, have the data points take the majority of the graph area.
Communicating the expected details: clarity of answers, showing work, including the data sheet, etc.
Giving examples of deducting points for poor quality.

I found same-day grading took less time (since the material was fresh in my mind) and created a great deadline for late work. I accepted work for full credit until I grading was finished; afterwards, I awarded late labs 50% (without grading).


How much assumption relaxation : journal review Suppose a theorem in applied probability is true under the assumptions (A1), (A2) and (A3). Suppose,   (A1) is relaxed to (A1)' at the cost of strengthening (A2) and (A3) to (A2)' and (A3)' respectively. I got a review from a prestigious journal that "how much (amount)" is the relaxation from (A1) to (A1)' ? What is meant by that ? Is the reviewer saying that if the relaxation is huge amount compared to the strengthening of (A2) and (A3) then only your result useful.
Any help/suggestion will be useful.

I think you're right. The most straightforward interpretation is that the reviewer wants to know how good the trade-off you have made is. Are you just shifting assumptions around, or have you made a fundamentally important relaxation of assumption A1 such that assumptions A2' and A3' are not much of a big deal.


Is it appropriate for a prospective PhD student to contact phd students at a target school? I am a prospective phd student. I wish to know if it is fine to contact the phd students of my target schools?

If answering this question requires more information, please feel free to state that.

It is absolutely fine to contact current PhD students of programs and departments that you are interested in. On an average, I get about 1 email of this sort everyday and I make my best effort to reply intelligently.

Keep in mind though that many PhD students will simply not reply to your email. Sometimes folks are inundated by too many emails and commitments to respond to any additional emails and sometimes people just have bad emailing tendencies in general.


ARC DECRA eligibility exemption: how to demonstrate unemployment? For me to apply for an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA grant in the next round, I will need to include an application for an Eligibility Exemption.  The last round DECRA rules are below, and presumably next year's rules will be the same but +1 to each year.

  D7.4.4 The ARC may grant an Eligibility Exemption for the DECRA Candidate who has been awarded a PhD on or after 1 March 2006, together with periods of significant career interruption (between the PhD award date and the closing time of submission of Proposals) which if taken into account would be commensurate with a PhD being awarded on or after 1 March 2010. Career interruptions of less than one month will not be considered.  The following types of interruption will be considered:

  carer's responsibility;
  disruption due to international relocation for post-doctoral studies or other research employment not exceeding three months per international relocation;
  illness;
  maternity or parental leave;
  unemployment and/or
  non-research employment not concurrent with research employment.

I was unemployed for 2014 for personal reasons I'd prefer not to go into on a grant application.  This means I will be eligible if any only if the eligibility exception is accepted.  I'm wondering if just asserting unemployment is acceptable, or do I somehow need to demonstrate it in some way?

Question: How would I demonstrate unemployment for an ARC DECRA eligibility exemption?  Do I need to explain my personal reasons for being unemployed?

If possible, I'd like to hear from others who have applied for this particular exemption.

(And, if you happen to know the answer to a related question: Do I have to write the whole DECRA grant application before knowing whether or not I'm even eligible?)

To demonstrate unemployment for an ARC DECRA eligibility exemption you must provide a justification statement.

"Justification Statement: In no more than 3000 characters, please provide justification outlining the special circumstances in support of the Eligibility Exemption Request being submitted."
- Eligibility Exemption Request: Instructions to Applicants (491 KB PDF), pg 2.

This justification does not require details of why you were unemployed. It requires you to state that you were unemployed, that you were not able to undertake research during that period, and delineate how long that period of unemployment lasted.

That is, the ARC wants to know that you were unable to undertake research for the required time. It doesn't need to make a value judgement about why you were unemployed. You do not need to explain your personal reasons for being unemployed.

In answer to your second question: No, you do not have to write the whole DECRA grant application before knowing whether you are eligible or not. As the ARC Important Dates page says, eligibility exemption requests will open and close in January 2016. You will have an answer shortly after that, about two months before the ARC DECRA closing date on 22 March 2016.

However, as someone who helps applicants develop their applications, I would always advise an applicant to draft their application well before January. Leaving it to the last two months doesn't provide much time to write, review and revise your application.


Split research into two papers I am a 4th year Ph.D. Student. After submitting my first paper 6 months ago, I have been continuing that research. I have a lot of new methods and results, and I am almost ready to start writing again.

How do I know if I should split my research into two papers or write a single comprehensive paper? If I choose to split, how do I decide where best to split the two papers?

