How to explain why I want to go to a summer school? I want to go to a summer school in biomathematics for undergraduate level, and they ask to give some sort of explanatory of why do I want to attend. I've never done this before, so I have no idea what to write, first I wanted to write that the relationship between biology and mathematics is very interesting, and that stimulates my curiosity, however I feel this sounds extremely immature. How do you write this things?

Also, I've seen that in general for other events that usually involve (short) courses, they ask the applicant to write their reasons to attend, why is that?

To answer both questions of "what to write" and "why they ask for this," I will quote an answer from @badroit to a related question (which deals with writing a research statement):

  You're trying to demonstrate why you and your background are a good fit for a summer school and that you will benefit greatly from that school.

The general idea is the same for writing a "why I want to attend" statement: you want to show the organizers of the summer school that they won't be wasting their time and other resources on you.

So, the two things you'll want to make sure your answer conveys are:

That you are genuinely enthusiastic about the topic. Explaining (as you suggest) that the relationship between biology and mathematics is something you are very curious about/interested in is a perfectly reasonable thing to write. You could also mention related coursework or projects you have undertaken, to further demonstrate your interest in this area.
That you will benefit from the summer school. Discuss relevant goals that you think this school will help you achieve; for example, your intent to take graduate-level courses in the subject as a senior, to pursue independent study/research in this area, to go on to graduate studies in biomathematics, etc.

Finally, if there is a professor in a related area with whom you have some relationship (e.g., you took his/her class), you can ask them to review your summer school application before you send it in. This has the double benefit of (1) getting expert help with your application, and (2) cultivating a relationship with faculty in your field of interest.


Does a supervisor have to read a thesis of his PhD student A friend of mine who is doing a PhD has finished writing the first draft of her thesis. In her school, it's a common practice that a supervisor will read the first draft and then provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.

However, my friend's supervisor is too busy at the moment and explicitly says that he won't be able to read her thesis in a month or so. The supervisor suggests my friend to wait for him. But, since my friend already has a job offer and wants to submit the thesis as soon as possible, the supervisor allows her to submit it now without him reading it.

When my friend was writing her thesis, she sent some chapters to her supervisor. He read some but not all of them.

My question is whether a supervisor has a responsibility to read his/her student's thesis. Moreover, should my friend submit her thesis now even her supervisor hasn't read it yet.

Updates:

My friend is doing her PhD in the UK, which means the supervisor is not in the examining committee.
My friend let her supervisor know about the job offer more than a month ago and they both agreed that the supervisor would try his best to find a time to review her thesis. However, it seems that the supervisor cannot find a time, so he lets her submit now if she wants.

Have to is a strong requirement. In the US, the supervisor is almost always part of the examining committee so at some point they will have to read it. Some departments may have rules about feedback on drafts and how quickly and how much feedback supervisors can provide.

In the UK, the supervisor is almost never part of the examining committee. While I have never seen regulations prohibiting feedback, but there is more of a culture that students should stand on their own. That said, I think most supervisorsuccessful read a draft of a thesis.


Grading unsuccessful team work in a seminar I'm the supervisor of a seminar.

A team of two students is preparing a common presentation for the seminar. The team has to write a report (a preliminary version for double-blind reviewing by other teams and a final version read by me) and give two talks; the team has a lot of freedom on how and what they do. The topic, the seminar dates, the duration, and the deadlines for handing in the reports and the slides are fixed.

I put the two together a few months ago (they had not known each other before, so I had to do all the organization via e-mail). They already submitted the preliminary version of the report more-or-less in time. However, 5 days before handling in the final report and 12 days before the presentation, one of them complained about the poor performance of another one. I asked them to clearly state their contributions by a particular deadline; one did so, while the other did not answer by the deadline. I offered them to split and am waiting for the answer.

I do care that all the participants of the seminar and me learn something new from the students' presentations.
Moreover, I get evaluated by the seminar participants anonymously; the evaluation goes to the department. I do care about good evaluation results, too.

How should I deal with such an unpleasant situation?

This post might be relevant to you: Should I hide the fact that I did a group assignment completely by myself?

Regarding your question:

You put them together a few months ago, and still you only get a complaint a few days before the deadline. Now, there are two possible cases:

They don't have a finished report by the deadline. In this case, I would take the appropriate steps. They had months to discuss the topic with you, to get into another team, etc., if they only come to you five days before the end, they have to take the consequences.
They have a finished report, but one of them claims to have done most of the work. In this case, you already took good steps, I would continue along this path. If the student doesn't answer, assume he dropped the course and act accordingly.

Regarding your evaluation, you should know that it is common for students who get a bad grade (like it might be the case for the lazy student here) to give a bad evaluation. The people reading these evaluations should also be aware about this and as long as it is only a single one that stands out negatively, it shouldn't affect you too much. Be prepared to explain and justify the steps you have taken, e.g. offering the students to split.


if an academic writer critiques your study using an approach you are not familiar with, should you bother responding? I came across an article claiming that 82 percent of peer-reviewed publications in Humanities are not even cited once, let alone read by the general public. What's more interesting is that the increased specialization in contemporary Humanities further narrows down the target readers of academic publications to such an extent that these publications become inaccessible to most other professors.

This leads me to my question: if an academic writer critiques your study using an approach you are not familiar with or do not understand, should you bother responding to the criticism?

Say, for example, that philosophy professor A published an article explaining "right" and "wrong" using traditional conceptual analysis. Philosophy professor B, who specializes in mathematics, critiqued her paper by employing formal models. Assuming that philosopher A does not specialize in math, should she bother responding to the criticism?

You are asking about cases where an idea you have put forward is criticised on the basis of a theory that you are not familiar with, which might require some investment of time to understand.  The example you give of two philosophy professors is a good one.

There is a time-cost involved in any attempt to learn a new discipline area, even to the level that would allow you to understand an argument directed against your work.  While the time cost might be too steep in some rare cases, as a general principle, if you are going to set out arguments and ideas on an academic subject, you should be willing to invest the required time to understand the arguments that bear on your subject matter.  This is a normal part of academic work; it requires you to read outside your own speciality on occasion to understand some outside idea.  This is also a useful way of expanding your knowledge and acquiring some interdisciplinary knowledge to allow some communication between different fields.

Although there is a time-cost to this kind of study, it is highly beneficial in giving a more rounded understanding of a subject area.  Having said this, there is generally a large difference between the amount of time required to learn a subject well enough to understand a criticism (a short time), and the amount of time required to learn a subject well enough to create new work in that area (a long time).  It is reasonable in cases like this to at least learn enough to understand and evaluate the argument made against your work, and be able to respond cogently to this argument.  If this piques further interest then it might lead to deeper study, but that is not a necessity.

Your example with the philosophy professors: In this example there is a time-cost to the first professor to learn enough about formal models of normative ethical operators (presumably some kind of modal logic) to work in that field.  However, he shouldn't need much time to learn enough to understand the particular argument made in that formalism that is deployed against his argument.  This is effectively just a translation of an argument in another language (mathematical formalism) into terms that he can understand.  It will require him to go through bit-by-bit and learn the specific aspects of the formalism that are deployed in that case, which is a lot smaller task than becoming an expert in modal logic.  Once he has done this, he should be able to understand and respond to the argument (in his own words - not necessarily in the formalism!).  If that argument is important or interesting it may pique his interest and lead to further study in modal logic ---e.g., he might decide he wishes to learn enough to couch his own ideas in the formalism, and thereby provide a contrary model in the formalism as a counter-argument.


Do teaching evaluations improve from high participation rates Do teaching evaluations tend to improve from high voter turn-out?

I think that teaching evaluations are naturally answered by people with strong opinions or who are invested in the class. Many students don't answer the evaluations because they don't care.

I presume that if you could force them to answer the evaluation questionnaire, then many would just be yes-men and answer favorably.

Is there reason to corroborate or invalidate that line of thought?

There are too many forces here to expect any clear trend.

It depends on who forces them, I think. You are probably correct that when they are optional, only the most invested will be likely to participate. But if the instructor forces them, then some, taking it as an extra task for which they see no personal benefit, might react badly. I'm assuming anonymous responses, of course.

If the system, somehow, forces them then those less invested might still be annoyed, but not at the instructor. Whether you get honest answers, however, or chaotic, playful, anarchistic ones or helpful ones would be worth looking in to, but there is probably no real way to do the experiment.

However, the comments are likely to align, more or less will with how pleased the students were with the course and the instructor's helpfulness than otherwise. But this might not give overall trends different from the current situation you find.

But in particular, I don't see any forces that suggest "yes-men" behavior.

But turn it around. If you do a really good job or a really bad job your participation rate will probably go up.

Humorous aside: Or, you could bribe them somehow to participate so they see a personal benefit for answering. Tricky to do a bribe that doesn't itself slant the results.


