Arxiv paper with lots of revisions and changes made to subject matter; shouldn't Arxiv clean this up? In the domain of "Computer Science > Programming Languages" American Computer Scientist Carl Hewitt has put up a paper that changes completely from the first revision to the current one:

From

v1, July 2009: ActorScript(TM): Industrial strength integration of local and nonlocal concurrency for Client-cloud Computing

to

v46, February 2015: Inconsistency Robustness in Foundations: Mathematics self proves its own Consistency and Other Matters

... which seems to be outside the subject of "Computer Science > Programming Languages".

The entry also goes through several revisions along the way, notably:

v35, July 2010: ActorScript(TM): discretionary concurrency for privacy-friendly, client-cloud Computing
v37, August 2010: iScript(TM) extension of Objective C(R): discretionary concurrency for privacy-friendly, client-cloud computing
v40, September 2010: A 0-sized withdrawn entry superseded by another paper entirely: ActorScript(TM) extension of C sharp (TM), Java(TM), and Objective C(TM): iAdaptive(TM) concurrency for antiCloud(TM) privacy and security which itself has 60 versions.

I will not discuss the merits of v46, as I am interested in the contents of v1, which is also meant to be found when going through links in other web-based publications discussing Actor approaches to concurrent computing.

But it is confusing and looks irregular. Shouldn't arxIv clean this up?

It does indeed look confusing and irregular. Oh, and it only gets worse once you start looking into how interrelated it is with different versions of some of his other arXiv postings... In an ideal world, perhaps arXiv should clean this up somehow. However, the moderation team is relatively small, works on a voluntary basis, and has to handle a lot of submissions every day. One really can't expect them to sort out messes like this one, nor do I think it'd be good for them to have an extensive editorial function. Assuming the initial submission meets the criteria, the onus is on the author(s) to communicate clearly - not on arXiv.

It's also worth noting that only the first five versions are included in the daily listings, so individual authors making lots of revisions don't necessarily impact the community too much. Given all this, I think it makes sense for arXiv to focus on rapidly processing new submissions instead of worrying about excessive changes to a (presumably) small number of postings.

Finally, I'll note that in cases like this it's a very good thing that arXiv stores all versions. You can cite a specific version and leave it at that.


What is the proper way to reach out to a university with an academic question as a layman? I am a layman with a series of questions regarding chemical engineering. I'd prefer to contact my alma mater and contact someone there - is there a protocol for doing that? Is this an unusual thing?

It isn't really unusual, and most places will be willing to talk to you informally. You could call the department office and let them know of your interest and desire to speak to someone who might be able to help.

Note, however, that people are busy but also schedule regular office hours so you would probably, then make an appointment with the person suggested.

If it is just a few questions there shouldn't be any issue, but if it is more extensive, you might want to enter into a consulting relationship which would require payment.


After quitting a PhD program, would time off before applying to a new program be harmful? If one plans to quit one's current PhD program and apply to other PhD programs in other universities, is it recommended that one tries to get to the new program as fast as possible? Waiting could make it possible to apply to several places and choose which suits one best.

Would working outside of academia a period of time before applying or before the new PhD program starts hurt one's chances of getting accepted (or damage one's career later in some other way)? I imagine getting recommendation letters might be an issue if the period is long.

I remember reading that if one should try to find out what work outside academia is like the best point in time to do so is before graduate studies. Myself I have studied my whole life and for many years my only career goal was in academic research, but thinking about the job prospects and sacrifices associated to academia I have become mildly curious about life outside academia. I think some time outside could bring some perspective and a point of comparison. If it matters my own area is pure math.

A respectable wish, but perhaps not the best approach. I would suggest a few points to consider:

If you want to form an opinion about what it's like outside of academe based on one single work experience (at one company or organization), then indeed it will be a biased opinion as it will be based on a sample of 1...and you don't know if it's representative of that 'life' or is an outlier. Best case, it will be representative of only one category of jobs outside of the academe (e.g. for profit, non-profit, NGO, small, mid-size, or large orgn, in one industry or another).
I would compare leaving the academe for the 'real world' to not dating another girl to appreciate one's girlfriend, but to hooking up with a guy to see if you like guys better than girls. I think that would be a more accurate reflection of the difference in culture, incentive structure, relationships with superiors/bosses and colleagues, compensation/quality of life, work schedule/flexibility, free time after work, etc. Or like living in a foreign country for a while.

Is it a great learning experience even if it turns out to be a very challenging, boring, and generally unpleasant job? Absolutely. It will teach you how to work with different kinds of people, how to handle responsibilities - in other words you will become more mature and 'seasoned' for what life may bring to you at some later time. You will be better prepared to handle reality.

Leaving a PhD program before graduating is a strike against you, which may result in a vote of no-confidence from past advisors. A more mature approach would be to take a 12-month academic leave, which is perfectly 'legal' and within the boundaries of acceptable professional conduct.

Academic leaves were designed for students whose life circumstances make continuation in a program very challenging, thus providing a way to continue in 'good standing' while taking time off in a structured way. That leave of absence may not need to be explicitly stated on your CV, it will merely postpone your graduation by a year. If employers care enough, they might ask; otherwise it will be hidden in that space on your CV between the graduation date from your Bachelor or Master's program, and the graduation date for your PhD program.

I would recommend against taking a leave of absence for more than a year (there may be a maximum cap of 12 months set by your university's graduate school policies anyway - check with them to find out for sure).
If you do end up taking a leave (which I think is really the way to go in your case), there may be some really cool ways to spend the year other than working the 8-5 drudgery for some firm.

There are countless graduate fellowships, community service organizations, foreign exchange programs, etc. that would be happy to have another warm body in their ranks for a year! Something like an international fellowship or community service experience could give you much broader exposure to different organizations, different kind of people, different workplace settings and cultures, than being stuck in a cubicle somewhere on the 40th floor in a concrete jugle.

So I would cast the net broadly and see what's out there. Your university's career services office could be a great place to go for advice.

Lastly, leaving a graduate program mid-way will mostly likely result in wasted time in terms of what it will take to re-start graduate studies and get to the same place where you are now. Not all credits might be transferred, thus some quarters or semesters that you have already spent in the program may go to waste (at least on paper). It will take renewed effort to build new relationships to secure RA/TA funding. And of course there is always a risk (which someone mentioned already) that you might not come back. A half-finished degree is really no degree, and doesn't count for much on a CV other than explaining what you've been up to for N years (though not necessarily to your credit).

Bottom line: I would suggest to stay in the program but take academic leave for 6-12 months. Before you do, first find a solid opportunity and get accepted/admitted to it, so you know for sure you won't be fumbling for months and wasting that precious time getting something lined up.

Hope this helps. Good luck!


Sharing a master thesis with a third party before the final exam I start by describing the situation: a friend of mine is a master student in Italy, and is going to graduate soon. She wrote her master thesis and submitted it, and should have her final exam (the one in which the thesis is discussed) in about a month. In the meanwhile, she is sending PhD applications.

A professor that she contacted asked if he could read her master thesis. The problem is that I am not sure if she can (and should) send a master thesis to a third party before her exam.

What do you think of it? Do you think it could be a problem? The thesis is not meant to be publicly available before the final exam through the university site, but I've read the regulations and this kind of issue is not mentioned at all.

To give some context:

There is no copyright involved. The thesis is going to be available on the university site for free, but only after she has her final exam.
The professor knows that the person is going to graduate soon, but maybe he did not realize that he was asking for an unverified thesis.
She works in the field of pure science, where people usually have a "sharing" attitude.

Thank you very much for your attention.

The detailed specifics of this will likely depend on her university's policies.

In most situations I am aware of, the student retains the copyright of her thesis. She should be allowed (from a legal perspective) to distribute her work in whatever way she sees fit. Likely the best thing she can do in this situation is speak with her advisor. If her advisor is desiring to publish any papers from the thesis, he/she may not want the work shared with a third-party.

It may also be possible that the student in question here only send a portion of her thesis to the third party. A pre-print, if you will. It should be sent with a note specifying that the thesis has not been defended yet and is subject to final revisions and review. Open and full disclosure is the best option here.


What is the meaning of the title "Akad. Orat"? What is the meaning of the German academic title "Akad. Orat"? What would its international analogous be?

Via @mkennedy in a comment:

Nontenured, approximately assistant professor in the US system.

Expands out to Akademischer Oberrat.

See: Academic ranks in Germany


Post-doc vs. Assistant Professor choice, but neither ideal I'll keep this question short to make it easy to read, but happy to supply details later if relevant.

I recently finished my Ph.D. - computer science, in the US. I have a choice between accepting a post-doc position and a tenure-track Assistant Professor (AP) position.