Without going into too much detail, I have a method that explains the causes of a fairly well studied phenomenon. I can show that there are four distinct causes of this phenomenon and explain the relative importance of each cause in different situations. If I split my research into papers 1 and 2, the conclusions of paper 1 may seem vague and inconclusive. If I combine my research into a single paper, it may be quite long and rambling. I want to choose a path that minimizes both of these problems.

My mental model for the situation is a tipi. Some of the concepts in that I need to write about have to lean on one another for support, like the tent poles of a tipi. If there are not enough concepts (or tent poles) the rest of the concepts fall short of a real conclusion; The tipi will fall over the first time there is a strong wind. There are clusters of mutually supporting concepts that I can split off into separate papers, but I have a few unique ways to divide these concepts into clusters. I suspect that any of these individual clusters will be less stable and robust that all of the concepts built into a single paper, but maybe I am just being a paranoid perfectionist.

How can I frame my dilemma to help me make this decision? What question should I ask myself to find the right balance?

As @GEdgar said in comments, you should consult with your adviser. But in general, a paper should be about one thing. What you need to determine is whether that one thing is the method, whether it is the application of the method to a particular cause (then four related papers), or your other posited approach of two papers.


Why hold conferences in a resort town? I have noticed many academic conferences are held in small resort town. Why? Why not held in something like a 4-star hotel in the city center?

Attending a conference is a paid job, why should we travel to somewhere remote?

I cannot talk about general customs, but for whatever it’s worth, a major conference in my field is held in a ski resort, off-season. This has two advantages:

This is what the resort does to survive during the warm seasons. Therefore I presume that it may be a relatively cheap option.
Except for hiking, there is nothing to do there. With conferences held in cities, it often happens that attendants take some time off to do some sightseeing or similar. Here, getting to the next (touristically boring) city requires you to rent a car and takes one hour. Therefore, the conference gets more attention.


How to interpret the phrase "experimental approach"? I'm writing the introduction for a research proposal and am trying to express that our approach is "experimental" in the sense that it uses more exploratory and alternative methods rather than that it uses a controlled experiment.

Is the phrase "experimental approach" appropriate in this context? If not, what are alternatives? (Words like "novel" and "exploratory" aren't quite right.) Which way should that phrase be interpreted in general?

I use the term "discovery" when I am using approaches where I don't really have a "control," but am trying to investigate phenomena to determine the underlying causes. (I use a simulation technique which is essentially "deterministic" in its results, so it's a matter of trying to find a model which explains the phenomenon in question, or determining results for a new system).

So this would perhaps be an example of "experimental discovery."


Should you ask for recommendation letter from the professor of a class you didn't get an A in? It seems like the norm of American universities is that all the letters of recommendation are always positive stuff, and they are normally evaluated on the level of specificity they have, and if they have something extraordinarily positive about the student, rather than some usual positive language. Given that they never write a negative letter, would it help my application if I ask for a letter from the professor of a class that I didn't get an A in, if the professor is a really big name in the field?
(I got an A-, so not so terrible, but the grades were curved and I still got an A-.)

I was also wondering if the answer to that question would be different for applying to European universities, given that their expectations from a recommendation letter seem to be different, and they don't necessarily expect a personal description of the students' abilities.

(The professor is a really really big name. He is one of the 3 most famous people in the field in the entire world.)

I think there are two questions here that help determine whether or not you should ask this person:

Do You Have An Alternative? : This may seem like a simple question, but if this is the only person who you've done relevant coursework with, etc. you might not genuinely have a choice.

Can They Speak to Your Abilities? : While in the United States letters of recommendation often contain positive comments, they don't have to strictly be about people who are unalloyed perfection. What is important is that the person be able to speak to your abilities as a scientist, your probably success in graduate school, etc. "Merely" getting an A- in their class might not mean they don't think highly of your ability to think critically about the subject, etc. - just as getting an A is not a guarantee that they do.

For reference, I ended up looking back at the people I had write my letters of recommendation - I had taken classes with two of the three, and I had gotten A's in neither class.


Paper with a spelling mistake in author affiliation in publication I published a paper late 2016. Recently I noticed that the published manuscript has  a typo error in one of the authors affiliation. But it got indexed correctly on all databases under that author. Will it be good to contact the journal now to rectify the mistake or should I not care about that much as anyway it got indexed correctly? If I contact the journal almost after an year, will it affect the reputation of the authors? Also one of the student is going to use this paper  for his PhD thesis. Considering this fact should, what is the best strategy to handle this ? Any recommendations?