Is it unethical for a professor to misrepresent the format of an exam? If a professor at a university explicitly states an exam will contain "multiple choice questions and true/false questions" and then administers an exam with several short answer and essay questions, is that worth filing a complaint to the department about?

I'm a very dedicated student and don't mind essay questions at all, in fact, I prefer them...when I've been given proper notice and can prepare accordingly. There's a much different way to approach material when you need to draft responses from memory. If it WASN'T clearly stated what the format of the exam would be, that would be different. If it were one or two questions that deviated from the format, that wouldn't be a big deal. But to clearly state it would be multiple choice and true/false and then to have about 20% of the exam not follow that format seems unprofessional and poor practice.

I've already reached out to the professor about it and have not yet received a response. However, I'm considering also contacting the department. Am I overreacting? Or is this reasonable?

First, there’s some important background information to consider about professors, which is that they are human and occasionally make mistakes just like everyone else. In particular, as can happen to anyone in any other workplace or general life context, they may sometimes forget what they said to whom and when, or say something they didn’t fully intend, e.g., omitting an important detail or making a statement that is misleading or not entirely accurate.

Moreover, these effects are at their worst when a professor is overloaded with work. Small misstatements of this type can happen for example because a student accosts them with a curveball question at the end of lecture when they are frazzled and distracted and in a hurry to get somewhere (happened to me more times than I count), or due to many other kinds of cognitive overload that are a frequent occurrence in many professors’ lives. As an example, just this week I confused the lecture times of the two different classes I’m teaching in an email to a colleague about scheduling a meeting, and have found myself making a few other similar (fortunately insignificant) mistakes recently. This is very atypical for me, and it’s clear to me that it’s strongly correlated with a period of increased workload.

Coming back to your question, it’s obviously not great that the professor did not give you accurate information about the exam, but saying it’s “unethical” is making a statement about the professor’s intent. If they deliberately misled you, then yeah, that’s not very nice, and, depending on how misleading their description was, I can see the label “unethical” as being potentially appropriate. But based on my experience, I’m extremely skeptical that the misrepresentation was intentional. It’s much more likely that the explanation involved an error, forgetfulness, preparing the exam at the last minute and making a spontaneous decision to add an essay question without realizing that this would make some students upset, or some other such explanation.

Basically, in most situations of this type in academia, rather than assume bad faith, your default assumption should be that the person whose behavior you are aggrieved about made a mistake. They may be disorganized or even mildly incompetent, but none of that equates to being unethical. Unless you have hard evidence of an intent to deceive or the level of incompetence implied by the mistake is truly outrageous, complaining about this seems like a waste of time to me.


How good is the Google Scholar search Engine? I've been using Google Scholar search engine for a while in order to find scientific articles for my master thesis, but I've come to notice that the search algorithm is not as good as the real google search engine.

I feel that Scholar requires quite specific search terms in order to find the right articles. Does anybody share my experience and is it true that the Google Scholar search engine is worse at searching than the main Google Engine?

It's not so much "worse" as it is "different".  The base Google Scholar search uses a number of defaults that may not be optimal for a given search.  Check out Publish or Perish which uses the Google Scholar API and provides a number of additional means of searching such as citation counts, journal sorting, etc. that can be a lot more useful.  It also has an alternate option to use the Microsoft Academic Search API, which provides an alternative set of results.


Is it OK to refuse to cite paywalled papers? I wonder how reviewers would react if authors of a submitted paper refuse to cite paywalled papers. Is it a valid reason to refuse citing some papers?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, and English-speaking venues.

If I was reviewing a paper, and the authors failed to cite important literature, I'd recommend rejection until the authors provided correct citations.  It's the authors' responsibility to provide appropriate references.

I assume that many other reviewers would feel the same.


Should I give partly score of my English certification in my CV? I am writing a CV to get admission of a scholarship to study a PhD program in the US. My IELTS score is quite low, only 6.5/9, just enough to pass the door. However, my reading score is quite high, 8/9 (listening, writing and speaking are both 6). I have time to take the test again, but I'm suspect that my score can't be improved in a short time. I have some options here:

Show overall score. This is ordinary. The 6 band indicates that I "has generally effective command of the language".
Show only the reading score. The 8 band indicates that I "has fully operational command of the language". This is my preferred option, since after all reading is the most important skill to do research (I think).
Don't show anything. Overall score is low, and only show the reading score will raise the suspect in the recruiters that I'm hiding something.

Which one should I choose?

For US grad school applications, one  normally doesn't put test scores on a CV.  They will be requested on a different part of the application form, and you will also have to send a score report directly from the testing organization to the school where you are applying.

If the school requires these test scores, they will almost certainly require your scores for all parts.  If they don't require them, then you should omit them completely; there is no point in reporting some parts and not others (the omission may even look suspicious).

My understanding is that language exam scores are only really used as a "gatekeeper".  A score lower than the minimum requirement will be a serious problem for your application, but a score higher than the minimum will not significantly help.  So there's no reason to try to highlight your reading score.


Importance of professional website to search committees I am hitting the academic job market this fall and was advised to have a professional website, but I am completely lost in putting this advice into action.  I now am sitting here thinking about making a professional website in preparation of the job market. I am uncomfortable with this kind of self-promotion but, on the other hand, I do not want to ignore a low hanging piece of fruit because I don't like its shape.

My questions are:

Do professional websites enhance the application for potentials?
How much does the professional website matter at this stage in my career?
Is it worth time writing up my own webpage or is sticking to prefabs  like weebly good enough?

Background: My field is in the social sciences, though my area of research is computational within it.  My publication record upon finishing my postdoc will be strong. I am exceptionally uncomfortable with the idea of self-promotion or even engaging in social media conversations.

Any advice would be appreciated. My hope is that my research productivity will stand on its own and I will not have to create a professional website, but I hope you can advise me on how important it is.

I look for and use the websites of job candidates all the time, and I know many of my colleagues do as well. The reason is that we can find things there that are not on your CV, for example:

Links to the PDF versions of your papers, if you put them there.
Links to pages that provide teaching materials for your students.
Numerous other things that belong on a website but can't be obtained through the CV itself.

So yes, do create a website. As @aeismail writes, take a look at the websites of your colleagues in the field, pick the ones you like best, then imitate that style.

What system you use -- handwritten HTML or a content management system -- is secondary to the content you put online.


List invited, co-authored conference presentation on CV as student As a student (M.Sc.), my list of publications is as short as my career would suggest. For an invited talk at a conference that my professor gave, parts of my work were presented and I was consequently officially listed as a co-author.

Refining my CV for the application to a PhD position now, do I list this on my CV in the "Publications" section? I've read that this can be interpreted as "blowing up" your CV in some cases, which is really not my intention. But given that people in my career stage normally haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to show their work in public, this might still be of interest.

Thus my question: should I include it or not?

If you are listed as a co-author, I'd say yes, include it. You could list it in a separate section of your cv below other, more personal work. If you are asked about it, you can describe it as you do here. This is even better if the reason for the invitation was the work itself and not only the stature of the professor.

But it would also be good to get advice from your professor on this.


Grant/Funding question: "Expected Benefits and Outcomes for attending the conference"? I have acceptance for a conference in my field (Telecommunication and networking), and now I am applying for a conference travel grant to attend this conference. Can I please have an idea what should I respond to the following question?

What are your the expected benefits and outcomes of attending this conference?

I know that this conference is a major conference and it will earn me a good reputation, but the funding agency will not be interested in any of my personal gains and they will be concerned with their own benefits (in this case, providing internet connectivity to this country).

Any idea to respond so that I can convince the reviewers of the application that I am worthy to get this fund?

Depending on the funding agency, I'm not so sure that I would immediately discount the personal gains that your attendance would offer you.  However, I suspect that you might find this prompt easier if you start to think about the overall gains and extended effects that this might offer to both you and your institution/group.

Allow you to build connections with researchers at other institutions. You can also expand this in terms of types of institutions (academic, governmental, corporate) and locations of institutions (is this a regional conference, does it draw from around the world)
Allow you to identify potential collaborators for multi-institutional work
Allow you to learn about the current research in this field
Allow you to bring back information about the current research to your organization. Depending on the grant sponsor, you may want to explain how you will be distributing that information (presentation to the department, lunch talk with a research group, etc.)
Boost the reputation and visibility of your organization with the greater community
If your department is hiring faculty and the grant is funded by your university, you might be able to distribute information about the job search
If you know what the presentations are going to be on, then you can also be specific. E.g., "Meet with Professor YYY and discuss her work on field XXX", "Learn about the latest in VOIP infrastructure rollouts".
Identify potential collaborators for internet connectivity rollout in your country


how can I use email as a reference I have a question about references.   I was reading a paper and I emailed the author asked him about something if it is already known or not. Let make it as example, I asked about basic property say $P$ and he stated the property $P$ in general case he said that he did not know a reference for this property. What's more, he did not believe if anyone write the property in this general case. My question, in case I need to use his idea in my project, what should I do ? since there is no reference for that just his email.