However:

The AP position is at a satellite campus of a state university. This is a masters-granting campus (i.e. no PhD students). The teaching load is 3+3, though there is expectation of decent research output, especially (but not exclusively) during the summers.
The post-doc is at an R1 research university (though not highly ranked or especially prestigious). It appears (to me) to be less-than-ideal for the following reason: the PI applies techniques from my field (CS, AI) to another field (let's call it F2). He publishes (and presumably, I would publish) exclusively in conferences and journals of F2. After 2-years of this, I fear being stuck between two fields, departments of neither seriously considering me for tenure-track positions.

So, both positions appear sub-optimal, which is the source of my dilemma. Eventually, I hope for a tenure-track position at a R1 university. Which of these will best help me meet this goal?

ADDITION:

Thanks for the responses. It's helpful that the responses clearly categorize the AP institution as a teaching-focussed university. When I went to interview, they harped on their focus on research, show-casing the research activities and publications of professors and MS students. Since it is a masters-granting university and not an undergraduate teaching college, I was uncertain of what to make of all this. I suppose, in the end, the 3+3 load is telling.

One reason I'm swayed toward the AP is that, as a foreign national, a tenure-track position is a firm step toward US permanent residency, which a post-doc position is not.

It is uncommon for people to move up from a teaching school to an R1 school. It happens, but rarely, and your chances are slim. So this seems like a dead end regarding your goal, though of course teaching can be quite satisfying for a lot of us.

The offer of a postdoc elsewhere at least allows you to continue dreaming about a permanent position at an R1 university. Of course, there is never a guarantee that you will get such a position, whereas the AP offer you have at least offers this certainty.


Tips and tricks for presentation demo for academic job interview I am working on different research projects. I was asked to give research demo on an on-campus interview. I am thinking of the two following strategies:

First is to give overview of the projects I worked on (one or 2 slides), and then present in detail one of my latest published papers.

Another one is to give a overview of papers for each project with not going in depth.

I am wondering about the best way to impress the research committee. I am working in very hot areas in computer science. If there is any presentation/demos to share, I would be very thankful

Your strategies are probably fine, but they both seem focused on the past. What you have already done. Don't neglect the future. What are you working on now that shows promise? And, for some situations, how you can possibly include others, faculty and grad students, into a research program. Think about the job as a whole and the university department as a whole.


How to complete laboratory courses after building fire? A couple of weeks ago there was a fire in my department. While it only directly affected one research lab, the whole building is currently closed due to safety reasons while the place is cleaned. The current timeline has the building closed for months (well into the fall semester).

We've already started to recover from the shock. Courses have been relocated, grad students near graduation have been sent to other institutions to finish their work and researchers have started to find friendly labs to work in.

However, we've been having problems with our undergraduate laboratory courses. These courses consist of three to five experiments, each of which takes several weeks to complete. The experiments require specialized equipment, which is now trapped in the building, and cannot be moved before the cleaning is complete. We are the only department in the university that has this specific equipment.

We are currently at a loss about what do to with the students that were taking these courses. Some options that have been proposed are:

Give everyone an incomplete.

While this would seem logical, since the students will end up with only half of the course material, the courses are both a requisite to graduation and usually taken in the final year. This means that we would be pushing the graduation of many of our students. Additionally, we would not be able to handle the doubled demand for the courses when we can give the again.

Try to complete the experiments in other departments

Another department at our university has some labs that run somewhat similar experiments. However, they would not be available for at least two more weeks (when their students are expected to finish their courses). By that time the semester will have less than a month left, not enough time to fully complete the remaining experiments. To do this, we would have to design new experiments that attempt to have the same teaching value and that can be completed in the new labs in limited time. Some of the professors running the lab courses are understandably reluctant to do this at short notice. Additionally, some of the experiments are pretty much unique to our department, so that it might be impossible to do them at the other labs.

Give the students experimental data to analyze

My preferred option is to give the students experimental data, and have the students analyze it and file reports as if they had actually run the experiments. However, some professors argue that this would betray the point of the laboratories, which are meant to focus on the experimentation.

Stop the courses and give everyone a grade based on the work completed so far

Some professors prefer the idea of just stopping the courses as they stand, and basing the grades on the work the students have completed so far. However, this is difficult since the labs are run in groups, and different groups have managed to complete differing amounts of work. Additionally, this is likely to affect students grades negatively, since historically their grades are boosted by the final exam, which they would not take in this situation. Additionally, I don't see how this is better than option 3, since stopping the course midway also leaves unmet several course objectives.

Are there really no better alternatives? Is there some way to allow the students to complete the lab courses without compromising its objectives?

As an experimentalist myself, I feel strongly that that hands-on part of laboratory is an important part of the course, but ...

The students have presumably already done some of the planned hands on work, so option #3 would not be a total loss on this front.
Analysis of data is not generally the same as classroom problems, and is also an important part of the laboratory experience.

Toward that end I would suggest

Investigating option #2 vigorously in hopes of recreating or substituting for some part of the hands-on work that would otherwise be lost. Try to get all the students one more hands-on experience if at all possible.
Use option #3 to address the analysis skill you were hoping to teach. Give them not only the data, but the equipment, methods and technique parts of lab reports from previous students (be sure to get permission where this might be needed).
Use a library assignment to get them thinking about the skills they are not practicing. Perhaps assign them each to report (either a oral presentation or a paper) on the methods used to perform [some common analysis in your field] when that technique was new and the equipment was not as forgiving as today.

And declare it the best you can do under the circumstances.


Can I publish photos or reconstructed drawing of the internal part of a patented instrument? I am doing a publication using a specific optical instrument protected by different patents. To see how it works I opened it and I have redrawn the arrangement of the optical components. Am I allow to publish my drawing for explaining the physical principle behind the measurements I have performed during my research?

It's not a reverse engineered designed, there are no specific distances between the components or other relevant details for the construction. I am showing an abstraction but more or less the parts and the arrangement is the same as the real one.

The drwaings, are of course mine. I would like to publish on my PhD thesis in Italy, but in general I am interested on any pubblication.

Following up on the answer of HairyBlob, you are also safe from copyright issues (a separate thing) if you are using your own drawings, especially if they are an abstraction of the ideas in the patent.

There is no restriction on public discussion of patents (most places). In fact the patent process requires disclosure. But you can't republish copyright material. And your description suggests you aren't doing that.


Is it common for PhD programs to require students to have a minimum number of papers to be eligible for the defense? In some countries like mine (Iran), you are asked to have at least two papers printed or accepted in an ISI journal before you can claim for your PhD thesis defense.

Is it like that in other countries?
Is there any world record for the number of papers extracted from a single PhD thesis?

Publishing papers is not a requirement in many places, but it usually depends on the specific university and graduate program. In the U.S. these things tend to vary from school to school. Sometimes research projects funded by industry prohibit the people involved from directly publishing results.

As for a world record, I'm pretty sure nobody keeps track of that. It is pretty subjective. How would you determine whether or not the paper is from your thesis rather than just being in the same field? There shouldn't be that much value in the number of papers either.


Should I work at a lab prior to getting my PhD in Education? Do applicants to the field of education even apply to work in labs prior to applying? Does it truly help?

I'm in an educational psychology PhD program at a large R1 university that's not especially competitive or prestigious and there are many students who had no research or lab experience before starting.  That being said, working in a lab may help your application to be more competitive, particularly if you work in a lab at the university you're applying to (so you can meet people) or you have opportunities to publish or present research (which I think would be sort of rare for a non-student employee, but I could be wrong).  In fact, my program has a lot of part-time students who teach (or do some other school-related position) during the day and take classes towards their MS/PhD in the evenings, who have never worked in a lab, and who intend to go back into teaching (or school admin or school psychology or whatever) after they finish the degree.


Can I get a scholarship from graduate school in physics if my GPA below 3? I'm fresh physics graduated student from University of Jordan -Middle East-, My GPA is below 3, so Can I get a scholarship from graduate school in physics at -US- if my GPA below 3, If yes what is the Admission Requirements for it ?!

This depends on the school, depends on which classes dragged your GPA down and how those intersect with what you want to study in grad school, depends on what you have done in your field since your undergraduate study... I don't think there is a single answer that will be correct for all students and all schools.


Can a tweet be added to graduate research proposal? Can I add a tweet by someone famous in the field into my research proposal to show why is it important?

I am asking this because I have not seen anything like this but people do use quotes by famous people in their thesis.

If the answer is yes, then how will I be citing it?

You can quote any source, including Twitter. Cite it in the same way you'd cite any web source and be aware that it might disappear.


What is purpose and meaning of "Propositions" in PhD thesis? I found a weird and intuitively strange document that is submitted with the thesis. It is called

  Propositions To accompanying a dissertation on the.....

and it is such a strange thing included, that maybe it is a cultural thing specific to Dutch academia? Its content is as follows:

  To cycle up a steep hillside one needs to accumulate strength beforehand. This is a similar process to planning one’s work. Democracy is forbidden in science. Doing science is similar to the Chinese martial arts (Kungfu). Alongside learning and practice, both are capable of creating physiological or psychological disorder.

