How to correct a fundamental error in a series of papers made by a colleague of your adviser? I am a PhD student in mathematics. I recently found a fundamental error in a method used in a series of papers. My adviser confirmed that. One of those wrong papers was authored by a researcher who had several works with my adviser. I found that this error can be fixed using an approach which I found in some old works. So I started to write an article about this. I am just asking if I should tell my adviser to contact him and inform him about this error. Or contact all the authors of those papers. Or just continue writing my paper and cite their works explaining how their approach is wrong.

Talk to your adviser as soon as possible. I'm a bit surprised that in your previous interactions your adviser did not already tell you whether and how he planned to contact the author(s) of the fallacious papers -- especially given that at least one was your adviser's collaborator.

Here is my advice (it comes from a pure mathematician, if that is relevant to you):

Spend up to one work day writing up a careful description of the error.  If a result is false, give a counterexample.  If you can give one specific, easy to verify counterexample, start with that.  Then if you have a further sense of the "terrain of counterexamples" -- e.g. if you know the result is never true, or you know that it is true precisely under some additional hypothesis, then include that.

The point of this is that in many cases what we perceive to be errors in mathematical work stem from misunderstandings between the reader and the author, including different use of the same terminology.  I would say that approximately half of all the errors I think I see in my colleagues' work turn out to have such innocent explanations.  Another big percentage of suspected errors stem from misunderstandings of the part of the reader: it is one thing if you come across a result that contradicts another result you have already written up.  However, if you are just reading then the odds are fair that the cognitive dissonance in your mind is not actually caused by a mistake in the paper: for instance when I read other people's work, I try to do so with an eye towards its relationships to my own work and my own problems.  As a proud student of the "Richard P. Feynman school of situational genius" I heartily endorse this approach, but sometimes it turns out that what I think is an error is due to an entanglement of "my situation" and the author's.  Finally, when an error has actually been made, there is usually (very understandable) psychological resistance on the part of the author.  This is why it helps to arrive with individual, crisp counterexamples.

If the theorem is correct but the proof is faulty, the situation may be more nebulous.

Everyone has different standards of what constitutes an acceptable proof.  Moreover, mathematicians are still human beings, and the percentage of inessential slipups we make in the course of our written work is non-negligible.  Most people do not appreciate their expository flaws and bone-headed but unimportant mistakes being taken as evidence that their proofs are incorrect.  In fact, where possible, when you claim that someone's proof is faulty it is an honorable thing to give them a chance to correct it.

In this case you speak of a "fundamental error", which I guess means that it is worse than the relatively innocuous mistakes described above.  Do you mean though that the theorems are still true, and you know this because you know how to prove them?  If so:

Spend up to two or three work days writing up as much as possible of what you feel is a correct proof.  If you can only give a sketch, so be it, but try to include all the ideas which convince you that your argument is correct.  Your target audience includes people who are deeply committed to and knowledgeable in this particular area: you can write accordingly.

I would meet with your advisor as soon as you have written each document.  (If you can write both in one day, great.)  Then the question becomes obvious and unavoidable: what should you do with these documents?  If he can vouch for their accuracy, I think you will certainly want to contact the author of the flawed paper, but whether to do this yourself or through your adviser is something you should ask him about.

Why do I place time limitations on these tasks?  It is because of the following important observation, which in my understanding is somewhat peculiar to mathematics:

Even if the author's proof is wrong and yours is right, your corrected proof may or may not be publishable.

There are too many nuances here for me to go over them all, but just one quick thing: you say that you fixed the result using material from old works.  Because of this, it is possible (perhaps; I don't know the situation) that the authors and/or the editors in question will still regard the mistake as a "slip up" (even if you do not).  A math paper which does not contain "new results", "new ideas" or "new techniques" may be very hard to publish...let me readily admit that this practice is not entirely fair or wise, but it most certainly is extant.  So you don't want to spend substantial work time on what may end up being a corrigendum written by the author but identifying you as the provider of both the problem and the solution.

Good luck.


Math journal for young mathematicians I think I have good results for publishing a paper in a math journal, but I've never published one. I need a propose about any good math journal in mathematics for young mathematicians who have never published a paper. It can be with impact factor or with international board.

Thank you in advance.

If you're a student you should consider Involve, or other publications geared toward student authors.


For Postdoc positions seeking experts in programming language, what are the expectations and what should my strategy be suitable for those positions? I am a 5th year PhD student in mechanical engineering. My research has been about utilising a commercial Finite Element software to model a complex phenomenon.

For my research, I had to write small python scripts for post processing, many matlab codes to implement topology optimization algorithms (available as ready-made functions). I also wrote few Fortran subroutines to implement two constitutive equations to my simulations which involved working around the syntax provided by the software guidebook.

My concern is that, none of the programming aspects of my research required any implementation of numerical methods or any high level of programming. It was just using an available inbuilt function and wrapping a program around it to serve my purpose. So, the only skill set required here was a knowledge of basic syntax, a bit of logic and an idea of the big picture.

The numerical bit of the simulation is done by the commercially available finite element (FE) code. It's not a black box to me as I know the fundamental theory behind it. But its actually just knowing which buttons to press.

However, while I was searching for some good and relevant postdoc positions, they all mentioned one thing; "Must be an expert in some high level programming language."

My question is, what is the expectation of programming knowledge in an applied work as my research area? And what should my strategy be for the next half a year to make myself suitable for those positions?

It was just using an available inbuilt function and wrapping a program around it to serve my purpose.

To be honest, this sounds like the majority of programming that takes place in academia.

Obviously the exact skill requirements will be different for every position, so I can't give you any specific advice, but knowing how to link together existing functions in order to create a program that you want is a useful skill that not everyone has. Don't let your impostor syndrome get the better of you.

Your advisor or someone else in your particular field might be able to offer advice on what skills you should focus on developing.

Background: I recently finished an MA in a field where many researchers are using programming, but also many are not. I have a programming background, but many students with much less programming experience than I have were able to be successful in writing programs for their research.


Does students asking questions in class improve the learning outcome of the entire class? Is there any research/study/survey that looked at whether / to what extent students asking questions in class improve the learning outcome of the entire class?

I am most interested in computer science and math education, but curious about other fields as well.

In a group class setting, educators, mistakenly, think that if one person responds, subsequently the rest of the class shares the same understanding. Most instructors would agree this is not the case.

Questions on relevant topics help to engage all the students. Often times I use the student's question as a connecting point to ask one of mine. Other times I involve other students by asking questions such as “Good, now can someone provide another example? Who else has an opinion? Who disagrees?”

If the question is off-topic then it is the educator's responsibility to bring the class back to the discussion by asking one of their own questions.

At this time, I am unaware of any research related to this.

Note: I will append any links to this post if I come across relevant studies.


Job after post-doc - Whom to list as referee? I'm currently a postdoc (in computer science) and planning on applying for faculty jobs soon. During my 3 postdoc years I've had a couple of papers with 2 "superstars" in my field, whereas my current boss is somewhat less renowned.  Most job ads seem to require 3 referees.

Now my question is, who should I list as referee?

my PhD advisor + the 2 superstars
my PostDoc supervisor + the 2 superstars
A different combination?

Would option 1 or 2 be perceived as unusual?

List all 4!

People will find it odd if you PhD advisor is not under the list of referees. The same holds for the host of your last position. If you are limited to 3 references then get rid of one of the "superstars", but typically job descriptions say "at least x referees".


Dealing with colleagues avoiding work I doing a PhD in a research group where there are 4-5 PhD student and 1-2 Postdocs. Given the nature of the research projects, more than one person ends up working on one project and sometimes people work on multiple projects simultaneously.

I am assigned to work on a project where a postdoc is supposed to help me. Recently, a deadline arose and we had to submit a project in two weeks which was extremely tight. I am the principle person working on the design, but given the tight deadline, my advisor asked the postdoc to help complete the design. The design consisted of two parts which were simulations and drawing. I was working on the simulations which were time-consuming. I asked the postdoc to learn how to use the tool needed to draw the design and then teach it to me quickly at before the time of submission so that I do not have to go through the user guide as time was tight. He refused just after the meeting where my advisor asked him to help me saying that he will not draw anything. In the meeting, he seemed fine with helping me.

Given that I was very eager for this project to succeed, I pushed myself and completed everything on my own with no help. I submitted the design successfully.

Now I am considering telling my advisor what happened. This person is blatantly avoiding work and try to dump everything on me. This pattern of behavior has occurred more than once before. We are understaffed in this project and I cannot carry it on my own. At least three students are needed and now it seems that I am on my own.

My question is: What would be the best way to tell my advisor about this postdoc? I do not want him to get the impression that I am whiny, but I believe this is an issue needs to be addressed and that a more professional behavior is expected from the postdoc. What things should I avoid in explaining this problem? Is telling him about the issue going to help with anything?

