Should I ask my students to contribute in preparation of the manuscripts? As a part of my PhD. I supervise master and bachelor thesis. Even though, I get extremely smart students I find that they are having troubles in writing up their research as articles. Often I end up writing it for them. What is the best way to motivate the students to make their own first draft?

When I did my masters, I had this problem. My old supervisor ended up rewriting a paper from scratch. He never really gave me any feedback except that my writing of the paper was not good and there is no way it will be accepted. I now understand that this approach was a waste of his time and a waste of a learning experience for me.

Now I am working with a different supervisor and when I write a paper, I get a lot of comments and feedback and we end up doing 4-5 rounds or review. I think the initial draft is usually not good. But after all these rounds of review, I end up writing a "good" paper myself.

Maybe your students need to realize that they have a problem that THEY need to address. You writing the papers on their behalf does not solve this problem. Initially, push them to write a draft regardless of quality. Then do rigorous review afterward. With time, their writing will definitely improve


Is it possible to write PhD thesis (or PhD level article) in Computer Science without (real) advisor? Is it possible to write PhD thesis (or PhD thesis level scientific articles) in Computer Science without real advisor (of course there always be formal one)? E.g. there are (almost) no books how to learn musical composition, artistic painting, cello playing - all such learning is done during private tête-à-tête studies. Maybe Computer Science is similar discipline which can not be learned by self-studying books, articles and conference proceedings. Maybe Computer Science has enough unwritten folklore that is passed only via direct contact between advisor and student? I have read many acknowledgments in thesis that ascertain this viewpoins, there are so much thanks for explaining one or another thing.

My question is about having real PhD advisor. Of course, each PhD student has its advisor by the University rules but there may be cases when having advisor is mere formality, advisor can have no knowledge and skills and the discipline pursued by the student. It can happen and it happens in countries that are not top countries.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that doing a PhD is a very hard thing to do, even with an adviser (and particularly in computer science, but also in essentially any other discipline). So what you're asking is basically "is it possible to do this thing that is difficult enough that a good proportion of the people who try to do it don't finish, but in a way that makes it even more difficult than it already is?"

To use an exaggerated metaphor, it is a bit like asking whether it's possible to climb mount Everest blindfolded. The literal answer is, yes, it's possible. The practical answer is: any specific person who tries it will almost certainly fail.


I am uncomfortable about students taking pictures of the blackboard, because I don't like appearing in them It seems to be the trend that fewer and fewer students take notes in class. Lately, and particularly this semester, for some reason, I have been noticing that several students take pictures of the blackboards with their phones in lieu of taking notes.

While I'm not necessarily against this, if it helps them focus on class, I'm uncomfortable about being in a million pictures by these students. I'd like to speak up, but it's already a few weeks into the semester, and I don't want to make the students feel uncomfortable either. Is there anything that I can do to resolve this without creating discomfort on either side?

Perhaps you could make an announcement that just before erasing the board, you will pause for a moment to allow pictures to be taken, while you stand out of the way so as not to obstruct the shot.  You can ask photographers to wait until that time, and to please compose their shots to exclude you if necessary.


updating paper after conference/workshop is it possible to update (minor edits) a paper after a conference/workshop before proceedings?

If that's not possible, why is that?, I'm just trying to understand the rationale, not critiquing.   Aren't workshops/conference mechanisms to get feedback?
The paper acceptance has already provided a peer review mechanism; but isn't the conference just another mechanism?  questions arising here, might provide means to clarify some concepts to a wider audience?  is this to avoid a loop of revision, and instead use the mechanism of a new paper?

It depends on the conference or workshop, of course. In my field (Computer Science), it is uncommon but not unheard-of for workshops to have what is called "post-proceedings". That is, authors submit an initial version of their manuscript, present at the workshop, and then have a chance to revise for the actual published paper. In this case it is possible, maybe expected, that you actually improve your paper based on the comments you received (although usually no additional review happens at this point).

However, most venues don't have that. The more usual case is that you submit a paper and the proceedings are already published when the conference starts. In this case, you obviously have no chance to revise your paper, because by the time the conference happens the paper is already available on archival sources. The advantage, of course, is that the paper is available for people to read during, or even before, the conference.

  Aren't workshops/conference mechanisms to get feedback?

For conferences in CS, this is most certainly not what conferences are for. In this field, conferences are a means to communicate the result of finished studies, not to get input on how to do them. Sure, you can get ideas for future work, but it will pretty much by definition be too late to change what you have already done. For workshops, things are a bit muddier, but in practice authors usually use the feedback they receive at workshops to improve the larger study that they are usually working on (which will be submitted to a conference or journal), not so much to improve the workshop paper itself.


When can I make assumptions in scientific papers? I would like to know if assumptions are accepted among the scientific community. especially in the field of theoretical computer science.

To be more specific, is it OK to say something like: "The behavior X might be explained by . . ." when you are not 100% sure that it is the correct explanation, or you are not able to explain it mathematically or statistically.

Edit:
Indeed the possible explanation I'm talking about is not the main point of the paper, but a small part of results discussion that is, from my point of view, important for future investigations. Also, if I take the time to run some additional tests it would be off-topic and very time-consuming.

It depends on what you mean by "is it OK".  If you write "The behavior X might be explained by...", it's certainly OK in the sense that nobody will be offended or automatically reject your paper.  You are acknowledging some uncertainty, so there's nothing to object to (while there would be if you claimed greater certainty than your work justified).  On the other hand, speculating about possible explanations is not as good as giving a compelling explanation.  It's reasonable if this is not the main point of your paper, or if the speculative explanation is awfully clever.  However, if the main point of your paper comes down to speculation that you just haven't investigated carefully enough to resolve, then it will probably not impress readers.  You could end up with a paper that's not objectionable but still isn't very good.


How can one successfully run a reading group? This is related to "Skimming through a math paper with a group" and "What do professors gain out of teaching reading courses with individual Ph.D students", but from the other side :)

I've experimented with various ways to run my advanced Ph.D seminar, ranging from almost-lectures to "students present papers" to "students present textbook-level material" to "let's all work on a problem together". I don't think any of them have really worked to my satisfaction in the sense of ending the semester feeling that students have a command (as opposed to knowledge) of the material.

I've been reading about the Oxford tutorial style approach, which can crudely be approximated by:

professor assigns reading material once a week
students form pairs and meet with professor once a week for about 1-1.5 hours.
students run the meeting (maybe one person presents and the other critiques, or they work out shared portions of the material on the board). Professor keeps quiet as far as possible except to unblock.

This format sounds tempting, as something that might work with a small group (at most 10 people). Does anyone have experience with this format and would it be suitable for advanced material at the graduate level ?

While I'm hoping it doesn't matter too much for this discussion, the topics for the seminar would be in theoretical computer science.

Although it's quite a while since you posted this question but here's what I've seen been extremely effective (when I was a student for those courses).

Course 1: A theory course with reading and understanding of advanced material

The professor took great effort in actually explaining everything using a chalk and board (better than PowerPoint for theoretical course IHMO). Of course, we were told to read the papers but he explained as if teaching in a chapter/concept in the lecture. Thereafter, he'd assign us some homework problems and we were allowed to do them in groups. Now, these HW problems were really innovative. They weren't part of any book. He would actually "create" them based on the ideas he was teaching. He would cast an existing problem, either from something he was working on or just create one and ask us to solve it. THAT was the master's stroke, IMHO. The entire class would bang their heads against the wall to solve them and learn a lot as a result. We could solve the problems but not always, but the fun part was applying what we learned, consequently requiring  us to understand the material really well.

Course 2: Exact same format as you mentioned as well as that suggested by @lynxoid

Nothing learnt. Honestly. Only the people assigned the papers actually read them. Maybe a few questions here and there but very little interaction other than some from the professor. Overall, the students weren't really happy with it. I barely even remember half the things from that class. But for the former, remember almost everything.

Another variation you could try with style #1 (I read about this somewhere): Tell them that you are going to tell one "lie" (false information) when explaining the material. They have to spot the lie by the end of class. If they don't, they have learned something that is not true. If they spot it, a small reward like a chocolate else, it's a HW due next week. This drives them nuts. You can make the lies progressively complex and sometimes not lie too (You can say that you lied when you told them that every lecture would have a lie :) I haven't tried this variation but will do so soon. I feel this is an excellent way to get them to master the course content.

