Leaving out unhelpful advisor from acknowledgements? I’m getting towards the end of a long project and am required to write a dissertation (Bachelor of Engineering) and we have been advised that it’s a good idea to include an acknowledgements page¹. What I’m wondering is: Is it considered a requirement to thank your academic supervisor, regardless of whether they actually helped? My supervisor was not particularly helpful and I ended up not bothering to ask them questions about half way through the project. Is it considered poor form to leave them out of the acknowledgements?

My original question was similar to a previous question asking about whether they should publish a PhD Thesis without acknowledgements due to difficulties with supervisors. My question is slightly different in that I would like to include an acknowledgements page to thank family and friends etc. This would make it more obvious that the supervisor has been left off the list of people who have been acknowledged.

¹ The guidance provided says:

  It is common courtesy that you acknowledge assistance received whilst undertaking the project and preparing the dissertation. You should consider carefully all forms of assistance received and these may encompass academic, technical, secretarial, administrative and personal assistance (e.g. family and friends). A set of simple statements is usually appropriate and adequate acknowledgement should not normally exceed one page.

From your comment:

  ereading the guidance provided, it says the following: 11.6.5 Acknowledgements It is common courtesy that you acknowledge assistance received whilst undertaking the project and preparing the dissertation. You should consider carefully all forms of assistance received and these may encompass academic, technical, secretarial, administrative and personal assistance (e.g. family and friends). A set of simple statements is usually appropriate and adequate acknowledgement should not normally exceed one page.

As your academic supervisor is the one that probably will sign off on your dissertation (if that is the custom where you are) and at the very least, filled the necessary role of having a supervisor - then at the very least, he/she has helped in an administrative sense. However, consider that there may have been a lot of activity 'behind the scenes'.

But, it is always polite to acknowledge your supervisor in a positive manner - realistically though, it is the content of your work that will matter.


How can I improve the effectiveness of my literature searches? OK, I know this is a pretty basic question but I haven't been able to come up with any really satisfactory solutions. (I have searched around on this site, but none of the related questions precisely answer my problem.) I'm a first-year PhD student working mostly in evolution, phylogenomics, and conservation biology. I'm looking for basic tips on how I can become more effective at finding papers when I need to research a subject for any of the usual reasons like developing a methodology or drafting a proposal.

Right now I seem to be pretty bad at this. My search strategy pretty much consists of putting likely keywords into Web of Science and Google Scholar, and then looking at whatever papers appear that seem like they might be relevant to my query. Frequently this fails to yield satisfactory results, even when the subjects that I am researching seem like they ought to have a significant body of existing work behind them. I know I must be able to do better, because I see other people coming up with papers that I don't seem to be able to find.

What are some basic best practices for conducting a literature search? I feel like this is a big gap in my existing skillset, and something that will really hold me back if I don't get on top of it soon. Again, I realize that this is a pretty remedial-level question and I appreciate your patience and guidance here.

Literature search, to me, is like the recipe of potato salad: everyone has at least one, and they always claim that theirs is the best. In fact, we just use what we feel comfortable and, so far, has not caused any major meltdown. So, bear in mind that these are just what work for me, and you should modify them along the way.

Schedule a meeting with a librarian, now

Talk to a librarian at your institute. In our school we have a medical librarian and perhaps you may find one specialized in your field as well. They are trained to locate useful information and are up to date with related technology. Give them a clear field of study and even a gist of your research, and ask for a good list of databases. I may go so far to say that a good database list is half of the game. Apart from the list, learn Boolean and learn them well, pick up a good electronic reference manager software. Your library should have these resources.

Also, ask your library if they have any library consortium. Some major institutes have large amount of subscriptions which open the gateway to many full articles. If your institute is tight on budget, a lot of the time you can just find abstracts sans full text. Having a consortium library card may grant you access to other bigger institutes' library, in which you can print or photocopy their articles. On the same note, ask for an introduction on doing inter-library loan and how much you're supposed to pay.

Learn systematic review

Systematic review, simply put, is performing literature review as a scientific research. It's problem-based, protocol-focused, and the process is meticulously documented and hence readily replicable. There are plenty of publications about this skill. I have been using Booth's Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review and so far it serves me well.

Focus on the chapters about question formulation and ways of collecting data. I think even we are not heading for a formal systematic review, learning how to keep a clear search records, draft a conceptual framework, and maintain a paper trail would still be very beneficial.

Understand the cataloging system

In biomedical field (where I work) we have MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) which shows the hierarchy and grouping of keywords. Consult the librarian and see if such thing exists in your field.

Read a few systematic reviews or literature reviews in your own field

To get the general picture, I actually first start from Wikipedia and encyclopedia. If you already have some background knowledge, you can probably skip the first phase. After meeting with the librarian, use the new-learned technique to find a few literature reviews or systematic reviews (hereafter "review") in your field. Review articles provide general scopes and a rich pool of keywords for your later use. You can also perform a reference tracing technique on these articles because they usually have unreasonably nice and comprehensive bibliography.

Spend some time with the online search engine and really read the "read me first" and "how to use this site" links. Learn how to massively download cited articles from a hosted article and export them to your manager software of choice.

Another good reason to start with these articles is that they are all required to report the information retrieval in details. Which engines were used, how articles were screened, what were the criteria, etc. You can get a good sense of how researchers do it (or appear to want to be seen doing in order to look trustworthy.)

Start casual

Through this snowballing technique, a small body of articles should start to form. Pay attention to their use of words, keywords, etc. It's still somewhat a toying phase but you should start using your tools seriously. The only recommendation from me is at least one electronic storage/manager software should be used. Make sure you can integrate this software into the word processing software in a harmonious manner, and be able to export a formatted document on the fly. For the rest, it's personal choice: index cards, Post-it notes on the wall, writing on a poster size paper, etc.

Now, many fun tools are available... mind map allows you to cluster the ideas and words, citation map allows you to trace the ancestors (cited) and offspring (citing) articles of any indexed articles, word cloud allows you to identify the most frequently used words, some of these functions are also embedded in manager software such as Qiqqa, which is largely free and powerful.

Then get serious

After a week or so, you should have a good command of the tools, the software, the databases, and the keywords. Now you just need a question. Personally, all literature review should be problem-based. If someone asked you to "go and understand the field," that is just simply absurd. It's like searching an encyclopedia without anything to search; while there may be people who enjoy randomly reading wikipedia entries (I do, to confess), but that's not the best use of PhD time. Isolate the questions from your study before doing any literature search.

Now, what to search? I work in biomedical field so your and my paradigms may differ. For me, I usually go by this sequence as a starter:

Definitions: How does my field define XYZ? What are the controversy of the definitions?

Operationalization: How does my field capture/measure different contexts? How do we approximate "poverty"? How do we call a good "user experience"? etc.

Data source/Research design: What does my field do when they study the phenomenon of XYZ?

Analysis: What is some specific analysis for a certain type of design?

In a way, use the first literature review to solidify and fortify the understanding of every single phrase in your research questions and specific aims. Then expand to other questions (you WILL have branching questions along the way, trust me. It'd be hard to suppress them). Stop when you feel you have somehow exhausted the answers, and/or you're happy with the results.

Never start a literature review without a question, or you'll find yourself still only reading paper 18 months into the PhD, and that is probably not good.

PhD is not a between-people competition

You mentioned that sometime you saw others finding stuff that you did not. I'd suggest just ask them how they did it. Just because you asked them doesn't mean you're worse than they are. If they found something you didn't, get the references, read them and incorporate them into your manager, and instantly you're as well informed, if not better informed.

Talk to experts

Find some prolific faculty members and researchers, and ask them for tips. Collectively you should be able to get something more out of just talking to the librarian. Experienced researchers also tend to know more about the seminal work. And if you can get that list, compounded with the ability to trace the work's offspring, you can pretty much recreate the family tree of a particular key research theme.

Use crowd-sourcing

Websites like Mendeley and Research Gate utilize social bookmark approach and you can refer to other people's collections of articles/citations. If you have a good peer in your team, you may also divvy up the work and then evaluate the findings together, exchanging references, etc. Also some young researchers may be on other social sites such as Reddit (but refrain from checking funny videos) or crowd sourcing sites such as GitHub... you may consider setting up an account and set up a chat thread or a project for others to contribute.

Exploit all services of journals

There are at least a few services that you should see if your field's prime journals provide:

1. Mail alert: Some journals or search engines will send you e-mail when an article containing any of your preset keywords is available. Get like a weekly notice from them, and you can keep yourself somewhat up to date.

2. Twitter: Same as above, but through Twitter.

3. Digest: Some journals may boil down their published works into short pieces then feature them in the form of an online billboard. Occasionally a third party may do that as well for a nominal fee. For example, MDLinx summarizes key medical journal findings and e-mail them to subscribers as a 5-minute digest every day.