Try this: "Professor Smith, I'm glad we met the deadline, but I think I should tell you that I ended up doing all the work myself.  I had asked Bill to get up to speed on the drawing tool so that he could jump-start me when the time came, but he didn't.  Perhaps next time, you could ask us to develop a plan for partitioning work, which you would then approve."

You've let him know what happened.  More importantly, you've suggested a way to prevent such problems in the future.  It's a solution that doesn't require much of the professor's time, either.  (And, if the "approved plan" doesn't work, at that future time you could suggest progress reports from each team member.)


What makes a good recorded video poster presentation for an academic conference? A "video poster presentation" sounds like a logical impossibility, but now that conferences are online, they seem to be a thing.  What makes one effective?  How is this different from a recorded conference talk? What makes for good content?

First, this answer isn't based on experience of creating such things, but just on general principles. I assume that you want an audience to actually watch the video to the end and that what you have to say isn't so earth shatteringly novel and important that they naturally will. But also, I assume that what you want to say has value in itself, though more for some than others.
First, I think you have about 15 seconds at the start of the presentation to answer the viewers question "Should I continue with this or not?" But the answer has to be obvious from the presentation, rather than just saying outright "This is why you should watch." If you aren't immediately compelling, people will hit the "next" button. It isn't like a class where students are forced to sit and watch.
The last 15 seconds are probably also very important so that people have a succinct message to carry away - make it memorable.
Talking heads are boring. A video has an advantage over a live talk, of course, since interested watchers can hit rewind if they miss a point, but still, do something to avoid the talking head issue. An overly pedantic presentation will probably also induce watchers to move on.
I assume that the most interested people will have some way to contact you after the presentation so that you can get follow up. The format suggested by walkar in a comment sounds like it might be very good, so that people can ask questions after viewing and possibly get some synergy going. But I also assume you don't have control over format.
I'd suggest, actually, that you take some inspiration from an early science oriented TV show intended for children: Watch Mr. Wizard. It was a half hour of simple science done live. The wikipedia article points to some similar things that this show inspired. Some of the shows are available on [YouTube[(https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Mr.+Wizard). And note that by using another person, in this case a youngster, as an assistant, Don Herbert avoids the talking head problem. You can have a "conversation" with an assistant that you can't have with the audience.

Background: I'm an old guy with hearing problems. I don't watch TV or depend on video much. When I do, I'm looking for visual impact and am quick to move on if the presentation starts out too slowly or gets boring. On the other hand, I'm interested in lots of things. If you catch me early, I might stick around. I don't need to take notes anymore, so won't, but a clear message about the key insight (the last few seconds) will stick with me and make you memorable.
Oh, and I never missed an episode of Mr. Wizard.


Identical APA-style In-text citations I am working on a paper in which I cite two resources from an online reference work with no author:

Ransomware. (2016). Malware Protection Center. Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/mmpc/shared/ransomware.aspx
Ransomware. (2016). TrendMicro. Retrieved from http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/definition/ransomware/#logo

Unfortunately, these two works have identical in-text citations: "('Ransomware,' 2016)."  The only material I can find on situations like this is when the authors are the same, and the remedy is to append the letters "a" and "b" to the date, like (2016a).  These works, however, do not have the same author, so I do not think this fix can be used.  How should I differentiate between these two citations?

APA style attempts to resolve ambiguity related to the names of authors in both in text citations and the reference list. As far as I am aware, and this APA Style Blog comment confirms my belief, APA style does not attempt to resolve ambiguity about authors. In other words, as far as APA style is concerned in text citations do not need to differentiate between two different people with identical names.

As your example has no listed author, I would argue (although it does not appear to be addressed in the APA Style Guide) that as far as the citation is concerned the authors have the same name. In the case of multiple works with authors with the same name and year the in text citation just appends a, b, c, ... to the year.


How to write a good PhD literature review? I am in the early stages of my PhD and I am trying to put together a literature review of my topic. My intention is that this review will eventually be included in my thesis, something like "the chapter that describes the state of the art in the domain."

My subject is soft matter physics and a large number of theses have already been written this topic. When looking at the literature reviews included in these other works I've noticed that:

The sequence of ideas is often the same (this makes sense, so why not?)
Cited papers are always the same, even though 20 years elapsed between the first and last thesis. Moreover, papers from the 30's are cited but no one in my lab seems to have a copy available?

My hypothesis is that these theses are derived from some sort of a Mother of All Thesis, and that paraphrasing the work of the previous student is OK.

So, what makes a good literature review?

How do you notice that a literature review is sloppy?

PS: I posted this question because I assume many of you have experience with this process either in your own PhD work, or as a supervisor where you have had to deal with paraphrasing of your students.

PS2: I am not asking about making proper citations, LaTeX+BibTeX handles that like a charm.

The purpose and expectations of a PhD literature review is likely to vary from field to field. My PhD was in Physics, but my views might be taken to apply generally.

There is likely to be some repetition or paraphrasing between students in the same research group, when it comes to the literature review. However, perhaps the comments below might help.

A literature review should be an enjoyable to read (!) introduction, survey and guide to the state of the art. You want to introduce your reader to the field (assuming a clever, but non-expert reader), setting out what has gone before, and perhaps to some extent showing where the gaps are in the research - raising the opportunity for you to present your research as that which fills a gap (Next chapter: "Aims and Objectives", or similar).

My primary hallmarks of a poor, or sloppy literature review is that papers are listed without any helpful context.  A dreary literature review, to me, is a listing of papers that we all already know about, without any guide to the reader why the trail leads me to hold the present thesis. No-one much likes reading a dry chronology of papers. I personally, want to be told the story of the research and the literature review plays an important part of that story.

The opportunity exists here to review the field - what are the general trends in the literature? For example,  Paper A was the first to introduce the theory that drove the authors of Paper B to perform experiment Z which is now the standard technique. However, Paper C suggests that an alternative method may be more effective, etc.

Note that your review shouldn't attempt to be a complete review of the field - whole standalone papers are written on this, usually by invitation. Your PhD literature review should be more focused, but still a recounting of the Story So Far.

Since your literature review is to be a nice, focused review of the path to your contribution, it is likely that you will read far more papers than you will need to cite in your literature review. Those papers that do not contribute to the Story So Far can be excluded from your literature review. Going off on a tangent, like in any story, can lose and confuse your readers. If you feel a need to refer to these papers, perhaps you can refer to a decent review article which discusses them in detail, for the interested reader.


Using first name only for university email alias I’m an incoming grad student at a US university and I’ve been asked to set up my email alias. The university doesn’t have an explicit policy on what the aliases should look like, but I’ve noticed most faculty and grad students have gone with either of the following:

  firstname.lastname@acme.edu
  lastname@acme.edu

However, my first name is shorter, available, and easier to spell.
It’s an unusual name in the US (which helped me secure firstname.com), but it’s four characters and hard to get wrong.
Therefore, I’m thinking of going with:

  firstname@acme.edu

Could that be interpreted as inappropriate/unprofessional/overly casual by some, or would it be fine? It’s one of the top-five programs in economics in the US – everyone seemed friendly on my fly-out and they’re probably among the less formal departments I’ve visited.

You’re overthinking this issue. Nobody cares. Enjoy your cool email, and have fun in grad school.


Is it appropriate as a referee to contact an author after the editor rejected the manuscript? This is related to this question, but it is more a special case of it.

I reviewed a manuscript, which was submitted to a reputable traditional journal. The journal has a single-blind review system. I liked the manuscript a lot, as it was closely related to my research interests. However, the authors did not do a great job in reporting the manuscript, and I provided a long review with several suggestions for improving the report.

I suggested major revisions, but the editor rejected the paper. That is ok for me; it is the editor's responsibility to take such decisions. What is important is that the process is now closed.

By re-reading my review together with the other two referee's reviews, I came up with a couple other suggestions that I truly believe would benefit to the manuscript. Would it be a bad practice to contact the authors now that the paper is no longer under review? I do not mind unveiling my identity, and I would do that only because I want to advance the research in the paper. That is, I just want to help them.

One important consideration is whether the paper is publicly available (for example, being circulated on the web as a preprint).  If it is, then it's perfectly reasonable to get in touch with the authors and offer suggestions.  You don't need to address the question of how you heard about the paper if you don't want to.  If you do want to reveal yourself as a reviewer, I think it's fine, but I've run across people who disagree about this.

It's much trickier if the existence of the paper is itself confidential.  If for some reason I submitted a paper without circulating it publicly, and then after rejection a referee contacted me privately with detailed suggestions for improvement, I would feel uncomfortable.  It would look a little too much like an attempt to become involved in the research or writing, and I would wonder whether the referee might take offense if I just said "thanks for the suggestions" and didn't engage in further discussion or collaboration.

If you have confidential knowledge about a paper, then you must not even appear to be using it for your own benefit.  For example, you can't ask to start a collaboration or try to find out more about this research.

If there's no public preprint, then it's safest to make contact through the editor, and at the very least you should ask the editor about what you intend to do (the editor may well object, and in any case you need to avoid seeming secretive about it).  Even if the editor approves, you should be careful, since innocent actions may be misinterpreted.