I have sometimes seen in the references an entry like:
...
[37] Professor Bigshot, Private Correspondence
...


How to Direct the Reader to the Background and Terminology Section? While writing a thesis, suppose that, one wants to inform the reader that he/she needs to have a basic knowledge of some topic to understand the following.

If the term is explained in Background and Terminology, how should I say this?

  For the readers who are not familiar with the term blah-blah, we
  explain it in detail in Section 1.2.

or

  We strongly encourage our readers to read Section 1.2 to obtain
  information about blah-blah.

or, what else?

I personally don't like making presumptions about the reader's knowledge when I am writing.  Someone may, for example, be familiar with a term or concept but use it in a difference sense than the paper does.  This is especially true in cross-disciplinary work or when there are unsettled scientific issues in play.  I thus prefer a value-neutral statement.

For example, a general pointer might be:

  See Section 2 for a review of the background and terminology of this work

while a pointer for a specific element might be:

  We thus conclude that this snark is frabjous (for more details on frabjous evaluation, see Section 2.4).


What is the etiquette in using honorary names in the title of North American professors? Academic titles of many professors in U.S. (and maybe in Canada) include one or more honorary names the samples of which are be Jean-Lou Chameau Professor of X and Thomas E. and Doris Everhart Professor of Y. I am curious about the mechanics of using such titles in view of academic norms. To be specific,
1- Are such titles something that any professor at any level (assistant, associate, or full) may pick for herself or academic individuals need specific advantages to use honorary names?
2- Is there any restriction or ethical norm, such as permission, to select an honorary person's name? I am wondering the necessity of permissions because in many cases an honorary person of interest might be already died.

These are called named professorships. If you put that term in a search engine you will get explanations from many schools.
Typically, a large donation is made to fund the named professorship or named chair. The name can be the donor or someone the donor wants to honor.
The person who gets the named professorship is selected by the school. It is often already a faculty member or can be somone recruited for that specific spot.  It comes with prestige of the name and additional resources.
Since the OP examples are Cal Tech, here is what they say about it.  Note: this press release was not from the year that either OP example was listed.

During the 2018–19 academic year, Caltech recognized three faculty members with the Institute's most distinguished award for individual faculty—a named professorship. This honor provides faculty with additional funds and resources to pursue their best ideas while they continue to mentor future generations of leaders.

Each named professorship brings its own distinct legacy. Many professorships, for instance, have long-standing histories and pass on through each appointment a tradition of discovery and exploration from one academic generation to the next, from one colleague to another. A professorship may also provide a faculty member with an opportunity to forge meaningful connections with the philanthropists who provided the donation that made it possible.

So the answers are 1. No and 2. Not applicable to an individual taking a name, but the donor would want to have the prominent person’s assent or his or her estate/foundation/relatives’ assent.


Basic paper outside area of expertise: reject or decline? It sometimes happens that I receive referee requests for theoretical papers which deals with the same phenomena I do in my research, but from a totally different specific theoretical starting point. I am familiar enough with the "competitors'" theoretical framework that I can read the papers, but they more often than not, it seems that the papers I receive are limited to only basic results of the kind I would not publish myself, but rather leave for my memoirs or a lecture note.

I realize that I am of course a bit biased, since I actively dislike that theoretical framework. For that reason I also have a hard time judging if the papers actually make some kind of incremental contribution, which would warrant publication.

For these reasons, I mostly decline reviewing such papers. But recently I have started to doubt whether I am, in this way, a bit too soft. If everyone, who are not active researchers in that very specific theoretical framework, decline to review their papers, we just end up with a lot of sub-par research being published. On the other hand, I don't want to become one of those petty referees, who will only accept papers that does the kind of theory that I find best.

Are there any good solutions to this dilemma?

It sometimes happens that I receive referee requests for theoretical papers which deals with the same phenomena I do in my research, but from a totally different specific theoretical starting point...they more often than not seem extremely basic to me.

Given that you deal with the same phenomena from a different basis and achieve more advanced results (i.e., not extremely basic), can we conclude that your basis offers some advantage that is being overlooked (by proponents of the other technique)? If so, you could write a position paper that argues in favour of your starting point and against the other starting point. In parallel, you could ask a competitor to write a position paper that argues against your starting point and in favour of their starting point. Perhaps you could then combine your two papers before submitting for publication. Maybe the resulting paper will surprise you both!


Using masters lab colleagues as references for PhD application? I'm thinking about applying to a PhD program in computer science this coming December and I'm wondering a couple things about getting letters of recommendation.

For some background, I have a BS and a thesis MS in computer science, and I've been working in industry for a while now, but not that long.

I did a lot of work with my fellow graduate students while getting my masters and I think that, other than my advisor, they are in the best position to write a letter of recommendation for me. They have all graduated with PhDs and are now working as professors themselves. However I'm not sure if having my former fellow students write letters of recommendation would seem appropriate to a graduate committee. What do you all think?

When I started reading, I already thought about how to answer "no", because I was thinking of other students writing recommendations. If, however, they themselves are already professors, they should have some academic reputation with which they can vouch for you. Thus, I would suggest the following steps:

1) Ask them what they think about it and let them send the letters to you first.

2) Ask other people, e.g. your advisor from back then, contacts in the field, maybe even a contact in a graduate committee you know but don't plan on applying to.

3) Get "enough" recommendations to not depend on your former colleagues to much, so that you have the desired number of letters (some PhD programs post such numbers online) and these are but add-ons. As you have been working, and this working time was long enough for your fellow students to get a position as a professor, you might need to explain why you apply for a PhD just now, why you didn't so before and why you don't just stay in the industry. As this is rather important, I put an extra number for it:

4) Get recommendations from your current industry job to show that you are not (only^^) applying for a PhD because you want out of the company or lost your job, but rather because you want to learn, study, better yourself. One or two superiors at your current work place, stating that they advise on you getting a PhD (as you show the necessary skills, etc.) might be just as convincing as your former advisor. If possible, take supervisors who themselves hold PhDs and make sure that they sign as something like "Mr XXX, senior YYY at ZZZ, PhD in ... from ..." to show that they are able to judge your capability and the usefulness for you to get a PhD.

So long story short, I would if possible get letters from your advisor and from your current job. The former colleagues could be a nice addition to that, but I would not put the main focus on them if possible.


Authorship dispute after author was removed without their knowledge My supervisor, two other students (C and G) and I were invited to write a paper for a journal. The paper was about a project in which we were all involved.

(C) though, never engaged into any writing activity, even after multiple messages from us. When I asked (C) if he still wanted to be an author, clearly expecting either no answer or an honest "no", (C) replied saying he knew he didn't do much for the paper, but volunteering to proof read and review the final draft. I sent the document to him but we never heard back.

It was decided that (C) didn't do enough to be granted authorship and we submitted without him, but due to a misunderstanding no-one notified him that he had been removed.

Because of this, (C) is now accusing us of having plagiarized his work and of scientific misconduct and fraud, and requests that the article is retracted.

(G) and I still agree that (C) should not have been granted authorship and can produce all the evidence we have to show that (C) didn't contribute to anything substantial in the paper and is not worth authorship (emails, previous publications, etc). (C) continues to threaten to report us to the university for fraud (it is not clear if he plans to report the supervisor as well).

I am confident of my good standing but at the same time I am afraid this dispute could spiral out of control.

What could I do to defend myself in case (C) reports us? Should I get in touch with the editors and explain the situation?

You have described a situation very similar to the one described here—unfortunately, you and your colleagues have mishandled the situation and are at fault through lack of communication, even though it was an oversight.

Since you did not communicate with co-author C that you were going to remove him as an author, he is entirely within his rights to raise a complaint against you. If he can provide sufficient evidence that the editors at the journal or the administrators at the university decide that you did not treat him fairly, you can be subject to sanctions. The paper certainly could be retracted, and you could be subjected to administrative punishment from the university as a result.


What to wear on one's shoulders to interviews? (bags, backpacks, etc.) There has been quite a few questions about how to dress to an academic interview. However, no answer to these questions addresses what one should use to carry their things in. For example, is it acceptable to carry your things in a backpack, cheap shoulder/messenger bag made of synthetic materials, briefcase, expensive leather bag, purse etc? A backpack with a suit would look awfully strange. Maybe a cheap messenger bag would still look OK. Links to photos of acceptable/preferred bags would be nice. Is the etiquette different for post-docs vs. faculty positions?

I have seen them in all in faculty job talks in our department for the last few years. I have seen messenger bags, backpacks and briefcases; some of them have been made of expensive leather and looked really classy/professional and I have even seen them made of cheap, fraying materials.

Either way, it does not matter - except maybe in incredibly conservative departments. We hired one of the folks who had a pretty cheap looking backpack. The fact that he/she had multiple publications in the top journals and conferences in their area probably mattered more. They were all wearing suits though.