Pay attention to "grey literature"

Notice that in some fields there is a tendency to favor publishing results that are statistically significant. Relying solely on literature database is only unbiased in the domain of the published literature. Sometimes, grey literature such as conference abstracts, documentaries, unpublished papers, white papers, proof-of-concepts, blog posts, grant proposal archives, trial registries, patents, personal communications, and general mass media may needed to be explored as well. Each field has their own literature graveyard and atypical channels of documentation, you'll need to talk to some specialists in your field.

Be always on

To me, literature search is really more of a lifestyle change rather than an activity. Now I have camera to take snapshots of posters, take verbal and written notes. I bring index cards for writing. Etc. When talking to people I often drive the topic to what cool papers they recently found. That's my best way to deal with potentially tricky water cooler conversation; either I'll learn something or they'll leave me alone.


Editor rejected paper because of insufficient reviews I received a decision notice on a paper this morning. Reviewer 1 gave a positive review, suggesting relatively minor cosmetic adjustments, etc. However, the editor was apparently unable to obtain a second review, replying:

  ... the Editors have decided that your manuscript cannot be accepted for publication in XXXXX, as we have been unable to secure enough agreements from peer reviewers to examine your submission.

I admit that I'm puzzled by this response, and am curious what if any response from me could be useful. Is it possible that the paper was just not a good fit for the journal? If so, I wish the editor had rejected it right away. I'm curious if anyone has another explanation or suggestions for steps forward. And if the step forward is just "find a different journal" that's kind of what I'm expecting at this point.

It seems to me that the editor asked people to review your article, but not enough people were willing to do so. Apparently, the editor thought your article had enough of a chance not to give you a desk-reject, but your article (or your abstract) was not exciting enough to convince potential reviewers to review it.

Maybe it is not the article/abstract, but your article is dealing with a very narrow subject, thus limiting the potential reviewers. You had the bad luck that all of those few potential reviewers were all busy.

I don't think there is much you can do, other than have a good look at the abstract, and see if it is excessively boring. If that is not the case, then you probably just had bad luck.


Normal length of time taken to arrive at a phd admission decision? I would like to know, if possible, how long it takes on the average to reach a first admission decision for doctoral programs?

Let us say a doctoral program promises to inform the applicants of the outcome three months after the deadline for submitting application packages. Does this really mean that to reach a decision requires exactly three months?

In my experience it's common for academic departments to have a graduate admissions committee that meets periodically to make admissions decisions and decisions on financial aid.  Sometimes decisions on financial aid are made separately from decisions on admission.

In our department we review applications as they come in and typically respond with a decision on admission within a few weeks.  However, decisions on financial aid are made only a few times per year.  For example, we'll meet in early April to decide on assistantship awards for the fall semester.

Under this system, if you applied for admission now, we'd review your application and reach an admissions decision by the end of January, and you'd either be told "no", or "you've been admitted but we'll make decisions about financial aid in early April."

I've seen other institutions where all of the applications are held until one meeting where both admissions and financial aid decisions are made at the same time.  Under that system, you probably wouldn't hear anything at all until the committee met and made its decisions.

A couple of other comments:

Applications are often sent to a central office ("graduate studies" or something similar)  and then distributed to the departments to make admissions decisisons.  In my experience, there are many incomplete applications received by our graduate office.  We don't see them in the department until and unless all of the required materials have been submitted.  You can and probably should check with the office where you sent your application to make sure that the complete application has been received.
Christmas (December 25) and New Year's Day (January 1) are important holidays in the US.  Traditionally, fall semester classes end before Christmas and spring semester classes don't start until after New Year's Day.  Many colleges and universities are effectively closed for a few weeks around these holidays.  You shouldn't expect to hear anything from any university in the US until after New Year's Day because of these holidays.


How to find the state of the art algorithm for a specific problem Are there any good methods for doing this? I can find papers with algorithms, but they usually do not show their computational results with the same problem sets and the publishing year of two papers is usually different so they will most likely use different equipment for solving the problems.
Edit:
By problem, I am referring also to the specific size of the problem, memory usage and other characteristics of the problem.

I generally go through review papers in the field and try to cite them as well if they have any sentence in the paper "claiming that the previous method is SOTA".
There are also benchmark sites.
Famous datasets even have their personal benchmarks linked to their sites.
You could use research gate or any other forum and ask a question there.
You could try a keyword search on google scholar and see if any paper claims to do so.

Regarding the difference in setting, generally the "well-acclaimed" SOTA papers don't have these issues. At least that's what I've noticed majorly in my field.
If that is the case, then I suggest making a small study within the paper covering all the results in the different settings. (Please do correct me if I'm wrong here).


Is it reasonable to ask for access to an advisor/supervisor during summer time? At the end of a recent lengthy meeting with my supervisor, in preparation for my end of year GRC (Graduate Research Committee) meeting, I asked about if I would be able to contact them during the summer holiday period in relation to my research.

Background is that I am a History Masters research student and as I'm completing it part-time I'll be doing as much work during the summer months (maybe even more as one of my major visits to archives is during this period) as during the academic year.

My supervisor was open to me emailing him during the summer and submitting any written work I may have completed. As it was we were finishing the meeting we did not elaborate on exact details. In my own case this will suffice as I am working on my project on my own with my supervisor.

While I just asked if I could keep in contact with my supervisor and that's probably the best thing to do in most cases, I am interested is it reasonable to request that you can have access to an advisor/supervisor during summer time (either by email or face to face)?

Supervisors are employees just like everyone else. They have duties (to supervise you), and they have vacations and business trips. Both vacations and business trips (conferences, field trips, probably archive work in your line) will be more common during summer. Specifically for academia, many people will use summer to spend more time working from home while they don't have to give lectures, but they may designate certain days when they are in the office, specifically to meet with everyone on a single day.

That said, I see no reason whatsoever why email contact should decrease during summer, of course except for known vacation or trip periods, where everyone can agree that emails may take a little longer to be answered.

Face-to-face contact is also important, but given that many people will spend more time at home, there is a case to be made that you may not meet quite as frequently with your advisor during summer, even after accounting for vacations/trips.

Nevertheless, I see no reason why a request for email contact and (possibly somewhat less frequent) face-to-face meetings should be unreasonable. It would of course be optimal to work out a schedule before summer, taking vacations etc. into account. "I'll check in every day with a short email, and I understand if you reply later to email questions. Could we set up at least some face-to-face meetings, perhaps not every week as during the semester, but every other week, except for the week you are at a conference?"

After all, your supervisor will be just as interested in hearing from you and knowing that you don't spend all of summer at the beach...


Why do Computer Science degrees contain a high proportion of mathematics? About 17 years ago I attended a top 10 UK university to study for a degree in Computer Science.

Mathematics had never been a particularly strong point for me. However I (just) had the required A-Level qualification to be accepted for the course without any issue.

After two terms I dropped out and switched to another top 10 UK University to study for an Information Technology degree. The reasons I dropped out from the former were simply because I found the Mathematical lectures unbelievably difficult. The university did not (in my opinion) provide good support to people who weren't strong in this area. However I also never understood why this level of mathematics was being taught in the first place.

I recently looked at some lecture notes provided on the former universities website for the current year. And sure enough, the level of complexity seems the same.

When I switched to doing an Information Technology degree part of my logic was that the outcome would be a more practical/useful set of skills to actually develop software, along with the logical thinking required (which in my view requires little mathematical knowledge). For me this has worked well as I've had a good career as a software developer since graduating. I've never found any of my work requires much maths, beyond that of a GCSE/A-level level of complexity.

Interestingly, looking on LinkedIn, a huge number of people at the former university went on to be software engineers or similar roles. The salaries at the organisations these people work seem commensurate to the role I am currently in.

Given this, I'm wondering what the end-goal and purpose of teaching that complex maths is on CS degrees? I understand some people will go into roles working with hardware, or even producing software where there are complex mathematical elements. But this seems to be in the minority - by a very big margin - in terms of what people actually end up doing. I have also spoken to people about careers they've gone into as opposed to just looking on LinkedIn etc.

It seems to me that CS courses are teaching skills which - whilst relevant - are not as relevant as they might once have been. If this is the case then why has nobody addressed it? It seems absurd.

My experience of this is based on two top 10 UK universities but having looked at some others (in the UK and USA) this seems to be a general case.

If people are going into roles which require that level of mathematical knowledge, what are those roles? Because I can't see a lot of evidence of this actually happening after people have graduated.

Oxford University’s overview of their CS degree says it all:

Computer Science is about understanding computer systems and networks at a deep level. Computers and the programs they run are among the most complex products ever created; designing and using them effectively presents immense challenges. Facing these challenges is the aim of Computer Science as a practical discipline, and this leads to some fundamental questions:

How can we capture in a precise way what we want a computer system to do?

Can we mathematically prove that a computer system does what we want it to?

How can computers help us to model and investigate complex systems like the Earth’s climate, financial systems or our own bodies?

What are the limits to computing? Will quantum computers extend those limits?

In other words, the language of computer science is math, not C++. If you were looking for vocational training in computers then CS Is probably an inappropriate choice.