Hope this helps


Professor gave full credit for incompleteness My professor gives full credit for every single assignment I have turned in for the past 9 weeks (except for a paper we had for which he gave me individual feedback on my writing). I did everything I was supposed to do and fully completed each assignment until the most recent one.
I recently turned in an assignment on time last night, but I didn’t have it fully completed (1 question incomplete). Sure enough he gave me 100% of the points, but I’m not sure I deserve it, or if he even looks at some of the assignments.
Should I do or say anything? I don’t know if he thinks I deserve the grade he gave me or not, or if he just somehow didn’t notice one of the questions incomplete.
Added Clarification: All the grades (except for the 3 papers) seem to all be copy/pasted as they’re not specific to my writing (this is in an American Literature class). The comment for my incomplete assignment is along the lines of so and so made a change in American Literature, they shifted the focus towards nature. I can give the exact words of the comment, but I don’t think it’s necessary, the point is: the comment isn’t specific to my answers, leading me to suspect he may not actually read it (I can’t be 100% though).
-I should also add that I wrote way more than the minimum word count for some of the questions, but I still don’t necessarily feel like I deserve the grade. I was literally up at 11:59pm and turned it in last second

It seems an odd policy and, as a colleague, I'd be interested to know why he does this. But I wouldn't condemn it without more information.
However, if it is clear that he actually reads your work and comments on it when necessary to avoid having you develop misconceptions, then it might be fine. It is even possible that what you do provide makes it clear to him that you understand what needs to be understood. But it is hard to say.
If you got full marks by not trying at all, of course, then the standards are too low, but it seems to be a "carrot but no stick" approach.
But the fact that you are asking here seems to imply that you are conscientious, at least and if you get feedback when needed you will probably be fine. But, I think that asking about the teaching philosophy behind it is also fine.
It is also possible, I suppose, that he has a reading difficulty, the same as some students do, or is so occupied with things like research (or family) that he fails to notice things. That wouldn't be so fine.
But, as I've stressed in other answers here, the essence of learning is reinforcement and feedback. If you are getting that, then all should be well. Some people don't need to be graders in order to be good teachers. I wish there were more, to be honest.


How to get my humanities paper published in the short timeframe before admissions deadline? I have around two months before the application deadline to a masters program in humanities, and I want to increase my approval chances. I don't have papers in the program major (got one paper in mathematics though), but I already have enough material for a short article.

So I wonder if there is a way to improve my admission letter by listing a publication in a subject close to the major. Is preprint (via some analog of arxiv.org) the best I can have within the time limit?

Journal review times in the humanities tend to be longish and I doubt that you'd have a paper accepted in a journal of sufficient quality to impress anybody. (I just got back yesterday a round of comments from a paper I submitted in September.) If I were you, I'd maybe try to submit a paper to a graduate conference instead. Look around for Ph.D. granting programs in your field in the area and send them a paper/abstract. It's much less work for you to write up an abstract, and a much higher likelihood of actually getting something accepted in a reasonable timeframe. An undergrad getting something into a grad conference is probably sufficient to make the committees think you've got potential as a researcher. Maybe it isn't quite as impressive to have a presentation as a publication, but I doubt that'd be a big factor here. To get accepted to a grad program, you just have to get past a threshold of potential, and doing something that puts you way, way above that threshold (publication in a reputable professional journal) just isn't really any more helpful to getting accepted than doing something that just barely puts you above that threshold (a grad conference presentation).

One exception here: if you have a paper or something that one of your profs was just raving about and told you that you just have to publish it in Such And Such Journal, then yeah, maybe shoot it off, but don't expect it to get picked up in time to make a difference in your apps.


Should I alter personal holidays for a research visit? The group of my professor and another professor from a distant Asian country have signed a cooperation agreement.

As part of the cooperation, me as a rookie graduate student have to visit the other professor. Unfortunately, the proposed days of the visit interfere with a few days of a personal holiday. On some other time-frames it is either too late or the host professor has deadlines to work on.

The only time-frame which fits all is the one which infers with my plans.

Both the host professor and my professor in their email communication asked explicitly whether the proposed date fits me. Of course it doesn't, but I don't know if I should say that or should I simply sacrifice my plans (a weekend + two bank holidays), lose a few days of personal traveling, and opt for the visit?

How important is the research to you? And how hard is it for you to replan?

An enthusiastic grad student probably would jump onto the opportunity, but if you see it as a chore, and you do not see direct repercussions (after all, they asked you whether it works), you might decline it.

Of course, you may still be enthusiastic, but it may mean losing out on a pre-booked, expensive trip to the outback/jungle/mountains/etc. (or something else that requires a lot of organisation and/or money to arrange). In this case, the decision will be less clear-cut.


Is it acceptable to drink alcohol in front of senior staff during semi-official occasions? I am a graduate student, and because of the department's projects, partnerships with other institutions, and conferences, I am often out of office with the senior staff (supervisor, department head, other senior researchers and management, etc.).

After the work (e.g. meetings, presentations), it is often the case to attend social events (e.g. conference dinner or reception), or simply spend the free time with my colleagues (e.g. dinner in a hotel or somewhere out). During such events, which I consider also as partially work but not that official, people drink alcoholic beverages. Since I am often the only graduate student and the youngest person in the group (and usually the difference to the next person in age is >15 years), I am worried that in my case it might not be acceptable to drink and that it may project a bad image about myself. So I am wondering whether to always abstain in such occasions.

Of course this is not about getting drunk, it is about a glass of wine or two along a meal.

This also includes flights. When flying I always have a beer or glass of wine to fall asleep easily and to mitigate my fear of flying, but sometimes I am seated close to my supervisor or colleague.

I am not sure about the customs in academia, so I am asking: is it acceptable to drink alcoholic beverages in front of senior staff? (Again, to a limited extent.)

I could have asked in the Workplace SE, but I think that academia has a different etiquette.

Putting ice in good whiskey is universally unacceptable, but I think the answer may depend on which country you are in. If you are 20 in the USA, then no. Otherwise, you are an adult and you decide.


Offering Authorship Prospects To Professors For MSc Thesis I am conducting research for my MSc thesis and there is a paper that I have been putting a lot of work into trying to understand and incorporate into my thesis. Theoretically I understand what's going on, but mechanically carrying out the concept is stumping me. As such, the problem that I am faced with is that I have hit a wall in my intellectual ability to perform a particular computation within the paper; by this, I mean that I simply cannot reproduce the method the author used. If I had somebody I could talk to about this paper then perhaps I could figure it out, but for now, assume that my supervisor is unable to assist and the author of this paper lives far enough away to make travelling not an option.

My own research idea is dependent on being able to reproduce the results in the paper I am studying, and so if I cannot reproduce the results with my own data for myself, I cannot pursue my idea. So, what I was thinking of doing was reaching out to the author and asking if they would be willing to perform the computation for me in exchange for an authorship position on the paper if it can get published.

This is not ideal for me, because I would much rather just recreate the results and I feel that for an MSc thesis seeking external collaboration might be frowned upon, although I do not know for certain. However, I feel that I am at a point where this might be the best path forward to keep working on my original idea. If I cannot perform this computation on my own, would offering potential authorship to the author of the paper I am studying be a worthwhile path to pursue, given that I am doing this for my MSc?

Since you are tentative about whether this would be acceptable, I suggest that you put that idea off for a while, at least. Talk to your advisor about the issue. It might be that co-authorship of any kind might not get you to your degree. You need to find out about that.

But the best option might be if you could work with someone with more math experience, even a professor, who could teach you the techniques you need. At a minimum they could offer advice about how the original paper was done so that you can reproduce the results. They might just be able to point you to a source for learning the needed technique.

This might be considered different than helping you with your own paper and might not result in co-authorship, depending on the questions you ask and the help you get. An acknowledgement would be appropriate, of course. But if co-authorship is ok at your institution, then a local one might be better than one with the original authors.


In-text citations - First and subsequent citations - AMA Am new to writing research article. While I am following the guidelines here
Am I right to understand that whenever we refer to a source, we cite them in-text.
Let's say my paragraph has 100 lines.
I refer the source for the first time in L10. So, I write xxxx[superscript 1]
I refer the source again in L25... Should I again use the [superscript 1] here?
Basically, should we use in-text citation whenever I refer/mention about the source?
Or just in-text citation for just the 1st mention is enough (and we don't have to in-text cite the subsequent mentions)?

Yes, use again the same superscript as before.
Here is a random example from JAMA Network Open (this paper at p. 5). Note the repeated use of 1 or 24:


In the US as a grad student, is it normal to ask a professor for "extra" grant money for doing more research? I'm currently a grad student in STEM in the US. I'm currently receiving a very modest stipend for acting as a TA, as well as getting credit for some research this semester. I'm also interested in doing some research not directly related to my degree for a professor in my department who has been publishing papers on another, tangentially-related subject.

Would it be normal/acceptable for me to ask for extra pay in return for working on my advisor's pet project, if he would benefit from the work of a research assistant? He's not asking me to anything I'm not getting credit for, I just had the idea that I might ask.

My current stipend isn't making ends meet, and, if I can't get a raise, I'm going to take a part-time job doing menial labor to avoid relying on loans. I don't mind the labor at all but spending the time working on research would be better for my career.

Whether this is acceptable or not will generally depend on whether the TA and RA are set up as "salaried" positions or as hourly positions, which can vary from institution to institution.