I suggest doing nothing. Once a paper has been published, making further changes is a difficult thing. With electronic versions it's easy to correct the typos, but since the electronic papers have already been disseminated, lots of copies of the paper with the typo included are already worldwide. The publisher cannot recall those copies, fix the typo, and then send them out again. With paper versions there're obviously even more problems since implementing the correction is hard.

If you must make a correction, it depends on how severe it is. If it's very severe, enough so that the veracity of the results are threatened, I would contact the publisher and ask to issue a corrigendum or erratum (see this link for more details about either). But in this case it's just a typo in the affiliations. This typo makes no difference to the research conducted or the results. Nobody is likely to care, especially not the researchers who will be using the work. Many might not even notice.

tl; dr: relax! There are far better things to spend your time on.


What are the pros and cons of writing papers alone? In my field (economics), there are many co-authored papers. People are even writing some chapters of their PhD thesis with other colleagues.

I know that single-authored papers are more appreciated when you are a Ph.D. student and when you are in the job market.

Until now, I always prefered writing my papers alone. This is not because I did not want to interact with people but I did not really want to be dependant on other people during my Ph.D. (I know that some projects take so much time to be accomplished since everybody has its own research agenda.)

I wonder if writing papers (or chapters of a Ph.D. thesis) always alone is a bad sign on a CV? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

The advantage of writing with someone else, someone more experienced in particular, is that you may end up publishing quicker since you're not doing all of the work. It can also allow you to write papers that you may not be able to write on your own assuming the co-author(s) bring(s) something to the table that you can't offer. For graduate students, it is a good idea to write their first paper with someone more seasoned so that they also get advice on the logistics of publishing a paper (how to pick the right venue, how to write the cover letter when you submit, how to respond to reviewers - some of these an advisor can help with regardless of co-authorship, but a co-author will be more invested). In some fields, it may be frowned upon that you have no co-authored papers as it may signal a bad relationship with an advisor or that you are generally hard to work with. This part is completely field-dependent. The downside of having too many co-authored papers is that people may wonder whether you can work independently.


Entering the correct Publisher and Editor in a BibTex citation I would like to enter a PDF book I have purchased into a bibtex library using JabRef. JabRef requires the publisher and editor information for "Book" type entries. In the inside cover of my book I see the following useful information:

Academic Press is an Imprint of Elsevier
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Publisher: Glyn Jones
Acquisition Editor: Glyn Jones
Editorial Project Manager: Naomi Robertson
Production Project Manager: Kiruthika Govindaraju
Designer: Christian Bilbow

Some more information about the book can be found in this link
I am inclined to place Elsevier as the editor and Academic Press as the Publisher. I also know that that Academic Press is owned by Elsevier. I have looked up the individuals stated in the Editorial Project Manager and the Publisher sections and they seem to work for Elsevier at this time. However I also note that Tsinghua University Press is mentioned in the cover of the book so I am not sure what their role was and whether they need to be included in the citation.
What should I place in the Editor and Publisher fields in JabRef, respectively?

The label editors refers to human individuals, while the publisher is always a company.
First, the editors: In the context of a book, it only makes sense to talk about 'editors' if the book is an edited volume. Otherwise the people who wrote the book are 'authors'. - - In your case, there do not seem to be any 'editors' at all, but only 'authors' (X.Z., Z.C., and Y.L.). Are you sure that the editors-field is mandatory?
Secondly, the publisher: Formally, yes, the publisher is Elsevier, but if it uses an imprint (here: Academic Press), then you should name the imprint. Do not name the overarching company of the imprint. A publisher can use various imprints in order to circulate books under various trade names (each with different reputations and specificities); to a publisher, the name of the imprint is really one of the main purposes of using an imprint. Therefore, list the imprint (Academic Press), and not the overarching company (Elsevier).
(Why Tsinghua University Press is mentioned in the cover, I do not know; it might have something to do with Elsevier's co-publishing agreement with Tsinghua Univ. Press.)


If a research project leads to potential financial benefits, who owns such benefits? I am deciding if I should follow the academic path or work in industry. One of the perceived benefits of academia is the ownership of your own work, be it papers or patents. I want to know how much academia and industry differ in intellectual property (IP) rights.
If a postdoc or a principal investigator (PI) works on a project and their work leads to results that can be monetized, who owns the patent and profit derived from it?
There seem to be four players at work: the postdoc, PI, the university, and the funding agency. Will the lowest ranks of these, the postdoc, be part of the patent owners?
I want to compare this to what happens in industry, so I asked a similar question at Workplace. In case the place is important, I am mainly concerned with Europe and North America.