Is it possible to co-finance a personal grant in Europe if it doesn't meet salary conditions of the country? If one obtains a personal postdoc grant to cover a couple years of research as a full-time employee, but the value of the grant is only 60% of the union-stipulated wages in the country in which you wish to tenure it (and additionally does not include social benefits), what alternatives are available?

I can only fathom three choices, none of which seem appealing/feasible:

Decline the grant in favour of working on an existing project that covers full wages. (That seems wasteful and to forego an opportunity to further one's career opportunities as a researcher who attracts external funding.)
Convince the department to co-finance the remaining 40% of the wage as an "income supplement" out of their operational budget (That doesn't seem very likely.)
To obtain another grant from some other funding agency, on short notice, to co-finance the grant. (I'm not even sure that such actions exist, particularly at this time of year.)

As usual, rules on this sort of thing will vary from country to country and from grant agency to agency.

However, all three options that you mention sound plausible to me. To go over them:

  Decline the grant (...)

Sure. Nobody can fault you for declining a grant that pays so much below standard salaries. Honestly, unless I had no other options, this is likely what I would do. I am not sure I would call it "wasteful" to decline a grant that, honestly, sounds like a terrible option to begin with.

  Convince the department to co-finance (...)

This is indeed not unheard of. Of course, whether you will be able to convince the department to do so largely depends on how much they want you to be there, what their regulations are, and if they have money to spare. I have seen this sort of co-financing mostly in cases where the department and the applicant were already in longer contact, and the public grant was mostly acquired as a way to make a move that was happening anyway cheaper for the department (that is, it was planned that the candidate joins them anyway, but now a part is paid via an external grant). If the department had no intentions to hire you without the grant it becomes substantially less likely that they will be willing or able to chip in.

  (...) obtain another grant (...)

This sounds like another plausible option, but check the regulations of both grant agencies. In many cases, full-time personal grants are exclusive - that is, you can have only one at a time, even if the stipend is very low. However, it may still be an option to apply not for a second personal grant, but for a regular research project that allows you to pay a salary supplement for yourself. Whether this is possible again depends on the grant agency. For instance, the SNF in Switzerland as a rule never allows to pay any money to yourself as part of a regular research project. The FWF in Austria, on the other hand, is perfectly fine with this as long as the rules of the host institution (regarding, for instance, maximum employment), are followed. That being said, with this option you should probably expect to live off the 60% stipend for a while, as the application procedure for grants tends to take a while.


How important is a online reputation for academics? I catch myself too often thinking about how to become more visible and present online instead of doing Great Research™.

But how important is it to be very visible online for academics and researcher anyway?

Here are my assumptions, numbered only for easy referencing.

The bad:

Tenure committees and such don't care for twitter follower
Public bodies that provide funding don't care how many people have you in your circle
Colleagues might look down on you, because your blog posts are not scientific enough

The good:

Writing a blog can be a good exercise in writing about your topic
If you are looking for a job or position, it can be helpful iff your potential boss is also an 'onliner'
It makes it easier to network and getting in contact with other people who work on the same problems
It might help you to get work, invited to talks and book contracts in the normal world.
(For CS) Uploading and advertising your code will make your research results more used

Are my assumptions correct? What did I miss? How do handle your online reputation?

Generally speaking, online presence is not so important with respect to your career advancement in academia. Your professional stature is based on your publications, presentations, connections, and ability to obtain grant funding. When you look for positions, you'll be judged primarily on these criteria; blogs and media appearances are a very minor factor, if considered at all.

That being said, it may be beneficial in other respects. A strong online presence can significantly boost your visibility to those outside the academic environment. This can lead to consultation opportunities, collaboration opportunities with those outside of academia (think business ventures), and possibly job leads in industry. To the extent you're interested in those, you may want to invest in creating a strong online presence to help you advertise yourself.


Plural or singular in CV section titles? In a CV for graduate school application, should one use plural or singular for the section titles? My main confusions are at

Research Experience or Research Experiences
Publication or Publications (more than one paper listed)
Education or Educations (two universities listed)
Honor & Award or Honors & Awards (more than one award listed)

There is no general answer, I'll answer for the specific cases:

Research Experience (singular)
Publications (plural), or "List of Publications"
Education (singular). A better term is "Academic Record" IMO.
Honors and Awards (plural)

In points 2 and 4, going for plural makes sense because there is more than one publication and more than one award involved. In pt. 3 there may be more than 1 institution involved, but it doesn't say "institutions", it says "education", which means sum total of everything you obtained by going in these institutions. In point no. 1 also, the phrase "research experience" talks about all the research you have done in your academic career. "Experiences" would refer to the experiences you had during the course of your research. That's not what they are asking for!

Hope that helps :)


Will turn down a graduate (Master's) program have effect on my application for the same program? I have asked a similar question.

Is it bad to apply for the same Master's degree program in consecutive years?

  If I failed the first year, will it be a negative factor for my
  application the next year (say if I could been admitted originally,
  but because I failed the last application the year before so I am not
  accepted)?

But what if it is the other way around. I turn down the admission to do a gap year thing and reapply the same program the next year. Will my rejection in the first year be bad for my application for the same program the next year?

In most programs, each application is judged on its merits. That said, however, it is likely that a little note will be appended to your file to state that you were accepted into the program last year and that you rejected the offer. How this note will be judged will depend on the admissions committee, of course. However, unless you can provide reasonable evidence explaining your rejection of the offer of admission, I would imagine that it would count negatively in your favour. I suggest that you provide this reason in the statement of purpose.

@Buzz has commented that your question about deferred admission is pertinent here. If there is no reason for you to reject the offer outright, then a program that offers you the chance to defer acceptance should be the way to go. This is usually the case for students wishing to do a "gap year thing".


Can I upload journal articles to a private git repo? I have some journal articles that are obviously copyrighted in some form that I am not allowed to share with people who don't have a license.

I also have a private student git-repo. I want to know if it's okay to upload these articles to the repo, considering the repo is private?

I store all important papers in a cloud, where I am the only one (beside the operating people) that has access. There are several such cloud solutions around, such as from DropBox, Microsoft and many others.
Unless there is an explicit statement that does not allow this, it is perfect (and until now, there has not been such a statement). The key is that you restrict access to yourself.
I would not use git for your case; it is intended for software development.


Is it okay to let body text follow immediately after intermediate level headings? Let's say we have a thesis/scientific paper with a sectioning depth of three [chapter, section, subsection]. I already often wondered:

Is it okay to have text outside of the lowest level, i. e. subsections?

For instance giving the introduction to / overview of a chapter is that done right after the chapters headline (or sections headline) or in the first subsection appearing in the same chapter?

In my view, it is perfectly acceptable. It often helps readability, and logically it makes sense (a good example is the "introduction before subsections" that you cited).

That said, some people hate it, and I have already encountered referees who wanted me to change it. I haven't been able to infer a reasonable motivation up to now, so I would be interested in reading arguments in its favor.

Academic papers typically have no table of contents, so there is even less motivation for enforcing a strict tree-like structure.


Do the disciplines of my PhD thesis and of my MA thesis have to be identical? I graduated in history, with a specialization in cultural studies. Now I want to pursue a PhD in literature. Is this possible? What are the potential obstacles and how can I avoid them?

I think there is no such requirement to stay in the same field anywhere, unless you want to work with the same advisor who has narrow interests. In general, you can work on anything you like as long as you can find an advisor who will support and help you and you meet entry requirements for the doctorate. It is good to still be a bit of a generalist at the MS level, but doctoral studies will pretty much force you into a narrow field. There are some exceptions, of course.

Since you are staying in the humanities, there shouldn't be a lot of problems, provided you've studied in the US, at least. You probably have sufficient background in most of the required topics. You might need a course or two that a lit major might have taken as an undergrad, but I suspect it isn't extensive. Again, in the US, these are probably open to grad students.

Outside the US it might be a different story, and I can't speak to that. It would depend on the entry requirements and finding an advisor.


Retake the math GRE... as a grad student, preparing to transfer? I'm currently a first year PhD student at a respectable but not top-ranked math program. I'm also confident that I am among the top three first year students in my program. As an undergrad I went to a somewhat prestigious liberal arts school and was valedictorian of my graduating class. I did a little bit of research and took a fair number of upper level classes (although no grad courses) along the way.

In hindsight I can see where the problems lay with my application. As the title of this post suggests, I got a mediocre score on the math GRE. In addition to this, I was kind of a late bloomer as a mathematics student. I didn't start taking many upper level courses until my junior year. The people who wrote my recommendations were not necessarily all that famous either.

So I got into all the programs that I thought I had a good chance of getting into but none of the programs that I thought would be more of a stretch. The one I'm currently attending gave me a good fellowship and I've been doing very well here so far (passing qualifying exams, taking lots of classes and doing well in them). But I honestly feel like I'm not being challenged quite enough.