When set up as a salaried position, a TA or RA generally covers tuition and "living expenses," where that living expenses is a stipend intended to be sufficient to enable you to live somewhere nearby in a fairly sparse and monastic manner.  In this case, you are expected to be acting as a full-time student, a significant part of whose time is spoken for by the TA or RA duties.  In this case, it would not be appropriate to ask for a second TA or RA, because you are already being paid for your full expected working time.
When set up as an hourly position, on the other hand, the TA or RA is more of a "piecework" employment, where the school is only paying you for the particular hours you work, and taking no responsibility for ensuring that your pay can cover tuition and living expenses.  In this case, it would be perfectly acceptable to combine this with another job, including another TA or RA.

If you are in the first case and you aren't being able to make ends meet, then you may need to adjust your lifestyle to meet the level of poverty that your institution expects of its students---or else find outside consulting work (if permitted) or organize for better wages.


Lectures and labs on the same day as an exam? I'm taking a two day workshop at a technical institute, the instructor has said that all accredited courses must have final exams. Fair enough.

Since this is such a short course the exam will be on the same day that we are also being presented new material. This seems very strange to me, to be given an exam after approximately 5 hours of both lectures and labs throughout the day. That being said, I have a lack of academic experience, so I would like to hear from you.

Is this a common practice to have lectures and labs on the same day as an exam (of the same class)?

The university I'm at recently had a class with lecture in the morning, lab that afternoon, exam an hour after that, then a quiz the following morning in lecture, and finally a recitation that afternoon. Summer semesters tend to be like this as they are shorter in length than a fall or spring semester. No one is happy with it, but it's what needs to happen to cover all the requisite material.

What would typically happen during a regular semester is that labs can't be moved or adjusted, but usually the following lecture is either shorter of cancelled if it is the next day and the lecture the day of the exam is mostly review. But I must point out it is at the discretion of the professor.


U.S. Government Shutdown -- potential effects for the upcoming Spring 2019 semester The U.S. government shutdown has continued through three weeks now; what would the effects be for the upcoming Spring 2019 college semester for graduate students who depend on federal student loans to pay their tuition, health insurance and fees, room and board, and costs of living?

Will such students not be in attendance for the semester, if the government shutdown is not resolved?

The short answer is that the 2018-2019 US government shutdown shouldn't affect student loans for the vast majority of students, but some may have some issues.

Now, for the longer answer:

First, note that the Department of Education has contracted out loan services. In effect, the loan payouts (and repayments) are administered by non-government entities. These will still be disbursing grants and federal student loans. Second, I believe student aid programs are forward-funded to cover an academic year, rather than the calendar year, so the Spring semester should've been funded already. Third, the Department of Education is actually not affected by the 2018-2019 shutdown in the first place, as Congress has already approved the agency's spending bill.

That said, it turns out that the partial shutdown of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can cause issues for some. In particular, obtaining income documentation directly from the IRS does not appear to be possible at this time. This can affect both people repaying already incurred student loans, and students who applied for federal student aid during the shutdown - particularly lower income students, who are more likely to be flagged for income verification. So, to connect back to your question, the shutdown can affect students who didn't rely on federal loans or student aid during the Fall semester, but applied for the Spring semester, and who didn't have all necessary documentation available.

I don't know how many graduate students that would apply to, but it certainly applies to many undergraduate students. There have in fact been news stories about it. Now, I expect most universities will be flexible in how they handle these situations, perhaps accepting some forms of documentation they otherwise wouldn't have, or extending tuition deadlines. Students who find themselves in this mess should probably speak to their financial aid office.


Applying for NSF math postdoc fellowship with a non-U.S. institution as sponsor I will be applying for the NSF mathematics postdoctoral fellowship this fall, and I was surprised to find out that the sponsoring institution need not be located in the United States. One of the universities I am now considering as a sponsoring institution is located in Europe. I'm curious if anyone here has experience with this situation and can give some perspective.

Does the location have any effect (including indirectly) on my chances of getting the fellowship? I'm currently already doing a postdoc in Europe; does this have any bearing? Is it important to communicate, in some form, an intention to return to the U.S. after the postdoc? Or to emphasize that you will still be involved in the U.S. math community?

Are there any challenges or pitfalls with a foreign institution that might be less obvious, or particular strategies that might work well? How might you write a convincing "broader impact" statement if you'll be going abroad?

I'm American and I did my PhD in the U.S.

I'm curious if anyone here has experience with this situation and can give some perspective.

I served as a reviewer for NSF proposals in math, so have some insight into the process, although I don’t recall if this particular issue came up.

  I'm currently already doing a postdoc in Europe; does this have any bearing?

I don’t see how it would.

  Is it important to communicate, in some form, an intention to return to the U.S. after the postdoc?

I don’t see how that‘s relevant. The fellowship’s goal is to assist you in reaching certain objectives during be time you are receiving the fellowship, not afterwards. However, I suppose it’s possible that some reviewers of your proposal will have a different view and think that this is important.

  Or to emphasize that you will still be involved in the U.S. math community?

You should emphasize whatever you think are the best and most noteworthy aspects of your proposed project activities in the context of the broader impacts review. Certainly being involved in the US math community sounds like a good thing, but it’s by no means the unique thing you can propose to do that an NSF reviewer might think is worthy of funding. For example, since you are abroad, you can also do things that your competitors in the US are less able to do, such as build bridges for collaboration with researchers in other countries. Basically, my suggestion is that you try to think what would be the best way you can make a contribution given your unique setting, skills and interests, and propose (and emphasize) that.

Finally, it’s good to keep in mind that the people who would be reviewing your application are people with a fairly similar background to you and (by and large) care about the same things you do. Mostly they will want to see you propose to do something that is exciting and beneficial to society. So don’t overthink this - obviously if you can make the case that your project will further the US national interest or US society in some specific way that’ll be great, since it’s US government funding you’re applying for, but that effect doesn’t have to be a direct one, and there are many ways in which an overseas US researcher can still make a good contribution.

Good luck!


How will study as a non-degree student affect my graduate admissions chances later? I am considering applying to a computer science department at an esteemed US university, university A, as a non-degree seeking student. The reason is three-fold:

Determine if what I'm studying is truly what I want to do.
Do well in the classes to improve my chances of being accepted to their MS program in the near future.
Make connections with profs who might be a good academic/research advisor.

My goal is to eventually apply to a PhD program at university B.

Will the non-degree option help my chances at being accepted to university A's MS program?

Will the non-degree option hurt my chances at being accepted to university B's PhD program? Will they need to know about the non-degree if I'm eventually accepted to the degree option?

Will the non-degree option help my chances at being accepted to university A's MS program?

No.

Will the non-degree option hurt my chances at being accepted to university B's PhD program?

No.

Will they need to know about the non-degree if I'm eventually accepted to the degree option?

Do well in the course and then you'll be proud to share the transcript with them.


How detailed should I be when describing what material was covered in prereqs on a masters application? I am applying to a good quantitative program and they have a section where they want me to list what textbooks I used and what material was covered in certain prereqs for the program.  How detailed should I be with these?  Right now I have the name of the book and every chapter heading that we covered.  I also have topics listed from supplementary slides and more advanced versions of the same courses that I'm taking now listed underneath them along with those topics.

Is that too much?

The forms probably have some space reserved for this, that should give you a fair idea of how much you are supposed to write. In any case, concentrate on the final courses of the relevant line(s), don't list everything from freshman up.


Why does research cost so much money? I have been dragged into an argument with someone who can't understand why millions are being raised to fund ALS research (that's the "ice bucket challenge", love it or hate it). He doesn't get why research costs so much money because - and I genuinely quote - "it only takes time and effort".

My first instinct was to say "Are you being serious or just trying to wind me up?". But then I realized that maybe from an outsider's perspective, this might actually be difficult to understand.

So I am asking for points to make when explaining the cost of research to lay people, and how to articulate these points in a way they can identify with them.

it only takes time and effort

I think the answer to the question is already there. It takes time and effort. So it means it takes at least the money to pay the people for a long time. And effort means you need a lot of people.

More precisely, for medical research, reagents, animal model, clinical test are really expensive. Many different drugs need to be developed to have only one working in the end. Finally when a drug seems promising, you have to do year-long clinical tests, just to ensure patients safety.

So time and effort == lot of money


How hard is to get a post-doc in the area of HEP-Theory? At the moment I'm a high school student, who is passionate about the High Energy Physics areas, especially Phenomenology, String Theory, QFT and so on. I would like to pursue a B.Sc. degree in Mathematical Physics in the future in my country (central European country with a lot of famous string theorists ;) ). After that I would like to move to the USA to get a PhD in the one of the areas show above, but I heard that getting a post-doc and then a permanent job is quite hard.

Is it true? Would I have better success if I wouldn't limit myself only to the US, but include here, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Currently, yes, it is quite hard. Assuming you go on to get your PhD in some field of HEP theory, you'll graduate with a very specific skill set that qualifies you for maybe about 10 available postdoc positions in the entire world, of which perhaps 3 or 4 will be in the US. (Obviously these numbers vary by perhaps a factor of 2 year to year and from one specific subfield to another; take them only as rough estimates.) But there are typically hundreds of people applying to each of these positions, so in the absence of other information your chances of getting one are not good. If you do get a postdoc, then your chances of getting a tenure-track faculty job are lower by perhaps another order of magnitude.