In the end, this proposition finishes with

  The contention is that these propositions lend themselves to opposition and are defendable, and have been approved as such by promoter [promoter’s name] and co-promoter [co-promoter’s name].

for me, this is so strange and not understandable. Why would this be submitted with the thesis? Please, can someone explain me the meaning?

This is indeed related to customs in Dutch academia. Precise practice and regulations vary between universities, but usually there is the opportunity (or even duty) to provide this list of propositions, usually distributed as an inserted leaflet with the thesis. The propositions themselves vary from serious scientific statements (typically related to the content of the thesis), to more "humorous" statements like the example you posted. These statements can be part of the defense, i.e. the committee can ask questions about them and the candidate has to defend this thesis. In practice (insofar they do not relate to the thesis itself), this only happens when the committee runs out of "real" questions. This can happen because for the defense in the Netherlands a fixed amount of time is prescribed, which cannot be shortened.


Consequences of a paper with major errors, but unrelated to your field/dissertation Background Info:

So, to make a long story short, I'm worried about paying for mistakes I made when I was a younger, unprofessional, ignoramus.

I'm an engineering PhD student at a U.S. University.  I did my BS and MS at the same university which I'm doing my PhD.   About 3 years ago, my previous advisor wanted me to publish my work (from late undergrad early MS stage) to a respected international conference.  At this  time I was young, nieve, and frankly did not care very much.  I submitted the paper and it was accepted, and I presented at the conference.  I have since left the lab, and changed fields to a different engineering discipline.

Years later, I have realized the conference paper has numerous errors, some are theoretical errors, others are sloppy errors.  My initial reaction was that this does not matter because it's a different field (a conference/journal not relevant to my current field) and not related to my current PhD dissertation.  However, upon further thought, there could be serious consequences to this.

MY QUESTIONS

1) What are the consequences for having submitted a conference paper with major errors?  The paper is sitting in the proceedings with errors.

2) Are there actions/charges/reprimands the university can take against me for having submitted a paper with major inaccuracies while a student at that university?  Can they expel or revoke a degree?

3) Since this work has errors, I worry about charges of rigged data/results.  Since there are inaccuracies, this could lead to charges of rigged data (side note: paper was on theoretical and computational work, not experimental).  The way to combat these allegation would be to reproduce the error-filled work  -  which would be very tough for me to do since (1) the work had errors and (2) the work was done a long time ago with some files now missing.  Even though I did not falsify data, what are the charges for a grad student falsifying data?  Although the paper is not related to my dissertation, allegations of rigged data could have serious consequences, what could they be?

To be honest, I find that most of the moral / cautionary tale in your story lies in the trend to push younger and greener students into publication.  I feel strongly that having a professional-grade mastery in one's discipline should be a prerequisite to submitting a paper in a research journal.  But note well that I am not scolding you: as a BS/MS student, you don't know the profession, the standards for publication, or (most likely) even your own level of mastery, really.  Your advisor let you down.  Moreover, a respected international conference should read its submitted papers -- especially from student authors, I would argue, but if you don't like that then OK, from everyone! -- carefully enough not to accept something that through the simple process of learning and maturing you will eventually find shoddy and embarrassing.  You were too young to know any better: what was their excuse?

  1) What are the consequences for having submitted a conference paper with major errors? The paper is sitting in the proceedings with errors.

Well, the consequence is that you have published something with errors.  If you are worried that the errors will mislead other researchers, you should consider writing an erratum.  For conference publication you may not be able to publish the erratum with the conference, but you could still include it on your webpage, and if e.g. you have a google scholar profile, that will go a long way towards giving people the right idea.

I should say that I am in a field (mathematics) where conference publication is quite rare nowadays, but I assume that the merit of conference publication is that it gets out results judged to be of interest to the community more quickly, and the corresponding demerit is that the results are more tentative and more likely to be wrong.  Do you have a good reason to believe that your publication is especially shoddy compared to other work published in similar venues?  In fact, the shoddier it is, the less likely it is to mislead: in my experience, most serious researchers have a good nose for taking the good and avoiding the bad in published work.  A certain kind of subtle error in a striking result can be really insidious, but once again you make it sound like once you matured a bit you find the mistakes rather obvious.  So maybe other people will too?  It might be good to get some expert opinions on this.

  2) Are there actions/charges/reprimands the university can take against me for having submitted a paper with major inaccuracies while a student at that university? Can they expel or revoke a degree?

Practically speaking: no.  You are at least an order of magnitude too worried about this.  Degrees only get revoked for substantial academic dishonesty.  Making mistakes, even embarrassing ones, does not qualify...thank goodness.  Does it make you feel better if I tell you that one of the six major theorems in my Harvard PhD thesis is false?  Suffice it to say that I can keep my degree.

  3) Since this work has errors, I worry about charges of rigged data/results. Since there are inaccuracies, this could lead to charges of rigged data (side note: paper was on theoretical and computational work, not experimental).

@ff524 has the right answer here: just relax.  Move on and try to do better in your current work, which people will take much more seriously than one early paper, especially if it's in a different (sub)field.  At the most, write an erratum and include the erratum on your CV.


CS Associate's degree in Brazil: go straight to master's or get a bachelor's first? I am 23 years old and finishing my associate degree (3 years part-time) in Computer Science. I've been thinking about pursuing a career in academia; I've started to do research and got a paper accepted to a relevant conference in my field (pattern recognition).

I already have some experience in industry (4 years software development), so it's something I've tasted before, but nowadays I see academia fulfilling me better in the long term (big thanks to this post).

My goal would be to grow a career in academia (pattern recognition) and work as a consultant on the side.

Would count against me to go directly to Masters without a Bachelor? Or is there some better option? My concern is that my associate's degree didn't have a good mathematical foundation; it was focused on market-related technologies (programming languages, databases, software engineering, testing).

At this moment I've been thinking about two different paths I could take:

Take 2 more years to get a bachelor's degree, and then go to master's (at age 25). This would allow me to grow more (both in foundation but also in maturity aspect) and make the most out of my master's.
Go straight to Masters I believe I would have a really hard time with this, due to concepts I haven't seen before (calculus and linear algebra). Certainly I would try to learn beforehand, but this kind of knowledge takes time to grow. At this time I feel that I wouldn't make the most of it, but it would save me two years.

Note, I am in Brazil. College is free, and the only requirement for a master's program is to have an undergraduate degree, which both associate's and bachelor's are, so this wouldn't be an impediment.

You will almost certainly need to obtain a bachelor’s degree before enrolling in a master’s program. Virtually all master’s programs in STEM fields have the requirement of a bachelor’s degree in either the same or a related field as part of the admissions process. It will also give you the opportunity to make up for deficiencies in your previous experience before beginning the more difficult master’s program (relative to the bachelor’s).


How to deal with advisor not allocating time to me? One of my advisor's students asked me how frequently I have meetings with him. And since at that time we had very few meetings I replied:

  "We have a very few meetings and the advisor does not allocate time to me."

The advisor heard it and has started retaliating by reducing those few meetings to zero and complaining about me to other faculty, etc. Do you have suggestions about what I should do now?

First, do not assume bad faith and go talk to your advisor. There is an issue which you feel threatens the successful continuation of your PhD, the natural person to talk to about it is your advisor. In this case, it so happens that the problem involves him too, which means you have to be diplomatic about it, but he's still the right person to hash it out with.  Behave professionally, do not accuse him of anything, just state the problem factually (“I need more involvement from you in order to successfully overcome this problem”), and see what he and you can come up with.

Not assuming bad faith at first is good advice in most professional situations. In this particular case, the elements you mention are:

lack of time, which could be completely explained by other factors such as the advisor being swamped (don't get me wrong, it still needs to be fixed somehow, but it doesn't necessarily mean he's being an ass)
rumor (“complaining about me to other faculty”), which might be just that

Now, if after trying in good faith to solve the issue with him (give it a few tries), the situation doesn't improve and it is hurting you and you think he is of bad faith: I listed several possible recourses in this related answer (and another write-up here). But don't jump the gun, because a lot of the options on this list will mean burning a bridge.


How to in-text cite a series of paper with nothing in between in APA? E.g. Would it be OK if I write:

The papers by Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, and Anderson (1994), Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, and Damasio (1997) and Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, and Lee (1999)  shows that .....

?