This isn't a full answer, since it depends on the laws and regulations of the place of employment, including university contract rules. However, note the following.
There is a big difference between holding a patent and monetizing it. The latter is a business process, not a research process, and takes lots of inputs. Money doesn't automatically flow from the possession of a patent.
Obtaining a patent in the first place can be expensive since there are (varying) regulations governing it that normally require lawyers (plural perhaps, expensive usually).
Defending a patent against someone who wants to invalidate it can be very expensive. Even defending against someone who wants to exploit it without permission or license can be very expensive.
For university employees, as for employees elsewhere, there are often contract stipulations about patents. A typical contract provision gives the responsibility for obtaining, licensing, and defending a patent to the university itself. This is normally advantageous due to the costs entailed. Large research universities may have patent attorneys on staff or on retainer for this.
The patent may be applied for in the name of the researcher, or (perhaps), jointly in the name of the researcher and the university. Other contract arrangements are possible, and I don't know all of them. The researcher may be entitled to a portion of any profits that derive from the patent, but are normally protected against losses. The last is, potentially, a big deal.
I don't know of funding agencies who get involved in this, but that isn't outside the realm of possibility.
For your own case, if you are in a situation where it matters, start with your own employment contract. Or, consult a patent attorney.
While the patent may remain in your name only, you may be required by contract to assign some of the rights to the university (or company). Search for "Patent assignment" on google or other search engine. An example explanation is here: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/patent-assignment-how-to-guide


Comparison of current work to the state of the art in a (journal) paper My last paper evaluations in journals (rejects/major reviews decisions) emphasized I should make more clear the novelty and strengths of my work in comparison to the state of the art.

Which style is preferred?

After presenting each related work, make a brief comparison with my work when possible, or:
Make a summary of the strengths/novelties of my work as the last paragraph in the "Related Works" section, and point the differences and advantages over the cited works

Here are some suggestions based on things I learnt from a seminar on academic writing I got back from just yesterday:

First, what follows assumes that the work you did is truly novel. However, unless you are doing a straight replication of some other work, then there must be some novelty in your work. Your first job is to clearly identify in your own mind what is truly novel, unique and valuable about your work. You need to be very clear about this before you can persuade anyone else.
For the literature review, rather than looking for what literature exists and then comparing your work to the literature, try to write your presentation of the literature to surround what you actually did. Think of presenting the literature like a doughnut. You want to arrange the literature to look like a doughnut with a conspicuous hole in the middle of it--the goal of your article is to fill in that hole.
In your literature review, it is extremely important to not mention research that is not part of the doughnut. I am certainly not asking you to hide any relevant research (if you try that, reviewers will skewer you); I am rather recommending that you not distract the reviewers with any work that is not directly related to the problem that your article is solving. (And to be clear, the problem you are solving should be what you consider novel and valuable, not more than that.) Your work in the literature review is absolutely not to review all the existing possibly related research; it is only to review the research that is directly related to the problem that you are trying to solve, that is, only research that is part of the doughnut with a hole in the middle of it. Less is more: that is, you do a much better job when you present the least amount of research necessary; too much research that is not directly related will lose the reviewers and make them lose sight of what you're really trying to do.
After framing the literature review section, then go back to the introduction. In the introduction, be sure to summarize in one paragraph maximum the top two points from the literature review that demonstrate that you are filling a real gap in the literature. Note that I recommend that you write this part of the introduction last--because the introduction is absolutely the most important part of the entire article, I recommend that you write it last. I do realize that some excellent writers prefer to write it first, but for less than excellent writers like myself, it is usually best to write the most important part of the article last.

I hope these general tips are helpful.


Can I add more corrections to page proofs? After my paper was accepted, I was sent page proofs with few corrections to some words and some references. Is it possible to add something to this page proofs. I want to change wording of a line that they didn’t mention so it makes better sense is that possible?

In my experience, this is usually fine, as long as your changes are fairly minor and localized.


Is there a lot of writing in PhD programs in top-rank US schools? I am an M.Sc. student in a university in a developing country, and I am  frustrated with the volume of useless writing that we are supposed to do in my program. Every single course has a class project, in which we need to do a literature review a project and then at the end need to submit a 10-15 page report. We also need to submit a thesis progress report every three months and a lot of other writing matters that I am sure will not be read by anyone.