What's the average retirement age in the universities in British (UK/Ireland/Australia/NZ) system? In UK/Ireland/Australia/NZ, they don't seem to have a set retirement age. However, when do faculty members actually retire, or 'have to' retire (due to peer pressure, for example)?

This question is related to: 1. How common is it for tenured professors to retire?,
but my question is specific to the British system, and
2. How common is redundancy in the British (UK/Australia/NZ/Ireland) system?

If there is no tenured position in these countries (except Ireland, perhaps), isn't it easier to pressure the older faculty members (who may not be doing much research but at least be doing all the mandatory teaching) to step down?
In a tenured system such as US/Canada, it would be difficult to fire a tenured and aged professor even if he/she is research inactive, I believe?

Edit: With the follow up comments, the refinement of my question is: can the management in a university in the British system use the redundancy as an excuse to remove an 'old' and research inactive (but ok at teaching etc.) faculty member?

To be a bit more specific:

ctokelly is correct to say that there is no mandatory requirement age, as this was indeed phased out, but from the UK Government website:

  [S]ome employers can set a compulsory retirement age if they can clearly justify it.

In practice, this seems to vary from university to university. Oxford, for example, do set a compulsory retirement age for their staff. From their website:

  Council has agreed to maintain a retirement age for university academic and academic-related staff[...] All existing members of academic and related staff who have a normal retirement date of 30 September immediately preceding the 66th birthday will be deemed, from 1 October 2011, to have a retirement date of 30 September preceding the 68th birthday, which shall be the EJRA.

Cambridge have a similar policy: see here and here.

Others, such as the University of London and York, seem not to.

In the other direction, UCL suggest that their employees may need to work until 65 to access their full pension. From their website:

  Effective from 1 October 2011, there is no compulsory retirement age at UCL. Staff may voluntarily retire at a time of their choice, subject to providing appropriate notice. Many staff may continue to retire at their pension age (currently 65 years) because this is when they can access their full pension benefits although they have the choice to work beyond this age. Staff may be able to flexibly retire or retire before 65 years (normally accessing reduced pension benefits) depending on their pension scheme rules. (emphasis mine)

The answer seems to be, then, that it depends on the individual university. Oxford and Cambridge do seem to be in the minority in enforcing a mandatory retirement age; most universities stress in their policies that the age of retirement is a choice.

As to when academics actually do retire: I couldn't find any hard figures on this, although the general consensus for the UK across all job sectors is that people are choosing to work longer. I should imagine, however, that the default is still somewhere between the former mandatory age of 65, and the 67 or 68 set by Oxford and Cambridge.


Are datasets really random for Bioinformatics tools For my masters thesis, I needed a to run a tool to filter out RNA sequences and then research on the filtered data. I researched online reading papers to find an appropriate tool and I found one that really fitted my needs. The tool was published by a renowned group in a good journal (IF around 7). The tool claimed to have been run on a 30 random datasets and claimed to have around 90% specificity and sensitivity. I was very happy.

When I ran it on my dataset, the tool produced so many false positives and false negetives. Its accuracy was less than 10%. I ran on other datasets too and never got an accuracy of more than 20% in any one of them. To my surprise, the tool only worked well on the dataset that was published with the tool, with a good accuracy and no other input. I cannot believe that the dataset was randomly chosen.

I spoke to my PI about this and he said that he understands. He allowed me to choose another topic for my thesis and helped me a lot to complete. In the end I could successfully defend my thesis.

My questions are:

Is this common for groups (esp in Bioinformatics) to select a biased dataset as input and claim it to be random?
Does reviewers really run the tools (or read the source code) that are accompanied by the paper in order to test it and see whether it really does what it claims or they only read the paper?
Can an end user later write to the editor and let him know that the tool published in their journal isn't what it was suppose to be?

What you are describing here is an in silico form of Cherry Picking Fallacy. Before answering your questions specifically, I would like to point out that before assuming bad intent or foul play, consider the biological variability in the datasets, and difficulties writing generalised solutions to biological problems. Take it from a 3rd year grad student and a bioinformatician in training, it's not straight-forward to develop tools for biological datasets. There are both biological and technical challenges in writing "foolproof" software in bioinformatics.

Consider for instance, that there are multiple ways to estimate error and false discovery rate (FDR). There are also varying levels of thresholds used in different labs. Any heuristic value, if hardcoded, might alter the results.

Similarly the biological diversity, as well as technical variability introduced by wetlab benchwork will likely have serious influence on the datasets. Once everything boils down to a large table of numbers, all of that variability is implicit and thus often forgotten.

That said, my answers to your question(s):

No it's not common to pick datasets just to show that your model/software works, at least not publicly. That would go against scientific rigour and ethics. At the same time, you start from what you have available. I typically start with datasets we have in the lab, when I start developing a new tool. But in order to publish your method, you should typically show that it works on data from independent sources, or alternative data types etc. All in all, your results might not be representative of all datasets out there.
It is impossible to answer this question, factually. I am sure there are reviewers that take a look at raw data and/or source code, but it's unlikely that any reviewer actually digs into the source code, line by line, to see if everything checks out. But I am also certain that there are some who just see if you have actually made the source code or test datasets available or not, without actually look at them.
You can always do that, end-user or not. But beware, before you go blowing the whistle on someone else's handiwork (which probably took them a significant amount of time and money) you better get your facts straight. Claiming that they are selling false results or simply misinterpreted their results is a very serious accusation, especially if the authors are renown and respected in the field.

Prior to writing a letter to the editor (who AFAIK have a duty of publishing scrutinising critique on something that has been published in that journal) you should check, and double check, your results. Make sure you are not misunderstanding the statements made in the original work. Make sure you are not misunderstanding your own results. Make sure what you have observed is not a side-effect of your datasets or your own use of the software, try to talk to other people who have used the software. And make sure, your supervisor (and others in the group) are behind you, get your own results investigated by your superiors and colleagues.

If everything checks out you can, and should, inform the journal that the results in the original article might not reflect a general reality, and that you could not replicate the results on independent datasets, then show your results.


How to credit Creative Commons icons in a Bachelor's Thesis? I am currently working on my bachelor's thesis in computer science in Germany. I have created a few charts/graphs, making heavy use of icons downloaded from http://www.thenounproject.com/.

Most of the icons I did use are published under a Creative Commons license. I am not sure how to credit the authors of the icons. The website states the following for books:

  The attribution should be displayed either on the same page as the symbol, with the colophon, in the bibliography or Credits section.

The license text (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/) states the following for attribution:

  If supplied, you must provide the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material.

I don't think it makes sense to credit the authors of the icons in the bibliography of the thesis though.

How is the usual procedure to give picture credit in theses? Is it considered appropriate to use these kinds of graphics for illustration in academic contexts?

I would add the information to the figure caption. Something like "The icons are courtesy of ABC." If there are a lot of figures with difficult to attribute icons, I might refer readers to a footnote or even an appendix. I am not sure that the icons being released under creative commons really matters in terms of how you attribute them.


How good of a conference can I realistically submit my first paper to? How can I figure out which conferences I'm good enough to submit to? I'm working on finishing up my thesis in wireless security and I'd like to publish the results of my work in a conference, obviously the best conference that I can realistically get published in.

However I'm having a hard time figuring out what the criteria might be for this. I see conference rankings around, but how can you actually figure out where on that ranking you should fit? How can I learn how to evaluate these kinds of things?

You learn to evaluate these kind of things by experience.  You read the papers published in the conferences, form your own opinion of their quality, see how they impact the field over time, see how they are viewed by others, and revise your opinions.  Eventually you get a general sense of how "good" a paper should be in order to be published in this conference, and you compare it with your evaluation of your own paper's quality.

You bootstrap the process by drawing on your advisor's experience.

So: Ask your advisor.


contacting professors when looking for a job even if there are no advertised vacancies in their group I am a fresh PhD graduate looking for a job. Is it a good idea to write directly to professors/group leaders, asking if there are any job openings in their group? If yes, how long/detailed such email should be?

I haven't published any papers during my PhD so I feel that my chances of getting a postdoc position are pretty slim. I would like to start somewhere as a research assistant to gain some experience, make connections with people, etc. I know that quite often RA positions are not advertised because professors just offer them to their own PhD students.

Your question is rather vague -- what does "is it a good idea" mean? If you're asking if you can write to professors? Sure; there's nothing to lose, and there may be people looking for lab technicians. (I've been in this situation of looking for someone to hire in the past.) Go for it! If you're asking if it's likely that you'll get a positive response: no, for all the reasons you state.

As for how long/detailed such an email should be: you should succinctly (in a paragraph or two) state your skills and goals and possibly point out abilities that are particularly useful for the group you're writing to. Attach a clear CV.

I should point out that the statement "I haven't published any papers during my PhD" is rather worrying, and it may be a good idea to explain this when writing. Good luck!