I do not believe there is a rule that covers this. the best I can find is on the APA Style Blog:

  When multiple studies support what you have to say, you can include multiple citations inside the same set of parentheses. Within parentheses, alphabetize the studies as they would appear in the reference list and separate them by semicolons. In running text, you can address studies in whatever order you wish. Here are two examples:

The running text example has each citation in a separate sentence so it is not a perfect match. I think the main point is that in the text, you can do what you want. That said, this is one I would either let the copy editor deal with or more likely try and write the sentence in a way that allows the citations to be parenthetical material.


Visa preparation for the postdoc will take weeks. Can I start research (with the PI?) As it's mentioned in the title. I am going to receive a formal letter this week. During my meeting with HR, they told me the visa will take 12 weeks so we can agree on the start-date at the point. My question is this: I really want to be successful in my postdoc and I want to do research as soon as possible, can I email tell the PI about this? (to get information about their current research step, etc.) or I should keep doing research and reading on my own and wait until everything is official?

[Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice]
As Thomas mentioned in his comment, generally, without a visa you cannot be legally employed in the country of the university, this includes remote work from abroad. In addition to that, at least in some countries, it is illegal to do work that is normally paid, even if you are not getting paid for it, unless you have a proper work permit. I guess, the logic is that you enter the labour market by doing work and not by getting paid.
So be careful and precise in your requests. Starting working on the project remotely, before your visa is ready and valid, is probably against the law (and your future boss will share some responsibility for this). However, simply asking for suggested reading before you started working on the project itself is probably okay. I suppose your PI would be happy to give those suggestions even if your visa fell through or you hadn't signed the contract to begin with.


Confused about potential supervisor response I asked my professor to supervise me. I took several courses with him. He replied to me that he is confused about whether he will have enough time to supervise me. He is extremely busy though! I wanted to ensure that I will take minimum time.  Is it okay to reply in the following way?
"My previous collaborative research experiences will help me to work independently. I believe that I will require minimum time from you"

To me this sounds like a polite rejection. Depending on your culture this may differ.
If you push harder, likely either you will find a stronger rejection (though this isn't necessarily a bad thing, just confirms where you stand), or in a worst case scenario you will convince them to supervise you but you will never receive the supervision you need and find yourself like many of the question askers here who can't get advice from their advisors when they need it and find themselves lost in academia.
An active supervisor is much more useful to you than a "best professor" who never answers your emails.
I would probably respond with something like, "It sounds to me like you think you are too busy to take me on as a student, and that I should find someone else to supervise me. Is this correct, or should we plan to speak again in (several weeks/a couple months) to discuss?"


Would a 5-year prison sentence totally ruin one's academic career? For committing a crime considered very severe in the U.S. and in some countries (hence the 5-year minimum sentence), but not as severe (but may still lead to imprisonment) in many other countries? He does not have any record of academic dishonesty or anything like that; in fact, he had a solid record of publications and was still building on it before he got arrested. Can he still publish papers that are taken seriously, and obtain academic positions, in the U.S. or in some other countries, once out of jail?

UPDATE: I only know what he pleaded guilty to according to news. It is not something noble like an "honest crime". I have confused conviction with indictment, so now I think the crime is most likely real and hardly disputable. I want to add that he is a first-time offender, so I don't know if his prison sentence can be converted to probation, and if that matters to whom may hire him in the future.

@xLeitix's comment:

  I cannot think of one crime which results in a five year sentence where I would hire that person.

Maybe the crime of failing to notify the town of L'Aquila of a 2009 earthquake that killed at least 309 people? Fortunately for those scientists, the initial court ruling was overturned about 2 years later.

A five year prison sentence would damage an academic career in at least two major ways.  The obvious way it would damage it is from the possible stain on a person's record.  In the U.S., at least, being a convicted felon can be very difficult to recover from, no matter what the crime, due to general societal prejudice.  Add to that the fact that most crimes indicate either dishonesty or being a threat to others, and you've got a serious problem.  It does, however, strongly depend on the crime.  For example, if the crime is an "honest crime" that derives from ones intellectual inclinations (e.g., the notorious example of Timothy Leary, the sad case of Aaron Swartz, or the youthful recklessness of Robert Morris) then it may be "forgiven" from an academic point of view.

The other, perhaps less obvious, source of career damage is from the interruption in ongoing work.  Typically, any working scientist has a number of simultaneous multi-year projects at different stages: preliminary work, proposal, execution, publication.  Each of these fuels the others, e.g., papers from more mature projects help support proposals for new projects, pieces of ongoing work in project execution include preliminary work that leads to new proposals, etc.  With any major career gap, this "pipeline" can empty, and there is often difficulty in restarting it.  This can be a significant problem even for academics who take family leave; a multi-year gap for prison would be much bigger to overcome.  Either, however, can be overcome with time and help from supportive colleagues.


Is abandoning my PhD degree better for my career path? It is a known fact that reputation and lineage are a very important factor in academia. Master students need recommendation letters to get a PhD opportunity and the same for PhD students looking for a postdoc position. If a PhD supervisor knows someone in another institute or a company, he can very easily help his student get a postdoc or a good job in the industry. If your supervisors are prestigious in the community, you can start your career much more easily than your peers. Conversely, a mediocre PhD supervisor may become an obstacle for his talented student.

I am a PhD student in CS, and I am at the final stage of my PhD. However, I wonder whether it is better to abandon my PhD degree because of the mediocrity of my supervisors. Since a thesis will be stored in a database; once deposited, the PhD student's name will be permanently bound to his supervisors, and if the public perception of my supervisors is low, I'm concerned that I may have difficulty building my own brand.

To address my concern, I would like to know which of the following states is likely to make it harder to become a leading scientist?

having a PhD from mediocre supervisors in a mediocre lab, or
not having a PhD, and building one's name from scratch?

Your argument for abandoning your PhD hinges on a few false premises.

P1) You will wear the mark of your PhD for your whole life.

That is not true. A PhD is, in principle, a degree given to someone capable of independent research. Whilst you do your PhD you may be associated with your supervisors. That's because you're a minnow in the sea and it is the easiest way for someone to know whether you are worth talking to (sorry about that). After your PhD, people will rarely if ever ask that. I say that as a postdoc.

P2) You will exchange your dignity for money if you renew your contract. WHAT? That's something internal to you, an external observer is unlikely to see it that way.

Moreover, if you do not intend to do a postdoc, none of these points you made will apply to industry people. They will just see that you have a PhD and they will think that's worth something.


How do professors learn how to write letters of recommendation? Writing letters of recommendation must be a fine art. Culture across fields and countries vary wildly in almost any respect, and this is likely to the case for LoR.

How/when do professors learn how to appropriately convey the value of the person they recommend?

As they write them, by trial and error seeing which students land the position. But this would require a large number of trials, given so many factors come into play (including circumstances that have nothing to do with letter writing)
As they read them, while sitting on admission committee. I am then almost completely oblivious to the procedures, but as above, many observation might be required before one can be confident on its ability to write a proper letter.

As with most professorial duties, it's a sink-or-swim process.  There is no formal or official training they receive for this task.  They're just thrown into the situation with no experience and are expected to perform well at it immediately.  If they've seen other recommendations during their other duties (that they likely also weren't trained for) they can use that, otherwise they can try asking colleagues or do google searches.  So for the most part it's a bunch of untrained people relying on other untrained people and crossing their fingers that the other guys were able to figure out a good approach.


When can a person be called a PhD ABD? Can one call oneself a PhD ABD (All But Dissertation) after completing all of the course work and working on the dissertation?

Some people think it's ok to call yourself PhD ABD when in the Canadian or US system, you pass the qualifying exams and coursework, but haven't yet, or fail to ever, deliver the thesis.

But simply do not call yourself PhD ABD.

It's not attractive to advertise failure.

You're either a PhD candidate, or you're a PhD, or there's nothing to say on the subject (bar a line on the CV filling in the black hole on your timeline with discreet mention of an aborted doctorate). PhD ABD is a ludicrous pseudo-title.

A PhD that's All But Dissertation is like an espresso that is All But Coffee. It's hot water with a bit of sugar, thus defeating the entire purpose of the exercise.


Working in an isolated environment A while ago I got a job as a theoretical interdisciplinary modeler in a purely experimental lab of a different field from my own. It was an experiment for the lab and a big change for myself.  It was risky for both, but also potentially a great opportunity.

Unfortunately I ended up feeling professionally isolated.  Most people here know little math, some very little.  There isn't anyone I can discuss the details of my work with, only the "big picture" and results.  It turns out that I am the kind of person for whom discussions and interaction is essential.  Without them my thought seem to gradually slow down and stop.  When trying to solve a mathematical problem, I find myself unable to see obvious things and can barely make any progress.  Yet when I get the opportunity to discuss it with others, suddenly everything becomes obvious.  It's often not even necessary to get feedback from someone, it's sufficient to explain what I am doing, to put it into clear terms, and the solution just pops out.