I have no problem with writing real papers that help other researchers to improve the field. My problem is with writing useless course reports without any innovation (because of the time limits) or Progress Reports, which I am even not sure that will be read carefully by the instructor or the grader! At first I considered these things an exercise for real papers, but now I think I don't need this type of exercise any more!

I am wondering: is this large volume of writing in U.S. top schools too?

Yes, you should expect to do quite a bit of writing as part of your courses in any high-rank U.S. university.  It is, indeed, good practice, and in a good university your work should indeed receive significant scrutiny and feedback from the instructors.

Furthermore, I would not be so quick to dismiss such practice in technical writing.  First, the quality of prose that you have produced in the initial version of this question clearly indicates that you have a long way to go before you can routinely achieve a high professional standard of writing.  Second, no really good writer ever considers their art to be finished, and that includes long-experienced academics.

Do not forget that communicating your technical work effectively is just as important and difficult, if not often more so, than doing that technical work in the first place.  I know people who have run their careers into the ground from a reluctance to invest sufficiently in becoming comfortable with scientific writing.

In short: if you want to be a scientist, you've got to embrace the writing.


About completing Ph.D degree in the US Industry Fortunately I was able to continue my graduate studies at a US university, recently passing my Ph.D qualification exam, which put me one step closer to my final goal--the ultimate "Ph.D degree". But due to the limited resources at university, I was wondering whether I am able to complete my Ph.D research in materials science related industry instead of the laboratory of university, because eventually I am gonna work for the industry, I like their well disciplined as well as the goal-orientated working environment. I really hope anyone who has been through this can give me some information and useful suggestions, I am really appreciated....

I have known a number of people who have done a Ph.D. while in industry (in partnership with an advisor at an appropriate degree-granting university of course), often closely tied to the work that they are doing in industry.  This is relatively unusual, however, because it requires that one's industrial work be both at a high enough level for a Ph.D. and also able to be disclosed through scientific publication.

Thus, if you're in an industrial environment where people are publishing regularly (my company is an example of such), it's not too hard to make work, but in a "generic" industrial job it would be difficult.


Have people been prosecuted for using fake degrees? Diploma mills sell degrees at any level, ranging from bachelor to PhD. The way I see it, the sole purpose of getting milled diplomas is to deceive others. As such, I expect the consequences of getting caught to be sufficiently severe.

I wonder if there are known cases of people getting prosecuted for using such fake degrees to land a certain job. I know there are plenty of cases where said people got fired, for instance here.

I am mainly interested in the consequences of obtaining fake PhDs and subsequently using the supposedly obtained titles. In Belgium and the Netherlands, for instance, the formal title of 'Doctor' is legally protected, so unjustified use could lead to prosecution. I assume this is also the case in some other countries (examples are most welcome), since we have a lot of questions pertaining 'can I call myself X in country Y after obtaining Z'.

See here for one case:

http://www.employeescreen.com/iqblog/fake-degree-leads-to-arrest/

And here's the official announcement:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doi/downloads/pdf/pr46feraca05_26_2010.pdf

Apparently, in the US, one can be charged with "criminal possession of a forged instrument" and "offering a false instrument for filing".

However, this case concerns a fake degree from a real institution. As noted below, the Diploma Mill case is much more complex. See here for a discussion of the legal issues:

https://journals.law.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/stanford-law-policy-review/print/2010/01/gollin_21_stan._l._poly_rev._1.pdf


Should I always address both PhD supervisors in emails? I am starting my PhD and have two equivalent supervisors at different universities in different cities. I am going to city A first and then later to B and so on.
What is the etiquette regarding emails? Is it impolite to address emails to just one supervisor even if it's not an important subject like informing that I arrived in city A? Should I always send emails to both of them?

I think that asking won’t hurt. But that said, just because two PIs are jointly advising a student on a degree does not entitle one to be privy to all exchanges with the other. Or put another way: just because you have two advisors doesn’t mean you lose all rights of privacy when communicating with either one of them. Of course sometimes information concerns both, so an email addressed to both is appropriate.


Bachelor thesis: cite my own paper? I am currently writing my bachelor thesis and since my results were really good, my advisors encouraged me to write a paper about it. The paper was accepted at an international conference and will get published and in the corresponding journal.

I've really invested much time in the paper and the results, thus my thesis fell a bit short. Additionally the topics are identical, because I wrote about the results that I achieved during my work for my thesis. Therefore it is really hard to write a "completely different" text in the thesis compared to the paper.