Digital media rights for online courses (US) I've been trying to research how digital media can be lawfully utilized for online, distance-learning courses.  The specific use case here would not be a MOOC or anything massive, but an online course offered to homeschooled students that probably would have less than 20-30 signups per semester.  The sourced videos would include items such as this one:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/

Current American guidelines suggest that it is perfectly OK to offer this video in-person in a physical classroom:

  Classroom Use of Videos
  Public performances of a video/DVD in the face-to-face classroom is an exception to the public performance right §110 (1) and therefore lawful. The following conditions apply:

  The teaching activities are conducted by a non-profit education institution
  The performance is in connection with face-to-face teaching activities.
  The performance takes place in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction.
  The person responsible for the performance has no reason to believe that the videotape was unlawfully made.

Source:  http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet07

However, I am unable to find current and accurate guidelines that would apply to online courses in a similar manner.  At the current time this means that we are restricting our course videos to items that can be obtained reasonably on Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and so forth - however, this is so piecemeal that it becomes a real pain to attempt to track and maintain locations, prices, availability, and so on for the relevant videos.

Is there any legal path for a purchased educational  DVD such as the above to be made available online for a strictly limited educational audience in a distance learning context?

Per brief linked by @ff524 in the comments (updated location here - PDF), there seems to be a reasonable argument that anything you could do in a face-to-face classroom is reasonable to do in an online learning situation as well, as long as similar barriers to entry apply.

The classroom exemption basically says that what you're doing isn't really a "public" performance per se, it's use in a small-group instructional setting.  Hundreds of thousands of people can't just drop in, like they can for a publicly posted resource on the internet.

As such, it seems that if you use technology to shift that small group around in space (e.g., via online streaming) or in time (e.g., via asynchronous viewing), then it's still instructing a small group.  The legal details might or might not be resolved, but the argument would be strong and there's clearly no moral or ethical issue.

If you just post something publicly, however, then you've removed the barrier to entry, and the number of people who can potentially be using that resource is unbounded.  Maybe there will never be more than just your students, but what if for some strange reason the lecture went viral? While that probably won't happen, there is a moral and ethical (and likely legal) line being crossed when you decide to make something that is otherwise restricted freely available to the entire internet.

In between the two cases, I believe, is a grey area of MOOCs, in which there is a barrier to entry, but the technology is used to greatly scale up the number of students that are being served by a lecture.  Since it sounds like you're planning to stay small, however, that's not something you would need to worry about for now.


Options for a teaching position in a liberal arts college in Europe vs US? I am a 4th year PhD student doing Computer Science in an Ivy League School. During the past months the question of what I want to do once I graduate in the next 2 years seems to absorb most of my time during the day.

I have crossed industry out, and I don't feel particularly strong for a research position in an academic or research institution for various reasons. Instead I realize that I am more intrigued by the teaching process, since I love interacting with students and helping them discover the numerous possibilities that CS has to offer. I would love the idea of following a teaching path in a liberal arts college but I have many concerns that derive from conflicts of interests (in my head). I would love to hear your opinions and advice.

1)In theory the easiest way to follow would be to apply for teaching positions in liberal arts colleges in the US. My concerns are: I am an international student, that means that they would need to sponsor my visa status. Why would they choose me instead of an American candidate, since they wouldn't have the language barrier and would cost significantly less. More importantly, since the PhD program I am currently enrolled is heavily biased towards research I feel that I cannot demonstrate an impressive teaching portfolio. My teaching experience is limited in a couple of courses I have TAed and seminars on didactics and pedagogics. There might be a possibility of teaching a class on my own before I graduate, but it is a long shot and something that does not happen really easily in my department. If I wanted to follow this path what advice would you give me in order to better prepare myself and become a more competent candidate?

2)Given that I come from Europe I am more inclined to return closer to home. Every time that I search for teaching opportunities in Europe though I come to understand that it is extremely hard to get in an educational system that I do not speak the language, I do not have the corresponding citizenship, and I am not particularly interested in doing research. The descriptions of the jobs that I am finding are in German, French, etc, and I do not speak any of these languages. Is there even the notion of teaching schools in Europe? How can a holder of a US PhD try to acquire such a position? I am even more lost here since I have no idea where to look for jobs and if there are any that would match the profile of a professor in a liberal arts college in the US.

As ff524's comment suggests, you seem to have a couple different questions, so this is only a partial answesr:

One thing to consider is that, if you have little experience teaching, you may not have an accurate view of how much you will like it as a career.  This is not to say that you're wrong, just that you might want to view teaching jobs not just as a chance to "do what you love" but also as a chance to explore options and find out what you love.

Also, liberal arts jobs and teaching jobs are not synonymous.  At least in the US, there are a number of teaching-focused jobs other than those in liberal arts schools --- notably visiting professorships and jobs at two-year colleges.  As the name suggests, visiting professorships typically last only for a limited time, perhaps a year or two.  However, this could be an advantage if you want to take a shot at a teaching career: you get a chance to teach for a while, and at the end of your time in that job, if you like it, you have more teaching experience can more confidently apply for a permanent teaching job; if you don't like it, no problem, since you're leaving anyway.

Jobs at two-year colleges ("junior colleges" or "community colleges") are also an option.  These jobs are often perceived as less prestigious than jobs at four-year colleges, and pay is often lower.  However, there are a lot more of them than teaching-jobs at four-year colleges, because essentially every community college faculty position is devoted primarily to teaching.  This, again, can make it a good option if you would like to gain teaching experience and see how you like the teaching life.  It will probably be easier to get a teaching job at a community college than at a liberal-arts college.

As Brian Borchers notes in his comment, there are also "regional" colleges that offer four-year degrees but are primarily oriented towards teaching.  These are somewhere in between community colleges and big research schools.  At these schools, research would be part of your job, but not as much as at a major research university.

If you have the chance to teach a course before you graduate, do your best to make it happen.  If that turns out not to be possible, try to get some other kind of teaching experience.  For instance, you could teach a workshop or short class as part of a conference or the like.  As you might expect, it's difficult to get a teaching job without teaching experience, so if you really want to do that, you should make maximum use of your remaining time in grad school to get whatever teaching experience you can.


Does "being ghosted" mean "rejection" after PhD interview? I had a PhD interview (Computer Science) 3 weeks ago with a German institute. The interview went well and they said they will make their final decision in a week (the latest) and let the candidates know. However, it's been 3 weeks and no response. I emailed them a week ago asking if they have decided yet. Still no response. Before the interview, they were extremely responsive. E.g. I emailed and asked many questions about how I should prepare for the presentation etc. They would typically respond in like 5 mins. But after the interview, they seem to be ghosting me. Does this mean I should forget about this position?

It could be that unforeseen circumstances have prevented a timely decision. However, most likely you are not their first choice but they don't send out rejections before their first choice has signed the contract. That's pretty standard.
Something similar happened to me in the past. Three months later they called me and asked if I would still be interested. Their first choice had decided against the position. If they had send out rejection letters they would have had to restart the whole process again (with a new job posting).


What percentage of applicants on a wait list for masters program generally get accepted? My application has been put on the wait list at my top choice institution (unfunded masters, about 10% acceptance rate). The Department said they may not be able to let me know the final decision until after April 15 (which I understand). However, I need to know the decision before April 15 to respond to other offers. In order to determine my chance, I have the following questions:

While this may vary depending  on the programs, is there a general percentage of applications out of the entire pool being put on wait list? If not what factors determine this?
Are wait listed applicants ranked? if not, how do programs determine which one to accept off wait lists?
Should I let them know that they are my top choice and if accepted I will almost surely attend?

The answers to your questions depend on the university/department, but are all reasonable questions to ask. It would be perfectly reasonable to send an email along the lines of

  Thank you for letting me know about the wait listing decision. I understand how competitive the admissions process is. I wanted to let you know that XXX is my top choice and if offered a place I would accept it immediately. As I have also received an offer from YYY that I need to respond to by April 15, would you mind if I checked on my status closer to the deadline?

This will hopefully open a dialog and they might say something like "given your place on the wait list it is unlikely we will know anything prior to the deadline" or "given your place in the wait list the picture should be a lot clearer closer to the deadline.


What percentage of admitted PhD students comes from waiting lists I was wondering if there is a rule of thumb for the following.

What percentage of students that are accepted for a PhD position were initially put on a waiting list, and were only admitted after high-scoring applicants did not enroll?

This will depend upon the department, but I would expect that relatively few students would be admitted via a waitlist.  Departments usually have a pretty good estimate of how many students who they accept will take their offer and enroll in their program.


Professor deletes me from Skype contact list after Skype interview and promise to give offer. Could this be a rejection? Recently, I had a Skype interview with a professor several weeks ago, and professor also promised me the PhD offer. My GPA is not high enough to meet the requirement of Department, but she said she would argue for me. After that, I also sent an email to professor and tried to talk about two academic questions, but no reply had been received. Recently, I checked my Skype and found professor has already delete the contact with me. And after I submitted the application, I also sent an email to inform the professor, no reply has been received either. So can I think it as a rejection?