That being said, high school is way too early to be planning your future based on the chances of getting a postdoc. In particular, the difficulty of getting a postdoc should not dissuade you from getting a PhD in high energy physics, if you decide that's what you want to do when you finish college. There are plenty of other things you can do with a PhD in physics, especially if you have supplementary skills like computer programming. And by the time you approach the end of graduate school, you'll have a better idea of whether you are more qualified for a postdoc than the average applicant.


US equivalents of Russian academic titles I am looking for US equivalents of Russian academic titles, such as "Kandidat Nauk" and "Doctor Nauk". I've done my research and come up with a list of translations of these terms. I'd like to know which of these translated titles are the most recognized/appropriate in the US academic world and whether they carry the full meaning of the Russian titles.
Кандидат наук (Kandidat Nauk) – Ph.D./Doctoral Candidate/First Doctoral Degree
Доктор наук (Doctor Nauk) – Grand Ph.D./Senior Doctoral Degree/Higher Doctoral Degree/Second Doctoral Degree.
Here are some of the Internet sources I used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidate_of_Sciences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktor_nauk
https://www.englishelp.ru/translator/articles-for-translator/288-translating-academic-degrees.html
http://www.aic.lv/ace/tools/leg_aca/guid_rus.htm

From how it should work, the situation is like this:

Kandidat nauk (кандидат наук) is a PhD holder. Not a PhD candidate, but a done PhD.
Doktor nauk (доктор наук) is something not really common in the US system. It's the higher doctorate in the UK or a habilitation in a European system.

Now what you get recognized depends on the local authorities, but ideally that should be it.
Bonus: the typical position names in ex-Soviet system are junior and senior research staff (младший научный сотрудник, старший научный сотрудник). Typically, you have the former when you are doing your PhD and the latter when you are a postdoc/tenure track researcher.


How to attend conferences without funding I would like to attend some conferences this year, but we are running out of funding until 2015, so I need to look for other options. For instance, I organized a special session in a conference, and attained 12 speakers, so accommodation was free and also registration but not travel expenses. So my question is, if you do not have funding, which other options you know for attending conferences?

P.S. Given my position (PI of a research group), I can not ask for student travel grants, etc

I know your question is based around the assumption that "funding cannot be found" but I write my answer as a challenge to this assumption.

Short answer: Sometimes you can go out and find funding in odd places.

Long anecdote: I was working in a research lab as an undergraduate.  We had very little funds pretty much all the time being in an undergraduate-only institution (with respect to my field of study which is chemistry).  We had some great work that we wanted to take to a fairly prestigious conference halfway across the country but we had no money to go.  Myself and a co-worker knew how much this conference would mean to our boss so we decided to go on a crusade to find money to make this happen.  We marched out of the lab with all pertinent information in hand and took it straight to the top.  We literally walked into the president's office (of the Uni) and asked the secretary if we could meet with him.  She was immediately concerned and amused at what we were trying to do.  Of course we weren't able to see him straightaway, if at all, for our shenanigans.  But she did allow us to make our case to her to see if she could help us out any.

This turned out to be a very profitable and endearing experience.  She dropped some contacts in various departments and suggested we go talk to them.  She even left us with some business cards to take with us.  We immediately contacted every single person on her list and, much to our surprise, we received some very positive responses.  I remember one office in general, "Undergraduate Enrichment", which dealt directly with the promotion and advancement of undergraduates.  They were nearing the end of the fiscal year and they had money lying around in some accounts that had not been used.  Well, long story short, they gave it to us.  All of it.  We managed to pick up a little bit here, a little bit there, through a few departments, and were able to come up with all the funds we needed.  It wasn't a cakewalk though.  My friend and I went as far as to appear before Student Government where we asked for funds and had to present our case to, for all intents and purposes, a group of dimwits who were not only apart of Greek life, but ran Student Government strictly around the idea of advancing Greek life (i.e. they didn't give two squats about anything we had to say) and it was one of the most painful and grueling 40 minutes of my life standing before them.  We managed to squeak about $500 from them which topped us off.

Summary: My friend and I dove in feet first and asked around for money.  Found the funds in some of the oddest places.  We went on the trip and were able to present our research in a prestigious conference.

Don't give up my friend.  Be proactive and think outside the box. You may walk away being quite surprised.


Is it fine to use a startup as an affiliation? My situation: I have finished university more than 10 years ago. I work for company X. I also own a small startup company called Y (no employees). I am in the process of publishing a paper and I was asked to provide an affiliation. Not providing one is not an option, in the sense it's a mandatory field on the form. I asked X and X said no, as I worked on the paper in my spare time.

Does it make sense to use Y as my affiliation (which is 100% true though not necessarily relevant)? The other option would be to try with something like "Independent researcher" and hope the journal is fine with it (idea came from here; example).

Relevant questions:

Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?
Using home address when submitting an article with no affiliation?

I was asked to provide an affiliation [for a paper]. Not providing one is not an option, in the sense it's a mandatory field on the form.

You could write N/A or unaffiliated, since this seems like the most relevant answer.

  Does it make sense to use [my startup] as my affiliation (which is 100% true though not necessarily relevant)?

Just like your employer decided that they didn't want their company name on your paper, you should consider whether you want your startup name on your paper.

On an aside, I wonder whether an employer (generally) has the right to deny an employee of listing the employer as their affiliation. (Some employers -- especially those in R&D -- will explicitly define contractual conditions, but generally they will not.)


How to best prepare for a Master course I'm planning to apply for a Master course in the area of computer graphics. My goal is to conduct research in this area in the future.

However, I'm not sure I will be able to apply for the course this year due to my personal circumstances and I may need to wait a year before I do so.

Having said that, I would like to prepare for this by building a skill set that will help me one year from now in the course. However, I'm not sure whether this skill set should be in my ultimate area of interest or general skills like learning scientific writing, for instance.

In summary, I would like to know what are some important skills that can ease my way into research if I study well in advance before I get into the MSc programme.

In essence, you should try to get a basic grasp what doing research is all about, first. And second, you should try to get a basic grasp about the who and what is important in your area of interest.

Now, these are broad topics and something you can't expect to learn like a lesson, it is more a journey that will ease some important details - of the kind that no one will (or can) tell you about and are nowhere to be found written out - that time spent in academia will bring along.

For the first part, follow some academic blogs, professors and other academics write a lot about the everyday experiences of their research programs. Even if their field is not your own, try to read between the lines and draw yourself a bigger picture. Although the day of a researcher differs by the field they are active in, you will find many common traits. Getting the experience of other people about paper writing, research methodology, thesis committees, and similar topics was of tremendous help to me, before I started with my graduate studies.

The second part includes narrowing in to you specific area of interest. Use your time to find currently hot research that is done. Identify the people who do it and visit their websites to check out their work. Try reading the published work, don't mind if you don't get all of it. Focus on the problem at hand and the proposed solution. Even if you only understand the abstract, introduction and conclusion it is enough for starters. Also, pay attention to the group of people at the institution where you will be doing your MSc. What are the topics of their research? Do they have labs / what projects are they working on? What classes are they teaching? Is some professor/topic/project of particular interest to you?

Finally, I wouldn't recommend burdening yourself with an over extensive amount of prep-work for classes or thesis. Of course, feel free to explore, experiment, etc. but the majority of this will come naturally once you have an adviser, classes, a group, and so on. If you find that a skill is demand in your field, try allocating time for getting the basics of it (e.g. if you never have written anything in Latex, try it out).

As you see, my recommendations are primarily focused on getting to know the world you are getting into. This proved far more important to me than preparation for the coursework and thesis. Also, it helps you solidify you interests in research and puts you in some (real) perspective what you can expect from graduate studies.


What happens to NSF funding when someone passes away? A young professor at my old university recently passed away. They were still in the process of setting up their lab, taking on graduate students, etc.

What will happen to their NSF funding now? There is no obvious candidate in the department to take it over.

It probably depends a bit on how accommodating the program officer is.  The money is allocated to the university and they can put a different PI on the project.  It seems likely to me that if students are depending on the funding, they should find a way to make it work but you never know with this stuff.  The onus would be on the university to come up with an acceptable alternate plan.


How to approach negotiating the start date of a tenure-track position? A few days ago I got an offer (yay!) from a US school. I have about another week before they want a decision. Over the last few days I have been tallying up costs for start up.  When should I start negotiating?

And here's the bigger question: my wife and I are expecting our first child basically soon as the fall semester starts - how do I broach the topic of a single semester deferral? I hate to do this but we have a lot of worry about transitioning during such a sensitive time (and their health insurance policy does not allay our concerns plus we have zero connections there and I worry about my wife's isolation as I start a new position). This would be the number one thing for me to take the job.

So how would I go about the negotiation? Would I say A is number one thing I need, then B, then C etc? I should I start ASAP? Should I e-mail where I can cleanly layout reasons for each desire?