Moreover the deadline of my thesis ends in 3 weeks...thus, my second advisor suggested to mostly copy+paste stuff of my paper, because it is good and was reviewed several times.

However, my second advisor is always relaxed and calm. I haven't talked to my first advisor about this so far...but I suspect that he would not be too happy if I copy & paste large parts.

What is the "standard" in academia for comparable situations?
Would you feel OK with copying certain parts of your paper?

Any advice would be great and really appreciated.

When it comes to copy and paste, I'd certainly have a bad feeling. Paraphrasing/rewriting is the least you can do. In general, citing own publications is common practice. Citing your own publication in your bachelor thesis is therefore, in my opinion, completely okay.

Since the research published in your paper is actually part of your thesis, everything should be fine. But in your thesis you should be able to give even more detail than in a conference paper. That way you can reference your paper, showing that you published successfully, and then show your findings to a bigger extent.

Good luck with your thesis!

Edit: Almost forgot about your first advisor: Talk to him/her! There is no reason to feel bad for asking. Ask your second advisor for advice on how to talk to your first advisor.


Why does Switzerland prevent foreign students from studying medicine? I have been browsing for information on language requirements for universities in Switzerland, and on a page studyineurope.eu I accidentally read a quite interesting note about studying medicine in Switzerland. They say:

  foreign students are not allowed to apply for study programs related to medicine, dentistry, veterinary and chiropractic in Switzerland

Now, I'm not interested in studying medicine, but I'm curious about this policy, because it seems unusual. Googling the topic gave me no results, so I thought I would ask it here. Do you know or have any idea why would they have such a bizarre policy?

In Switzerland, access to medicine, dentistry and veterinary is limited due to high demand (also for Swiss students). The test for admission is called Numerus clauses and it was introduced because the capacity of the universities are too low and demand too high. Basically they are allowed to test students if demand is more than 20% above capacity.

Regarding the information about foreign students, this does not seem to be the case. On the University of Zurich website (in German http://www.med.uzh.ch/Medizinstudium/humanmedizinstudium.html ) they state that everybody, Swiss and foreigners, have to take the test but in principle foreign students can study medicine at a Swiss university (at least according to UZH):

  Zum Medizinstudium sind Schweizerinnen und Schweizer sowie Ausländerinnen und Ausländer, die bestimmte Zulassungskriterien erfüllen müssen, zugelassen


How to spend the last months of a CS postdoc usefully before leaving academia? My current computer science postdoc ends in the summer. I'm planning to leave academia after that. For the purpose of this question, because reasons I won't go into, we may assume I will never return to academia.

One of the peculiarities of the field of computer science is that research has not really happened if one doesn't travel to present it in a conference over 4 months after the paper has been submitted.

For all relevant conferences that take place before my contract ends, the paper submission deadlines have already passed. Since I don't know what my next job will be or in what continent I'll be living, I cannot commit to traveling to a conference after my contract ends. (And also even if I could, I would not because no matter what people say, I don't want to endorse such a practice.)

I currently have one ongoing project that I've been working on with my advisor. However, it is uncertain how much time is required to finish it. In addition, there are some ongoing projects in our group that I perhaps could join, but I don't know how much I actually could contribute to those projects.

Anyway, I'd like to spend the remaining work time of my contract doing something that's worth doing, when I'm at work working. It seems that there are no good solutions in my situation. But certainly many CS postdocs have had a similar problem before. Is there a solution to this that I'm missing?

Perhaps your advisor has one or more students that could benefit from more mentoring than the advisor can supply?

Helping young graduate students learning to do research and write papers would be worth doing in its own right. If you are going on to an industry career mentoring junior programmers would be a valuable skill. It would be a different sort of experience to put on your resume when job hunting, not just more of the same.


Is it considered rude to address a PhD holder as sir or miss? I suspect I might have offended some of my professors/lecturers and tutors by calling them sir or miss despite them holding a PhD.

Edit (info provided in comment): I'm from Malaysia. We have our own variation of English called Manglish (Malaysian English). So ma'am instead of miss then for female college educators?

I'm a male PhD holder from a private university in Malaysia. This answer is based on my personal experiences.

It is very common for me and my male colleagues to be addressed as 'Sir', and I have not personally come across any (local) academic staff for whom this has been a problem. Generally, 'Sir' is considered suitably respectful, especially as it's pretty often used as a translation for the Malay 'Tuan' or various Chinese dialect honorifics which could alternatively be translated to 'teacher' or 'professor'.