The big question: How can I work efficiently and maintain my creativity and productivity when working in isolation?

I have tried several things.  I tried to maintain contact with former colleagues through VOIP, though this is not too practical.  Then I noticed that sometimes it is sufficient to just think about how to explain a question to someone, and the solution comes to me before even calling them.  Purely imaginary discussions help too.  I think this is where the solution to my difficulties should lie, but after realizing this, I am still struggling.  I also tried writing down the problem to force myself to articulate it better, but this turned out to be ineffective and extremely time consuming.

Has anyone else encountered similar difficulties?  Is it a common problem?  There are famous scientists like Ramanujan who are said to have worked as hermits and still made great leaps.  I imagine that what works best differs from individual to individual.  I suspect that I am particularly susceptible to grinding to a halt once I find myself in isolation, despite being an introvert.  But I do believe that there should be a way to improve the situation.

I have already decided that in the future I must avoid such situations. But until then I must find a way to be more productive while working alone.

I was in a pretty similar situation, so I can sympathize. Although, personally I found it less critical for me to have these interactions. Don't get me wrong - it was not easy to work this way, but I saw it as an opportunity/challenge to develop my independence as a researcher.

However, I was able to get some ideas and interactions in the following ways:

Presenting my work at various forums - any size, from group/lab meetings to seminars and conferences.
By establishing a collaboration/semi-collaboration with relevant people at a different institution.
In terms of ideas - sometimes just reading a lot of literature helped (but this can be field-dependent).
By interacting with the "mathematically unskilled" people at my lab - might sound surprising, but sometimes you just need someone to interact with and ask basic questions even if they are not knowledgeable.

Personally I also found that I don't need these interactions to be very frequent, sometimes it is enough to interact, get a seed of an idea, and then go work on it for a month on my own.

Good luck, for me it worked out very well in the end and I can say I developed significantly as a scientist, and both sides benefited.

One more piece of advice - while you are dealing with the math, don't forget to keep in close contact with the experimentalists so you don't drift away trying to solve some problem which is not relevant.


What to do about students who ask for help too often? For my writing courses, about 5% of students will come to me prior to deadlines asking for help with their paper. I see no problem advising students, as I often similarly came for help when I was an undergraduate. Recently, though, I found an increase in students who apparently just want to abuse this:

Students will bring me some plagiarized work, showing it to me early, as a sort of test if I will notice. It seems difficult to punish plagiarism when the paper is not yet submitted.
Students will bring in papers again and again, with little changes put in at each stage, hoping their minimal effort each time will be sufficient to reach their goal of a "D".

I've tried stopping students, but then they are angry when they see the "F" that they hoped I would help them get away from. While most of these students are probably just incredibly lazy, there is a chance that some among them are genuinely trying to improve, but just struggling a great deal, and I can't see it.

How might I go about blocking such abuses?

Here is one strategy:

Specify the level of changes the student needs to make before they can come back again.
Request that the student shows you what changes have been made by comparing the old and new versions of the assignment.
If student has failed to reach the level suggested or fails to show you the differences, simply tell them to go away until they have made the requested changes. Simply state that your previous comments still apply.

Adding a time delay between when they ask and when you give feedback or when you give feedback and when they can come again might also help.


Professor dismissed error I found in her work. I need more feedback, but the field is small Background / My problem:

I believe to have found a substantial error in my professor's original research.  After getting answers to my previous question, I emailed her about it, but she was dismissive. Of course, I could be wrong and it is very possible that I am. My professor seemed not interested at all to talk to me though, so I cannot discuss this with her further.

It is not a factual error, but an error that concerns the logic of her argument. To simplify, I think that she says that both P & -P. This is not obvious at first, and it becomes apparent only after some entangling of her whole argument.

The field is small:

Now, I do not personally know anyone who is interested this field. The field is very small and I can assume that pretty much everyone knows my professor and that my professor knows pretty much everyone too and that they talk.

What do I do now? / How do I get feedback?

Ideally I would like to get feedback from other experts. Maybe I am wrong. I am happy to be wrong, but I need to understand why. I could maybe email them, but I am not sure how responsive they would be.

Also, I am worried now that if I ask other people to have a look, my professor will hear of that. She will then know that I did not take her dismissal seriously, and am working on a paper. How would I go about this? I am worried to look like a backstabber, esp. if I email other people and say "Look, I believe I have found an error in Professor XXXX work" after my professor already told me it is not an error. If I do something like this, I would also be especially worried that should I be wrong, all of this will be very embarrassing for me.

PS: This concerns original research, not a textbook. I am in the Humanities. Please give me a chance, even if you believe that I am probably wrong,

In this case, you should consider iterating with you professor again. Perhaps in person, rather through email (the explanation could be lengthy and that might be the reason why your professor was dismissive). You should also consider changing your approach, try to assume that the original research is correct and from that standpoint approach your professor for an explanation (again a situation when a personal approach might be better than an electronic one - the tone of your email might be misunderstood). You can then guide the discussion toward the issues you see.

If all the above fails, I would still hesitate to go to other people (whether in the field or not) with the attitude "My professor made a mistake and refuses to discuss it with me, I need you to confirm for me that I'm right". You course in this case is to learn as much as possible about the area and determine for yourself whether or not there was a mistake. During these actions you can and should ask and discuss your work with as many people as possible.

With original research it is often the case that even experienced researchers need to follow the above path (although their's is shorter than a student's) to state whether or not something is wrong.


How to cite paper with several co-first authors in APA style? It's common in my field to have articles with many (>>6) authors including several "co-first authors." For example:

  A. Anderson*, B. Brown*, C. Clark, D. Davidson, ..., Z. Zed

  * These authors contributed equally to the work.

When citing a paper with many authors in APA style, one would normally use the following citation (Anderson et al. 2017).

However, in this case where there are multiple co-first authors, would it be appropriate to include all co-first authors in the citation e.g., "(Anderson, Brown et al. 2017)"?

Obviously, once there are 4 or more co-first authors, it gets cumbersome to include all of them. Also, I realize that this alternate citation format is by no means necessary if it's even allowed at all.  My gut reaction is that this still would be inappropriate since it would look out of place; at the same time, I want to acknowledge all of the main authors' work on this article.

Short Answer: You should follow the standard citation style. E.g., "Anderson et al".

As far as I'm aware, there is nothing in APA style that speaks to an exception for the situation where the authors of a paper contribute equally or that set out multiple "first authors".

More generally:

Ultimately, author order is a thing that exists independent of contribution. It is often related to size of contribution. In particular, being first author is often related to making the greatest contribution. But disciplines vary substantially in the meaning of author order. And even in fields where first-author usually indicates greatest contribution, authors in other positions sometimes make greater or equivalent contributions. For example, in some cases the first and second author will have contributed equally. It seems more sensible to say that both authors contributed equally than to say that they were both "first authors", because at the end of the day, a reference has to have a canonical order to the authors. So whether the order of authors is determined by contribution, agreement, a coin toss, or a game of croquet, there is an order to the authors, and someone is first.
It seems strange that it would be the citing person's responsibility to adopt a citation style that captures every nuance of relative contribution in a given cited paper. An appropriate place to mention relative contribution of authors is in the author note in a paper. More generally, there are a lot of variants on the "co-first-author" scenario. In some cases, authors will note equal contribution or that author order was determined by a coin toss. Ultimately, this could all get very fuzzy.
It would make citations and references even more challenging to compile. Relative contribution of authors is not usually encoded in abstract and indexing services. And it is not encoded into reference management software such as Endnote or BibTeX formats as far as I'm aware. So it would be an additional hassle to keep track of these things.
The primary goal of citation styles is to unambiguously direct readers to sources. Managing author credit effectively is a secondary goal.


How would you respond if you were forwarded an email by your secretary that clearly wasn't meant for you? I'm an undergraduate senior seeking to continue on into academia, and one of the avenues I'm pursuing to accomplish this is through an NSF GRFP proposal. I spent well over a hundred hours agonizing over every word of this, and I'm happy to have three professors that I've done research with who agreed to write my letter of recs.

The deadline for these letters is just a week away, and over the course of the past three weeks, one of my professors stopped responding to my emails, as he is prone to do on occasion when he gets busy. In the past, I had a negative experience where a careless professor forgot to submit a letter on time and this led to my sophomore study abroad proposal being returned without review. In this context, I sent the following email to his secretary (names redacted):

  Hi [Secretary],

  I wanted to inquire about an issue I'm having with Prof. [professor]
  at the moment. I asked him a number of weeks ago to write me a letter
  of recommendation for my NSF proposal (due November 2nd), to which he
  kindly agreed. He asked me for various things, including my transcript
  and statement of purpose, which I provided. Unfortunately, since then,
  I haven't been able to contact him in any way. I've sent him three
  emails over the past two weeks with no response. It is extremely
  important to me that this letter actually gets sent in; to put it
  bluntly, it's my future that's on the line here. I have in the past
  encountered the terrible experience of having a professor miss a
  similarly non-negotiable deadline, and I suffered from the loss of
  that opportunity as a result. I would greatly appreciate it if you
  could gently remind him of the deadline and ask him to confirm that he
  did indeed receive all of the application materials I sent him. If he
  needs anything else from me, I am more than happy to send it to him.