What is a "good" PhD dropout rate, and how would we know? In a few questions/answers on here (e.g., here), passing reference has been made to the difficulty of determining a good/acceptable/healthy dropout rate for a PhD program.  However, I haven't seen any questions directly asking how this question is or can be addressed.  In practice, it seems this question must come up.  If a lot of students drop out of a program, the faculty (not to mention the other students) must begin to wonder if something is awry.

The difficulty, of course, is that an ideal dropout rate is probably neither 0% nor 100%.  (If no one drops out, the program is likely to be too easy; if everyone drops out, the program is probably too challenging.)  How do departments/schools deal with this question in practice?  How do they distinguish between "good" dropouts (where the faculty and student agree dropping out is best for all concerned and there is no ill will) and "bad" dropouts (where the dropout is due to burnout, a harsh environment, lack of funding, etc.), and track those outcomes over time?  How do they avoid self-protective rationalizations (e.g., "our program can't be too/hard easy" based on review of the program content rather than the dropout rates)?  Are there established ways of looking at the dropout pattern and evaluating it?

As a sort of side note, I'd be interested in hard data on dropout rates.  Although there are numerous popular-press articles and blogs lamenting the dropout rates, the only concrete data I've been able to find is this slideshow and a few other things that seem to be drawing on the same data.  (It's rather surprising that there is so much discussion of the "problem" with so little discussion of how to decide whether it's actually a problem or not.  There seem to be many articles saying "the dropout rate is so horribly high!" and very few saying why it's considered high, and what would be considered low or normal.)

Just to clarify: I recognize that the dropout rate is not the only meaningful assessment of a program's health or quality.  My question is not "How do you decide everythig about a program based just on the dropout rate?"  My question is "How do you decide what the dropout rate is telling you about the health and quality of the program?"  You will of course combine that information with other kinds of assessments of the program.

I don't think there is a "good" dropout rate - without knowing why students drop out, the number is meaningless. But my overall view is that education (on any level) should be measured by the improvement in knowledge/skills/competence/... it provides to students and not by its ability to classify students into those who pass and the rest.

In this view, ideal (but unachievable) drop out rate is zero as you make sure that only students that are a good fit for the program enlist and then you do your best to lead them to maximal achievements they are individually capable of.

In the real world, it is hard to know for both the student and the institution whether the program is a good fit. Also people and their priorities change over time. So I guess there are a few "valid" reasons for dropping out:

The student's life situation changes (e.g. has a child)
Although the studies proceed well, the student realizes that he/she wants to do something different with his/her life. This should not include the case when the student had incorrect information on what the study program is actually like.
Early in the program the student realizes that he/she is unable to fulfill the expectations of the program (that were known to him/her before enlisting)
The student behaved in some unacceptable manner and was asked to leave.

To me the goal is to have very few dropouts of this "valid" kind and exactly zero dropouts for other reasons. In particular I think that if students fail because they learn midway that your program is too hard for them or because the environment is too harsh or because their ideals of what the study program would look like were shattered, than it is a failure of the institution (although often the student is also at least partially responsible).


When is it ok to cite handbook instead of original source? When I cite papers in my work I always try to go to the original source of the information I can find. However, I noticed that sometimes authors just cite handbook/textbook in the field even though the information in handbook/textbook still refers to primary sources. One one hand I feel that one should always try to give credit to the original authors but I am tempted to just start referring to handbooks/textbooks more often as it saves my work. This being said, I am mainly concerned that citing the handbook could be perceived as lazy or lower the quality of the work.

So my question is if such practice is in general considered or perceived by referees or other authorities in academia as lazy or indication of low quality or should handbooks be cited only when they are primary sources?

This also depends on the journal, if they do not allow to cite a handbook and the page in it due to their citation style you are refering to, then the reader has not a high chance to find it this information within several hundred pages quickly.

In general your thinking is right and my rule of thumb here would be to cite a handbook if possible and necessary only as a primary source in a research article.

I don't agree so much with the comment of @Andreas due to the time factor. The point of a research article is not to teach the reader something or give an introduction and references, but to report on scientific advances. So brevity, non-redundancy is the most important goal. A case making this/your question/situation maybe even clearer are review articles. Here I could agree with his comment, but even in review articles you will not find many references on handbook.

Another reason for this is the difficulty to get a handbook, they are very expensive in comparison to an article, so putting several handbook references in an article might make it simply impossible for a reader to understand your research/he gives up. That is not good for you and the journal.

A place where handbooks are referenced quite a lot and for good reasons are bachelor, master, PhD thesis, because everything in a thesis is often explained from the fundamentals to the new scientifc advances in a thesis.

So the criterion is not laziness, rather think about who your audience is. If you don't have a special page in my mind citing a handbook and would have to look for hours therein on your own, it's also no good argument to reference it to save your time.


How do you promote your papers in Mendeley? A colleague of mine says mendeley is a good place for promoting published papers to be read by peers. However, as I tried, it is a private library for a person or a group of people.

Am I missing something? Is there an option to promote your uploaded papers publicly?

Mendeley has two types of groups- Public and Private According to their website

  Create and join Public Groups to share knowledge and discuss new
  research with others with similar interests. You can also create
  Private Groups that are only visible to invited members, letting you
  share information securely.

When discussing setting up a profile it promotes the idea of you been able to publize your publications through mendeley.

  Publications - Adding your publications to your profile allows you to
  publicize your work to a global audience. You can add your
  publications to the My Publications folder in Mendeley Desktop or Web
  Library, or upload them directly via your profile. You can also add
  the entire contents of your Scopus Author Profile in one batch

On another page it states that you can promote your work publicly

  By connecting your Mendeley profile to your Scopus Author Profile, you
  are able to claim your work as identified by Scopus. This allows you
  to publicly promote your authored work, and access a wealth of data
  provided by Scopus - as well as several other Elsevier services - in
  the form of Stats.

For your publications to be seen publicly you probably would have to edit your privacy settings and select for you publications to be seen by everyone. Picture source


Is it appropriate to register a girlfriend with "companion registration" for an academic conference? Maybe my question is rather weird, but actually it turned out it is also a question of my colleagues.
Usually when you register for an academic conference, there's an  option that you can register a companion. I'm wondering if it is appropriate to register my girlfriend as a companion? Does it sound so bad?

In the conferences I am aware of, companions are people not attending the conference, but coming along with some of the participants for tourism or company. Depending on the venue, they may or may not offer some alternative activities for them (anything from visits to the city to a heap of maps and sort yourself out).

If this is the case, your girlfriend would fit right in, as long as she is not interested in the conference itself.


Length of statement of objectives [mathematics / MIT] While most other schools seem to have some recommended length (e.g. 1000 words) for the statement of purpose, MIT (maths) simply states

  Please explain why you are a good candidate for graduate school. You should describe why you wish to attend graduate school, what you would like to study, and any research experience you have. Describe one or more accomplishments you are particularly proud of that suggest that you will succeed in your chosen area of research.

As a mathematician I would like to keep it short because if I was in their position the last thing I would want is another long essay. However, since there is no possibility to upload a CV (and I am afraid they won't take a very close look at my website) I am inclined to describe my research experience as well as experiences with researchers (showing that I do take initiative, am not easily discouraged, etc.) there. This rather detailed description turned out to have 995 words.

Should I try to keep it shorter at the expense of, say, descriptions how I got interested in a particular field?

Most statements of purpose written by applicants to math PhD programs in the US are 1-2 pages (single spaced).  So 1000 words sounds just fine to me...as does 995, of course.

If you write a statement of purpose that is any longer than two full pages, the likely outcome is that it will be read rapidly or skimmed.  Much the same will happen if your statement is shorter, by the way.  In short: what you propose is a very reasonable length for me. (It may help you to know that I am the Graduate Coordinator of the math PhD program at UGA.)  I don't see any problem here.  If you wanted to make it a little shorter or a little longer, you can, but don't worry so much about it.  This statement of purpose is probably not the most important part of the application anyway.

By the way, I interpret the more specific instructions given by MIT (as opposed to many other programs) more as helpful advice for writing an effective statement of purpose than as asking for something much different from other statements of purpose.  It is actually quite difficult to write a statement of purpose that really grabs an admissions committee.  Most commonly students seem to want to declare their ardor for mathematics and tell the narrative of how that romance began.  That is more than understandable (probably I wrote something like that myself, many years ago) but when you start to read these by the hundreds they run together pretty quickly, and I expect that most faculty essentially mod out by that part of the statement of purpose.