This is slightly different in universities with significant foreign teaching staff (I also have experience with 2 such examples), where some staff take more notice of these titles, but even in those situations I've not yet seen any academic staff take offense. It's easy enough to introduce ourselves to students with something like "Hi, my name is So-and-so and I'd like to be addressed as Dr. So".

That being said, please do not use 'Miss'. That's only partially acceptable in very Chinese-centric institutions, and not at all acceptable outside those. 'Ma'am' is much better, even though not as well known locally.

Finally, considering our local culture, there's probably a hard age limit above which you'd wish to be very careful how you address a teaching staff. Generally speaking once the academic staff is mid-40s or older (or old enough to be your parent) you should be more careful in including titles. The younger staff just starting out generally do not mind.


Should I justify an average GRE score with a good excuse? I received a 4/6 (59%) for my GRE analytical writing score. I would have scored higher had it not been for the fact that I type on an alternate keyboard layout (i.e. not QWERTY) and had to use QWERTY to type the essays. Before taking the test, I looked into getting approved to use my alternate layout, but it seemed like a good amount of time and paperwork would be involved, so I didn't go through with it.

Should I mention this in my graduate applications? For reference, this is for application to United States PhD programs in physics. My GRE verbal / quantitative scores and GRE subject test scores are all much better (>90%).

I don’t think you need or should mention it.

First of all, 4/6 is not a bad score, even for a PhD application. Moreover, Writing is probably the least important section of the GRE test, at least for a physics major.

Second, the professors who review your application would expect to see other more meaningful indicators of your research potential, and thus, explaining why you don’t have a higher score will make you look petty. In fact, try not to talk about your Writing score because the reviewers might not care about it at all, unless you mention it.

After all, the rule of thumb is to focus on the strength of your application instead of explaining the weaknesses.


Which blacklists of poor quality scientific journals are run formally by a government agency? I read on Nature News China introduces sweeping reforms to crack down on academic misconduct
 (mirror) 2018-06-08:

  The policy also states that MOST [the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology] will establish a blacklist of ‘poor quality’ scientific journals, including domestic and international titles. Scientists who publish in these journals will receive a warning, and those papers will not be considered in assessments for promotions, jobs and grants. A couple of such blacklists already exist, but rarely are they run formally by a government agency.

Which blacklists of poor quality scientific journals are run formally by a government agency (aside from the blacklist created for the policy presented in this news article)?

Here's one:

The Ministry of Education (MOE) of Malaysia have blacklisted (at least) four publishers. I don't know how to find the official source, but the list can be accessed from at least two university websites: Universiti Utara Malaysia and University Teknologi Malaysia.


Graduate Program - Re-application etiquette? I'm re-applying to several of my top choice graduate programs (comp. lit. programs in the U.S., specifically) after being rejected last year. I'm making some substantial improvements to my application materials (writing samples, personal statements, etc.) and applying with a somewhat different and more clearly articulated focus.
From other posts I've gathered that re-applying to a program doesn't necessarily lower chances of admission. However, how advisable/appropriate is it to acknowledge the prior rejection while re-applying? What about contacting the department as to what the weakness were in the prior application - is that advisable, or even possible?
Does anyone have general advice for the re-application process?

This can be subtle and depends on the schools. In particular, it might depend on the size of the institution and on how many people apply each year. It may well be that no one remembers an earlier application (large school) or that they do.

I can't recommend which of the following might be best in any given situation, but consider, at least, the following.

One strategy is just to strengthen your application in all ways that you can and apply just as if you never had done so. Of course, you may need to also account properly for the intervening year. This strategy has you not mentioning the prior history with the institution. Stress your strengths and your likelihood of success in your application and have letters of recommendation that support that idea.

But, in an opposite case, if you think you need to address the fact that you were denied entry, then, I think, you should also speak about what is different not. What has changed from a year ago, not just what is good, now. I worry that if you go too far with this it sounds like begging. But don't just mention it unless you also explicitly give the evidence that supports why they should make a different judgement this year.

If you want to contact the prior committee for information about what failed you in the past, you may get a response or not. But make it distinct from the new application itself. It may be that it was nothing more than the fact that the competition was (and remains) fierce for graduate admissions in some places. This varies by field and by time, of course.

But you can probably get a lot of information about what went wrong last time from your current professors, without even contacting the other institutions directly. Find a trusted professor and show him or her any rejection letters you got along with the material you used to support the application, especially letters of intent and statement of purpose documents. They have been through this, and may be involved, themselves, in such decisions at the current institution and can, perhaps, see how things will be read and interpreted.