  Thank you very much,

  [Me]

Of course, the first thing she does is forwards this email directly to my professor, even though it was never written with his eyes in mind. I'm now worried that my professor (with whom I otherwise have a good relationship) will think less of me and write a poorer letter of rec on my behalf. I was wondering how academics would feel if they were put in a similar spot, and if I ought to be proactive in rectifying the situation, or if I should just let sleeping dogs lie.

A Socially Anxious Student

My first question is what you thought would happen? In my experience, many secretaries would handle it exactly in this way - your email is fairly unspecific in what you thought the secretary would do ("remind him about this" - he/she did by forwarding your mail, and at the same time probably wondering why you did not send it directly to him). If you thought that the secretary would take responsibility for hunting down the recommendation letter for you, I think this is an unreasonable assumption. The secretary is the professor's assistant, not yours. In the olden times this may have included managing the professor's work backlog, but nowadays most people prefer doing this themselves and just having the secretary arrange meetings etc.

  even though it was never written with his eyes in mind.

Tip for the future: never write something to staff where you would be embarrassed if the boss saw it, especially if you don't know the person well. However, I see little in this email that would offend me, other than maybe the implication that you thought I could not be approached directly about this. But of course other people get offended by other things.

  I was wondering how academics would feel if they were put in a similar spot, and if I ought to be proactive in rectifying the situation, or if I should just let sleeping dogs lie.

I am for "letting sleeping dogs lie". Very likely there really isn't a situation to address, and if there is you can still tackle it once it comes up.


Difference between introduction and related work? when i want to write a conference  paper i get confused how to organize introduction and related work chapters! Because both are related to the literature review.

My impression is that the introduction should be broader than the related works, and the latter should be more focused on the comparable approaches. But do we still need to mentioned the related works in the introduction as well? Then it'll become double mentioning of literature.

Could you please distinguish the difference of these two chapters for me a bit more clearly than my understanding?

By the way, i'm working in computer science field as the above might be different in other fields.

Because these distinctions vary across fields, your best bet is to look at some examples from your field to get an idea of how people approach this.

In general, I would say your introduction is a more general overview which should include some references to existing literature but is also intended to establish the importance of your work (i.e., a knowledge gap of some sort). You can limit the citations to the most recent or most relevant works - you certainly do not need to mention every work you will cite later in the paper.

Depending on the flow of your writing you may re-cite citations from your introduction in your related work chapter or in other sections; if you do re-cite, it is likely because these works are very important to your paper and you may have multiple reasons to cite them (for example, in your introduction you may mention their conclusions/achievements; in your related works you might be talking about their approach). As long as you aren't repeating yourself, there is no reason to be afraid to cite the same work more than once in your paper.


What time can be considered enough to withdraw my submission? I had submitted a manuscript to an ESCI journal.
It has been over 1 month since I submitted but the status shows "with editor".

I mailed the editor to check the status of my manuscript. The editor informed me that he had sent the manuscript to some referees but he has not received any reply from the reviewers.
He/She further said that if I want, I may consider submitting my paper elsewhere.

How long should I wait for the reviewers to give a decision whether they will review my manuscript or not?

Also my deadlines for submission are due in 2-3 months, i.e. I need to get my first submission within 2-3 months.

What time can be considered enough to withdraw my submission?

The review process often takes a long time. 2-3 months is typical. I’ve known instances of it taking 9-12 months. You need to be patient. This process is about the same for each journal (well most take a month or so at least. You must consider resubmitting to another journal carefully as you won’t save time by starting over, even if you don’t need to reformat it or write for a different audience (note that you cannot submit the paper to more than one journal at a time).

That it’s still with the editor (hasn’t been rejected) is a good sign. If they believe your manuscript does not have relevance to their journal or sufficient merit, they would have rejected it by now. They will now only do so if the reviewers raise serious concerns, it’s often accepted with revisions if it goes out for review.

The editorial process takes a long time. Many scientific or academic editors perform this role as a part-time job on top of their own academic responsibilities. The most time consuming part of the review process is finding the reviewers. They need to find reviewers with the right expertise who don’t have an existing relationship with the authors who are available to review. It can take a long time to get responses for requests to review.

Once they find reviewers, the review process should be quick. Reviewers are only given a couple of weeks to return their completed review (usually they submit them in this time or a few days late). They should decline to review if they cannot do in this timeframe. Once the reviews have been returned, an editor should give you a decision and the reviews within a few days.


Is it possible to apply for a Master's programme then leave current PhD? I'm a 2-year PhD student at a research institute in Asia, and now I'm thinking about applying for a Master's programme abroad (possibly in Australia or Europe), so is it possible for me to submit my application first, if I could be really lucky to receive an offer, then I leave my current PhD?

Here's my background. I earned my BS in optical information, and my final project was to investigate quantum machine learning, it really piqued my interest in machine learning, that's why I took my Master's programme on data analysis. Things went well at first, the research institute I'm in is part of a larger system, so the first year we were all gathered to finish our courses in a universty. In the second year, we were summoned back to respective institutes to finish our studies.

I was hoping that I could finally get to know more about scientific research, but it turned out that it was just the beginning of the nightmare. I was assigned to a team led by a certain PI, everyone on the team is this PI's subordinate, even my so-called supervisor. The PI is the kind of person that won't allow others to say "no" to him, and he initially asked me to investigate situation awareness, then switched the topic to object detection. At that time I didn't put much thought into it, so I applied to continue my study as PhD student, and stayed on the team.

To cut a long story short, I was then asked to work on multiple object tracking, remote sensing, spatial-temporal data mining, event detection in videos, graph-based data mining and information centric networking. That's 8 different fields in 2 years. I just can't stand it anymore, I've never recieved any proper guidance since I got back to the institute, all the PI wants is asking students on the team to write a report about certain fields so he can make better judgement when outsourcing the project.

I'm still passionate about my research, I keep reading papers and conducting experiments on computer vision and deep learning, but haven't made much progress, I have no one to discuss my research idea with, as no one on this team really knows these things, the PI and supervisor really don't care about students' research since they can still make resonable profits by outsourcing projects, they just keeps distracting students with endless reports to write.

This is why I made up my mind to apply for a Master's programme abroad, I desperately yearn for better guidance, hopefully it can make me better prepared, so I can eventually do some real PhD.

is it possible for me to submit my application first, if I could be really lucky to receive an offer, then I leave my current PhD?

I don't see why not! It seems like this good be a good approach for you to pursue your research and career goals. You can go ahead and apply and try to put together the best application possible.


How to come to know that you have done some thing non-trivial in the research? I am a PhD student. I was working on some problem from last 5-6 months and some days I was able to solve it. I discuss with my research team including my research supervisor. I told them my idea and approach and then they discuss for 40-50 minute and asked me few questions and I gave them answers. They ask me to combine it with my previous smaller result and told me that it is a complete research paper. but here is a problem, I have seen some of the research papers written by some senior colleagues in my research field and with respect those people my research problem and its solution seems less significant. I am not comparing myself with them but with respect to these top researchers my work seems small. Some time I feel that I have done something non-trivial and some time I feel like my research work in trivial.

  Question : How to come to know that you have done some thing non-trivial in the research? One way is to read the research papers of others. What are other ways?

In a recent project I felt that I had somewhat trivial results, and that I needed to add more to it before writing the paper. The new steps turned out to be so non-trivial, and take so long time, that I decided to write up what I had in the meantime. By putting the work so far in the form of a proper paper - you know, with an introduction that attempts to convince others that the work is interesting and worthwhile - I ended up convincing myself that the results were non-trivial and made for a good paper already.

In hindsight I had worked on related stuff long enough that my results seemed less novel to me than they would to another person. So, my advice is to write it up, and trust your supervisor.


Is it advisable to do a postdoc in statistical genetics after a statistics PhD in machine learning/deep learning? Is it advisable to do a postdoc in statistical genetics or other similar medical disciplines (e.g. medical neuroimaging) if I have a statistics PhD in machine learning/deep learning? I really wanted to be involved in applying statistics in medical disciplines, but my life just didn't pan out this way.
My concern is that I have no previous training in Computational Biology/Bioinformatics/Genetics.
I think the problem I have is:

Either these are too big of a transition and I won't be able to get much out of the postdoctoral fellowship with the limited time period (not getting much published), or
Perhaps it will be too hard for me to get a postdoc in those fields since I don't have the adequate biology background.