What can I do when anxiety causes me to perform poorly in oral exams and class discussions? I have this class where we have oral exams once in two weeks. I am honestly trying my best. I am preparing for the class and I think I understand all the material. I can do all the assignments (albeit not as good as I want to but still). But I am really nervous during oral exams and class discussions. I don't understand and can't focus on the questions that are asked (when someone's saying something my mind just goes blank and I can't hear(?) what they are saying; like I hear the words and I know each word but I can't make the connection between words at all). I stopped participating in class discussions because I was so anxious during them that I needed to take a rest for a few hours after them.
I always feel confident before exams start, but during the actual exam, I get so lost, and sometimes I can't understand the questions that are asked. I don't think I can email prof about it because I honestly don't know what he can do or what I should say. Everyone is in the same situation but they seem to do way better (he said that everyone is getting 9.5/10 all the time but I only got 9.8/10 once and the rest of the grades are not good).
The worst part is that it is an open book exam and I am writing little notes for each question that I think can be asked, I always put myself in my prof's shoes and trying to figure out what he can ask but I never get it right. I am so tired of this and I really want to drop this class but it's too late right now AND I have a project with another guy that's taking the class. This is my final year, and the low grade for this class would look so bad in my application especially since I don't really have any other experience
UPDATE: I talked to my prof even tho I felt that it wasn't their problem (burden). If you have a similar issue, please talk to your prof/teacher. In the worst-case scenario, they will say that they can't help you but at least they will know that you have a problem. Just want to thank everyone who commented here!

I'm not a mental health professional, but it sounds like your anxiety is interfering with your performance in this class.
You may be eligible for some accommodation to immediately triage your grade. If your university has a center for students with disabilities, talk to them and see if there's a process to get you started to talk to a doctor and get a diagnosis about whether your anxiety is serious enough for accommodation. They may have some kind of form you need to bring to the appointment, and can otherwise help you with bureaucracy.
I would also talk to your professor. While you are likely meant to get better at public speaking in this class, many profs will work with you to meet you where you're at and find additional ways to assess your comprehension of the material independently of testing your public speaking.
Also I agree practice will help in the long run, but that doesn't mean you need to fail the class in the short run! Ask for some help and see if people will work with you. No university class should feel this hopeless. You should be able to get better in the timescale of the class if you put in work. Ask for help if the conditions seem insurmountable.


How to ask, if at all possible, what part of my CV interested the interviewer to interview me? I'm having a postdoc interview coming up, which is not in my doctoral topic or not so closely related to my previous postdoc research. While applying for it, I thought I'd not called for an interview, but luckily enough, I did. The reason I didn't think I'd get called for an interview, as I can see that I'd need learn quite a few things that'd take me easily a minimum of three months to get the hang of.
So will it be rude to ask my interviewer her/his motivation to interview me or what (s)he thinks I can do for her/him, or if not, then what's the best way to formulate my question, without sounding like I'm trying to hear some good words about myself from the interviewer? I guess one of the option might be "What part of my backgrounds can be useful to your project?" but I'm looking for a sincere, honest and a genuine reformulation of this. I'm interested in the project but my concern is it might take me at least 3 months to get myself up to speed to start to solve the problems.

I found that in my professional life being honest, clear, and direct have served me very well. So once all the probing is over, I would say:

I have an additional question: Even though I am very interested in this position, I was doubtful I would be invited for an interview since my background doesn't seem to match perfectly. Would you mind telling me why you think I would make a good candidate for this position?

Of course adjust the wording to your style and take the details with a grain of salt as I am a non-native English speaker.


Are References Confidential? I am a postdoc who has been supervising a Master's student, who is applying for a PhD. The application uses an online system, and I have been notified that I have been designated as a referee. In general, will this be entirely confidential, such that the student will never see the reference I have written? Or will the student then see my reference on their application, with the ability to download it and read it?

Of course, I could ask my institution about this directly, and also this may vary between different universities, but I am wondering what the expected rule would be. My university is in the UK.

In the UK all references can be revealed if the student makes an application to the University under the Data Protection Act for a copy of their application record. The record would contain full disclosure of their entire file including all correspondence, including emails, and minuted discussions of the application. This would have to be a formal application and would accrue a fee.

Normally, in all other circumstances, the references would be kept confidential. Most UK universities would warn referees about the Data Protection Act when requesting a reference.


I believe my classmates plan to hand in a plagiarized project, how should I handle this? In my class, we have project groups of 4 or 5 students. This period has everything to do with game development. The project is to build a XNA game for children at primary school.

Now, there is one group of students in my class, who snitched a game from the internet and are going to hand that in. I saw a Facebook post from one of the students about "their" game, and a fellow student found almost the exact same game on a Dutch game site.

What is according to you the right way of handling this -in my eyes, plagiarism? Should I inform the project teacher, to have them exposed to the exam committee?

Should I inform the project teacher, to have them exposed to the exam committee?

Yes. Tell the teacher exactly what you know: that there is a game that seems very similar to your classmates' project.

As a student, it's not your responsibility to decide what is and isn't plagiarism, or to decide who should be punished for dishonesty and who shouldn't, or to start a "movement" to let the cheaters know you're onto them. If you believe you have evidence of misconduct, report it and let the administration handle it from there.


What I should write to a professor to decline a PhD offer, while I have accepted it months ago? In Dec. last year, I got admitted to CUHK as a PhD student, and have chosen my 'future advisor', with whom I had been emailing for several months. Three months later, I recieved HKPFS (Hong Kong PhD Fellowhship Scheme, HK$20,000/m, big award). Currently, I'm waiting for the result of visa application. If nothing happened, that's the university I would like to go, for the award and its academic achievement.

However, after the time having accepted the admission offer, I met a few guys, and  gradually realized that I am homosexual and what I want is a place to live freer. I also have applied several American universities before CUHK's interview. Two weeks before, an offer was made by one of them. From my birth, I have been living in Mainland China. This could be an opportunity for me to seek a change in my life - date a guy and get married eventually. So, after months of struggle of my identity, choosing which university to go is not a problem. No matter how CUHK outperforms the american one, I would like to go america.

So, the question now is what and how I should write to my CUHK advisor? I know making excuses untrue or creating 'irresistable event' is not a wise idea. But telling him that I am homosexual and decide to go america instead would make things better? CUHK has rather early admission, and they have made all the admissions long time ago. I think they would get mad/annoyed no matter how. :(

Another problem is that my teachers from my undergraduate college heard about my story. (They thought why I chose America over HK is that I have a crush on a girl there. But the rest they know is the same as the truth.) They all want me to write back to CUHK asap. So, what I should do these days to make them not thinking less of me?

My problem is not typical. I'm not serving 'being homosexual' as an excuse. I know many people are not OK with it. But it's the truth I have to deal with. Any advice is appreciated, :)

I would suggest writing something like this:

  For personal reasons, it turns out that I cannot attend this university after all; I will be moving overseas. I am sorry I will not be able to work with you. Thank you very much for your time. I apologize for the inconvenience and late notice.

It is possible that he may be a little disappointed or annoyed, or  suspect that you  are moving because you have another offer that you prefer for academic reasons, but I don't think it should be a huge deal. You've exchanged some emails, but it isn't as if he has invested years of his time in working with you. It's generally not a good idea to go around alienating people in the small world of  academia, but I don't think one slightly annoyed professor will cause any real harm to your career. Anyway, clearly this decision is important enough to you that it's worth the risk.

It's possible he would be more understanding if he knew the real reason. It's your decision to whom you want to come out, and I can't offer any advice on that. But you should only tell him if you're really comfortable with doing so; I don't think the academic consequences of keeping it private are significant enough to enter in the decision.

The phrase "personal reasons" is intended as a polite signal that you don't intend to discuss those reasons, and that it would be rude for him to press you. There is some cultural context there (I am in the US) so it's of course possible he won't take it that way. If you know a better way to express this to him, by all means use it.  If he is rude enough to demand more information than you want to share, you can just repeat that "it is a personal matter".


Axis naming for multiple parameters in one graph I have four angles and I like to show them in a angle–time graph using Matlab’s plot function. The problem is the naming of vertical y-axis. Should it be:

plural, i.e., Position Angles since the graph is showing four different angles, or
singular, i.e., Position Angle as shown below since the important point is the meaningful explanation of axes regardless of parameter count given in the graph?

You should use the singular, "Position Angle," because an axis is  interpreted as referring to each data element individually.

In order words, at time 0.4, the red line is not at approximately "60 angles," but is at an angle of approximately 60 degrees.


Should I contact the reviewers I suggested during the submission if the manuscript is still under review after one year? In order to publish my paper at The Journal the cover letter should include four (4) experts in the field as potential reviewers for the manuscript. I ask some professors to have their permission to include their name as reviewers and find 4. I sent their details to the Journal. I didn’t hear anything back from the journal after 8 months, then I sent an email asking about the status of my manuscript and they indicated that they received one review for this time and they are waiting for the second. Now almost one year has passed for my manuscript, and the Journal is still waiting for the second review.

Should I send an email to the reviewers to ask them to read my manuscript?

No.