No. I don't think you should assume that this is a rejection.

Deleting you from Skype does not sound unusual. If they added you for a specific purpose and don't intend to be contacting you regularly then they may just want to avoid notifications popping up all the time about when you are logged on.
Professors are busy. A lack of email reply, especially at this time of year when they may be about to leave for the holidays (depending on where you are in the world), may simply mean they not have got around to replying to you.
It's possible that the department you are applying to has strict procedures about job/studentship offers, such that the professor is not allowed to give you certain information until it has been formally confirmed by the school. Depending on the exact questions you asked, the professor may feel that they need to wait for the proper process before getting in touch with you again.

Assuming that you have gone through an official application procedure, which it sounds like you have, you will get official notification at some point from the department as to whether or not you have been successful. As I said above, be aware that might be a bit delayed due to the holidays. But I don't think you should assume one way or the other until you get the confirmation.

Good luck!


How to react to strongly erroneous and irrelevant citation of my article? In an paper, an author cites my article in which he states that I said "something" and that it is wrong. Not only have I never said "something", but the article he cites is about a completely different topic (there is no ambiguity about that).

Obviously the reviewers have not done their job appropriately, but that it too late. Worth mentioning I suspect this is due to my non-responding to his solicitations, but that is not the point here (see edit).

How should I react (ethically) to that?

Clarifications

This question was marked as a duplicate but I will add a few clarifications out of respect for the commenters/answerers: I did not expand too much on the solicitations because I did not find it very relevant. What happened is that I was approach by a researcher who wanted to extend his research topic to mine (or more generally to that of the company I'm working for). He invited me to contribute to some funding project, which I did, then asked me some technical questions, to which I answered, up to a point where I got annoyed by him not reading the references I suggested. He basically wanted me to spoonfeed him everything. He then cited my article in a negative manner, including a completely false statement (that I said in my article that a solver had property X when the cited article does not even mention anything related to a solver -- and it's not just citing the wrong article: I never wrote anything related to this wrong statement).

Begin by trying to speak to the author and see what he says.  Then:

Speak to the editor of the journal, unless the author is willing to submit a correction instead.  If the problem is big enough that it:

a) Misrepresents your work to the degree that someone would think, from this article's citation alone, that you did or did not do something critical, or

b) Invalidates the results of the paper in which the citation is published, or

c) Undermines those results by providing a false citation to make it look like a claim is better supported than it is

then it is important that the editor be involved and the article be corrected.

If it's a small problem, then speaking to the editor may not do much.  As an example, a paper of mine was cited incorrectly once.  It was actually a small and irrelevant mistake, and the authors probably meant to cite something else.  It was along the lines of: "Other techniques to solve this problem include Y, which was explored in [1][2][3], but we are approaching it differently" and that was it.  In this case, embarrassing the author was not something I felt like doing so I let it go.


What type of paper is this and how should I input it into JabRef? As a follow up to this question I am now trying to use JabRef along with @Jonas Steins python script to manage a small literature database on my local machine. I came across the following conference paper :

http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/852068/1/098_Argyroudis.et.al._rev.pdf

I tried adding it as "Proceedings" in JabRef but the only required fields which need to be added are:

Title
Year
Bibtexkey

I find it really strange that entries which are conference proceedings do not require anything about the name of the conference, or the authors responsible for this particular article.

Am I looking at the wrong category? If so which one should I be looking at? Here are the possibilities in JabRef:

Article
InBook
Book
Booklet
InCollection
Conference
InProceedings
Proceedings
Manual
MastersThesis
PhdThesis
TechReport
Unpublished
Misc

If this is the right category, could someone please explain why the name of the conference and the authors are not required for this literature type?

Thanks

This looks like a conference paper to me, so "InProceedings" is appropriate.

The one you thought of, "Proceedings" is for the entire conference.  i.e. the book that contains every single paper from the conference, not just a single paper. That's why there is no author field, and the title field is for the name of the conference.

BTW, definition of the categories is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX


Can someone who works in tech industry still publish research unrelated to their main job function? It seems to be a common trend nowadays that high paying jobs in the tech industry tend to have both a combination of employees from STEM related fields and non-STEM related fields. Also, I know that companies like Google allow employees to spend 20% of their time to do tasks of their own interest. Given these two facts can an employee, say someone with a Ph.D in astrophysics who works at Google, still publish in journals such as Physical Review, Journal of Physics, etc? This would alleviate a lot of problems, since the difficulties to transition from industry to academia is quite troublesome. Thoughts?

The path to publication at a company strongly depends on whether the employment contract includes a "we own your dreams and family photographs" clause.  Some technology companies insert such a clause, essentially claiming rights over anything that their employees do that could possibly create intellectual property.

If you are faced with an employment contract of this sort, there is generally a possibility of specifically exempting certain activities as a sort of "pre-existing condition."  If you exempt your research area or if you have a more liberal employment contract, then you can generally do whatever scientific research and publication you like outside of work, as long as you do not claim endorsement of the company in any way (e.g., you may not be able to list them as your official affiliation in the publications: check with your supervisor or company legal).

Alternatively, tech companies with broader interests may be entirely fine with you working on projects unrelated to your responsibilities while acting as a company employee, as long as it does not interfere with your ordinary job duties.  This is often particularly true for companies that have a consulting or contracting business model, since for such companies "unrelated research" can often turn into "new line of business."  Likewise for companies whose product line serves the R&D community.  Companies that have a tight focus on a non-R&D-related product line, however, are less likely to be receptive to such "side-project" work.


Permission for changing the title of a paper I am revising a paper and want to change the title of the paper and send for editor-in-chief.

My Question: Is there an formal sentences to announce to editor-in-chief and reviewers that I want to change the title of paper in this revision.

For instance, is it acceptable that I write the following text?

  With the editor-in-chief’s and reviewers’ permission, the authors want to change the title of paper because of ...

What you write seems fine. Until very late in the process, the title should, in my view, be tentative. It should best express what the paper says. Especially if recommended revisions have changed that, or your view of it, by all means change it and just let the editor know.

If you get pushback, or refusal, from an editor, you can deal with it then. But, IMO, it would be improper to refuse.


What's the role of colloquiums in academia? During my bachelors and masters degree I have attended some brief talks called colloquiums in which a researcher was invited by a professor at the university and s/he gave a one-hour talk about a scientific topic most of which about his/her own research interests.

These talks are a little different from normal conference presentations and seminars because the speaker is invited to give a talk and he is not presenting a specific paper; but in a conference, except from keynote speakers; people normally submit their papers to be peer-reviewed.

I don't know what's the role of colloquiums in academia and what the speaker is seeking by giving such talks? Also, who can give such talks (a researcher, somebody from industry, an outstanding professor, etc.)?

what the speaker is seeking by giving such small talks?

One word: exposition.

As a rule, the more senior a researcher gets, the less of her/his attention is devoted to writing single research papers. It becomes more central to be known for a specific niche, a specific topic where (s)he is the world's foremost expert. One does not become such a figurehead for a specific niche by writing good papers in the area alone (although, clearly, this is still required). One also needs to be an ambassador for the niche. This includes giving keynotes at conferences, as well as giving seminars and colloquia.

  Also, who can give such talks

Everybody who gets invited by somebody. However, typically, one does not give keynote-level talks before senior postdoc or assistant professor level, simply because most PhD students do not have all too much of a vision going beyond their thesis yet. And, frankly, the keynotes of most postdocs also suck. Like most skills in academia, giving good exposition talks is also a skill that comes with training.

(there are exceptions, of course - I can think of at least one outstanding PhD student in software engineering who was regularly invited to give keynote talks at conferences midway through her dissertation)


arXiv Submission Disappeared I recently submitted a preprint to arXiv. This is my first time submitting to arXiv. According to https://arxiv.org/help/submit#availability, based on my submission time, the paper should have been announced on Wednesday 20:00 EST (which just passed). At that time, my submission disappeared from my arXiv portal. Is this common? Was it removed due to an error of mine? Up until the announce time, the status showed Submitted. It wasn't put on hold, so I assumed there wasn't any errors.

Give it more time to be published, the system sometimes may not do things strictly on time.


How do I go about publishing a paper without a university affiliation? I graduated with a B.S. degree and I have been working in industry for a few years as a software engineer. I am very interested in reinforcement learning, a sub-field of machine learning, and I am interested in performing research and publishing a paper on that topic.

The problem is, in my city there are no professors working in this field (or related fields) who could help me. I contacted other professors in different cities and they rejected my help request for a variety of reasons (such as I am not their student, they don't know me, they are busy, etc.).

Still, I want to perform research and publish a paper. I can't attend school as a full time student and my collaboration requests were not successful. Given all that, how can I publish by myself?

How to choose a research topic?
Should I read all the papers on this field?
How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.
Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?

Is it possible to publish a paper without a Professor?