Thank you,

A big part of the PhD degree is that you have learned to learn.  If you have a PhD in statistics/machine learning then I see no reason that you could not rapidly learn the material required for statistical applications in medicine/genetics.  So long as you are doing statistical things (e.g., statistical genetics as opposed to the biology/medical aspects) then this falls very close to your existing expertise, and the additional learning is likely to consist primarily of learning new statistical distributions/models, which will be something you are well trained to do.
To the extent you need to learn genetics to understand the statistical models applying to genetics (which is much less than you might think), you ought to be able to learn the basics rapidly enough to communicate with geneticists in your projects.  Most of your work is likely to be interdisciplinary, where you do the statistical work and geneticists do the genetics work.  Likewise, if you publish in this field then the geneticists will write up all the parts of the paper pertaining to their subject and you will write up the parts of the paper pertaining to your subject.
One of the great things about statistics is that you can enter a field and assist with data analysis with surprisingly little background in the subject.  You often need to learn the basics, and interrogate the problem to learn how the data is being sampled, etc., but the burden is smaller than you might imagine.  Moreover, other applied statisticians have written books in these fields that introduce the statistical models of interest, with the relevant scientific background for the field, so you can pick it up quickly.  Statistical genetics requires you to know just enough about genetics to understand why the statistical models are formulated the way they are (which is very little) and then the rest is standard math/stats work that is squarely within your training.  Take heed of the immortal words of the great John Tukey: "The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard."


Writing a paper on occasion of birthday My colleague and I intend to prepare a paper on occasion of our advisor's birthday (he turns 65 in two years). As the preparation and publishing of a math paper takes some time, I commenced planning now. We both have defended our theses.

I would appreciate any tip on this issue. For instance, the quality of journal and the number of authors. In addition, should we share our idea about such paper with advisor?

If your advisor has had a large enough impact on his field or sub-field, it may be possible to organize a special issue in honor of his birthday. For example,
Donald DeAngelis had a special issue of Ecological Modelling dedicated to him. The first article was titled "Next-generation ecological modelling: A special issue dedicated to Donald DeAngelis on the occasion of his 70th birthday".

The entire issue may be found here and a non-paywall press released here.


Conflict of Interest from previous employment as a graduate student I am currently working in industry with a pharmaceutical company on a one year contract (front-line sales role). Following this contract, I was hoping to complete my masters of Science in population and public health. If I am no longer affiliated with the company by the time I begin courses, and will not finish a masters thesis for 2 years (where the research is not related to my previous employment), is this a conflict of interest, and how is this managed?

Specific requirements for conflict of interest vary by publication. I think the situation you describe would be considered a conflict according to some but not all medical journal requirements, for those that give detailed requirements of what to report. Others give less guidance; in which case you should typically err on the side of caution and report it (all this assumes your employment was at least somewhat relevant to the area in which you are conducting research).

In any case, this is typically not a big deal. You won't have to do anything beyond reporting the conflict of interest, and it's unlikely to cause much concern. With pharma companies extensively involved in research, this sort of thing happens all the time.


How to identify future directions in a saturated field without getting discouraged I am close to finishing a PhD in applied mathematics and I'm looking to develop future projects that go beyond my dissertation topic into other domains.  One of the major subjects my advisor has suggested that I look into is an extremely saturated - but still largely "unresolved" - field.  While I find the subject incredibly fascinating and challenging, I am also intimidated by the amount of work that has already been done, and I worry that I might loose the niche I've dug out for my dissertation by trying to play in someone else's big pool.  I feel like I might have something to contribute, if nothing else from a "translational/interdisciplinary" perspective (applying the expertise gained during my PhD to a different field), but is there a good way to feel out where exactly I fit in?  I suppose a logical answer to my own question would be to identify a post-doc position with a leading group in the field, but I am interested in hearing other opinions.

If you browse through top 10 schools (or researchers') websites, you might get a "feeling" on where (or what) their research is heading towards! For example, you can check what their newest post docs are working on, PhD students' thesis titles etc. You can also do the same thing by checking NSF newly funded proposals. This may not give you a definite answer, but it might help you establish a "directional sense"

PS.
I'm in engineering not math.


How hard is it to succeed in research after an adviser's death midway through PhD? TL;DR: How hard would it be to finish out a Ph.D. and have an effective early career (as a pure mathematician) after my adviser has unexpectedly passed away? My department does not have any tenure-track faculty able to take on students in my field at the time, but two postdocs in my field have offered to help, and the department has offered to fly me to visit researchers in my field. I am currently in my fourth year at a U.S. university.

I read this similar question, but it seemed to address practical plans for going forward more than the costs and benefits of doing so. What I'm looking for is advice on how difficult it would be to have a successful career and/or finish the Ph.D. in a reasonable amount of time, in addition to talking about what options I have.

I am a pure mathematics Ph.D. student in my fourth year. My adviser recently passed away unexpectedly, and my department does not have anyone else in his field who is able to take on students. He was a great loss to all of us, as he was a deeply intuitive mentor as well as an excellent researcher. Before my adviser's passing, I had anticipated 1.5 to 2.5 more years to Ph.D.

In the next six months or so, my department has offered me the option of working with a couple of postdocs (in my field) at my current institution, as well as flying out to occasionally meet with more senior mathematicians at different institutions. It is unclear whether the department will hire another researcher in my field anytime soon, especially one who is not fresh out of a postdoc. The department is currently uncertain if there will be tenure-track faculty there who could advise me anytime before I graduate. The department tends to offer at least 6 years of funding to Ph.D. students.

I currently have enough material for roughly one paper, but I feel that I still need guidance to finish my Ph.D., and I felt like I was really benefiting from weekly/biweekly meetings with a single adviser. My adviser helped keep me confident and excited, as well as explaining difficult techniques and offering new approaches to proofs or counterexamples.

I have heard some people advise on transferring institutions at this point, though my department does not recommend that. In addition, some people have pointed out to me that an adviser is an important early-career research collaborator, to the extent that it is difficult to do good research early in a career without having them to collaborate with or ask questions of.

If my time to Ph.D. is going to be lengthened significantly, I would like to know that going forward, as it would help me make decisions about whether to transfer, etc. So my question is: how hard would it be to finish out a Ph.D. and have an effective early career without an adviser in the traditional sense?

In academia, as everywhere, life happens.
Fortunately, a lot of people understand this.

It will definitely be harder to succeed when your advisor has passed away than if your advisor had lived.  I suspect, however, that it will be much easier than if you had a falling out with your advisor, which has been addressed in a number of different questions on this site.

It sounds like your institution is doing the best it can to offer you options for getting new advising, and that those options are not so bad.  It is also the case that you are reaching the point in your program where you would in any case need to start reaching out to build strong relationships outside of your home institution.  Where your advisor might once have helped bootstrap your connections, you have instead your institution's offer to help you meet with other mathematicians.  This is a big juncture in your life and career, and everything changes.  Despite the fact that the original quote is false, a crisis really is both danger and opportunity.

Also, make sure to take care of yourself.  You just had somebody close to you die, and that might affect you in a lot of ways, including interfering with your ability to work.  If you aren't already doing so, I would suggest proactively starting to see a counselor to help you navigate any psychological challenges that may come up: even if you don't feel you are having troubles now, they may start and it is better to catch them early, rather than having troubles that you might attribute to your new advising and then realizing six months down the road that it was actually your reaction to the death.


Should I send my AP scores from highschool to a graduate school I am applying to? I scored a 3 on my Statistics test, and while it did not count for my undergraduate school as they only accept 4+, it would be a bonus when applying for a doctoral program in Clinical Psychology. However, since it was high school, would it do more harm than good?

I doubt that it would have any effect at all. You might be better to stress other, more recent things. Presumably your transcripts show proficiency in statistics sufficient for entry.

I doubt it would do harm other than to have someone, possibly, question why you did that. And a 3 isn't a huge benefit, as your undergrad experience showed.

However, if that is your only CV possibility pointing to knowing statistics, it would be a different matter.


Have most journals recently stopped providing off-prints to authors? I've recently obtained my PhD in mathematics and started a post-doc this year. I have 5 published papers, across a wide spectrum of journals (in terms of quality, from very good to mediocre). However I never received any off-prints from the journals and it seems that to receive those one has to pay. On the other hand all the professors that I know of have always a lot of off-prints for most of their journal publications. I always wanted to have these neat looking off-prints but it seems that the winds have changed and journals are becoming "cheaper" (behavior-wise) than ever.

This leads me to the following question:

Is this a recent change? Is it considered the norm now to not send off-prints free of charge?
Are these professors perhaps ordering the off-prints through some departmental fund?

