How to communicate with the co-authors regarding the work (paper) I am working on a project, where I am the author of the idea. Also, I found the data (open-source) that can work well with the idea of the paper.

I invited one of my colleagues to work with me on this project. We have agreed that I will be the first author.

As this is the first time for me to work on a paper, I really do not understand the role of communication with the co-author. So, can I share with the co-author the analysis of the data (before writing the paper? In other words, can I show the co-author my works and software codes? or I must write the paper (my role) and then they can look at it. I ask this question for two reasons:

To understand my roles and duties.
To avoid bothering my colleague with my work.

Can someone help me with this point, please?

Co-authors should be involved in every step of the scientific progress. Some might be more involved in some steps than others, due to differences in expertise or involvement, but generally:

you should meet and discuss ideas and plans
you should meet and discuss results/interpretations
you should both contribute to writing

"meet and discuss" can be via email or in person, or a combination of both. These can be scheduled meetings or meetings at the coffee machine. Discussions can be more or less deep, depending on your needs and expertise (e.g. whether you need to share code or not is a specific question for your case, hard to answer in general - however, do ask for their input in case you want to). Writing usually loads heavily on one person (probably you), with the other(s) giving comments and feedback at major milestones.

You should definitely share and discuss progress before writing the paper, and before having written the paper. If you collaborator (as it seems) is not your supervisor, it is probably going to be your role to keep the project running. At the same time, if this person is not your supervisor, or you are already a bit more senior, you might not want to share every minor step of your work. Even if you can work quite independently, it could be good to give a status report every few weeks to keep them informed of the progress, and keep them on board. And, most importantly, to give them an opportunity to contribute.


Are there any good job directories for academic work? I'm currently looking for a PhD position and have started to realize that a lot of my time goes into sporadeously surfing the web in hope of finding an open position. Are there good job directories for academic work that lists available positions?

It would depend on what your field of work is. But heres a nifty little list that I keep an eye on (I am looking for a postdoctoral position in academia / research and these websites are quite helpful to me)

www.phds.org
www.postdocjobs.com
http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/
http://www.aps.org/careers/
http://www.academickeys.com

There are a few websites suggested in the answers below/above my response to this question and they are quite nice too!

Besides that you probably have a general idea as to what you'd want to work as / work for. You could perhaps target a bunch of universities and faculty members for prospective positions?

Good luck!


Including incomplete or complete BS after MS in résumé I have just got a MS in Math and I'm about to start a PhD program also in Math. The problem is that before starting the Math program I dropped out of a combined BS+MS program in Computer Science after ~3 years. I'm not sure about how, or even if, I should include that info in my résumé.

I'm considering some possibilities and I'd appreciate it if you could give me some advice on them.

Include that incomplete BS+MS program in Computer Science in my
résumé.

Pro: show part of my undergrad academic background. Con: being percieved
as a dropout.
Stop including that incomplete BS+MS program in Computer Science in
my résumé.

Pro: not being percieved as a dropout. Con: not showing a part of my
academic background.
I need only four credits to finish the BS part of the Computer
Science program. It will demand me only a light additional workload to get
them in two or three semesters while working on my PhD. I could finish
the BS part of the Computer Science program and start mentioning it in my résumé only after having completed it.

Pro: I'll be showing a BS diploma in a related field. Con: the
graduating date for the BS in Computer Science will be after getting
the MS in Math, so that could be seen as a lack of direction in my
career.

I think that this question is not a duplicate of this one because I'm considering also the possibility of actually finishing the incomplete BS program and how it compares to inlcuding or not information about it if I don't get the diploma.

EDIT for clarification

I already have a BS and a MS in Math and I've been admitted for a Math PhD. I want to know how I should expect to be judgen when applying for a future postdoc or applied math job if I happen to add a Computer Science BS diploma in between the Math MS and the Math PhD.

The intuitive answer to me would be that, if after finishing my PhD I'm able to prove that I've work hard, adding in that BS in the résumé should not harm. But I'm also considering the possibility of being judged as lacking direction in my career.

I think the most important question is what are you using this resume for? You say you're "about to start on a PhD program also in Math" -- does that mean you already got accepted? Are you looking to get summer jobs?

My main concern is if you have a PhD degree, a Masters degree, and another Bachelors degree, you won't have enough space to list other degrees (especially if you want to list relevant coursework). You'll hopefully get teaching experience, work experience, and leadership skills to fill out the rest of your resume.