Sure.  Nobody gives a rat's patootie about the academic ranks of paper authors (at least in my field).  I published sole-author papers as a graduate student.  I have colleagues who published as undergraduates, and others who published with no university (or research lab, or corporate) affiliation at all.

  How to choose a research topic?

Choose something you're good at, that you're passionate about, and that other people will care about.  If you're not good at it, you'll never get anywhere.  If you're not passionate about it, you won't put in enough effort to succeed.  If nobody cares, then, well, nobody cares.

  Should I read all the papers on this field?

No.  Reading all the papers in any field is simply not possible.  But you should read a lot.  A few hundred papers should get you started (ha ha only serious).

  How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.

Read lots of papers; talk to lots of people; go to seminars/conferences and listen to talks.  Or decide that the topics that you care about are so fascinating and your results are so compelling that you'll make other people interested (but be prepared for disappointment).  Or—my personal favorite—just make up something cool out of thin air.

  Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?

Yes.  Both.  (Except not all the prerequisite material; that's impossible.)


Is there any advantage to request a in-person interview over a Skype one? I have recently applied to a PhD position and have been invited for a Skype interview. I am thinking about proposing to have the interview in person instead.

The website states that "interviews will be conducted either in person or via Skype", so in person interviews are possible. I will also not ask for any compensation, since flights are very affordable and I can be hosted by a friend.

My reasons to ask an in person interview is to get a change of seeing the campus/offices and to maybe appear more motivated and invested in the position.

How do you think such a request would be perceived? Would it be slightly appreciated or make me look like I am trying to hard? Or would it be completely indifferent?

Furthermore, are there substantial differences with regard to the interview itself? Would it be "easier" in person because it is easier to connect, or is it "harder" because you are subconsciously by everything you do before and after the interview?

From my experience going in person is the better choice:

They will see you as very motivated and you show that you really want
that position and you are not just doing a quick skype interview (and
on the same day 3 other ones)
Personal empathy can develop much better in person than via skype
Your explanations will be much clearer e.g. using a white board etc
to explain

So, if you have the possibility then go in person!


Can I pursue a PhD while working as an Accounting Instructor/Lecturer? I plan on becoming an Accounting Professor in the near future. What I was hoping to do was pursue my PhD while working for the university as a lecturer/instructor. I read that many people work as a lecturer while pursuing their PhD, and that many universities offer this opportunity. I also read that it usually depends on your field of study. That being said, my question is:

Is this the case for Accounting lecturers?

There are many fields—including accounting—which offer “adjunct” positions which allow professionals to give lectures while not having full PhD qualifications necessary to be a professor. They’re usually advertised as “adjunct” or “contract” positions. But it’s also true that in many disciplines, such instructor positions are given to graduate students. It’s largely a question of how financing in the given program is handled.


Is it common to cite information from a think tank into one's literature review? As I was researching information on topic X, I found a paper published by a Think Tank. Interesting enough, said paper supports the policy pushed by the Think Tank. So far, all sources used in my paper are from researchers at a University, and I was wondering if I should include the paper in my lit review.

My question is whether I should include the paper or just ignore it, seeing as how the publisher holds a strong bias (possible conflict of interest). With that said, I'm also curious whether it's normal to cite research put out from a Think Tank.

Your literature review should include relevant research around your topic. If the paper is just a policy statement, you can ignore it. But if it is based on research by the think-tank you could include it. However, it would be good to indicate a caveat in some way, perhaps just by having a separate section, perhaps with a clear statement.

Some think-tank research isn't really research at all, of course, but just the gathering of one-sided support for an already decided on position. The caveat given for papers of that sort should be strong IMO. But, since that isn't research in any sense, but just propaganda, you can ignore it with a clear conscience.

But for a direct answer, I doubt that this is very common except in some fields in which think-tanks generally do valid research. Though a thesis based on the analysis of propaganda would probably be an exception to this rule.


Are there any downsides to sharing a successful proposal with others? Since being awarded a grant from NSF (my first!) I have received a few requests from strangers at other universities, who are themselves seeking funding, to see a copy of my funded proposal.  Initially I reacted negatively to these requests, thinking that somehow the "secret sauce" of the successful proposal would be weakened by sharing it.  However, I now feel that sharing a funded proposal has the following benefits:

It increases my work's exposure and may lead to complementary research by another group;
It may lead to an opportunity for collaboration.

The major downside is the prospect of plagiarism-- that the stranger would use my text in a publication.  Of course I am planning to do that, but they should not since I would probably find out sooner or later.

If it is appropriate to share funded proposals, then the next logical step is to make the entire proposal entirely public.  Here it seems like there is significant opportunity to weaken my chances of getting future funding-- but I can't say exactly why I feel that way.

What do other SE readers think of this?  This may be appropriate for community-wiki.

(Some related reading: http://jabberwocky.weecology.org/2012/08/10/a-list-of-publicly-available-grant-proposals-in-the-biological-sciences/ )

Funded NSF proposals are requestable directly from NSF through the Freedom of Information Act. Proposal authors are given the opportunity to suggest redactions to NSF of proprietary or other information that should not be disclosed generally, but their FOIA office has final say on what gets sent. This kind of information might include not yet released product specs that would be bought with the grant funding or salaries of non-public employees. I suspect that all non-classified US federal agency grants are FOIAable through a similar process, but I only have FOIA experience with NSF.

Some people put their successful grants online, some people keep them secret. Your special sauce, in the end, is probably not that special, but good writing and good organization may be informative to weaker writers in the world. We don't publish our grant application texts online, but they're definitely out there due to FOIA.


As a teaching assistant, how to make tutorials more stimulating In my university, tutorial sessions in physics usually consists in the teaching assistant solving three to six problems in front of the class (less than 30 students per class). Some TAs try to encourage student participation by asking what the next step in solving the problem should be, etc... but the results are usually poor. As a student, I mostly thought that this format for tutorial sessions was a waste of time, especially since most TAs gave the corrected exercises after the tutorial session (as I think they should be doing). I usually stopped attending after a few weeks.

I now find myself in the situation of being a TA for the first time and I don't want to repeat the same mistake as my peers. I want to convince the teacher to let me try a more stimulating format for the tutorial sessions.

I initially wanted to use clickers and ask short multiple choice questions to students, but I may have to abandon that idea since 1) it might be too much of a change for the teacher to accept, 2) take too much time for me to prepare and 3) the university might even not have clickers.

Another idea I had was to go through a single difficult exercise with the students as an example and to leave them the rest of the hour to work in teams on their weekly homework while being available for questions.

What do you think about it? What are some good ways to maximize the usefulness of tutorial sessions and to make them stimulating for students?

You could take a jigsaw approach to teaching this.

Put students in groups.
Each group solves their problem
You work with each group to be sure it's correct.
Remix the groups so that each new group has at least one member from the original question group.
In the new group each person teaches the other members how to solve their question that they completed in the original group.

Everyone is engaged and you provide support as necessary. Each group should probably be no bigger than 4-5 members otherwise people start to get bored


Citing propositions etc. in a master's thesis So in my mathematics master's thesis I am mainly following a certain paper, trying to understand it and present it's results in my own way. Now for a few chapters in my thesis I am basing them off of chapters in the paper and I'm unsure on how and what I need to cite. I generally start of these chapters saying something like "this chapter looks at ...blah blah blah....following (cite source)". Also for remarks and analysis I've taken from the paper I also cite those. But what about Propositions or proofs I've taken from the paper? (Stuff which is not'common knowledge').

As these are generally interspersed throughout the chapter, writing things like "this result taken from (cite source)... nearby each of the results seems clumsy and breaks the flow of my writing, so I would prefer not to do something like this if it is necessary to cite each of them.

Including propositions from elsewhere with just a generic remark at the start of the chapter is risky, and I would strongly advise against it.

In particular when it comes to proofs this makes it very difficult to see what is going on: Are you providing your own proofs for statements deemed to be "obvious" in the paper? Are you expanding a proof from the source? Are you merely paraphrasing?

For propositions, a rather elegant way that does not impact the writing flow would be:

\begin{proposition}[\cite[Proposition XX]{source}]

...

\end{proposition}

For proofs, you can just put a sentence outlining the extent of your contribution at the start, where it also does not break the flow.


Confusing article status for journals of American Mathematical Society: "reviewing" AND "being handled by an editor" The web page of my article in the AMS editorial system for some three months says "Article status: Reviewing" and in the next line "Your paper is being handled by an editor". I find this confusing as the "reviewing" status appears to suggest that the article is with the referee(s) rather than with the editor but this in turn seems to contradict the line "Your paper is being handled by an editor".

Could someone with enough experience with AMS journals please explain how should one interpret the combination of "Article status: Reviewing" and the line "Your paper is being handled by an editor" at the article page?
More broadly, which are the possible article statuses in the AMS editorial system?

Many thanks in advance.