You don't (and shouldn't) know who your reviewers are.  The editor could have ignored your suggestions entirely, or even used them as a list of conflicted people not to ask to review your paper.

Feel free to bug the editor again, but leave it to the editor to bug the referee(s).


Which math departments in the U.S. have people known for their contributions to Lie-admissible algebras? Which math departments in the U.S. have people known for their contributions to Lie-admissible algebras?

(I asked this question on Math SE, but it was voted off-topic there. I hope it's not too specialized of a question here.)

You can try searching for "Lie admissible algebra" on MathSciNet and the arXiv.  There are a few papers each year that mention this topic, but it doesn't seem to be a major research area in its own right.  If you are thinking about topics for graduate school, this seems to me to be way too specific to narrow down to before choosing an advisor.  (I assume you aren't already working in this research area yourself: if you did, you'd have more information about who else is.)

As for math departments in the U.S., two of the authors of references in the article you linked to (Benkart and Osborn) are emeritus professors at Wisconsin, and Myung used to be at Northern Iowa but has since died.  You could try looking up the authors of papers on the topic that excite you, but this won't give you a wide range of schools in the U.S., especially now that Benkart and Osborn have retired.  Instead, I agree with Chris C that you'd be better off considering a broader area.


How to write summaries for literature survey? My professor wanted me to write a short summary (one or two paragraphs max) on each paper. Focus on the salient of the method.
could I use the abstract sentences exactly or should I change the words and write with my own words?
I was wondering if you could tell me whether it is necessary to read whole the papers or it is enough to read abstract and conclusion part?

He has asked you to write a summary of the works. I expect he wants to assess how you write, as well as your understanding of the papers themselves.

Copying the abstracts verbatim not only obstructs this goal, but is also plagiarism. The ideas and words are not your own and you should not try to pass them off as such.

Read the papers carefully and summarise them in your own words.


How long should one wait for a reference before writing to the course convenor? I am getting a little worried about my PhD application. I submitted it three weeks ago with reference requests going out to Prof A and B. Prof B wrote to me the same evening to say it would be done asap, and Prof A didn't respond, but that's fine. Three weeks later and Prof A has written back and completed the reference, though nothing so far from B. I have written to B with a polite reminder but they haven't written back. How long do people take on average to get these things across and should I be concerned? I know these academics are very busy but at the same time this is the only thing holding the application up. Should I write to the convenor about my concern if this goes on for a couple more weeks? What other ways could I politely encourage a response?

I'm going to answer this question myself for the benefit of people who may stumble upon this in the future.

In the end I didn't email the convenor, but I phoned the Prof in question. I initially thought maybe I needed to give it longer than three weeks and I was being impatient, but it turned out that they totally understood and said they had been very busy but of course they would do it. They ended up submitting the reference the same day. To those people who may be in a similar situation: don't be too shy about phoning or visiting your professors for this reason. They understand the necessities of getting it done and done in good time, but understandably get waylaid by priorities.


How bad does it look if I asked the director of graduate studies if I can change my program of study from pure to applied math after admission? Although I am primarily interested in studying pure math, for certain personal reasons, I had to ask such a question. What I fear now is the mismatch that'll be noticed between my Personal Statement, where I intend to write about my interests in pure math and this query which clearly exhibits the fact that I have as yet not made up my mind. Even if I re-do my personal statement to reflect an interest in applied math instead of pure math, the fact that I wasn't sure at this terminal stage of the application process might go against me. Is there any way to rectify my mistake?

For reference, this question is with regards to a university in the UK.

Assuming your personal reasons are sound, a polite conversation cannot hurt you. Explain your reasons, and keep an open attitude. It is very common for people to change sub-fields (and fields) after their PhD, or even postdocs, so it will not strike as an big oddity.

Now, if it is possible or not, depends mainly on where does your funding come from; and if the university regulations allow it. This will be brought up in the conversation.

If your reasons for studying applied maths are your desire to clone green dogs, well, it will look bad.


How long decision in process normally takes? I have submitted a manuscript to a journal on September after few days the status changed to under review and after 5 months the it changed to all required reviews are completed and immediately to decision in process. It has been 3 weeks that the paper status stuck at decision in process. How long this stage normally takes ?  is it too early to ask the editor (?) about the status of my paper?

No, it is not too early. "Decision in progress" means all the reviews have already been received and what's left is for the editor to make a decision. 3 weeks is pretty long for this. I would write to the journal asking for a status update.


Why should a graduate student complete a whole course? A normal process of learning in a graduate school looks like taking courses that include a broad perspective on some subject. This also includes the instruments of control: exercises, tests, problem sets, and exams. Let's suppose this control exists only to show where a student has gaps in his knowledge.

A student takes such courses to learn things she will apply later in her work.

But in practice each course include much material that the student will never apply in her work, even in academic research.

Many notable scholars mention that they pick up necessary tools, while disliking the idea of a university that offers too much in general, so students have to disperse their efforts.

Why does academia use this push process of fixed course program and control for all students in the course, instead of a pull process, when students have their own research interests and just pick necessary tools when the need arises?

Shouldn't students in general use a selective, not linear, approach to getting necessary knowledge? It's obvious that students need some overview, but what prevents them from getting this overview as they work through the problems of their own?

My immediate answer is they shouldn't. The problem is that there are differences between graduate systems. Aeismail has provided a good answer for one such system. Where I work each graduate student has an individual study plan and the idea is to tailor make the studies for each. this tailoring involves taking parts of a course and not for credit in the sense to go through examination. In our system all courses at graduate level is pass/fail. To understand the differences one has to look at the position of a graduate student as well.

In some systems a graduate student is more or less a bit more than an undergraduate (a "super student"). In my system a graduate student is pat of the employed body of the department and in that sense also a colleague. The point is that this involves both rights and responsibilities and further involvement in department affairs. This position has old traditions where a PhD was not awarded until much later in life, the term graduate student simply did not exist, there were, for example, intermediate teaching positions for those who had not yet completed the PhD yet. The thinking about courses is thus to ensure that the student does not waste much time on unnecessary material, just as you stated in your question.

So from this position, there is no right or wrong in terms of courses, the PhD programs differ so much between systems. The reason for the differences comes from deeper differences in the university systems and views on what the PhD student profile after completion. We had  discussions about mandatory (tailor-made) course for students to provide a common base in the subject, but we have scrapped this approach because the field is simply to wide and then it will be up to each to read upon their sub-field.


Possible to defend myself from plagiarism in draft thesis? I recently submitted my latest draft thesis to my advisor. I had been having problems with my advisor because I had found him unhelpful, he would not make it easy for me to ask him questions as he would raise his voice and cut me off, and I was confused by the goals/aims of the project and I feel he has misled me.

I had submitted a few draft theses before that the main advisor read, but the co-advisor did not read any of them. The co-advisor read the latest draft in detail and said I plagiarized. I admit that I didn't consider this constituted plagiarism and thought this was just a draft, I was mostly concerned about whether my ideas made sense and I was sure it would be changed because I knew the main advisor wouldn't like it. The parts they accused was plagiarism was in my previous drafts as well, so because the main advisor didn't mention those were plagiarized, I didn't change those parts. I was just hoping to keep the co-advisor. I also never intended to steal other people's work and claim it as my own.

Do you know if there's a good chance I'll get expelled,  based on your experience with plagiarism in master's draft theses?

According to my own understanding of what a "draft" means, it sounds like you're getting a raw deal here.  A "draft" is an informal document that is in the process of being changed and improved.  Unless "submitting a thesis draft" is something formal in your program, to me this sounds like accusing someone of cheating for looking up the answers to a practice test.  I also view the fact that you included the citations as a key one in your defense: that makes it quite clear that you are not in the middle of a larger plan to steal others' work; you just turned in a shoddy draft.

You do however sound very naive about what plagiarism means and how academic writing works.  You don't write an academic document by taking others' words, modifying them slightly, and then planning later to modify them enough to make it not plagiarism.  At no point in this are you actually doing the independent thinking and writing that's asked of you.  If you want to indicate in a draft that you intend to include standard background material, you could include a section that is almost blank with "[Standard background to be filled in here as from SourceX]".  The less generous way to look at your situation is "How did Mr. Ske manage to make it all the way to a master's thesis without understanding basic academic norms?  If he hasn't understood these things by now, it's too late."

The other issue is that, sorry to say, the rest of your description of your academic experience sounds extremely (virtually entirely) negative.  You have a bad relationship with your advisor -- very bad; he raises his voice at you when you ask questions, and he directly mocked you; both of these are really unacceptable -- you have a coadvisor who didn't read any of your previous drafts and gave you papers that you found "irrelevant" (which they might be, or you might be mistaken about it; either way is bad).  Finally, someone who should be helping you out instead reported you to the Dean's office.  This is really not good!