If you don't have another Bachelors degree, what did you list when you were applying to the Masters? I would just follow whatever you did there. It might seem odd that you have a Masters but no Bachelors degree.


Can I tactfully change my mind after agreeing to do an independent study with a professor? I recently asked two professors by email if I could do an independent study with them. Both of them responded, saying that they can sponsor me for the study. As soon as I received the first professor's response, I replied, saying that I wanted to work with him and scheduling a face-to-face meeting.

Now that both professors have responded, though, I think I would enjoy working with the second professor more. Would it be appropriate for me to tell the first professor that I changed my mind, or would it be wrong to take back the commitment I already gave him? If it would be appropriate to change my mind, how can I handle the situation tactfully?

Although I would prefer to work with the second professor, I know that I would enjoy working with either of them, so I'll be fine if it's too late to change my mind.

Edit: Here is some more information about my specific situation.

I am planning on doing the same project with either professor. I am currently writing the music for a video game, and I would be working with the professors to produce the music and create a graded portfolio. I haven't worked out any specific details with either professor.

Both professors are music professors who have specific knowledge about music technology. The reason I would prefer working with the second professor is because I know he has expert knowledge of the software I'm using to produce the music. In addition, he is skilled with the genres of music I'm producing as well as writing film scores. I'm not sure how much the first professor knows about these specific topics.

Do you have a project already lined up ? it sounds like your meeting with the first professor would be to discuss topics for the study. In any case, if no financial agreement has been reached, I see no harm in talking with both professors and then making a decision based on what happens in those meetings. I disagree with @aeismail that you've given a formal commitment at this stage.

You didn't say though why you'd prefer to work with the second professor prior to having a meeting ? is it the subject matter ? general rapport ?


Supervisor announced he's going to present my work without asking permission, how can I get credited without damaging my career? Short:
My master thesis supervisor want to present my findings at a conference. He did not ask me for permission, just informed me he will do so, how should I react?

Long:
My supervisor early on said there might be an opening for continued work and maybe a phd if everything went smoothly. Half way through he revealed that this opportunity was no longer a option with the reason given being money, not my work. Around the same time I found a sidetrack and with his blessing followed that instead of the topic he originally proposed, which ended up with some interesting findings indeed. He has given general advice once every two weeks on this side-track but the findings of interest were made by me alone.

Now my master thesis is officially done and he e-mailed me that he want a meeting to talk about my report (that decides my grade), and (among other things) writes that he will present the findings from my work at a conference a few months away. This was written as a fact, and part of a longer paragraph.

I don't know how to react. If this is normal behavior in academia I don't want to seem unprofessional (or ruin my grade and chances to use him as a reference) by questioning this, but on other hand I want to get credited for my work.

2-year edit: Got a notification that this question got a thousand views so decided to write a few words as a follow up.

My initial worried reaction to getting information about the grading and the conference in the same email was just stress and lack of experience getting the best of me. Nothing bad, such as not getting credit for my work, followed from this and I am actually a bit embarrassed that I was worried it might at the time.

You should initially react positively.  It is part of a supervisor's job to promote the student's work.  Possibly this is what the supervisor is trying to do, but the supervisor failed to explain what is going on.


How to check citations and references match in a manually prepared document with APA author (year) citations? I like to use bibliographic software (e.g., Endnote, BibTex, etc.) to manage my references. However, sometimes I am working on an existing article that has been written with APA citations and references written manually. For example, I might be working with a collaborator who has written the first draft or I'm adapting a student thesis for journal publication. As a result, citations get added and deleted, and there are reference errors: (1) citations present with no reference;  reference needs to be added (2) references present with not citation;  reference needs to be deleted.

So, a common task when such documents are being finalised is to go through the document and pull out all the citations and check them against the reference list and fix any errors. This is generally a frustrating task, because (1) unless you are careful errors can be made, and (2) if the document is edited further, the document may need to be rechecked.

Question

What is an efficient strategy for identifying citations without references and references without citations in a  document with author (year) style citations (e.g., APA, Harvard)?
Are there any automated tools that perform this checking?

In the "old days" this was what had to be done manually. I simply printed the reference list (one-sided print) and went through the text and checked the references I passed in the text and checked the corresponding one in the reference list. This would take maybe 20-30 minutes(?). It is clear that this is easier to do on paper than on screen but it is a very safe way to do the checking. In the end you will (hopefully not) end up with references missing ticks in either the text or the list.