You should note that the word "editor" is used in many ways for quite different things. Most people understand it to mean "someone who makes changes/edits to the text". But that isn't how it is necessarily used. While the publishing industry does, in fact, employ people who do that, working with an author to improve the text, it usually means someone with some management responsibility.

In the case of your paper, I suspect that a "managing editor" (a manager) has assigned your paper to a lower level "subject editor" (or some similar term) whose main responsibility is to track the progress of the paper through the system. He or she will find reviewers, track their progress, and collect reviews. When all reviews are in, that "editor" will make a recommendation to some higher level "editor" about whether to accept or not. If the overall decision is to accept, then your subject editor may assign someone to work with the author on improving the text - a traditional editor.

I used the term "subject editor", not because it is a term of use, but because it describes someone who actually knows a bit about the subject of the paper and which reviewers would be good for getting advice. This is most likely the "editor" that the system is referring to. It means, roughly, "we are handling it and progress is being made".

See the Scholarly Books... section of this wikipedia article for the typical usages. "Project editor" = "subject editor".


Lazy/Busy Professor does not give me my confirmation I have done a short summer research internship at a department of a famous University in Europe. Unfortunately, this was last summer and I reminded my professor several times now to give me some sort of written confirmation that I actually stayed at his department.(3 times per E-Mail and one time, when I left him). He always said that he will do it, but he always pointed out that he is very busy currently.

Do you think this sounds true? I mean, it has been half a year now and apparently there is not much to do about it instead of just waiting or is there? I also just asked for a few lines, not a confirmation letter of anything similar and I also told him that I would need this for my home university(Which was true)- but he did not really react upon that.

I do not want to pressure him by being more "rude" in my mails, this is not the way I deal with such situation, but I think his behaviour is very annoying and I want this piece of paper now.

How would you deal with that?

I would address this by contacting the professor's administrative assistant or secretary. Usually, such "form letters" do not need to be actively written by the professor in question—just signed by the professor. The assistant can prepare the letter, and get the faculty member's signature; in some cases, the assistant may even have a digital signature available, so the professor's direct involvement isn't even necessary.


What does a systematic review entail? In what way is it "tedious"? I spoke with a research professor who informed me that I may be able to work with him on a systematic review. However, he warned that it can be very tedious and frustrating so I should think about it. I understand that a systematic review involves looking through many papers, however, I would appreciate if someone could tell me, from their experience, how it is tedious. I would also have other classes in addition to this research so would be able to work on it for about 10 hours a week.

Tedious has a negative connotation. In many ways systematic review is meticulous, which to some people may appear tedious. One who enjoys reading, inspecting clues, and putting puzzles together to reveal hidden patterns would enjoy doing a systematic review.

The first hurdle is perhaps setting up the research question and search criteria. If the set of keywords is not close to perfect the resultant articles may not be exhaustive, and being exhaustive is a spirit of systematic review. In addition, all searches need to be documented through writing or using codes, so that the search can be replicated by other people.

The second hurdle is combing through moderate to large amounts of abstracts in order to identify the right targets. A set of carefully developed selection criteria will help. But a good handful of the retrieved abstracts may still fall into the gray zone and require some meetings to sort them out

Then it comes the actual reading and data extraction. This can take months and months of reading, re-reading, tabulation, and revision. Again, if the authors know what to extract very clearly, the process can get less iterative.

Notice that for the previous two hurdles, some research team may require two or more researchers to do them independently and then compare their results for agreement before divvying up the work. Be prepared for frequent team meetings or communications for troubleshooting.

The last hurdle is to put all the tabulated information into use, through grouping, sorting, summary, and synthesis. This requires a great deal of understanding from the reading process and one's experience. The process can often be iterative. Making a good conceptual framework will help setting up a more robust draft. Keeping the research questions in mind as the north pointer can also prevent getting lost.

And, all of the actions above need to be documented so that anyone can pick up the review and conduct a similar search (say, maybe 5 or 10 years later) in order to compare with what you found. In a way, systematic review can be viewed as an exhaustive, planned, and replicable literature review.

Now back to your case. If it's 10 hours a week for a semester, chance is you will not see the fruition of the article, but you can definitely take part. The important part is to get a very clear idea which part of the process you're taking. Article searching and downloading may work for more flexible schedule, even 10 hours on a day per week is fine as long as you keep good searching notes. But if it's the later stage, it's better to work on it by small amount, like 2 hours every day, as the later stage requires more consistent immersion and regurgitating.

And if I may make another suggestion, ask if the supervisor needs anyone to do a more general literature review for a grant proposal or a journal article. That should give you a smaller, more defined task and you can use this chance to see if you like this kind of work and, more importantly, if you and your supervisor work well together.


Can published papers outweigh average marks when applying to top institutions for MS? I haven't been paying much attention to my marks during my undergrad (4 year undergrad), they haven't been terrible, but they are decidedly average. However, it looks like I could publish an economics paper this year and my supervisor wants to publish another one with me next year (I am currently in my third year).

So could these publications help with getting into top institution, assuming my marks improve from here on out?

Your entry into a Master's program is based on your grades/GPA - these programs stipulate a minimum GPA (or specific grades for certain subject, as was my case). So, it is imperative on you to pay more attention to your grades and improve your overall standing so that you meet this requirement (the requirements can be found on the target institution website).

Published papers, particularly if they are in high-level journals certainly won't hurt, but can not take the place of the grade/GPA level required by the graduate school.

Think of it this way, your grades are a reflection of your ability to master and apply the necessary knowledge and skills required as a foundation, at least, for any graduate program - the expectation is that this evidence of your abilities are at a certain level. Journal articles do show some application of skills and knowledge, but not of all the topics covered in your undergraduate studies.


When does self-citation become citation padding? While reviewing an article recently, I noticed that a substantial fraction of the papers cited by the authors came from their own research work. While some amount of self-citation is appropriate (and usually necessary) to provide an indication of what one has done in a field, in this paper, it felt that the authors went further than that: equations were given four citations from the authors' works, rather than simply indicating the one or two that derived the original result, and so on. (Notably, all the self-citations were in methodology and results, rather than the introduction.)

My question is to ask if there are any publishers or journals that have established standards for what is considered unacceptable levels of self-citation? [Note that this is different from this question, which asks if self-citation is acceptable at all.

I think this is easier to think about if we drop the "self" qualification.

  When does citation become citation padding?

After all, people will also gratuitously cite colleagues ("I'll scratch your back so you'll hopefully also scratch mine") or likely reviewers. And I'd say that the criteria for self-citations should not be any different than for other-citation. Why should they?

That said, I stumbled over this part of the question:

  some amount of self-citation is appropriate (and usually necessary) to provide an indication of what one has done in a field

As José comments, this is incorrect. A citation is not there to show what someone (the author himself or someone else) has done in a field. It's there to give context to the new work, to show what has already been done and how the new work relates to prior art. The causal arrow goes from the work to the author, not the other way around.

(Of course, this is contingent on this question being about an article. In a grant application, you need to self-cite to establish that you know what you are talking about. And if you are writing an editorial to celebrate Professor X's fifty years in a field, you will of course cite his work to show what he has done over his career.)

So the question should be: does this citation provide relevant context to the new work? Who the cited authors are should ideally be immaterial. In your example, it would probably make sense to cite the original derivation of the results. And possibly other applications of such results that were similar to the new applications reported on in the present paper, similar enough to be helpful to the reader.

The problem is of course that "relevant" is subjective, field- and situation-dependent. One field may require a lot more context to make sense of a new piece of work than another one. A review article written in a general interest journal will need more background than a submission to a highly specialized journal whose readership can reasonably be assumed to already have a lot of background. And even then, one reviewer may prefer you to give more background, the other to focus on the closest related work.

And all of these factors apply equally well to self-citations and to other-citations. You will usually work in one direction across multiple publications, after all, and so your previous publications will often indeed be relevant for later ones... just as previous publications of people you collaborate with (because you collaborate with people with similar research interests) and of likely reviewers (because reviewers of course should have worked in this field - otherwise, why have them as reviewers?). So a somewhat higher proportion of self-citations, collaborator-citations and likely-reviewer-citations than of other-citations are to be expected, even without any conscious padding going on.

Reviewers and editors will need to make choices and draw lines to curb excesses, in line with the field's and the journal's conventions and expectations. In case of doubt, you can always ask the author to clarify the relationship of the reference to Foo & Bar (2015) to the present work, or to "consider removing the reference in the interest of brevity".


How can I write a thesis if my master's program does not offer it? I am thinking of one day doing a PhD in the area of counselling psychology in Canada, however my masters program does not have a thesis option and having done a thesis is a requirement it seems for almost all PhD programs. I would be willing to write one independently or do other research if it would be accepted?

While it wouldn't be, formally, a thesis, you can always write and publish your research. That would actually be preferable to a thesis that might get buried in university files.

But you probably need some guidance in going about it the first time. I'd suggest that you talk with a trusted faculty member to see if you can get advice and feedback if you want to do that.

But if a thesis-based degree is actually a hard requirement, you may need to study elsewhere, as you probably won't convince your university to change its policies.