Having trouble getting my "assistant" to put in work. How do I tell him to help out more without being rude? I was recently asked to train a new undergrad research assistant in the lab I work in. I was then told this new lab member is my assistant. He has no experience working in the lab before this, but I had been there for about a year before he came in. We have been working together for a few months now, but I am stuck.

I did have the chance to talk with him more, and he told me that he is only doing research to get a paper published. After all, if you complete research and do not get published, what is the point? I was a little bit taken back when I heard this, though not surprised. Of course almost every researcher dreams of being published, but me personally, I truly want to learn. I am not boasting and trying to make myself look better, but I personally believe my experience as a researcher will serve me well in my future career. If I do get published, all the better! I do strive to have enough data for publication, but I put my learning first.

After hearing this, my opinion of John changed, though I try very hard not to make it personal. I try very hard to focus on the research, and put all of my energy towards making my project successful. He always mentions to me how his schedule is very full, that he is always busy, but at the same time, I also struggle in giving him work to do. I do not want for him to take credit for something I did (in the long run), but I am afraid that because I may appear weak to him, this will most likely happen.

We had a meeting with our PI a few weeks back, and though John had mentioned to me he would be available for work that morning... once our meeting concluded, and several alarms later (that the professor subtly hinted his annoyance with the constant going off of his alarms), he mentioned to me that he has to get going. He gave me one idea that we could do to improve our project, but then as he walked away, said that his schedule is starting to become busy. I am busy too, I am overwhelmed sometimes, but I simply cannot stand the complaining anymore. I would like to tell him in a nice way, that if we are to work on this project together, he must put in the same amount of work that I do. However, the professor has mentioned he is to be my assistant, so I am not sure if he does have to put in as much work as I do?

I am really stuck on how to stand my ground and not appear weak, but at the same time, I do not want to be mean/a jerk. I am also wondering whether I am just putting John in a negative light because I see him as competition? Any thoughts?

Disclaimer lable: 100% organic locally grown opinion

I think there are a few aspects you need to reflect on.

First, it's fine for different people to create a joint effort with different motives. As long as the motives move the main goal forward. In addition, just because he wanted to publish a paper does not imply that he does not value learning. If his saying made you assume that he is just on for a free ride, I think that can be too premature a conclusion.

Second, learn how to manage people. Don't expect them just to fit in perfectly with your schedule and work style. Set up ground rules, lay out tasks, and negotiate on the ways of reporting. A very good feature about this case is you know his Achilles' tendon (or hanging carrot if you're a glass half-full kind of person): Name on the publication. Lay out all the works or tasks or learning for him and demand him to complete them on an agreed time or his name will not be listed as an author, but in the acknowledgement. Be civil about it and listen to what he says.

Third, sort out your own conflict. First:

  How do I tell him to help out more without being rude?

And then:

  but at the same time, I also struggle in giving him work to do. I do
  not want for him to take credit for something I did

Actually do you need an assistant or not? If yes, then make sure the terms are clear and he followed through. If he did, and ended up in the paper, he will eventually take some credits of yours AND you will also take some credits of his. This is what collaboration entails, at the end we have a general idea who did what, but it's inevitable to have some shared credit. If you're completely possessive about your work, and you think that he is taking advantage of you, then you should consider if you need an assistant or if you should decline this responsibility assigned by your supervisor.

Lastly, strengthen yourself up. Listen to this:

  I am afraid that because I may appear weak to him, this will most
  likely happen.

What about you that is weak? Why do you just label yourself weak from the get go? Personality? Physique? French? The only thing you need to be stronger than him in this case is your knowledge in this project. All others are side matters and you should not place yourself in the victim seat. An effective manager does not have to have strong personality, he/she just need to be fair, just, and remain clear and open in communication.

Lastly lastly, you should also talk to your supervisor for advice and tips. Work on it to create a happier collaboration experience.


How to find references for terminology? I'm just trying to find a reference for what the term "library" or "framework" means in programming.

Are there any ways to find such terminology in papers? I've searched many papers, they all use the term "library" or "framework", but they don't define what the word means. Am I doing something wrong?

I'm guessing it would not be okay to define the word myself, but that I'll need a reference for it.

If you have institutional access to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library you can find the definitions given by various standards.

Both framework and library are present in several standards. For example, from IEEE Std 610.12-1990, IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology:

  software library
  A controlled collection of software and related documentation designed to aid in software development, use, or maintenance. Types include master library, production library, software development library, software repository, system library. Syn: program library.