So considering, the time it takes, doing the manual check on paper copies, is perhaps boring but not a terrible loss. Sometimes you pick up on other errors as well. Although one should not rely on external help to solve ones own problems, many journals use copy-editors that check for inconsistencies so there may be a back-up for the stray miss.

As for software, I cannot point at one directly. It would have to be able to match first author name and the year between text and the reference list. I does not sound like an impossible task but I would probably just do the job the manual way in the few cases where this is necessary. You can also ask your collaborator to do a separate initial check (as "punishment" for not using bibliographic software). In addition, if you author in LaTeX then writing the bibliography directly with \bibitem and using \cite (or natbib cite commands) commands will at least do half the job.


Why do Americans care so much about recommendation letters? In Europe, we judge students based on their work and abilities. How are their grades? Do they have relevant work experience (TA/RA, maybe part-time industry work, etc)? What projects have they done? What courses have they taken? And of course the odd recommendation letter is always a nice bonus.

We expect students to write up a summary of all these things (it's called a resumé) upon which they are to be judged, and further detailed inquiry can then be made during a possible interview process.

However, as I understand it, it seems to be quite different in the USA. Reference letters is all that matters. Be a mediocre student, but have a good friendship with Professor Abstract Algebra? You're as good as made. Be a fantastic student, but be a bit shy or having done most of your work independently of the professors? Tough luck.

I am particularly bemused by so many of the questions on this very site where professors come to talk about awkward situations where they are being forced to write a recommendation letter for some student that they don't even know. Who the heck is Robert James? I lecture to hundreds of students, for Christ's sake!

Or when you in turn get students here asking for questions about how to approach a professor they've spoken very little to all year and ask them to write a recommendation letter.

And yes, I get it. One day, one time, you'll get a fantastic reference letter from a professor who actually knows and has worked with a particular student, and that reference letter will give you a better understanding of the capabilities and experiences of this student. I get that. But that's only part of the whole process here in Europe: That's the bonus I mentioned in my first paragraph, but we don't make it our everything. We realize that some people might get luckier with recommendation letters than others.

So why do Americans put so much weight on  recommendation letters?

I think Bryan's answer gives a nice perspective on the issue. A perfect system does not exist, and different continents have developed different (imperfect) ways of dealing with the fundamental recruiting problem that it is hard to judge whether a specific student (or employee) will perform or not.

What I want to add is that, if you peek behind the covers, the European and American systems don't actually differ all that much. You assert that in Europe "your CV is all that counts". That is, unfortunately, quite naive. The CV of your average student is simply not expressive enough to be "all that counts" - good grades are at best a weak indicator of research potential, and (despite your counterexample from France), also in many places in Europe many students have very good grades, to the extent of being low-value as a discriminator in hiring. Grades also do little to measure the soft factors such as motivation or being a good team player, which ultimately matter more than whether a student had an A or a B for some largely unrelated undergrad course.

How professors in Europe largely have dealt with this uncertainty is by personally asking the professors that the student worked with before what their impression of the student was - so you still have your "recommendations", but not through written letters but through informal email or telephone exchanges. This was possible because traditionally, students in (at least central) Europe were not particularly mobile - most prospective PhD students did their undergrad in the same university, a close-by university, or a different university where the professors are already in close contact. Applicants from other places were often rejected outright. Now times are (slowly) changing and more and more PhD students come from abroad - and, lo and behold, suddenly formal recommendation letters are becoming important as well.

Another aspect that I am missing in your question that at least central and southern Europe has historically had a problem with rampant nepotism in academia. So I find it particularly curious that you draw Europe as a haven of objective hiring strategies.


Reviewers had differing opinion on my manuscript I sent a manuscript for publication last month and I just got it back with major revision. There were two reviewers who peer-reviewed the manuscript and both seem to have different opinions regarding the content. One reviewer asked me to omit a graph as he/she deemed it to be useless and didn't add to study narrative while another one commented on improving the graph. They also have different views on sample size of my experiment. One of them though our sample size was small while another one agreed on sample size with only improvement on statistical analysis conducted. They also had divided views on study design. One of them thought our study design was flawed and we should go back to the lab to perform additional tests while another reviewer thought our study design was okay with only missing statistical analysis.

How should I approach this?

If the editor said which reviewer to follow, obviously do that. If the editor didn't say anything, then my experience is that he or she just wants to see what you think. For example if you think it's better to improve the graph than to remove it, improve it, and then write your reasons for doing so and / or a rebuttal to the first reviewer in the response to reviewers.