To answer your question: accepting everything you've said as an accurate account of the events, I personally find it unlikely that you will be expelled for this.  However I am much less optimistic that you can move forward from this to successfully defend your thesis and complete your degree.  The behavior exhibited by your advisor and coadvisor could well be gearing up not to accept your thesis.  Someone who accuses you of plagiarism is surely pretty close to being done with you whether the accusation is affirmed or not.  I'm sorry to say it, but I think you should be looking for exit strategies and considering other options.  It is certainly worth a shot to go to your advisor and say "Look, this has been a bumpy road and I acknowledge that.  I've been working on my degree for XX years, have spent YY months working on my thesis, and I would really like to finish it if at all possible, even if it is not perfect or what we originally hoped for.  I would really appreciate your help in showing me what I can do to make that happen.  I know that the primary responsibility is mine, and I'm willing to put in lots of hard work between now and ZZ, but so far I haven't met expectations, so getting more specific direction will really help me through this."  Almost all advisors want their students to finish rather than not, so that is a good shot at salvaging a bad situation.

Good luck.

Added: Here is another site on the internet containing some discussion on the issue of plagiarism on a thesis draft.  Note that the case in question concerns missing references, which is not exactly the same as yours and to me seems more serious.  The overall consensus is that initiating formal plagiarism proceedings for this is so far over the top that there must be something else going on beneath it, which is my thought as well.  However they point out that a ruling will depend on the precise plagiarism rules at your university, which (i) of course we can't know and (ii) of course it is your responsibility to know.  But again, reading between the lines here, there is something profoundly wrong with your relationship with your coadvisor, so trying to fix that directly has got to be a good idea.  The fact that it will not nullify the formal plagiarism inquiry is just an (unsurprising) formality: that's just saying that once something has been started, you can't unstart it, you can only end it.  The only person who is accusing you of anything is your coadvisor, so if you can work things out with him, the inquiry will almost certainly work out in your favor.  Hinting that you did this because of his bad advising seems like the worst possible strategy to me.

Finally, my talk of "exit strategies" does not mean that you should simply give up: in fact, as I immediately followed, you should have a frank discussion with both of these faculty to see whether the thesis and degree can be salvaged and if so how.  But to be realistic, you sound like you are in an unusually bad situation: if you are at a university where master's students repeatedly get turned in by their advisors for what they write in their thesis drafts: yes, consider the prospect of going elsewhere if you can.  Starting over is not the end of the world, and sometimes it is the best way to move forward.


How to read a textbook for distance learning coursework - do I need to work on fact recall, or is understanding enough? There's perhaps a better title for this question, but I can't immediate think of one - suggestions for amendment welcome.

I'd like to clarify the purpose of reading textbooks. It sounds obvious at first, but what I mean is opaque to me.

I'm currently reading a textbook describing ~35 problem-solving and improvement methods, as part of this course. It is densely packed with definitions, ideas, procedures etc. I'm highlighting as I go through and occasionally making notes in the margins.

When I finish reading, I barely remember what I've just read, let alone what I've learned. If I was asked to describe the characteristics of a technique I've just read about, I would struggle to put forward a coherent and strong answer.

Even if I condense my notes and read through them, the problem remains - there are too many 'facts' to learn, remember and regurgitate.

This leads me to ask what the purpose of reading textbooks is. Is it to learn and understand 'facts' and be able to remember them? Or is it to learn and understand? That is, it doesn't necessarily matter if you can't remember, so long as you can understand ideas when you revisit them and can argue them in your work.

For clarity, I'm a distance-learning student with The Open University, so the textbook I'm referring to isn't a traditional textbook, but one that is perhaps closely identified by F'x as a coursework book. These books are used in place of lectures, and so are meant to be read in a linear fashion on a week-by-week basis.

It might helpful to change the question slightly, into

  What is the purpose of writing a textbook?

Usually a textbook is written to lay out a fairly well codified body of knowledge about a topic. The "well codified" part is important: it's expected that this body of knowledge has some lasting value. The textbook is also written (hopefully) in a way that *teaches this knowledge, as opposed to merely dumping it out.

To me it sounds like the book you're reading is of the second kind (a dump of facts). Such a textbook is better treated as a reference book, like a dictionary. No one reads a dictionary (unless they're trying to pass the GRE or win a spelling bee :)), but they will refer to it to get the meanings of words.

Similarly, with a book that describes 35 problem solving methods, maybe reading it cover to cover isn't the best strategy. Rather, you should focus on a few techniques (or even one) and try to understand that well. Then put the book away and revisit it from time to time.

So to answer your question:

  A textbook can be a collection of facts, but often it's more than
  that: it's a path through the facts that provides a structure with
  which to process the facts. The goal of reading (and learning) is to
  acquire both the facts AND the structure. The facts will be easier to
  remember if you have the structure in place, and the structure makes
  more sense with the facts as examples.


Shall I quit trying searching for a postdoc and search for another title in academia? I had my PhD in 2004 in computer vision. I have been slow in research since then due to financial commitments and due to working at a non-reasearch university as an assistant prof. I managed to publish 2 papers in ieee conferences. Which means that I have a poor publication record for the number of years I'm in academia.

For the past 3 yrs, I have applied for 7 postdoc posts (but no luck) using an idea that I am passionate about, think is workable and which I have been working on (sometimes slowly).

Now I see myself at a zero-growth situation; I couldn't find a postdoc, & I am not an active research paper generator. Sometimes I think I should apply for a PhD program and get another phd where I can sort of start from scratch. Either way it looks too long of a path to me. Shall I keep doing what I am doing or shall I just quit trying.

You are in a tough situation, but not hopeless. Just sending out applications is unlikely to work due to your poor record. Instead, you could try to build on your network, start collaborations. If that works you will have polished your record. Now you can also start thinking about applying for funding for a bigger project, requiring a post-doc (you), with your collaborator and use that to move to the research university of your collaborator. So if you want to move into a research university, it is possible, but it is going to be hard work and there is no guarantee of success.


Only one student answered an exam question - and I strongly suspect he cheated Today we (professors + teaching assistants) proctored a midterm exam for a class of about 80 students.  There was undoubtedly a "hardest" question on the exam, since nearly the entire classroom of students asked us how to proceed with that question. To be fair, we didn't give any hints, but it was clear that one had to use a definition to be able to proceed.

When we collected the exams, all of the exam booklets had that question unanswered -- except for one student's exam.  And this was the only student who asked to go to the bathroom.  I gave him permission to go, but I did not ask for his phone, which I now highly regret.

What can we do in this situation, in which I strongly suspect that this student went to the bathroom to look up a definition on his phone, so that he could answer the question correctly?

We still have to look at every exam to be sure that only one student got it right (the bathroom student), but if this were indeed the case, do we have any power to accuse him of cheating, or, have we missed our chance by not asking for him to leave his phone in the room?

I feel a big injustice will have been done to the rest of the honest students, if we let this one slide ...

I apologize in advance for my frankness.

  What can we do in this situation, in which I strongly suspect that this student went to the bathroom to look up a definition on his phone, so that he could answer the question correctly?

Nothing.

  have we missed our chance by not asking for him to leave his phone in the room?

You missed it, but it doesn't really matter: the student might have had a mate with a phone in the bathroom. Or not. The student might even have known the answer.

  I feel a big injustice will have been done to the rest of the honest students, if we let this one slide

In your career you quite probably have already let others slide.

I wrote in this answer that, on the basis of my (now sufficiently long) experience, if a student wants to cheat, they will. Therefore, one has to accept that, from time to time, a student cheats, and one doesn't notice or is not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the student cheated (and you don't want to accuse someone of cheating if you're not able to prove it, right?).

So, move on.

NB: As some have remarked in various comments, the fact that almost all students were unable to answer that question can be a major issue. In this answer, I specifically wanted to address the cheating part only, because I think that this other issue is a totally different matter, which can be also culture-dependent, and which is probably worth of a different (interesting) question.


How to establish a presence at a community college that might lead to adjuncting I'm an engineer with a M.S. and 20+ years of industry experience. I always wanted to teach but I left grad school for industry to help pay the bills.  I have no regrets, but I do have a very strong desire to go back into academia.  I remember my first real engineering class was taught by a adjunct who had a full time industry job.  I really appreciated the advice he gave about being an engineer in the real world.  I'd like to return that favor to future engineers by being an adjunct.

I'd like to start by establishing a presence at local community colleges.  I'd love the opportunity to do some volunteer work, collaborate, substitute or sit on an advisory board. I'd offer a unique perspective still being connected to industry, but with a strong interest in academia.  What would be  realistic?  What position should I contact at the community college and how should that conversation start?

Country United States

All you need to teach undergrad courses at the university level here in the US is a masters, which you have.  You can't be tenure track (a professor) without the PhD, but you can be a lecturer.  And you can certainly be a part-time adjunct or affiliate.