Long story short, I screwed up on the GRE when I first took it and I want to try to transfer into a top-ranked program now. I've heard plenty of times that top programs will throw out applications with low math GRE scores. But does the same standard hold for grad students applying to transfer? Will programs throw out applications from current grad students if their GRE scores are too low? To be honest I do feel a bit silly thinking about retaking it. Of course, any advice on transferring between programs in general will be greatly appreciated.

Among elite and maybe even top-20-or-so math grad schools, many use the math subject test GRE as an easy, automated filter... even while recognizing to some degree that it doesn't really test what we'd like... because even after applying that slightly unreasonable filter, there are still enough good candidates.

So, yes, if you have a really-mediocre score, there would be advantages in re-taking.

But/and, as in comments, letters of recommendation are far more important once you've gotten past some initial filtering. The letters should be from people who can be believed to understand what a serious grad program in math is about, e.g., by having gone through one themselves, and they should say that you'll excel.

Meanwhile, in contrast to undergrad institutions, there really is no notion of "transferring" to another grad program in math. Nothing gets easier. You will be expected to have excelled in the year you've spent already, which it seems you have. You'd not get to really compete directly with people with fresh B.S. degrees, since, in effect, "performance/showing-potential" is prorated on what chances you've had, how much time you've had, to demonstrate it. This is reasonable, in many regards.

In summary: yes, re-take the GRE, to overcome initial filters. After that, it's about letters of recommendation, and (for me) your personal statement. That is, explaining that you got a late start (which can easily happen to sensible people) can account for some things. True, some admissions committee people might be looking for people who've "always known" that they wanted to do mathematics, but that can't be helped.


Social etiquette for interacting with PhD peers who complain *a lot* People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally?

Some of these people are my friends and some are no more than peers. In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints. Generally, much of this advice does not help.

For now, I try to avoid social gatherings with a high concentration of people from my program. When they get together, the complaints take over conversation. At the department, I can spot someone (or a group) having a stress crisis from a distance, and I keep my distance.

I certainly hope that this climate does not continue into faculty life.

[Migrated from other question here. There were some useful pieces of advice, so I hope that respondents will move their points]

(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from here to this question)

Kvetching is a perfectly normal part of mental and social hygiene, but to what extent depends on the person. It is also a self-affirming activity: If complaining leads to positive social experiences (people you talk to relate to your experiences and opinions and share them), you will do this more often. If unchecked, this vicious circle can easily cross your tolerance threshold for complaining (which is different for each person). So, first of all you should keep in mind that "too much complaining" is your subjective view, not an objective truth (absent a concrete case of someone spending the day complaining instead of working and then failing to meet a deadline). Of course, if you'd rather have less complaining around you, it's perfectly legitimate to try to break that circle.

The best strategy (outside of avoiding complaining peers, which you apparently now follow) is often to lead by example: Do not respond to complaining with your own complaints (especially not with ones about their complaining), but try to steer the conversation to happier grounds by

getting them to relate positive experiences about their PhD;
mentioning ones you might have had (without showing off -- this one can be tricky);
taking an interest in their lives outside of academia.

In short, show them that they can have positive social interactions without complaining. If enough people around you feel the same way as you do, this usually works.

To your final remark: This is by no means limited to PhD students (or even academia) -- you get similar "hot spots" among early-career faculty simultaneously applying for permanent positions (in Europe) or trying to get tenure (in the US), or among tenured faculty of any seniority any time a major evaluation (of a grant or institute) or reaccreditation is imminent.


How to determine which college textbooks are most widespread? I've come to realize that there's a specific pretty basic topic at the level of college algebra/precalculus which is given competing, contradictory definitions in different textbooks (link). And this topic also shows up at the high school level. I'd like to follow up on this and determine the proportion of students exposed to each type of definition, and ideally a breakdown by geographic location (say, nationality) if possible.

What's the best way to go about determining which college textbooks are most common/ biggest sellers/ used in more classes/ have more students exposed to them (or any related metric)? Or even better: any way to determine what proportion of students are given one of a few different, competing definitions for a topic?

This is not a literature review question; this is a market research question. (That's not a problem, but understanding the nature of the question helps to determine the most appropriate approach to take.)

Are you asking this question out of personal curiosity, or do you want to undertake a formal research study?

Personal curiosity: I recommend that you contact sales representatives of multiple publishers and ask them these questions. You should first contact the representative for the books with the contradictory definitions. You can ask each of them which are their main competing books, and why their book is superior. (If you only ask the main competitors, they might be reluctant to give you that information; however, if you ask them to compare themselves, they will likely willingly volunteer that information.) You can ask each sales rep your questions about the market penetration of their textbooks. I doubt looking at Amazon rankings would be meaningful, since I would guess that most university textbooks are still purchased through university bookstores, not through Amazon--I don't know that for a fact, though.
Formal research: You need to look into how to do a formal market research investigation. Sorry; I can't help you much here with practical details, but at least I hope this points you in the right direct.


Ethically, do I need to include as coauthor a person who provided basic knowledge to fill a gap in my research? Consider the following scenario.

I am researching on a problem in a domain and I don't know anything about the existence of Pythagoras theorem.

After so much time of my research I figured myself that if a fact like:

  the square of a side which is opposite to the 90 degrees in a triangle is equal to the sum of squares of remaining sides

exists, then my research completes and I can publish a good paper. But I never encountered Pythagoras theorem during my search of literature.

If I came to know about its existence during a discussion with a colleague or any random person, then is there any ethical need to keep him as a co-author since I struggled a lot of time and didn't find by myself?

The International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has established four criteria for being considered an author. The person's contribution should fulfill all four criteria. If not, they need to be considered as a non-author contributor and their contribution acknowledged, such as in Acknowledgements section. You can read about the different criteria and designation here. To directly answer your question, the person would be a non-author contributor.


Advising students taking part in a competition: how to provide direction, but not to contribute? I was asked to supervise a team of undergrad students
who are taking part in a case competition.

I decided to look through the competition website
to find out more about what is expected of a faculty advisor.
The website writes:

  The primary role of the faculty advisor is to provide direction, advice and guidance to the student team.
  The faculty advisor should not contribute to the content of the presentation, nor should they provide or facilitate the assistance from other parties that contribute to the content of presentation.

How do I walk the fine line between
"providing direction, advice and guidance",
and yet "not contributing to the content of the presentation"?

(This is my first time helping a student team with a competition,
so I would appreciate the advice of other faculty who have done this before.)

I have only worked as a TA to help students on an individual exercise basis, but I think the idea is kind of similar to this. In the case of a competition like this I can only speak from my role as being supervised.
However, I would say that the most important thing is to ask questions, such as "Why do you think that step X that you propose here would be a good step?" or "What results do you expect by doing this thing Y you're doing?". This should make them think about what they are doing in this competition and why they are doing it.

Regarding the presentation, you can of course always give them advice about how to present, how to style their slides, and how to convey the information they are presenting in an efficient way.

All in all, with most things you help them with, just ask yourself if you're telling them how to do it. If not, you're probably fine I guess.


Can I use published data to do my analyses and publish? Nowadays, there were many data published online and with papers, such as PLoS journal. I am wondering can I use those data to perform my analysis and if so, do I need permission of those authors to publish my results? Thanks.

Edits: The data I am trying to use is the supplementary data that provided by the article. The field I am working on is epidemiology. All comments are appreciated.

They've published their data. The way academia works is that people build on other people's work. You're just expected to reference their work properly.

Copyright is not particularly relevant here. Copyright law varies from country to country, but in any case copyright does not prohibit you from, e.g., adding two numbers just because those two numbers appeared in a copyrighted paper. Here in the US, copyright applies to the presentation of a work, not to ideas or data. For example, telephone directories have been found not to be copyrightable in the US. Since copyright is not very relevant, neither is licensing. Copyright law is specifically constructed so that it will not interfere with activities like scholarly commentary.

You will of course want to behave well toward the people whose data you're using. It won't hurt to talk it over with them. They know it intimately, and they may be able to warn you against misinterpreting it. For example, you don't want to be in the position of publishing a "gee whiz, amazing!" conclusion based on their data, only to find later that it was a misunderstanding. It may be appropriate for them to be coauthors on any resulting paper. Even if the purpose of your analysis is to contradict the conclusions they drew from their own data, it still doesn't hurt you to tell them what you're doing, and be above board and respectful.


Should I revoke my recommendation request for a particular letter? Is this impolite? I am in a bit of a bind. I've been taking a reading course with a professor, and at first it was going fairly well. After a while (when the material got hard and I got busier), the readings were just going okay, meaning that I wasn't progressing very fast, and had trouble with almost all exercises.

I feel that I don't impress this professor as much as I might have in the beginning. I am, however, doing well in his class currently, but not the best student I'd say. I have asked him a while ago if he'd write me a letter of recommendation for graduate school (my apps will be completed in a few weeks). I have even sent requests in the online applications for his letter. But I am thinking of revoking the requests online (this is possible). I asked him if his letter would be strong, and his reaction was not very clear. He said he'd mostly talk about how I'm doing in his topics course, and some of what we've been reading.