Do I need to translate Works Cited at the end? I am translating an academic paper to English. However, most of the sources cited at the end, are in other languages (e.g. Russian). Do I need to translate the list of references into English as well?

You need to keep the reference in the original language, so that people can find it if they want to look for it. However, it's also useful for the readers to have the titles translated into English, so they can understand what they mean. Many journals specify exactly how you should cite foreign-language references this in their style guides, and many do say that you should include both translated and original titles.

To take an extreme example, Google translates the book title

  Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays

into German as

  Gewinnmöglichkeiten für Ihre mathematischen Spiele

(which, with my limited knowledge of German, I think is a reasonably good translation). Looking these words up in the dictionary might then produce the literal translation back into English of

  Profit Opportunities for your Math Games,

from which it would be moderately hard to identify the correct source.

Another answer suggests (especially if it your own article you're translating) replacing foreign-language sources with equivalent English ones. I think this is intellectually dishonest, as a source that's cited in the original should also be cited in the translation. However, I don't see anything wrong with adding equivalent English sources, along with a note that they were added in translation. (There isn't any requirement that you do this, of course, but it would be of help to the reader.)


Peer-Review dispatch by Professor In our institute the professor dispatches papers to certain employees(research fellows/assistants who are graduates or have a PhD degree) for peer reviewing. The professor takes responsibility for the reviews, still I wonder if this is the way the review process is meant to be.

Without making it known to the journal that he is not actually writing the review it is (usually, as far as I know) not supposed to be like this.

Here is one example, a quote from the PLOS One reviewer's guidelines:

  Confidentiality

  Reviewers are required to treat all submitted manuscripts in strict
  confidence and should not share information about submissions with any
  other parties unless previously agreed with the editor. The
  involvement of a third party in the review must be declared at the
  time of the submission of the review.

If you ask the editor before you are sharing the publication with someone else, it can be okay. I have been "co-reviewing" with someone else (not my supervisor at that time), which was known to the editor and our names were both attached to the review.


Just how important is university prestige when completing PhD? I'm highly considering attending smaller, lesser known private university to pursue a PhD in cognitive psychology. The university gives full funding, I really mesh the with the professor I'd be working with, and the area is beautiful. The advisor I'd be working with came highly recommended to me by a professor I work with at my current university.

Compared to a lot of the other universities I've visited, the program is much smaller - with about 20 graduate students in total in the whole psychology department. This greatly appeals to me, as I just came from a tier 1 research university with over 60,000 students, and I've been really wanting a more close knit atmosphere.

Ultimately, I think I want to pursue academia, although I'm open to the possibility of industry. My concern is that while the university itself is touted as a "hidden ivy", it's not well renown for its psychology department. The university is not a tier 1 research facility, and the department isn't highly ranked. I'm worried I'm shooting myself in the foot in terms of job prospects later on. How important is the prestige of the program in the grand scheme of things?

I guess that if you want to teach at Princeton (or Oxford) then go to a place just like Princeton (or Oxford). Otherwise, I think that what you do and the work you complete will have a much bigger impact on your future than the prestige of your institution, which may be overrated. There are a number of R1/Ivy graduates in the news that I consider to have the intelligence of rocks.

Having an advisor with lots of ideas, wherever they are, is a big advantage. Being able to work closely with your advisor is a big advantage in doing good work, provided the advisor does good work.

And, your future may be determined as much by economic conditions as anything. You get no guarantees. In fact, even if you go to Princeton, expecting to teach there later, there is no guarantee that any suitable job will be available there (or at a similar place) at the time you need it.

Choose your institution on a more sophisticated set of criteria than it's perceived reputation.

I went to a big place with a lot of faculty and grad students. But the number of people doing anything that I was seriously interested in was very small. Three or four faculty and half a dozen students.

Actually, I should note that many universities (not all) have a policy of not hiring their own graduates. This is to make it more possible to bring in new ideas from the outside, as well as spread their own reputation more widely. Some will make exceptions, but only for the most exceptional candidate. As an aside, I recommended that my own BS and MS students go elsewhere for their next degree, just to be able to bump up against fresh ways of thinking.


University I rejected is asking which other one I chose over them; should I tell? I got PhD admission offers from 2 Universities (say A and B) and yesterday decided to accept one of them (University A).
Today I decided to  let University B know that I would not be able to join them. After they acknowledged my refusal to join, they asked for the name of University A since they keep track of the same for statistical purposes.