Contact the department chairs in the engineering departments of these local schools.  Ask to meet to discuss their current or possible needs for adjunct or affiliate faculty and any advice they might offer.  Without previous classroom experience, your first assignment won't be a big lecture class.  But you might start (as I did, about 6 years ago) as a lab instructor or as a faculty adviser for a team of students working on their senior project.  As you gain more experience and begin to figure your way around how a university works and how a class is run, you can ask for more interesting assignments.

Good luck.  I've really enjoyed the transition from industry to academia.  I love working with my students and my colleagues.  I think you will, too.


Stay in academia or become professor without overworking, is it possible? I am referring more to young scientists after the PhD than professors, although I am also wondering about people with a stable position.

I see many people overworking themselves, burning-out, being overworked and with pressure to work well, fast, and produce a lot (publications). I am discussing an average person who has completed a PhD that has all the skills for the job. Let's leave the top professors 5-10% of the field that are super-productive for whatever reason, those are exceptions. I also assume that there is passion for research, but that work balance is also important.

Is it possible to survive/remain in academia by working normal hours (8-9 hours per day) without working evenings, weekends, holidays, without feeling guilty about taking a 2-3 weeks vacation? I imagine to become professor would include many of the above sacrifices. Some professors (tenured) have told me they work 50-60-70 hours per week.

Is overworking basically the rule/working culture in academia?
Is it unusual to reach/maintain a stable position in academia without regularly overworking?

Consider mentioning the cultural, country, institution type of your answer, as there are variations in different contexts.

This is a bit opinion-based, but I'll offer my own personal take on an answer in the hopes that it might be useful; at least parts of what I wrote below seem pretty generally applicable to me.

  Is it possible to survive/remain in academia by working normal hours (8-9 hours per day) without working evenings, weekends, holidays, without feeling guilty about taking a 2-3 weeks vacation?

Short answer: no (except for the part about feeling guilty for taking a vacation, which is something I never had a problem with).

Medium-length answer: this question is based on a false premise, and simply doesn't make sense to most professors. "No" is an approximate answer, but a full answer requires a longer discussion to explain why neither "no" nor "yes" really make sense as answers, and why even though "no" is an approximate answer, it doesn't really have the negative meaning that you think it has.

Long answer: people in academia do work hard, sometimes very hard, but in my experience, the thing that many people looking into academia from the outside often fail to see is that what you call "working", we call "living" (and what you call "overworking" we might call "living a bit more intensely than usual, but still generally having a good time"). What you call "making sacrifices" we call "finding our work so fulfilling that we pay less attention to some other aspects of life than most other people do".

In other words, for a professor the "work/life" dichotomy is a lot more blurry than it is for people in (some) other professions, to the extent that it is often a completely nonexistent or nonsensical distinction. If I'm at the beach on a weekend and I'm reading a math paper or thinking about a research problem, am I doing "work"? If I'm traveling to a conference in an exotic city and using some of the time to explore the local sights and culture, am I "working", or am I on "vacation"? I don't know, and honestly after doing this for a while you start to realize that these questions simply make no sense. Most professors simply don't make the distinction between "life" and "work" that much of our culture obsesses about. They don't ask themselves these questions about how to "survive in academia" while only "working normal hours", since most of the time they are just too busy doing something they enjoy. Yes, they probably do end up doing what other people would regard as "work" for more than the usual 8-9 hours a day, five days a week and during times (holidays and weekends) when other people might regard it as abhorrent to do "work". But by and large, they don't perceive this as a negative thing (or at least, not as negatively as your question makes it out to be; I'll admit it can be a mild annoyance at times).

Coming back to my short, approximate answer of "no": basically it seems to me that you're asking the wrong question. If you are the kind of person who really wants to punch in at 9 a.m., punch out at 5 p.m. every weekday and go home to do other things and not even think about work until the next day, I'm pretty confident that academia is not for you. But most people who are smart enough to make it in academia are not wired that way.* The real question you should be asking is "can I be in academia and have a fulfilled life in which I'm happy to get out of bed each morning, get to do really exciting stuff a large chunk of the time, and in which I work hard (sometimes very hard) but still have a reasonable amount of time left over for other things that matter to me?"

The answer to that question is, quite definitely, Yes.

* (Added on edit:) to clarify, with this comment I am not expressing an opinion that a decision to leave academia says anything about how smart (or how anything else) someone is. I most certainly do not hold such an opinion. See the discussion in the comments.

———

Second edit: The comments, along with a few negative votes on my answer, are making me strongly suspect that I’ve given offense to some people who are perceiving my “smart enough ... not wired that way” comment as an elitist sentiment to the effect that if you are a person who is “wired that way” — that is, cares about having free time, work-life balance, raising a family etc — then you are “not smart enough”. Let me emphasize again that that’s not what I believe and not what I meant to imply. I actually care about all of those things myself, and don’t think caring about them is inconsistent with working hard (even sometimes very hard) or with being very passionate about your work. Nor do I think academia is the only place where one can have a fulfilled career; there are in fact many workplaces and professions with quite similar characteristics, and obviously there are many extremely smart people pursuing careers in such places and professions.

Finally, as I said at the beginning of my answer, it represents my own opinion and my own personal take on OP’s question. I make no claims that this represents anything near a universal truth.


"Internal" license for group software? I have a question about the use and attribution of internal software tools.

We have a model in our group that is very popular and has formed the basis of many student projects and publications.  It was written about five years ago and has been published as a book chapter, but not a journal paper.  The model exists primarily as source code; there is no compiled version per se although there is a user interface tool that generates new source based on the template of the original model.  As a result, new work tends to involve a mix of the original code and further modifications as appropriate for the study in question.

At the moment, we don't want to release the underlying model as open-source.  Is there an appropriate license that people would recommend to clarify these usage principles?  The original model author now has a looser affiliation with our university and so it may become difficult to ask his opinion on a case-by-case basis.

Software developed by multiple parties under university funding is implicitly covered by the copyright of the university.  The attitude towards intellectual property ownership varies by university, so you should search to find out your situation.

A few universities are very liberal about intellectual property.  See https://uwaterloo.ca/research/waterloo-commercialization-office-watco/intellectual-property .  Other universities are more traditional, see http://www.research.utoronto.ca/faculty-and-staff/inventions-commercialization-and-entrepreneurship/invention-disclosure/ .  An invention leads towards a patent.  Software development (and publication) lead towards a copyright.

From this point on, you might have to consult a lawyer, but here's some intuitions that may help (but could be wrong).

Practically, if the source code has been published in a book, the copyright may have been transferred from the university to the publisher.  If the code was rewritten and then put under an open source license, with attribution to the original sources, this could be considered a new work.  With copyright, the analogy is relatively clear in the academic world.  It's okay to cite the source, or use snippets as "fair use", but copying the whole text outright would be plagiarism.

If the university is not interested in commercializing the software, there may already be a process in place to have it reassigned under an open source license.  The MIT license may be the simplest to implement.  The Apache license and LGPL 2.1 licenses are also popular.


I filled the crucial gap; co-authors did the rest–who should be first author? A fellow researcher shared with me his notes where he attempts to solve an open problem in maths/computer science. Both he and his student have been trying to solve it for over a year, and by now they are not actively working on it anymore.

Shortly after he shared with me his notes, I found a trick to solve a crucial step they were struggling with, leading to a resolution of the open problem.

Who qualifies for first authorship in this situation if this leads to a journal/conference article (where the authors are not listed in alphabetic order)?

My gut feeling (I don't work in CS or TCS but I talk a little with people in adjacent areas) is that 1st authorship should go to the person who shared their notes with you; you say yourself that you solved "a step that he was struggling with", which indicates that he and his student had already done significant work to attack the problem. Of course it may be the case that your contribution is somehow the decisive one.

All this said, if you have a diplomatic way of asking this person "who did you think should be first author" I would do so: he may offer 1st authorship to you, or he may not. It is hard to say more at this level of generality.


Is it appropriate to compare myself with other students in my statement of purpose for U.S. graduate school application? In my statement of purpose(for U.S. math graduate school), I said something like: "compared with my classmates, I believe I am more capable of ..."

One of my professors pointed out it should be my referee's job to compare you with others and I should stay modest. So I am a little confused in here. Is it appropriate for applicants to compare themselves with their peer in the statement of purpose?

This would be a bad idea and will likely have the opposite effect you want it to have.  Especially in mathematics, people are turned off by bullshit.

Let me relate an actual exchange I heard a few years ago between two rather famous mathematicians:

Person 1: "I have an amazing theorem to tell you about!"

Person 2: "Slow down.  You tell me the theorem, and I'll tell you if it's amazing."

This illustrates I think an important principal of social interactions in academia (and probably elsewhere too, though I gather that eg in politics and business this is not true).  Namely, people are very unimpressed and skeptical when someone comes out and says how great they are.  What you have to do is tell them factual things that force them to draw the conclusion for themselves that you are great.

In other words, the old adage about writing holds: show, don't tell.