In regards to the deferral request, how do you envision the school to respond? It is a small department so not sure how they could absorb the workload. I was planning on going into detail how I would use my deferred time to accomplish tasks that would benefit the school (e.g.  grant applications, work on outreach program, prep for spring classes, be willing to take heavier load in spring, get research ready for students etc). I doubt the school will completely dismiss my caution but also worried that deferral will be too much for them to bear.

Let me offer the perspective of a former department chair who was involved in hiring negotiations from the department side. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Hiring a faculty member is a long-term investment. When a department recruits a new faculty member, typically they expect the person to be around for the next 20-30. When viewed through that prism, any short-term concessions, especially ones that come without any financial cost like a deferral or unpaid leave of absence, are fairly negligible compared to the total benefit the department expects to get out of an otherwise-successful recruitment.
Leverage is important, but it’s not everything. An academic recruitment is not usually a zero-sum game where each side tries to exploit the other to the maximal extent they can get away with. Specifically, it is a repeated game where the reputation of a department’s recruitment practices matters a lot for its ability to recruit successfully in the future, and besides, the two parties are going to be working alongside each other for a long time, so it is in everybody’s interest that things are done amicably and in a way that leaves the other side generally happy and satisfied. For this reason, a candidate’s request that can be granted by the department for a relatively low cost will typically be looked at pretty favorably, even in the absence of leverage. (At least this is true in departments and universities run by rational, competent people...)
Keep your cool. From the language of your question it seems to me that you are approaching the discussion from a rather emotional place. For example, you say “I hate to do this”, suggesting that you feel guilty or apologetic about bringing up what you perceive to be a super-delicate or taboo topic. Relax! Such discussions are all in a day’s work for the people you’ll be talking to, and don’t carry nearly the emotional weight that you imagine them to carry. Nor do you have anything to be apologetic about. “Negotiation” in the current context is just a code word for you telling the department what your needs and preferences are, to which the department will respond by telling you what its needs and preferences are, and by a process of joint exploration you and your co-negotiator will arrive at the point in the space of possibilities that is reasonably agreeable to you both. Just bring up the topic of the deferral and anything else that’s on your mind, in a live conversation (ask for a phone/video call with the department chair), and do so in a straightforward, mature, honest and professional way, and you’ll be fine. The worst that can conceivably happen is they’ll decline your request and you’ll be no worse off than you are now.
You should bring up your request as soon as possible. Given the short deadline, any further delay weakens your position, since if you wait much longer, people will wonder if things that you say are important to you maybe aren’t as important as you say they are (otherwise why are you only now remembering to bring them up?). By acting fast you will appear more credible and your requests are likely to be taken more seriously. There will also be more time to explore possible creative solutions that will satisfy both you and the department.

Good luck, and congratulations on the offer, which I’m sure you worked extremely hard to get and is well-deserved.


Conducting research as an undergraduate I am an undergraduate and am about to begin the last year of my degree. I live in a country with very limited research opportunities for undergraduate students, and wish to gain research experience for a stronger application to universities abroad.
I wish to carry out a study on my own. I do not wish to include any supervisors as the faculty in my college isn't great and I don't trust them to have any valuable inputs. Frankly, including them would delay the process and involve a lot of back-and-forth and awkwardness around telling them I simply don't agree with how they want to do things. I have a couple questions.

Is it possible for me to send a paper for publication if I don't have a degree yet?
Will my research be seen as credible standing by itself with an undergraduate as its sole author, or would you suggest I include a professor's name in it as well?
Is it better if I have other co-authors, such as another peer in my class?

Finally, if anyone has any suggestions for how I could possibly gain research experience, I would appreciate that as well. I cannot approach my supervisors to include me in any research they're carrying out, and there aren't any research labs where I could intern.

To answer your questions directly, yes, you can submit for publication as an undergraduate or as a completely uneducated person for that matter. Science and other scholarship is about the work, not the author's credentials. It will be credible if it is credible, independent of who you are. But it needs to say something new and interesting to have credibility. It is more, much more, than going through the motions of carrying out a study.

The only real reason for having a professor involved is that you can take advantage of his or her experience in doing research, writing it up, and getting it published. The name and credential is, as mentioned above, not the important thing. Likewise, a joint effort with peers is valuable since it is more likely that a few minds working on a problem will notice issues that need to be addressed and come to a better result. Other than that - little or no effect.

However, if you don't have any experience in doing this, it is pretty unlikely that you will be successful in your first attempt given the time constraints. Learning to do research and get it published, like any other learning task requires both practice and feedback. Many people, even with more educational background than yourself will struggle to reach the point at which it can be done with any facility. Most of them (a few exceptions) have the advantage of being able to bounce ideas off of much more experienced people - feedback.

Of course, if you do write something up and submit it to a journal or conference, it will be reviewed. If it has any validity at all you will get feedback from the reviewers. Hopefully it will be constructive, but sometimes it is disheartening. But it is better to get some local feedback before attempting publication, just so you get the practice and wind up submitting things that need less "polishing" to actually be published.

Like anything, though, you get experience through practice. Early attempts may be successful, but for most it takes a few tries. But the practice needs to be tempered by feedback.

If any of your professors have published material, you might want to approach one of them with some idea for a study. Ask if they can guide you and give you feedback. Even if you don't reach the publishing stage, that feedback will be valuable in figuring out how to approach research and how to make it presentable. Someone with more experience is also more likely than yourself to have an idea about what sorts of things are ripe for research. It does you little good to work on questions already answered and it normally takes a lot of study to understand where the research "edge" is any given field. A more experienced person can help with that, showing you what is the most important thing to look at.


Doubts about an experimental PhD project I recently finished my MSc in Physics and my average is within the absolute 1% of the whole institute where I study. I really like programming and numerical work, so my thesis was also concerned a lot with this, but there was also some experimental work to "justify" the numerical results.

I want to continue with a PhD and my thesis-advisor offered me a PhD project. However, the project is mostly experimental and the amount of programming is quite limited. The project is still interesting, because a large part of it is realizing the setup I proposed and simulated in my MSc thesis. It should be noted that the project is partly funded by a relatively large space agency, so (besides looking good on my CV) there are good chances of getting new contacts through this specific project. I thought that I could use this opportunity to see if it possible to spend 1-2 (or more) months at this agency during my PhD, working with them on their programming-heavy work. This wouldn't be directly related to my PhD project, so I'm not sure I'm "allowed" to do this, but this should be an option for me to investigate further.

I'm not sure if I should accept this experimental PhD project, because I worried that doing too much experimental physics may not be where my interest lies. On the other hand, I don't have any other offer and it may very well take some time before I find an alternative.

Regarding my future, then I definately see myself having a job which is based on programming/numerical work. This is another motivation for finding an alternative project, but would an experimental PhD make me less "attractive" for such a job?

Besides looking at my future, are there any questions I can ask myself to clarify this decision I have to take?

Do not spend several years of your life pursuing a PhD project that you aren't enthusiastic about. If you do not want to be an experimentalist, it won't do you much good. It will be a lot more difficult to overcome the challenges and setbacks you will face if you don't like your project. Moreover, it's harder to become "an expert in the field" if you're not highly motivated to do so.

However, that said, it is possible for people to move back and forth between computational and experimental work. It's perhaps somewhat more complicated now than it used to be, but it's still certainly doable. Unfortunately, it may take some additional convincing to show people that you want to be a modeler if you've only done experimental work.


What papers can you ask someone to cite for using your software? Ofen Software authors request that users cite a paper of theirs in publications resulting from projects using their software.

As such an software author, what logic governs what kind of papers you can reasonably ask to cite?
I see 5 cases:

The paper is about the software explicitly. Eg Theano
The software is a direct implementation of an algorithm described in the paper. Eg anything from here
They created the software to use in research presented in the paper. It has not changed since.
They originally created the software for use in the research paper, but since then it has undergone fairly large changes as it has continued to be developed.  Eg DeepLearnToolbox
The paper has nothing in common with the software, except sharing an author.

In which cases is it acceptable to request the paper be cited?
5 seems like an obvious no-no, but are the others in the clear?

This question is the flip-side of Should I cite Papers to acknowledge usage of tools?

When I am using someone else's software and this software has been used in my paper, the least I can do is cite the related paper. In many cases when the tool is available online, authors typically include the citation along with the download (on the readMe or documentation file). In those kind of cases, I must admit I have never really checked the overlap between the paper and the software, because citing the author's paper seemed to me more a matter of professional courtesy and attribution of their contribution to my work than anything else. After all, if I trust the authors enough to assume their software gives correct results, not trusting them for which paper they tell me to cite seemed like an oxymoron.

On the other hand, if I was the software author I would be careful so that there is a significant overlap between the paper and the software (your cases 1-4). All of those cases seem to me like a reasonable reason to cite the related paper. There is also a case 6 when the tool was developed during the duration of a research project and there is a published paper that describes this project. In that case, citing this paper like this:

  We use the 'tool' that was developed during the 'myName' project
  [citationToMyNamePaper]"

when using this tool, would also seem like a reasonable choice.