Is there any harm in letting them know? Or is it better to keep it private?

Edit

I guess I was fretting over nothing. I sent B a brief reply saying that I was going to accept the offer from A (I've already signed documents with A so I'm reasonably confident they won't leave me in the lurch). B replied wishing me the best of luck at A.

Thanks for the comments! I wasn't sure this was a common thing to ask for universities.

I can't think of any harm in telling them, and in the medium term, this isn't a secret, because it will certainly be clear by the fall where you've gone since your name will probably be put on the department website.  If you're uncomfortable, it's certainly fine to wait a bit until you've finalized things at the school you accepted; you don't even need to tell them you're doing that---just wait a bit before replying to the request.

It may help to know that it's standard for schools to want to know where students who reject them are going, so there's nothing unusual or suspicion raising about the question.  It's useful information because it helps them assess their program and admissions practices.


Research adviser is trying to give my thesis to another student. What to do? Going to sound dramatic, but something just isn't right about my research adviser who is trying to give my research to another student.  I don't know the student at all, but they are attempting to force me into a "partnership" with them.  The student has zero research accomplishments in my research area, but I've been told to tack them onto my research and share a years worth of findings with them.  Yes, really.  What would you do? Have you even heard of something like this before?

What would I do?

Mentor the guy, get him involved in my project, train him up. If you're as experienced as you claim, and he's as inexperienced as you think, you've got nothing to worry about except the time investment it will take to get him up to speed.

Have I heard of something like this before?

Yes, it's absolutely normal. Your research advisor is paying you a compliment -- she obviously thinks you're ready to mentor someone more junior. As someone who supervises more than one person, she's probably also planning for the future -- when you leave ultimately, someone will need to understand your work so that others in the group can build on it (this is a plus for you, in that you'll hopefully get citations).

There's absolutely no mileage in being melodramatic or defensive about your work. If someone were trying to take credit for stuff you'd done, that would be one thing (and there are ways of dealing with that), but in this case it's nothing of the kind -- you've been asked to mentor a more junior student, and the right way of looking at it is as an opportunity.


Citations from the title of an article I want to cite the words “cascade of disparities” which actually comes from the title of an article.  Under the APA style, do I need to include a page number since the words are in the actual title (and used throughout the article)?

A short, repeatedly used piece of terminology like this does not need to be localized to a particular point.  Attempting to pin down a particular page number doesn't make sense, because what you're really referencing is the concept as developed in the article, rather than some particular sentence.

I would thus say that you should treat it as a scientific citation rather than a quotation: cite the article as a whole as the context, and do not attempt to give a page number like you would for a quote.


Preparing a curriculum vitae for an undergraduate internship I am currently a scholarship student in my sophomore year in a double major programme in theoretical physics and pure mathematics. I wish to apply for an internship, for which they have asked me for my CV. I checked traditional CVs and I couldn't find anything that is relevant to my current situation. What should I put in my CV and what must I ignore?
The following is the skill set that I have in my arsenal. The internship is for a physics research topic so what must I include?

Skills  (academic) :

Physics (The courses that I have taken with my grades on them)
Math (The courses that I have taken with my grades on them)
Random courses in the branches of languages and arts
Currently involved in a theoretical research project in physics, but haven't really achieved anything in it as yet as I was headed tangentially in the topic
High school results (top 1% of the cohort)

Skills (miscellaneous):

hyperpolyglot
artist (professional impressionist and surrealist)
writer and poet (free verse)
active quizzer and debater
football striker (out of context, but you never know ;) )
swimmer
sculptor

Interests:

Philosophy
Psychology
Theology
Occult Sciences
Art and art history
Reading (I would read anything with words on it)
Literature
Languages

And a couple of other things here and there. Also, is there any particular formatting that I should adhere to?

I mailed the professor I wished to work with and he replied as follows:
Send me a CV and information on your coursework and results

So what must I put in and what must I deduct? Thanks in advance :)

It looks like your list here is pretty comprehensive. I would focus less on the "interests" and more on the relevant skills and experience. interests are nice as a snapshot on your personality, but I wouldn't sweat it if the section is a bit barren or void of "in depth" content here.

From my understanding, a CV is nothing more than an expanded resume. If you have an existing resume, take a few moments to expand a bit on your roles and accomplishments beyond simple bullet points.