I have three other letter writers, all of which should be very good. Two of these professors I've done research with, the other I am in his course, but he says my solutions are very good. Now, the latter guy does not know me as well as the professor in question, but his letter, he says, will be strong based on my course work.

So my question: Should I cancel the letter request? Is this weird to do? Should I talk to him first (if so, how?)?

This is my future career, so dealing with awkwardness and animosity may be worth it in the end. I should also say that the readings we are doing I am no longer interested in - they were more of a test-the-waters thing for me to see if I wanted to do research in that area.

edit. I've decided to live with my mistake and move on. Hopefully the letter isn't too bad.

No, it would not be very polite. However, I do not understand why would you cancel the request. You can just have the letter and not use it. You are not obliged to send every single reference letter to the institution you apply.

If you feel like you must cancel the request, you could tell the professor that the institution you are applying requires three letters and you already have them. Do not forget to apologize that it is your mistake that you did not carefully read the instructions.


Gofer work in exchange for Letter of Recommendation I want to apply for master’s programs, but I need two letters of recommendation. I was never very close with any of my professors, though I did receive good grades in all of my classes.
The professor who probably knows me the best is one of the core faculty at the college. I asked her for advice on how to start with undergraduate research, which wasn’t a requirement, just an interest of mine. I also received an A in her class, and suggested an outing for the class which she then took up.
It’s also been about a year since I graduated.
Would it be appropriate to ask her if she could write a letter of recommendation, perhaps in exchange for some gofer work (filing, watching class while students take tests, running errands)?

It’s appropriate to ask for a letter, but completely inappropriate to offer a thing of value in exchange. Professors are already paid to do their job, which includes writing letters of recommendation, and it would be unethical for a professor to accept a favor or other thing of value in exchange for agreeing to do what is already a part of their job.


How to express an ongoing PhD degree in suffix Is it correct to express PhD in brackets "(PhD)" as suffix to express the ongoing degree?

No, you cannot use a title or degree that you haven't earned yet.


Carrying incomplete research work from postdoc to assistant professor position I am a postdoctoral research fellow and recently I got offer for aP position. I am leaving the postdoc position before the completion of contract. My postdoc supervisor is saying that after joining the aP position whenever I publish the research work, which I started in his lab, should include funds acknowledgment of his lab and that he should be the corresponding author.  I worked in his lab for just 5 months and I already submitted to SCI journal articles in Q1 level. A week ago I shared my preliminary work which will take another 5-6 months to be ready for submission. In this case I will be spending 90% of time on this topic after leaving postdoc position, why should I add him as corresponding author and why should I add his dictated funding acknowledgment? Is it ethical to make such demands?

You should (indeed, I'd say you must) acknowledge any funding that supported any of the research reported in the paper.  If you (like me) are in mathematics, then you should list as co-author(s) whoever made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research.  If you're in some other field then you should follow that field's conventions for co-authorship.


Important qualities for Research Assistanship applicants 1.What qualities do professors (assume STEM if necessary) look for in students (in their MS) when recruiting them for an RA (Research Assistantship)?

2.Consider the follow scenario:

Person 1 : Has excellent fundamentals, thirst for knowledge and good grasping power but no exposure to the academic research per se.
Person 2 : Above average fundamentals (few random holes here and there. Not too minor, not too major either) and prior exposure to academic research.

Who would a professor rather pick?

The motivation of the question is to find out how a potential grad student can prepare himself to increase the likelihood of getting an RA with a professor he/she likes.

There are two issues here: what do advisors want, and what can they observe?  In principle, I think most would choose Person 1 over Person 2, if they knew all the facts.  However, this choice will not typically arise in practice, because they won't be able to verify the "thirst for knowledge and good grasping power".

Classroom performance, no matter how excellent, is generally not sufficient for admission to a strong graduate school.  The problem is that lots of students get excellent grades, and these grades are only loosely correlated with research ability.  The only way to stand out is to do something that's fundamentally more impressive than doing well in courses; this could be a research project, or a substantial exposition, or coding, or any number of other things.  Research has some advantages, since that's what you're aiming to do in grad school, but it's by no means necessary.  However, if you don't do any research, then you'd better have some other way of demonstrating your talent.

For example, if Person 1 has done no research, but wrote a beautiful, 80-page undergraduate thesis giving an exposition of forcing and the continuum hypothesis, then that might count for more than most undergraduate research projects.  On the other hand, if Person 1 can point to nothing concrete except course grades, then that will likely be a problem.


How to write your research work in simple way I am a PhD student works in the theoretical computer science. I am facing a difficulty while I have to write my work in a good manner. I try to write but when other students, collegues read my drafts they are not able to understand the idea I want to convey. I have written one or two research paper in my previous years. I try to look at the research papers which I am referring for help, it gives me some help but not that much. The problem I am facing is not able to write the things in a simple way, some time mix the  things. To me it appears that writing is much more challenging than solving a research problem.

Question : How to write your research in a simple way? Simple just means  other people can understand my work and the idea behind it at least.

Use a hierarchical structure that is clearly shown to the reader.    https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-Thinking/dp/0273710516  Make a bulleted outline of each section of work before writing.
Be honest and direct.  https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/media-arts-and-sciences/mas-111-introduction-to-doing-research-in-media-arts-and-sciences-spring-2011/readings/MITMAS_111S11_read_ses5.pdf
Look at the "directions to authors" for each journal you submit to and follow them rigorously, like a checklist.
Write frequently and get frequent feedback and incorporate it.  Look for those who are good writers to review your work.

P.s.  I disagree with the advice to write in your native tongue and then have a translation made.  You will not learn well that way.  Stick to your flawed English but get better as you use it.  If anything being weaker in English will force you to a simpler sentence structure (fine).  Issues with clarity are very likely not the language problem but poor structure or poor logic.  "Clear writing is clear thinking."


What to do if I found out the preprint paper missed a citation of others' work? I recently found out my preprint paper (to be published in a journal) that missed a citation of others' work, the paper is just published online in IEEE Xplore? The sentences are rephrased, however, I forgot to give credit notice within the texts. I feel very badly about it. I know this is a plagiarism. I do not want to find the excuse for myself. I want to remedy it before I cannot. What should I do it now?

The paper I should cite is in the reference list of the bibliography. I did not cite it within the texts.

Contact the journal as soon as possible with the correction, and see whether they can change it before the paper is officially published.

When they had real (and not electronic) typesetting, you had to try to change the text as little as possible. That's still a good idea, although it's less important now.

If they can change it before it's published, that's ideal. If they can't, you can decide what steps to take after they tell you it's too late.


How ambitious should one be in picking a journal to submit to? I've finished a mathematics paper with two co-authors, and I need to decide on a journal to submit it to.

More so than my other papers, I don't have much of a sense for how "good" it is. It is a substantial generalization of one of the main results proved in a very top journal, although not the most significant of these results, and not the one that got the most attention.

To my mind, (and after discussing the results with a few colleagues), the paper does not pass the "gut test" to be published in this same top journal. But it is not out of the question that it would be accepted. I would (very roughly) guess a 15% chance of acceptance, a 50% chance of positive reviews that are not quite positive enough, and a 35% chance of vaguely negative reviews that say "This is a nice paper, but it certainly isn't good enough to be published here."

Would it be advisable to submit to this top journal? Or would a little bit more modesty be wise? (And of course I will ask my co-authors, but I wouldn't be surprised if they defer to my judgment.) Thanks.

The answer should certainly depend on many different elements, each of which should be judged with respect to your particular situation.

First, the time issue. You should have a look at the AMS survey on journal backlogs, which also indicates the median time to get an answer (for accepted papers only, but we can assume it gives an idea of what happens to all not-rejected-upfront papers). This survey is published regularly in the Notices, and you should be able to find it on line. Then, ask yourself if waiting that time is worth a likely negative answer. Some journals have a pre-refereeing procedure, and reject a fair amount of papers very quickly. This mitigates the risk (either you get rejected quickly, or you have a much-higher-than-average probability to get your paper accepted).

Second, the impression you give to editors. I guess that an editor could remember slightly abusive submissions, and that they would not help you future cases with her; however I have no data or evidence to back up this guess.

Third, your own feelings. Receiving bad reviews is not something to underestimate: it could diminish your enthusiasm toward your own work, alter your willingness to pursue in this direction. This is probably only a small parameter, but if you have had a few difficult cases recently, you might want to take a break from rejections. Added in edit after a few more years of experience: you should also think your possible chain of resubmission. What could happen is that after waiting two years and getting rejected by a top journal, you are a bit down and then submit much lower. Aiming at an intermediate level first might give you a better outcome. This applies even more at resubmission: how much do you try high? How high? This of course depends on the feedback from referees and editors, but some long-term planning might help.