Is there anything that can be done about this situation? Can I pressure the journal into sending me off-prints free of charge (e.g would trying to refuse signing the publishing agreement, unless they provide the off-prints for free work?). Have people tried boycotting journals not offering off-prints? This kind of cheap behavior really strikes me as pushing the boundary of what is acceptable. Not only we do most of the work for the journal (refereeing, writing, etc.) but on top of that journals are expensive and do not even offer off-prints anymore.

Off-prints are a remnant from the days when photocopying hadn't been invented and, if you wanted your own copy of a paper, the only reasonable way to get one was to write to the author and ask for an off-print.

Providing off-prints to authors certainly seems to be becoming less common.  Some journals still provide them for free, some only for a fee, and some not at all.  I don't think most people care, and among those that do care, many prefer not to receive the off-prints.  It's been years since I received a request for an off-print, so when I do get them they just end up sitting in piles in my office while I offer them as party favors to anyone who enters the office.  Some decline and probably many of the rest recycle them, since electronic copies are far more convenient.

  Can I pressure the journal into sending me off-prints free of charge (e.g would trying to refuse signing the publishing agreement, unless they provide the off-prints for free work?).

I wouldn't try pressuring them, which could come across as both eccentric and rude.  Instead, you could try begging, by explaining that you are a postdoc with strictly limited funds but would really love off-prints and hope they could provide them at a reduced cost.  I have no idea whether this could work, but the worst that can happen is that they'll say no.

  Have people tried boycotting journals not offering off-prints?

You are welcome to investigate which journals provide off-prints for free and submit your papers there, but I doubt many people will join you in this.


Can we submit part of our assignment after deadline? I have a deadline for handing in my assignments. One of them is tricky and I need to think more. I coded it but I am not 100 % sure that is right. Can I think more about it after deadline of submitting the assignment are passed I give it to my professor?

What will be his reaction?
Will he give me the mark of that question?

PS: I submitted my assignments I also did that part, now I want to think more about that part. You know, that part was difficult.

There's nothing stopping you from thinking about it after the deadline, but if you want any corrections to be graded, you need to tell the professor before the deadline. It's possible he'll give you an extension, especially if you have good reasons (e.g. personal issues).

Handing in assignments after the deadline, without warning, is likely to lead to it simply not being graded. The professor must be fair to other students who might not have had the extra time, and besides, if he accepted your submission everyone else might start doing the same and the deadline might as well not be a deadline.


Referee says the proof is wrong, but it is not, what to do? About 3 months ago, my co-author and I submitted a mathematical paper to a journal. Yesterday, we got the editor's response and the paper has been rejected. The reason is that the referee thinks that our results are wrong or trivial.

However, we carefully read the referee's report and we conclude that the "errors" pointed out by the referee are not errors at all and that our proofs are correct. In all modesty, we think that the referee understood very poorly even the statements of our theorems.

Personally, this is the first time that such a situation occurs to me.
I already have four papers published in such journal and the reports I got from the referees have been always really accurate.

What do you think is the best thing to do?
Forget about and try another journal? Write an e-mail to the editor explaining why we disagree with the decision? Other ideas?

EDIT: Thank you very much for all your answers. At the end, we submitted our paper to another journal with only some slight edits we have already planned to do independently by the referee's report.

While you might be able to appeal to the editor, once you've been rejected, you're probably not going to get a change in decision.  I would instead recommend focusing on a new submission to another journal.

Before you do so, however, I would strongly advise performing a major revision on your presentation of the proofs.  Assuming that your proofs are in fact correct, you clearly did not convey them in such a way that their correctness and significance were obvious to the reviewer.  The reviewer may have been a sloppy or shallow reader, but so in fact will be many of your other readers after publication.

In short, take the feedback as an indicator of how your paper needs to be improved before you submit it to another journal.


Should I add references for examples? I am writing a paper in Computer Science / Information Technology.  At several points in the paper, I mention the existence of particular types of software products.  For example:

  Advanced web data extraction systems offer the possibility for the user to define and execute Web wrappers by means of interactive graphical users interfaces (GUI) (e.g. Denodo, Kapowtech, Lixto and Mozenda).

The examples I am referencing are commercial products. Some of them have some articles associated with them which I can cite. Should I add reference to these articles? If yes, how can I do that?

Like any other external resources you mention in your paper, in my opinion, the sources for the examples should be listed as regular references. This can happen in various forms:

If there is a scientific paper that in some way presents the external resource, cite that paper.
If the resource is only presented on a website, cite that website like you would cite other web sources. This can take various forms, though you should be consistent within any one paper you write. The author, unless a single person, should probably be the name of the entity that published the resource. The title can either be the website title, or the name of the resource (e.g. software name).

This has various benefits:

All external works are collected in your references section.
If you refer to the same source several times (especially on several pages), you can use the usual mechanisms by placing cite references.
Readers will not get confused by different formats and places for finding external works you refer to.

In an afterthought, I would find it extremely hard to consistently distinguish "examples" from "normal references". By "normal reference", I imagine a paper that confirms a statement you make. Now, imagine a simple statement like

  In past works, users have been provided with feature X.

for which you want to supply a paper that describes a commercial software that does provide feature X. Now, is this paper an "example" or a "normal reference" that serves to confirm your statement? Clearly, it can be seen as both ... which is why I generally advise against trying to distinguish between any such "categories" of cited works.


Could a Masters degree actually make someone a less employable candidate? Let me preface by saying I'm studying Computer Science, so I don't know how well this applies to every field but this is what I have heard from. many Computer Science and Engineering majors.

I have heard that, when applying for jobs, a masters degree can be a sign of poor performance. That is, those with a masters in Computer Science are thought to be significantly poorer programmers than those with an undergraduate.

I am interested in getting a masters degree because I hope to one day transition into more analytical and research based positions, but if I get an MSc. could it hold me back? Would it be better to get some work experience, and then get my masters mid-career? I know that some employers may even pay for your graduate studies, but is this significantly better than the alternative in any sense?

I would actually think it is precisely the opposite: generally, a computer science Masters requires a thesis, and that thesis usually involves writing a big chunk of functioning code of some sort.  Accomplishing that indicates that person is capable of a accomplishing a large and complex task with minimal supervision.  With an undergraduate degree, you don't necessarily know whether they've ever built a real program that wasn't handed to them as a pre-digested problem as part of their curriculum.

Now, if somebody was a giant company looking for "cannon fodder" programmers to grind out massive repetitive projects, maybe that could be a minus.  Likewise, you have to pay people better when they've got a Masters, commensurate with their increase in skill, so if somebody is looking for low-quality coding work, a Masters could make a candidate overqualified.  However, if you're thinking about eventually moving toward more research in your career, do you really want those sort of jobs?

I know for a fact, however, that the company group I'm in rarely even considers hiring people without at least a Masters.  A number of others I know are similar: the more cutting-edge or research-oriented a company is, the more that they are likely to value that extra education.


How do you discover who funded a study? Someone asked a similar question here: How to find out who funded a study / research?
several years ago, but not a single person had a real answer. So perhaps now. So...how? How do I find information on who funded a certain company or where their funds might come from in general? Specifically trying to find information on this company: https://ridgebackbio.com/
Thank you in advance.
PS: not looking to be spoon-fed information on this company, but to learn this skill on following money. I just can't find any resources to learn it in the first place.

To answer the "who funds a company" question, which is not the same as "who funds a study":
Real biotech companies are usually pretty easy to get information on. Take Editas for example. Lots of information there about funding cause it's a real company and it helps make investors less nervous when there's transparency (and they can see other real investors have skin in the game).
Your example has no public information because it's not a real biotech company. It's a shell company that's brokering IP in a way that probably relies on "Political connections", which often means something that is poorly distinguishable from bribery. Any public information is just more ammo for a US attorney if they start poking around.


How to add citation for a whole paragraph? If I write a report and a whole paragraph is based on one source but not cited verbally it seems unnecessary to include the reference after every sentence:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua (source 1). Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat (source 1).

Now I found a Phd thesis that puts the reference after the last dot of the paragraph to indicate that it is based on this very source:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. (source 1)

Is this a common practice? Is it generally understood? What are other ways to add the reference for a whole paragraph?

Generally it is sufficient to cite each source only once in each place where you refer to material from this source. "Place" may be one sentence, one paragraph, one definition, etc.

If you cite a paragraph verbatim from another source, put it in quotation marks or in a quotation block and add one reference to the source at the end.

If you have a whole paragraph referring to one source but don't actually quote it, it gets a little bit more tricky. You have to make sure that a reader clearly understands that the whole paragraph is based on the source you are citing. A simple citation in parenthesis just added at the end of the last sentence may not be sufficient to make this clear. One way to cite in this case is to write something like "The following argument is based on (source)" at the beginning of the paragraph in question.