I must say that I have never met your case 5 ("The paper has nothing in common with the software"), when I actually checked for overlap. Do you have any concrete examples of such a case yourself? Because although something like that is possible, I do not think it is common.


Academic Misconduct with alternate exam? Minimizing damage? An individual I know is in an interesting situation and I was just wondering what you guys thought about it.

This individual had an exam conflict and emailed the instructor to arrange an alternate exam time to get rid of this conflict. Meanwhile the rest of the class would be taking the exam for this course at a later time that day.

After the alternate exam was finished, this individual answered questions and provided specific topics regarding the exam by his peers who would be taking that course exam later that day.

Now this individual received an email from the instructor accusing him of leaking information and reported it to the academic misconduct board.

Now I was just wondering if this is truly a form of academic misconduct.

Just a few notes to add:

I have fellow peers who have done the exact same thing and not face a single threat of being reported to the academic board.
Is it not the instructor's responsibility to prepare a different version of the exam for both the individual and rest of the class?
Furthermore, is it not also the university's and/or the instructor's responsibility to highlight the confidentiality of an alternate exam and notify the possible consequences? In all the rules and regulations, there are no clear cut rules for alternate exams or any offences that can take place.
Does this just come down to miscommunication and failure to provide reasonable notice?
From the rumours going around, the evidence gathered is a screenshot of a facebook conversation, is this even enough evidence?
And if so, would it not be a breach of privacy?
Another update: The individual did not know that it was going to be the same exam.

Thanks again and I would love to hear your thoughts about this.

UPDATE:

As a user pointed out, the second part to this question is how can this individual minimize the damage and not face severe academic misconduct?

If the facts are as you report them, your "peer" has engaged in academic misconduct.

  I have fellow peers who have done the exact same thing and not face a single threat of being reported to the academic board.

Your "fellow peers" didn't get caught.

  Is it not the instructor's responsibility to prepare a different version of the exam for both the individual and rest of the class?

No, the instructor is not responsible for preparing a different exam; the professor should be able to rely on the integrity of university students.  In any case, a fair separate exam would necessarily cover the same material.

  Furthermore, is it not also the university's and/or the instructor's responsibility to highlight the confidentiality of an alternate exam and notify the possible consequences? In all the rules and regulations, there are no clear cut rules for alternate exams or any offences that can take place.

Probably the the professor should have told the student with the advance exam to keep it confidential, but I'll bet if you look in your student handbook, you'll find a statement about illicit knowledge of exam contents.

  Does this just come down to miscommunication and failure to provide reasonable notice?

No, it comes down to someone revealing the contents of an exam to students who have not yet taken it.

  From the rumours going around, the evidence gathered is a screenshot of a facebook conversation, is this even enough evidence?

See Anonymous Mathematician's answer concerning Facebook:  "Why not?"

  And if so, would it not be a breach of privacy?

See Anonymous Mathematician's answer concerning Facebook: "Only if the Facebook account was hacked."

  The individual did not know that it was going to be the same exam.

Then he couldn't know it wasn't, either.

Your "peer" knew what he was doing was wrong and he did it anyway.  Now he must accept the consequences of that action.

The question was updated to ask about how to minimize damage.  That will depend heavily on the individual's history of conduct, any circumstances not brought out in the question, the institution's rules of conduct, and how tough the misconduct board is. However, I can tell you how not to minimize the damage: approaching the professor, dean, or misconduct board in a way that is obnoxiously defensive and argumentative.  If, for example, the individual says, "Nobody told me, and besides it's the professor's fault for not writing a new exam.  A screenshot is not evidence and it was an invasion of my privacy to rat me out!"  That will almost certainly lead to the worst possible outcome.

While not a prediction for the case in question, a similar case where I teach, if a first offense, would lead to a penalty grade in the course and a one-semester suspension from classes.  Second offense?  Dismissed from the university.

Note: It has been pointed out that this answer is generally in the context of higher education in the United States.  Given that a professor accused a student of academic misconduct for breaching the integrity of an exam, I expect it applies in the context of OP's question even though the institution is not in the U.S.


Is tutoring (outside university) while doing PhD a good idea? Just to ask some advice regarding tutoring students while pursuing a PhD to supplement my income.
Is this a good idea? Tutoring pays well in my country, and I am intending to teach twice a week(2 hours each), which would generate a side income equivalent to 30% of my stipend.

(Side info: I am researching Mathematics)

Thanks for your advice!

Of course, whether it is a good idea can only be known in hindsight. But many PhD students work as private tutors, so if it sounds interesting to you, you might as well try it.

Some things to consider:

It will probably take you some time to prepare for each lesson. And unless your students will come to your home or office, also account for travel time and expenses. Four hours of lessons per week may require significantly more than four hours of your time.
What will you do if your students are late to their lesson, or don't show up at all? What if they don't study for their lessons? What if they are late in paying you? What if they (or their parents) demand some different style of tutoring than you had planned? What if they demand that you just do their homework while they Facebook?
Consider the time it will take you to recruit students. Assume that they  will quit unexpectedly, requiring you  to find new students and lose income in the meantime. Do not count on your tutoring fees as steady income.
Ethical issues: if you are working as a teaching assistant or something similar, you cannot be a private tutor to students who are enrolled in your class. Check for other ethics or conflict of interest rules that your university may have. In particular, although your university office may seem like a convenient place to meet your private students, this may not be allowed.


Request an extension of revision deadline over the holidays I have submitted a paper to an Elsevier journal.
They sent the first decision on my paper as a major revision on October 28 and gave me two months to revise the manuscript.

Currently, the deadline is so close while I am stuck in a problem with my manuscript. I sent a request of extension on the night of December 24 to the editorial office of the journal.

Now, I am worried about not hearing from them before missing the deadline due to the holidays.

Is their office closed on December 26? (I think their office is located in the UK.)

What is your suggestion in this case?

If I miss the deadline without no hearing from the editor due to holidays, the editor will extend the deadline after seeing my request sent on December 24?

Let me recapture my understanding of your situation:

You cannot make an appropriate resubmission in time.
You informed the appropriate person of this fact (hopefully giving appropriate reasoning).

I further assume that:

The person who will decide whether you get an extension can decide on a per-case basis using common sense and is not dogmatically bound to rules.
Further communication cannot possibly have any positive effect.

Then, there is nothing you can do, except hoping the person deciding upon the extension is reasonable and decides in your favour. Whether this is actually the case is something that we cannot predict any better than you. Whether the journal office is open should hardly matter (and again is something that we cannot tell any better than you).


Can you switch the co-first author position after the article is published? Can you switch the position of the first co-first author with the second co-first author of an article after it is published?

Full story: During my PhD, I published two articles, both as the first of the two co-first author. In both articles, the second co-first author is my colleague. My colleague is highly career-driven and ambitious. Although he did not do much work to contribute to either paper (I did 90% of the experiments and analysis and writing, since these are my main projects for my PhD), but he has a good relationship with our supervisor, and managed to convince our supervisor that he did a lot. Our supervisor then spoke to me and insisted that I included him as the second co-first author. I am ok with this, since my name still appears first.

Now, I have finished my PhD and is going to leave this research group soon. I am worried that my colleague, being career-driven and has a good relationship with our supervisor, may try some means to switch his name on these articles with me, and becomes from the second co-first author to the first co-first author.

Journals generally don't want to change things after publication - especially things like authorship order that would cause havoc to past citations. It thus seems unlikely that your coauthor will even try, and even less likely that the journal would acquiesce to such a request. I think most (well-run) journals would also try to contact all involved authors if there is such an unusual request, so you're likely to be informed if your coauthor were to try something. Finally, even if such a change were to somehow go through, usually people take the idea and statement of co-first authors ("these authors contributed equally to the work presented in this paper") at face value, so it'd be unlikely to affect either of your careers to any significant extent (with certain exceptions). Though of course, there's the usual caveat that conventions in your field about co-first authorships might be different.


Publishing a paper that cites my previous work How should one cite previous work of his own? If one paper relies on previous work that author already did I suppose that paper should be cited. Given that one paper is a continuation of the one before should the papers that are cited there as previous work be cited as-well?

If I take your question literally, then this would be my answer:

I citation serves two purposes:

You avoid that you take credit for work by others, and thus avoid plagiarism. This point also applies to your own work published somewhere else.
It can act like an "external appendix" (e.g. the interested reader can read the proof in...).

So, if you make a statement in your current article that relies on findings in your previous articles, then you should cite yourself. If your previous articles contain information you would otherwise have put in an (web)appendix, then you can cite yourself. Otherwise, you should not cite yourself.

However, I suspect you want to know how far back you should go when writing the section "previous research". Here the answer is it depends on what is considered normal in your (sub-)discipline. At the very least I would look at that section from the perspective of a reader: Can they understand how you want to place your article within the research that has been done in this area? Discussing the creation of the computer is typically not necessary to achieve that goal...