Fourth, you should ask yourself if the journal you consider to submit to is an appropriate venue if your paper do get published there. I would not fear too much people telling that your paper is clearly below the journal's level, as we often judge papers by journal's name anyway. But it might happen that a more specialized and less prestigious journal could reach the intended audience better than the most prestigious, general journal. This is not a very common situation, though.

Last, but far from least, what you expect to get from getting published in the top journal? Is it so much of a career boost compared to very-good-but-not-top journals?

Note also that some editors have the habit of suggesting another venue to papers that have good but not good enough reviews in a very selective journal. It is not easy to know this beforehand, though.


Can you be a good PhD student if you hate reading literature? I am a PhD student in computer science.  My advisor keeps telling me I need to read papers, but I find most of them really long and boring, no matter what field they are in (but especially if there are a lot of math equations).  Usually my mind starts wandering after one or two pages.

My advisor thinks I should read one or two papers a day (apparently he does this himself), but if I followed his instructions (and yes, I've tried doing that), I would literally spend the whole day reading papers, or 20% reading papers and 80% procrastinating.

I am perfectly capable of reading papers if there's something specific I want to gain from the paper (like if the paper is really relevant to my project, or if I need to implement an algorithm from the paper).  But I have a hard time doing broad literature reviews and getting to know a field if I don't have a specific problem in mind.  A lot of times I just end up not doing them.

Does this automatically make me a bad researcher, and what are some ways I can compensate for my short attention span?

Interesting question, I have thought about this alot both during my PhD studies and afterwards...

There are some answers and comments touching upon the aspects like why you should be reading, or what it means to read. I will try to give my two cents on the question title, which I assume is what's really on your mind, that is whether or not you're suitable for doing research if you don't like reading literature.

Short answer: It depends...

There's no way of knowing, or objectively guessing, whether or not it will work out fine for you. There are way too many parameters to consider

Long answer: It depends...

I'm sure you've heard, and will hear and see, people reading constantly. They will be telling you what you should read, how much you should read. I know I have...

While I don't doubt the sincerity or the good intentions behind these sentiments I am not sure how accurate or helpful they actually are. Hearing and reading those kind of comments have demotivated me at best, and pushed me further and further away from pursuing a career in academia at worst.

I was super ambitious in the beginning; I highlighted numerous journals that I deemed important in my field, signed up for their eTOC alerts. Read the short abstracts of anything that got published there. I had email alerts for a bunch of keywords, that were relevant for my work. Those articles that matched any one of those would be labeled in my inbox, I'd make sure to go through the whole article, albeit quickly...

About half way into my PhD studies (which is in bioinformatics, for the record) I've realized that there is quite literally no way for me to stay on top of literature, to a satisfactory degree. There is just too many people out there, doing way too many experiments that may be relevant somehow to my work. Also around the same time I started to look at publishing a bit more critically. The way funding and career options look these days, there is tremendous pressure on people to publish.

That has several significant implications, two really significant ones are:

there's an increasing number of publications (and the rate of increase is also increasing, although I dare not say exponentially)
a significant portion of the articles are written to secure research funds, deliver results for a received grant or secure the next position; as opposed to being written to be read and understood easily
stuff that wouldn't normally be published gets published. this could happen for a number of different reasons like the group that wrote the paper is too influential to get rejected or objectively critiqued, or the reviewers are too busy to give a proper review of the work, or the in the worst case of all, there is data forgery committed

So at the end of the day, you start doubting what's actually on the paper, and start wondering about what's been omitted, or how the article was framed in order to get it published.

Added on top of that is the fact that a significant portion of the articles are not read and an overwhelming majority of the articles are never cited. The exact numbers have been a matter of debate (here's one link there are many more) however the fact remains that a significant portion of the literature is ignored at best, treated as garbage at worst.

All of these reasons give birth to a skepticism that is hard to ignore. A lot of my colleagues and friends who've been through my phd studies with me essentially agree. I have yet to meet a PhD student who get invigorated and excited by a pile of articles that s/he needs to read... (Interesting side note here is how majority of the people that will typically talk about how much one needs to read are senior scientists.)

Finally the matter of work-life separation. Many academics would go around saying that being a scientist is a lifestyle not a profession. I have this very close to heart where many PIs I personally know well (including my brother) spend a significant amount of their free time reading articles. For the life of me, I have no idea why... The last thing I want to do when I get home is to read research articles. I think it's healthy to separate work and life beyond work, but I haven't gotten so far into my career, so take that with a pinch of salt.

So, as you can see, I share the same worry (unless I misunderstood the origin of the question) that OP does. I have been worried about this for several years now, am I a bad scientist because I am not interested in reading literature?

I am not sure, I have been getting pretty much only positive feedback on my work and skills, so I am not entirely sure it's that bad as it might appear. While I agree that one cannot completely shut out reading altogether and ignore literature, I don't think one needs to obssess about reading constantly.
I honestly think it's a matter of etiquette, or an ambition to strive towards, even though most sensible people realize that it's not really feasible to constantly stay on top of literature.

I say: do read, at least as much as you need to, about the subjects you need to know about, the rest is optional. Don't worry about keeping statistics or meeting thresholds, just try to stay well-informed about your field.


Do Springer, IEEE, Elsevier charge a fee for non-open-access journals? My PhD advisor and lab colleagues think that Springer, IEEE and Elsevier journals non-open-access charge authors for publishing a paper. (They usually only publish in local journals.) All the info I've found points to the contrary (except for "gold" open access journals, which do charge authors), but all I've found are people commenting on particular journals saying that they do not charge.

Nonetheless, I've found very few journals that explicitly say "submission and publication is free of charge". For example, JAIR mentions that there aren't any submission fees, but does not mention publication fees.  Frontiers of Computer Science does not mention charges at all in their instructions for authors.

I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I can't for the life of me find any definitive yes/no information online. (I don't have a concrete journal in mind since this all started because we are looking for one, but it'd have to be a machine learning/artificial intelligence journal.)
Do Springer, IEEE and Elsevier journals generally charge an author fee for their non-open-access journals? It may include submission fees or post-acceptance fees as well as page or figure charges.

I agree with the other answers, but they are anecdotal, and you asked for some "definitive" answers to help you convince your colleagues and advisor. Here's what I found:
IEEE
None of the IEEE journals has a required charge for non-open access publications.
The publication FAQ says:

For a detailed listing of paper charges by publication, download the List of Voluntary and Overlength Paper Charges (PDF, 287 KB).

Here is the current version of that list. You will note that some journals have voluntary "sustaining" charges for "normal-length" manuscripts. In fact, IEEE policy specifically states that those charges are not obligatory:

IEEE Policy 6.9 permits some types of periodicals to levy page charges. If your publication is one of these, it is your company or institution, not you, which is being asked for support. Payment is not obligatory nor is it a prerequisite for publication.

In the statement above "page charges" refers only to charges for not-open, not-overlength, not-color-print articles. Many IEEE publications do have "overlength" page charges, which are mandatory - if your paper exceeds the "normal" length then you must either reduce the length of your paper or pay the overlength charges. The length of a "normal" paper depends on the journal and publication type (normal-length "letters" may be as short as 1 or 2 pages, for example.)  Some also have charges for color figures appearing in print, although there is no charge for online-only color.
More definitive info is available for each journal in the IEEE Xplore site, at the "About Journal" page, section "Author Resources", link "Additional Information", which opens a PDF with detailed "Information for Authors" (see an example).
(The document also does not include the recently added IEEE open access options, which do have required charges, which are listed here.)
Springer
The Springer author FAQ asks

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO PUBLISH IN A SPRINGER JOURNAL?

The answer there is:

For the majority of Springer journals, publishing an article is free of charge.

If a journal requires page charges, you will find them on the journal's springer.com homepage or in its Instructions for Authors.
Charges might apply e.g. for color figures or over-length articles. The information on these extra costs will also be available from the journal's homepage or its Instructions for Authors.
Charges for open access articles: If you choose to publish an open access article ("Springer Open Choice" article or in a "SpringerOpen" journal), there will be an Article Processing Charge (APC) to be paid by the author. As a consequence, the article can be freely read, downloaded or distributed from SpringerOpen.com and SpringerLink.com by any internet user.

Furthermore, even for open-access journals, Springer advises:

SpringerOpen journals routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries; and individual waiver requests are considered on the grounds of hardship on a case-by-case basis.

Another Springer FAQ titled Why publish with Springer? claims:

Page charges do not exist.

which I think is as close to "definitive" as you can get.
Elsevier
Some Elsevier journals do have author charges, and by searching the Elsevier site I did find a (very) few non-open journals with required page charges.  I did not find any in CS with author charges, though.
The official policy I found is:

I am submitting my paper to one of your journals. How do I find out if there are page charges associated with this journal?
Page charges are journal specific. Many journals do not have page charges for submitted papers.
To determine whether the journal to which you are submitting has page charges, you will need to find the homepage for the journal and check it's specific submission instructions.

So if you're looking for a definitive "No page charges," Elsevier is not the answer.  In practice, however, there are literally only a handful of non-open Elsevier journals that charge author fees.