However, your dilemma surprises me, assuming you are now studying in Canada and wish to stay there. I wonder if you have accurate information about the requirements for entry. If you do, I wonder why master's level place would be out of sync with what is required for doctoral education.

I would understand it better if you are studying outside Canada and want to later study there, but still wonder why they would have such rigid requirements.


Using a publicly available code and modifying it to my PhD thesis. Should it be cited in the paper if I have modified the core equation? I have proposed a new equation and will be implementing it into a publicly available code in the thesis. I have modified the core equation of the program (the main constitutive equation, "Johnson Cook Model"), while the numerical method (newton-raphson solver) is as implemented by the original author.
I would cite the original authors in my PhD thesis where I will explicitly talk about the functioning of the code. However, my journal paper would be only about the equation (as it is the highlight of the work) and the implementation is not the main focus. I will not talk about the implementation and just mention that the "equation was implemented using a VUMAT."
In that case, do I have to cite the original source in the paper when I would eventually submit to a journal?

If you borrowed something from another source and modified it, you should definitely cite the original source in your paper.


Is it possible to do two PhD's in the same field one after another? I am PhD student in an area of business in India. I am dissatisfied with the coursework and research guidance available at my university and feel that I won't be a very good PhD post completion of this PhD. That is why I am thinking of applying to business schools in the US and Europe after completion of my first PhD but I am worried if they would even consider my application or look at it unfavorably as I will already have a PhD.I want to apply in the same area I study in my first PhD. Any thoughts on this are welcome.

I think there is only a small chance of this happening. Educational resources are limited in general and people like to spread the opportunities. Many people reading your application might wonder if you are just wasting everyone's time, including your own.

Some universities will consider you, but others will immediately reject you.

A post-doc somewhere after your degree might be a better option if you think you have a chance of landing a good one. It gives you a chance to prove yourself and to build your CV.

Or, plan to switch universities prior to finishing. Either early or at some logical point. In the US a logical point would be after the required coursework or after an MS. Probably it would be different in India.


No response from potential PhD supervisor after Skype meeting Four weeks ago, I had a meeting over Skype with my potential PhD supervisor for an open PhD position in his group. He initially expressed interest in my work and asked me to arrange for two recommendation letters in order to know more about me and then later, we discussed about my current/past research works, my future plans and intricacies of his work for about 45 minutes over Skype. He had also specified that both of my letters were good and will discuss with his boss (his group leader) regarding my academic background and research experience. Finally he told that he had applied for a grant and will let me know once he gets to know about the outcome. Overall, the meeting went quite well. Since then, I haven't heard back from him. He also hasn't responded to a couple of my reminder emails. Should I be optimistic about this?

Call him or his assistant. Or drop by during his duty hours or after his lectures.

No, you shouldn't be optimistic, you should continue applying for other positions.


Should a reviewer trust promises made in the rebuttal? Many Computer Science conferences offer a rebuttal phase, and it often does not require the authors to upload an updated version. Instead, the authors clarify things and many also make promises. What are reviewers supposed to do with these promises? Should the reviewer trust it or ignore it? The promises may not be fulfilled at all eventually.

I thought about this a lot when I first started reviewing for conferences and discussed this with other people. I will give a sum up how I handle it as a result of these discussions but it seems to be a quite controversial question.

I choose to give the benefit of the doubt except there are explicit reasons not to. Rebuttal periods are normally one week and limited to 1 or 2 pages, there is only so much additional results that can be produced and included. Also, generally doubting the sincerity of all authors is not feasible on the long term. You might also doubt that the numbers they report are not true because you do not have the code to check it.

Although it was not really the question, the second part is about how to avoid only getting promises:

Precisly state in the review which of your concerns are crucial for acceptance. I often see reviewers who do not make it clear what their priority for the rebuttal is and then the rebuttal is full of replies to minor comments. (For example, stating all the parameters used for training is useful in the paper but not useful in the rebuttal.)
Phrase your actual concerns instead of saying which additional experiments/comparisons would ease them. (The difference between "Please compare to initializing with this baseline" (easily promised) and "I do not see why this complicated strategy should be better than this simple baseline") In my experience, this leads to more interesting answers.


How to find out where a College's Graduates are now? I am looking at graduate schools and one of the things I would like to know about the schools I'm looking at is where recent graduates are now. I realize that contacting the colleges individually would certainly work. However, there are a lot of colleges out there, and it is untenable to ask them all individually. Is there a place where this kind of thing is available online?

If your looking at PhD's who presumably wanted to go on to academic careers, and if you can get a list of the graduates from a particular year, then you can generally track those people down by searching for them using Google.  Most people who've remained in academia have at least some presence on the web.  Folks who go to work in industry often become invisible.

The hard part is getting a list of graduates from a particular year.  This can sometimes be done using commencement programs.  I have done this using the mathematics genealogy project at:

[http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/][1]

Despite the name, this database has records for computer science, mathematics, and statistics graduates from many institutions.  You can search by institution name and year of PhD (e.g. I'm Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1992.)


What positions in industry should I apply for after a phd and postdoc in software engineering? This could also be not the most appropriate place where to post, but I'll try anyway.

Some background info: I am about to finish a 2-years postdoc in software engineering, and I am evaluating a number of options, including moving to industry. I graduated at 22 (bachelors), 24 (masters), 27 (phd), and now I am 29. In summary, I have a quite strong academic record (top grades from respectable universities, ~20 publications in acknowledged conferences and journals), but never had a position in industry. However, the type of research I conducted in my phd and postdoc has been in close collaboration with industrial partners on concrete software engineering challenges, so I'd say I have way more than just an idea on how the software process works in industry. Over the years, I also had the opportunity to grapple with management-like tasks in research: write reports/proposals (including some form budgeting), coordinate the delivering process of (guess what?) deliverables, co-supervise and advise students, peer-review.

As for what I would like to do, I see myself as performing best working as a software process improver. Given my background, this means design solutions for (ideally) smarter testing, reducing effort in the maintenance of software products. Of course I can also implement these solutions and know-how in a kind of "internal" tools (when needed), but the biggest contribution I would give is an answer to "what should we do to reduce costs in testing", rather than implementing some code that does it. I envision that I can relatively easily do so in other phases in the software lifecycle (for sure requirements/change management, where I also have a kind of background, maybe a bit less analysis and design).

I am a bit unsure on what kind of positions I should look for with my background. On one hand, I never ever have been keen on programming/developing/coding. Of course I am perfectly able to do this, but I have to admit I choose to study for 10 years to develop critical thinking skills and high-level principles, rather than focusing on the flavor-of-the-year technology.

On the other hand, most job postings for things different than "write code" (in any of its sugar-coated variations such as "work under the hood", "get the job done and not just talk about it", "be a doer", "power-drive through technology", etc) are so cryptic that the few ones you actually understand are those for which you know you are not relevant. Expert in TV decoders firmware and signals? Good! I am not your guy.

On the third tentacle, "higher level" (senior or not entry-level) job postings require 3/5+ years of experience in "insert something non-academic related here". Well, I have 3/5+ years of experience with "working in collaboration with industry", which can be easily extended to include whatever buzzwords are fashionable this days: DevOps? Sure, everybody is agile today. IT Operations? Well, I didn't do research locked in a basement. Service delivery? Everything is a service, and yes, I delivered quite a bit of things. People management and decision-making skills? Of course, the experience in research I had was that for some tasks you are the principal investigator and direct others on directions to explore, gather results, and decide where to progress. You might not be the boss behind the desk barking orders at his minions, but you have to take the lead in research. I am just not sure whether all of this counts, or better, can be stated in such a form on a resume to be relevant.

Some enlightenment? Be cruel and evil, don't be afraid to say that I should "just" look at entry-level positions as if I was fresh graduate :)

We don't know if you will get one of the jobs that requires 3-5 years experience.  But there's no reason not to try.

As you're reading job descriptions, avoid the ones that clearly involving sitting and coding for eight hours a day -- because you say that's not your strong suit.

When you apply for a job you think you would be good at, you must tailor your CV, your cover letter, and your interview to the specific job.  Piece together the work you've done to make a jigsaw puzzle picture that resembles, to a reasonable extent, the picture they have in mind.  This does require some chutzpah.  That's okay.  The job hunt process is not the place for humility.

In other words, you will argue that you have 3-5 years' relevant experience (in some sort of equivalent form).

If that doesn't get anywhere -- then you can go back to the drawing board.

(By the way, you might want to get involved with a headhunter.  I myself can't advise for or against going that route.)


publishing on arxiv a journal paper that is under revision I submitted a paper to an ACM journal, and it's under revision.

Can I publish it in arxiv in meanwhile? because the revision process will take time.

The ACM's open access policy can be found here:
https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess

As you can read, in principle, you have the right to "self-archive" you manuscript on the ArXiv. However, do check with the journal in question. (I can for example, imagine issues occuring when there is a double blind peer review.)