Protocol for writing a recommendation letter for someone you only know on a personal basis I am a graduate student. A close friend of mine is applying to post graduate research position and has asked me to provide a recommendation for her. I have never written a formal recommendation letter before and would like some advice on how to write this.

For some background, I am studying in a unrelated field compared to what she is applying for - Quantitative Finance vs. psychological counseling. I have personally known her for many years and she is very supportive with strengths such as a warm personality, a nurturing nature, and a great sense of humor. Her attitude is very laid back and she is very easy to get to know. Her loyalty and trust is unshakeable. However, my relationship with her is only on a personal level. While I think she is an amazing person, my knowledge of her academically and research wise is meager at best.

What are graduate admissions panels typically looking for in a recommendation letter? Is there a particular format they require? I just want to be the most help I can and help my friend achieve admission.

Graduate admissions panels are not (generally) looking for personal references. They are looking for academic references.

Tell your friend to find another letter writer; nothing you say about her wonderful personality will help her get admitted. At best, it would be a wasted opportunity for her to submit an actual academic reference; more likely, it would actively work against her (looks like she's clueless, or such a bad student that she can't get anyone to write an academic letter for her).

Also see Kisses of Death in the Graduate School Application Process, page 2, "Harmful letters of recommendation," subsection "Inappropriate sources."


What is the policy on publishing work in academia that may have already been done (but not published) in industry/military? I am interested in pursuing an area of computer security that is very likely already being studied by security professionals in industry and perhaps the military as well. Some of it is published, but I imagine some of it could also be unpublished work that companies and the military might not want to share with the public.
I could see my research group independently developing some unpublished techniques that probably are already in use in some form or another by existing companies who don't wish to share those to the public. In this case, is it acceptable for me to publish this as my own research, given that I have no affiliation to the company in question (assuming such a company does exist, which could very well be the case)? If I do publish, can I be in trouble for publishing work which these companies/military don't want the public to be aware of (but which I developed independently)?

It is fully acceptable to work on, and to publish, results on topics als researched in secret by companies or security agencies. From an academic point of view, there is nothing wrong with that, and neither from the point of view of stealing intellectual property. (But I'm not a lawyer!)  Whether those companies or agencies would be unhappy with you publishing some great new technique for breaking cryptosystems - probably not, but unless you believe in conspiracy theories, this is likely not be an issue.  (They might try to hire you, though.)
There have been precedents, e.g., on the best algorithms to factor numbers, or some cryptographic algorithms.  (I'd have to dig out references for that.)


Would using an application fee waiver affect my admission result in a negative way? I am applying to an Ivy League university in the US as an international student for a Ph.D. program. They have application fee waivers for students with financial hardship.

Would using it (or even asking for it) have negative effects on the result of application?

They also have a GRE waiver for these type of students too. I believe this one does affect the result. Am I right?

The people in the program will evaluate and score your application.

They won't know whether the fee was waived, nor are they likely to care.

They will know if there is no GRE score. For some programs the GRE score is important, for others it is not.

You will need to ask the programs that you are considering what there policy is. GRE waivers are usually in lieu of other evidence (such as a strong work history, previous graduate degree, performance on some other graduate test (MCAT, GMAT, etc)).


Contact professors regarding a not registered invention idea I have received my MSc degree and I want to apply for Ph.D. programs.

I have an idea for an invention (this idea came from my master’s thesis), but it is not completely related to my field – I will need help from people of other fields to design this application.
The idea is new and it is not registered yet.

Since I am graduated, I don’t have any access to the university.
How should I approach a professor to team with me for this work? Is it possible?
If yes could you please give me a piece of advice or sample emails?

BWY, I'd like to study in a foreign country as well, e.g., in the USA.

You can always contact professors in order to team up, however it will probably be the case that they will provide PhD students to team up with you. This is just a matter of communication and I don't think that is the real problem here.

The idea not being registered yet raises the real issue, because if you start to emailing everybody to try find a team someone may find the idea interesting and start working on it. Then comes the question is it possible to register the idea like in a patent or something? If not, is it possible to publish a paper about it on a conference, this would be a way to turn the idea public but with an authorship kept.

Another thing related to the team item is that you should first get an adviser and be accepted for a PhD program and then you should worry with the team up for the implementation, maybe even with your adviser help.


Is there any website for postdoc jobs in Canada? In Europe there is https://www.euraxess.de or in the Netherlands there is https://www.academictransfer.com/en/ to find postdoc positions.

Are there any similar website to find postdoc positions in Canada?

I only could find https://jobs.sciencecareers.org. I am wondering if there are any more websites.

I am one of the editors of https://www.thePostdoctoral.com - We had keywords "mathematical modelling biology" - last time May 2018 (https://promiseagep.com/2018/04/30/post-doctoral-research-associate-mathematical-biology/). There were 3 more in April and January.

Up to 250 new postdoc positions every day. We search the web AND social media and cover almost all webpages. Once they post or announce it's in our data base, before being shown in search engines.

If you want to have access to our data base simply sign up. Our power function is an archive keyword search (up 365 days, makes sense for 30 days or so).

Hope this helps.

Good luck and all the best,
Anthony from thePostdoctoral.com (and https://nextPhD.com and https://PhDvibe.com)


How to deal with the postdoc offer without a contract I was recently interviewed for a postdoctoral position at a top-three institution in the world. The PI has now offered me a position via email which does not include any form of contract. How do I ask politely for a proper offer letter/contract without sounding skeptical about the PI's email offer? I am an international student, and normally universities provide conditional offer letter to the international graduates contingent on the approval of the work permit by the government (which happens immediately after graduation). I will be graduating in May and would like to have a conditional offer letter signed to secure the position officially.

A top-three institution will certainly have experience with hiring international postdocs, and it is likely they have a standard process for doing so. In my opinion, you can ask your PI to advance the process without worrying about sounding skeptical. You might simply sound excited or eager instead. How about an email like:

Dear PI,

Thank you for your kind offer. I am excited for the opportunity to work together.

If you have the time to send me an official offer letter or similar document, I can apply for the appropriate work permits immediately to prevent any delay in the start date. Is there any additional information I can provide that might be helpful?

Best,

MAPK


Timing an internship during PhD Suppose there is an engineering PhD student who is unsure whether to join academia or the industry after his PhD. He does not want to take chances and applies for internship positions during the course of his PhD. Here is a dilemma: the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could otherwise spend thinking about his research problem. OTOH, when he is not fully into research, he is unlikely to get attractive research-based internship positions.

How should a PhD candidate time his internship in a way that it does not affect his research and is also a very valuable experience on his PhD resume?

I think you're creating a false dichotomy by saying

  the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could
  otherwise spend thinking about research problems

Internships are places where sometimes REALLY interesting problems come up. Especially in engineering, while it's not critical, it's very important to keep a finger on what's happening in industry - the industry/academia divide is a matter of time-horizon rather than fundamental nature of the problem.

Of course you need to have enough experience to recognize interesting problems, which goes back to @aeismail's answer. I will also say that doing it late in your career isn't that bad either, because then you get a three-month interview for a job. That's how I got my first one :)


How much should I worry about British spelling when submitting to a U.K. journal? I'm in the U.S. and have always written in American English. I will be submitting a paper to a U.K. journal for the first time. To conform to British spelling, I've changed the Microsoft Word dictionary to U.K. English, which has caught most of the obvious differences . Even so, I'm worried that it will miss some of the differences listed here and here.  Is this even worth worrying about? Will being lazier about spelling hurt the chances for my paper's acceptance?

The answer depends very much on the journal. Some expect UK spellings; others will permit either American or British spellings. You should check with the journal in question.

Of course, the other option that you have is the following. Since you know what the major differences between the two sets of spellings are, and you have a sense of which one's won't be caught by your spell checker, you could always do a final search-and-replace after you've completed work on the paper to make sure you've switched everything over. (Or at least, everything you know should be switched over.)

That should satisfy most journals, and as shan23 said, I don't think a journal will reject your paper for writing "meters" instead of "metres"; the most you'll get is a referee report telling you to switch spellings.


My department has changed its favorite fields of research. What are the consequences? When I was hired to a math department (in the US) my field was among the favorite directions in the department. Few years later the department decided to put more attention on some other areas of math.

I am wondering what might be the practical consequences of this decision for me. E.g. whether my research will be considered to be less important for the department from some point of view? Will I get more administrative duties? Will it be harder to get grants for my research? Any other consequences?

I have a tenure position.

I'm afraid I find the question rather vague.  You write

  When I was hired to a math department (in the US) my field was among the favorite directions in the department.

I have spent my entire professional life in math departments in the US, and I was not aware that they (we?) have "favorite directions."  Even the smallest departments I know have at least four different research areas represented, and the general attitude / expectation is that everyone should be collegial and helpful with each other while feeling that their own area is the "favorite" and promoting accordingly.