A place to host static HTML+JavaScript that can be referenced from a paper? My PhD supervisor always told me that we write papers "for the ages". The publication system being what it is, we cannot go back and update any links, so we should not cite or reference a source that may be gone in five years.

With that in mind, I'm looking for a place to host a small open-source web-application, consisting only of static assets (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), and I would like to link to it from my paper. GitHub being as big as it is, I suppose I will trust them for storage, but they do not offer hosting. Ideally, someone reading the paper should be able to go right to a URL and run the app.

Any thoughts?

GitHub Pages web hosting really is perfect for your needs, but you might also want to consider FigShare. You'll get a DOI, which makes it easy for people to cite your HTML application. You could zip up your application using only local references so your app will be downloadable and usable as long as HTML 4/5 browsers exist. Until March 2015, content on FigShare was shared through an international alliance of libraries (CLOCKSS), but alas no longer.


Does the American Mathematical Monthly allow ArXiv posting? This is a follow-up to the question Posting to ArXiv a longer version of a submitted journal paper.  The general consensus on that thread was that it is probably okay to do what I proposed, but that I should check with the editor first to make sure the journal does not have any kind of policy against ArXiv posting.

I've sent an inquiry to the editor in question, but haven't heard back (of course, it's summer and people's schedules are wonky, so I don't necessarily think the silence means anything).  I thought I would ask here:

  Does the American Mathematical Monthly have a policy prohibiting posting to ArXiv a longer version (or a preprint version) of a submitted manuscript?

Yes, they do allow arxiv postings at any stage.  However, starting in 2015 the Monthly has moved to a double-blind reviewing system (which, for general readers of this site, is all but unheard of in the field of mathematics).  Posting on the arxiv before or during submission would of course cause a serious risk of ruining the anonymity of the author.

I happen to know through direct experience that the Monthly views such ruination as being the author's prerogative.

It should be emphasized that this is a recent development, and whether it will be continued in the future is up to the board of directors of the MAA (and not the editorial board of the Monthly, a fact which I found surprising).

Added: Some remarks about the laissez faire philosophy of the Monthly's double-blind policy can be found here.  The difficulty of preserving authorial anonymity in an arxiv culture is mentioned.


Academic Interview: What is your Greatest Weakness? A common interview question is "What is your greatest weakness?". Having done some online research on this, there are lots of articles on how to tackle this with generic job interviews, and the idea is to turn a negative into a positive. Some examples have been: "I'm not great at public speaking, but have been attending evening classes to improve", "I have trouble managing my work-life balance, but have recently been working on a more careful personalised timetable", and "I have not been great with deadlines, but I now give myself a personal deadline of 24 hours in advance".

However, academic interviews are often very specific, and focus on research, publications, collaborations, outreach, teaching etc. What are some examples of how to answer this question well, which are specific to academic interviews (e.g. for a postdoc / lectureship / professorship)?

I would answer it as recommended.  The best strategy is probably to admit a real weakness that is relevant to the work (which shows honesty and the ability to be self-critical), but focus on how you are working to improve.  There's nothing really academia-specific about this.

Your examples seem largely fine to me, except "I have trouble managing my work-life balance" is too vague and could be interpreted as a very serious issue.  So I would avoid that or make it more specific.

I wouldn't spend too much time preparing for this question. Its reputation as a common interview question is greater than the reality. I've never been asked it (at interviews in and out of academia).

It's a poor interview question, really, because it's unlikely to lead to genuine insight on the candidate. Good interviewers don't ask it. Your main task is just to avoid a big mistake. Don't say your biggest weakness is plagiarism or stabbing colleagues in the back, and you'll be fine.


What practicable alternative do I have to not fly around the globe to present a poster/pollute environment? Popularizing your research and results is an important part of a non-tenured researcher, which alreday and often starts after graduating with a bachelor and proceeds up to being a postdoc for many years. While I don't question organization of conferences at all, observing that sometimes several researcher from one group fly to a conference, many only to present a poster sometimes, made me think, if there are alternatives to personally choose and practice as I'm also interested in the Azimuth project. I also remember from mail contacts with other researchers some of their signatures asking the recipient kindly "to not print out this mail" and increase its ecological footprint, as digitalization sadly increases paper consumption (tragic "fun" fact).

So my question is, what practicable best option/alternative do I have:

asking colleague of my group with talk to hang up my poster/present it/point to mail/phone for interested viewers
directly mail-spam attendees of the conference (looking up program) I know from papers in my field before conference with a PDF version of my poster, not paying conference fee (which look to me often also rather like a business model also among important and renonwed conferences fostering so many predatory conferences I get notice in my spam folder, likely being financed in very costly conference venues by many "poster-boys")
not care about my ecological footprint because researchers are no role-models and just a very small number of the international air traffic. As said, I don't question talks and invited talks held in front of several dozen peers.
only present posters for few years to make my community aware of myself or only at nearby locations.
engage in online conferences (which seem totally unpopular, not in practice in my field of condensed matter physics, being no niche and staging dozens of conferences even in single subfields like magnetism, materials...)
...

I know, there will be some disadvantages. Actually, the last idea originating from a discussion at a poster on the other side of the globe made me writing a granted research proposal which will finance my post-doc position and a PhD-student. But I think it would have been just a matter of more time and didn't need a flight around the world.

EDIT: I'm really looking for practicable tips one can apply now instead of waiting until the organization of conferences will hypothetically significantly change like in this related question. It's highest voted answer is funny, but has been disproven for decades as the environmental pollution steadily increases and unfortunately human kind and environment have a "time limit" :-)

If you want to build a strong career and be noticed internationally, then you probably have little choice but to attend international conferences in the present situation.

Longer term, however, you can try to work toward a world of virtual conferences rather than ones requiring physical presence, though these have tradeoffs. But the current and future communication technologies will make them more practical as time goes on.

But, there are other things to consider than just the carbon-cost of air travel. First, the plane will fly anyway even if you aren't on it. Collective political action can work toward a world with less air travel, of course, but an individual has little real effect. The carbon cost of air travel is amortized over a large number of people, of course, and if they don't fly they still don't have zero carbon usage. Depending on your normal activities and travel (to work, say) needs, a week long conference across the pond may not cost you much in carbon, if there is little travel at the conference site and things are centralized.

But if you do travel, there are things you can do to better utilize the benefits of the costs you incur. Making arrangements before you go to work with international colleagues for a few days before or after the conference helps amortize the cost over a larger set of activities, chaining the cost/benefit ratio.

You can, of course, think globally about your carbon usage and find other ways to reduce your footprint so that, even as an individual, you have a minimal negative impact.

Also, communication technologies aren't carbon-free. The trade-off computations are very complex, in fact. I just read a report that says that streaming movies, for example, has a higher carbon footprint that pressing and distributing DVDs due to the energy required by servers (a continuous cost) vs the pressing/distribution cost (discrete).

Our climate issues are a result of bad choices by society as a whole, making better solutions difficult or impossible to employ by individuals. An individual has little effect, especially if they are conscious of the problems and take steps to limit personal use where possible, but also to demand better overall solutions of governments and other large institutions.


How much do editors care about author affiliations and previous publications in the field? we've wrote a manuscript applying a computational modelling technique to a field (behavioral ecology) which is not related to our primary research field (neurobiology). This was the result of some year and a half of work, as a parallel project that we took interest upon.

The thing is, the institute to which we're affiliated has nothing to do with the theme of the manuscript, nor we have any published experience in said field.

How much will that matter for acceptance? Do editors take affiliations into consideration? Does it matter which journal (say, Nature cares but PLoS Computational Biology doesn't)?

Thanks.

In principle your background and affiliation should play no role, and the manuscript will be handled and reviewed on its merits only. Now, in practice, editors are only human, and may subconciously show some bias against unknown authors, and may deal with the paper with more skepticism than usual. However I do believe that most editors are professional enough to give the manuscript a fair evaluation.

Of course the very top journals are very selective, so that even for well-known authors in the field it is difficult to get published there. Especially if you are new to a field, it might be a good idea to first get feedback on your manuscript from someone who is more familiar with the field, to avoid disappointment.


Full scholarship and student advisor relationship If a phd student is completely funded by an outside institution and don't cost the school or the university anything, what impact would that have on the student relationship with his advisor? Especially on things like interest on the student progress.

The main effect of external support on a student/advisor relationship is that there is less external pressure for production of short-term results.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends strongly on the individual student and advisor.

With less pressure on the student, there is more freedom to develop a unique research agenda but also more opportunity to get "lost" in the possibilities and waste time.
With less pressure on the advisor, there are fewer boss/employee dynamics in the relationship and generally less strain, but also more opportunity for the advisor to be distracted by other short-term concerns.

A secondary effect is that the student may have less opportunities to be apprenticed in grant-writing, since their support is already assured.

In sum: with a good advisor and a student with a mature outlook, the freedom of external support is a blessing.  If either of those two ingredients is lacking, it can be a problem to lack the forcing functions of external support.


Does IEEE provide an ISSN or ISBN list for searching on a specific journal? Does IEEE provide an ISSN or ISBN list for searching a specific journal?
There is this link from here but it is not active anymore.

I think IEEE has organised it here: IEEE Xplore Title Lists
This list now contains information of all periodicals, conference publications, books, and standards in the IEEE Xplore database.


Don't like my choice of grad program and don't know what to do I have a BSW (social work) and have decided to go back to school for MSW; but social work was never my passion. I honestly picked it in undergrad because they took all my credits when I didn't pass the Praxis for Early Childhood Education (missed each by 1 point) and now I'm in the MSW program at Delaware State University but hate it. I feel like I'm just wasting my time; its not something that I am interested in at all. I went back because "its the thing to do" if I want to get money in my field. I'm just lost when I'm in class because it doesn't have 100% of my attention. I am 26 years old and feel like its too late for me to be saying "I don't know what I want to do with my life." What are some other options of programs I could  look into that is somewhat within social work?

It sounds like you do not have the passion for the study you are in - and this will invariably affect your effectiveness to be able to succeed in the Masters you are doing.  At 26 years old, rather than being 'too late' to try anything new, take this as an opportunity to explore new fields, to find where your passions are and most of all, find a path that you will both enjoy and feel fulfilled by.

The ultimate decision is yours; however, a few things to consider:

Just because the course is perceived as being "the thing to do", does not mean it is the best thing for you to do.
Consider if that field is a career that you want to devote your time to in a career.
Is there chances for innovative new research in a related field?


What is the basic structure of American higher education? When I go to university for four years and study, e.g., law or medicine, do I earn an undergraduate degree? And do I have to go to university for another two years or so to get a graduate degree? Also, is it the same university then, or do I have to go somewhere else? And do you have to get a graduate degree? I’m really confused by the American academic system.

This flow chart, from the National Center for Education Statistics, summarizes it better than any explanation I can think of.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d01/fig1.asp

Everywhere you see an arrow represents a potential change of institutions, or (above the black line) a natural place to exit formal education if desired.  In particular, most people who pursue graduate or professional study do so at a different institution than their undergraduate institution.  (They are usually eligible to apply for a graduate program at their undergraduate institution, if it's offered, but don't receive any special preference over applicants from other institutions.)

I'd also note that in many fields, one can go from an undergraduate program directly into a PhD program, without having to get a masters first.  In that case the PhD program normally takes more time (say about 5 years), and may or may not award a masters degree "en passant".


While applying for PhD in a particular topic, how useful is research in a different (maybe slightly related) topic? I have done 2 research projects on a topic, say "A". But now I am changing my field of work slightly, to say topic "B", and will do my masters thesis on "B". How useful will my projects on "A" be while applying for PhD in "B"? Will an arXiv/journal publication in "A" be comparable to one in "B", from the point of view of PhD admission committee (for graduate schools in US/UK, in particular) ?

I am a Physics master's student. The topics I mentioned above are related High Energy Physics/Gravity. "A" was mostly computational while "B" is purely theoretical.

I understand that any research is good and will add this in my CV in any case. I just want to know how good it actually is. The answer to my question will help me get an idea of graduate schools which are in my league and I could focus on those.

Thanks in advance!

The topics you mention (theoretical and computational aspects of high energy physics) are similar enough that any publication you get from one will be equally valuable when applying for the other. In fact, demonstrating that you have experience of both theoretical and computational work can only make your application stronger than if you had experience in only one.

Bear in mind that having a journal publication is not necessary for admission into any PhD programme that I am aware of (certainly not in UK physics). While a publication in either field that you mention would certainly boost your application, don't worry if nothing publishable comes out of your Master's. Just do good, solid work and ensure you have a strong grasp of the foundations of the field.

If you do write a paper, be sure to do it under the guidance of your Master's supervisor. They will help you organise the content and choose an appropriate journal. Submitting to arXiv is fine as long as you quickly follow it up with submission to (and hopefully acceptance in) a peer-reviewed journal.

Your supervisor (if they are active in the field) will also be able to advise you on which institutions to apply to for your PhD. When I was deciding where to apply, I mainly looked at the institutions of the authors whose papers I was frequently citing. That at least ensures your research interests will align, which is far more important than any other deciding factor (including perceived prestige of the university).

Source: I am a PhD student in physics in the UK.


Is it immoral to advise PhD students in non-industry-relevant topics in middle-lower ranked universities? Currently, the situation in academia is that graduating from a top PhD program is almost a requirement for landing an R1 tenure-track job. However, many of these graduates will not end up at similarly top-ranked schools for their job, and as such are at middle to lower ranked schools.
At these schools, their research is generally still along the lines of what they did in their PhD/postdoc, and PhD students as such follow them, doing this sort of research. But some research fields have little to no industry relevance— a PhD student working in such a field at a middle to lower ranked school would have bleak prospects for academia, and also related industry jobs.
These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc. (often through self-learning in online courses) which are unrelated to their original field of research, or end up on a string of postdocs endlessly searching for a job. Many may have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up.
In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?

While the question in the title is a good one, your post also makes some assumptions, in some cases dubious, which are really worth investigating first:

But some research fields have little to no industry relevance -- The truth is that almost all PhD research is highly esoteric and specialized, and unlikely to have any direct impact on industry. This is certainly true in my field (computer science), and probably true in many others to a greater or lesser extent. Why, then, do industry hiring managers even care that you got a PhD? Sometimes they don't, but often they value far more the qualities that having a PhD demonstrates, rather than the content of your research. For example: the ability to communicate well and sell ideas, the ability to solve technical problems, and the ability to dive deeply into learning what you do not understand -- these are fundamental skills gained during a PhD that are equally valuable in industry.
What I'm saying is: industry relevance of your PhD research is often not the top criteria for getting a good job; what matters far more is your general knowledge, technical skills, and communication and interpersonal skills.

These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc. Data science is a rare case where PhD research in data science appears to be valued in industry; most other PhD fields are not as valued in industry specifically, only generally. Do you suggest that all academics should just start doing data science? I think that would have some positives, but overall be a very sad world only motivated by money, rather than a true pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Many have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up -- This is absolutely true, unfortunately. But do you also believe that the only good reason to get a PhD is to get a job in industry? That premise is absolutely false. What we can do and should do: raise awareness and encourage people to get a PhD for the right reasons, rather than the wrong ones. If you are thinking of spending 5+ years on a PhD, it should be because you truly want to do it, and you love the research you are doing for its own sake.

To answer your last question:

In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?

It is immoral to be dishonest: to make the PhD students believe that their research will have direct practical relevance if it does not, or to lead them to expect a particular job in industry when they graduate which may be beyond their expected skillset.
To be sure, some professors are guilty of such dishonesty and immorality.
But no, it is not immoral to advise students in a non-industry-relevant topic, if the expectations are clear and the expected topic is of mutual interest. In fact it is one of the most beautiful and compelling parts of science, that we do not need to be constrained by what is currently practical in industry.


Mailing list for internships and full time jobs for computer science PhD students I have found many mailing lists for conferences. I just want to know: is there any mailing list that updates internship and full-time positions (computer science industry jobs and academic jobs) for Ph.D. students? Would you please tell me what are those? Any location would work for me.

For computer science, the CRA computing jobs site is a good central clearinghouse for a large fraction of faculty postings and some non-faculty research positions.  For industrial jobs in computer science, however, there is no such central location.


Does the symbol "&" in author list mean anything? Is writing Author A & Author B the same as writing Author A, Author B in the author list?

To make it clear, this question asks about formulating the author list in the author section when publishing a paper.

The field is computer science. Is there a way to signify that Author A is the first author?

Is writing Author A & Author B the same as writing Author A, Author B in the author list? (when publishing a paper)

You don't have a choice, the journal's style guide will do it for you. In cases where there is a list and not a block (or otherwise separated), an ampersand will be used for the last author in every case I'm aware of.

Original answer

In citation formats I'm familiar with (e.g. APA), using a comma with only two authors is never correct.

In other words, Author A., Author B. (2020) looks like a mistake, as if the third author (who would be separated by an &) were missing.

It makes no difference with regards to who is the "first" author.


Can literature review be a research paper on its own? I am thinking about starting a research to publish in a peer reviewed journal. However, I wonder if a literature review is a research paper. For instance, if I wrote a paper about EU-Russia affairs in a form of literature review, would it have a chance to be published?

Literature reviews, often referred to by journals as just "Reviews" can and are their own form of research paper. My very first publication was a review like this, so it's clearly possible.

How viable a paper like that is will probably depend on the conventions of your field. For example, mine generally requires that these "expert reviews" (in contrast to a meta-analysis or systematic review) be solicited by the editor, not cold submitted. That involves shopping your manuscript around a little to see if anyone is willing to "invite" it, having a senior person backing you who can prompt a colleague to invite it, or finding a journal who accepts cold submitted reviews.