It is true that often different research groups have different sizes or different profiles.  In my department for instance the number theory group has been larger than the analysis group (and had more students, offered more courses, organized more conferences and so forth...) in the time I've been there.  But there is no explicit, systemic way in which number theory is promoted over analysis in my department: in fact we have hired in both groups in recent years.

  Few years later the department decided to put more attention on some other areas of math.

Again, what does that mean?  Do you mean in terms of hiring initiatives?  If so, maybe you have nothing to worry about: hiring initiatives are very often cyclic: departments target areas where the ranks have shrunk in recent years.  I have never in my life heard of a hiring initiative whose express purpose is to deemphasize or somehow lessen in any way the stature of faculty who are already there.  Why in the world would a department agree to that?  Even if a "lessening" of a current research area was in the best interest of the majority of the current members, faculty have more solidarity and longsighted worries than that: first they came for the analysts...

  E.g. whether my research will be considered to be less important for the department from some point of view? Will I get more administrative duties? Will it be harder to get grants for my research? Any other consequences?

Again, it seems really impossible for us to answer these questions.  The first one is excruciatingly vague. Everyone's research may be considered to be less important for the department from some point of view: if it's too theoretical then how is it contributing to the world really, and if it's overly applied then it's, you know, not as cool to pure mathematicians.  Will you get more administrative duties is certainly a question to ask the other members of your department.  I don't really understand why this would affect your ability to get external grants, but then I don't really understand what you're talking about.

In general this is something that as a tenured professor you absolutely need to discuss with your colleagues.  Honestly, you sound like you don't understand the whole thing very well.  I urge you to get a clue by talking to your colleagues, repeatedly and protractedly if necessary.  Being tenured means your colleagues need to listen and address all your questions and concerns.  It's time for you to use that power.


Does adding "All rights reserved" have no legal usefulness? My University requires students to add the mention "All rights reserved." on their thesis. The full required copyright notice is "© 2008 Jane Doe. All rights reserved."

However, I have read in a couple of places that the mention "All rights reserved" has no legal significance:

http://www.iusmentis.com/copyright/allrightsreserved/ :

  The phrase was a required element in the 1910 Buenos Aires Copyright
  Convention. This was a treaty between the United States and most South
  and Middle American countries. Article 3 of this Convention states:

  The acknowledgement of a copyright obtained in one State, in conformity with its laws, shall produce its effects of full right, in
  all the other States, without the necessity of complying with any
  other formality, provided always there shall appear in the work a
  statement that indicates the reservation of the property right.

  Adding the phrase "All rights reserved" was enough to comply with this
  article.

  The phrase "All rights reserved" indicates that the copyright holder
  does not want to give up any of the exclusive rights he has under
  copyright law. This is only relevant for members of the Buenos Aires
  Copyright Convention.

  Today all members of the Buenos Aires Copyright Convention are also
  member of the Berne Convention. The Berne Convention states that
  unless explicitly stated otherwise, all rights are reserved. Further,
  a copyright law may not require any formalities as a condition for
  copyright protection. Therefore "All rights reserved" has no legal
  significance anymore.

Wikipedia echoes the same information:

  The requirement to add the "all rights reserved" notice became
  essentially obsolete on August 23, 2000 when Nicaragua became the
  final member of the Buenos Aires Convention to also become a signatory
  to the Berne Convention. As of that date, every country that was a
  member of the Buenos Aires Convention (which is the only copyright
  treaty requiring this notice to be used) was also a member of Berne,
  which requires protection be granted without any formality of notice
  of copyright.

Is adding "All rights reserved" only a legally insignificant reminder to the reader that author is by default the copyright holder of the piece of work and that he did not give up any of the exclusive rights he has under copyright law? Has the mention "All rights reserved" turned to be useful in the jurisprudence since its legal obsolescence?

Currently, copyright is assumed to the authors unless explicitly declared otherwise, and no rights are granted unless explicitly declared.  Thus, de facto your work is "all rights reserved" even if you don't explicitly state it.

Please do make sure you explicitly state copyright information, however, including name and durable contact information!  The assumption of strong copyright protection even without explicit notification is actually a big problem for effective sharing of information both inside academia and outside, because people often reserve more rights than they intend to, and lack of good copyright information makes it difficult to correct this.

A number of organizations are building systems intending to simplify this type of interaction.  One of the most notable is Creative Commons, whose licenses your see all over Wikipedia.  Other similar ventures and consortia exist for software, electronic hardware, mechanical blueprints, DNA, etc., each of which has its own unique set of IP problems, often intensified by the interaction of copyright with patents and less well-known IP systems such as EU sui generis database rights.


Extra time when time is of the essence (U.S.) In the U.S. context, I am wondering how colleges deal with the accommodation of students with disabilities when testing something for which "time is of the essence".

Consider, for example, a sight-reading exam at a music school. Surely, as much as dyslexia seriously impairs reading text, there must exist an equivalent condition impairing some people's ability to read music. So I would expect that under current policies, a student who can demonstrate a serious "music reading disability" could ask for accommodation in the form of extra time on a sight-reading exam (at least if the exam is one where students are given some time with the new sheet before they have to perform it live)?

The issue, obviously, is that time is of the essence in a sight-reading exam. What is being tested is precisely whether the student is able to quickly (sometimes even "on the spot") read a new sheet of music.

Of course, this extends beyond the particular example of sight-reading. A school that trains mechanics may specifically want to test whether its students are able to service a car in a given amount of time. A school that trains chemists may want to test whether its students can perform a given experiment in a given amount of time as well. And so on and so forth.

These situations seem hard to reconcile with requests for extra-time from students with disabilities. My questions are:

Do current accommodation policies recognize a "special kind of tests" where "time is of the essence" and requests for extra time from students with disabilities can legally be turned down?
If so, what prevents teachers from deciding that time is of the essence in all (or most) of their tests? In answers to other questions about extra time, we often read that "tests should test knowledge and understanding, not speed". What if a school decided it wanted to grant degrees to student who not only "understand" some material, but are also "quick on their feet" and able to apply this material to solve problems (or produce an artistic performance in the musical example above) in a timely manner? Could the school go down that road without contravening existing anti-discrimination regulations and risk losing all its public funding?

Do current accommodation policies recognize a "special kind of tests"
  where "time is of the essence" and requests for extra time from
  students with disabilities can legally be turned down?

No.

For example, where I am, instructors receive a form simply saying, "Student X has a right to double time on exams". There is no sub-categorization made to that right, and no channel for instructors to pick or choose whether to honor it.


Why is a job interview needed if I am the only suitable candidate for a research-assistant position? I have recently applied to a research-assistant position at a university in the European Union. I got admitted into the interview. However, I am the only suitable candidate to this job, as I could see by the official documents.

I have several doubts about this situation:

Why would they want to interview me, if I am the only candidate, and they find me suitable for the job?
What type of questions/discussion in the interview should I expect? It is a fact that I am not facing any competition, so what will the purpose of this interview be?
Is there any chance of not getting the job? I am really interested in the job, and I did not lie about anything on my CV. Can I still be considered not adequate for the position?
Is the interview just a formality? The original job posting says that the evaluation methods are curricular assessment plus interview thereafter.

There are a few possibilities.

It may be that an interview is required by the policy of the institution.

It is also likely that they want to get an idea of how you would fit in personally. If they are happy with your application materials and have no reason to doubt your honesty in that, they just might want to know if your personality seems compatible.

Yes, it is possible that you don't get the job. If they decide you are a complete jerk (sorry, nothing implied) they won't want to hire you and will most probably restart the search.

But, I'd advise that it isn't anything to worry over. Just be yourself and use the interview to help decide if you want to work with them. If you decide that they are complete jerks you will want to keep looking.

They may want to quiz you on aspects of your knowledge that are especially important to their work. Be honest in your answers, even if you aren't familiar. Be positive, of course, about your abilities and adaptability if that seems appropriate.


Graduate Recruitment weekend: faculty interview - research area mismatch I have been invited to graduate recruitment weekend at a school (PhD applicant in biomedical imaging). I have been told about an interview scheduled with one of the faculty members.
But my background does not match at all with the faculty's work. What to  expect in the interview? How can I use the opportunity to my benefit/admit? This faculty is doing some amazing work, I am totally impressed by it, but I just have zero background in it. Any suggestions/advice?

Don't make assumptions. Perhaps they really do see something in your background that they think is valuable to their own work. Maybe that would appeal to you, or not. But have the conversation first, and keep an open mind.
However, it might just be that the faculty as a whole divided up the interview task so that every one participates and everyone gets an interview. They might even recommend you to a colleague if there is a real mismatch. You say they "shortlisted" you but it may have been something more clerical than an actual choice. Don't read too much into the description of how you were chosen.
But there is no reason to give up your goals if they lie elsewhere. You probably don't need to accept a long term research relationship that you wouldn't find interesting. If you know of another professor, by name, you could even mention them as someone whose work appeals to you.
But, more important, if what they do is "important and interesting" then background can be developed. In the US there is a lot of opportunity for that, but less so in some other places.