Could a "phantom" citation in WoS be a problem? I have recently noticed that for one of my papers Web of Science shows that it is cited in a paper from totally unrelated area. This looked strange, so I checked the paper and found out that it does not cite my paper. (One of my coauthors has the same initials and surname as author of some papers cited there, so the problem might have be caused simply by automated script.)

I have contacted them using the form on their website, explained the mistake and asked them to remove the incorrect citation. The reply was along the lines: "Thanks for contacting us. Cited references have been reviewed. Requested cited reference already available in WOS." This reaction suggests that they thought that I am requesting adding a citation rather than removing it. I am not sure whether I should waste my time in trying to contact them with the same issue again.

  Are there some reasons why having some superfluous citation in WoS or similar database could cause problems for me?

When I think of any situations where numbers of citations of my papers would be needed for some kind of evaluation, the list of citations would be very probably prepared by me and not drawn directly from some indexing service. So I can simply omit the incorrect citations indexed in WoS. And even if there were some situations where somebody uses WoS as a way to evaluate my work, being cited in one paper does not influence the total result too much.

I believe that you have answered yourself in your question:

  And even if there were some situations where somebody uses WoS as a way to evaluate my work, being cited in one paper does not influence the total result too much.

Nobody expects databases to be perfect.  You are expected to do a reasonable job of self-curation, such that you are not, say, doubling your citation count by adding in many papers by other people.  Small percentage errors, however, will change nothing significant in any evaluation of you and your work.


What to do with repeated rejections for PhD position Background:

I have been applying for a PhD in the last three years to more than 150 positions, very much specific to my skills and background. I only applied when I found positions' requirements matching my skills and experience.

I got the same response for all those positions. I almost gave up and went offline. After few months, I noticed a couple of emails from a professor, who liked my profile very much and was very interested in contacting me. I responded and got interviewed. However, he didn't find me suitable for position and advertised again for the very same position.

After a couple of months I applied to another project/position of the same Research Centre, thinking I may have chance in this group, but as usual they rejected but they said I came second.

After a couple of months, they said they are advertising again and I should apply since I was in top three. However, as usual, they got better candidate this time as well.

In a nutshell, I have been rejected for more than 150 positions and only one group who found me very suitable candidate rejected three times. While I cannot describe how I am feeling I also don't know whether to take it as positive that they interviewed me three times or that even they didn't find me suitable for something which I was very much capable of.

My question Is if it's all normal, or should I give up on looking for PhD positions.

With every day I am not getting any younger and my chances are decreasing. It has been around 3.5 years since I have done my master's. With every rejection, I have been trying to rectify errors and mistakes and improvements but all in vain so far.

Thanks in advance.

You say you have been rejected a lot, but give no indication whatever of why that is. It isn't random, I suspect. I can suggest two possible scenarios and from them you can, perhaps, devise a strategy.

The first situation is that you are just applying to places that are so off the scale that no one is actually likely to be admitted. The top institutions normally have tremendous competition for slots and some of them have very few slots available. Dartmouth, in CS, for example is a great institution, but its doctoral program is very small. If they get hundreds of applications for any available position, then the likelihood of any particular person gaining admission is pretty miniscule. So perhaps you are just aiming too high. Since you have come close a few times, perhaps not impossibly high, but there are probably other options.

The second is that you are deficient in some way and need to improve either your technical or personal skills or both. That isn't criticism, since I don't know anything about you, but perceived issues are probably apparent to people once you get into the application process. Arrogant people don't find easy acceptance, to name just one personal "flaw" that some folks exhibit. At the other end of the scale, people who project extreme introversion often come off as less able than they are.

As for the technical side, you can work on that without formally being in a program. You can study and write in your field, for example. If you have the time and can expend the effort to do it effectively, you will improve the skills that others may feel you lack.

But, it is important, I think, that you also find a way to learn at least a bit about why you haven't made the cut. Perhaps someone you have corresponded with in the past can point you in the direction you need to go. Feedback can be valuable, not just about your final position in the ranking, but why you weren't higher. Find a way to ask.


I regret declining a PhD offer and accepting another PhD offer. What should I do? I got offers from school A and B, both of the schools are in the States. I made my decision in mid-April and deferred my offer for one-year master program in the UK. I turned down PhD offer from school A and accepted another offer from school B. But I feel very regretful now.

I know this is not ethically correct but I don't want to feel regretful for the rest of my life.
Should I ask school A to accept me one more time or reapply? Applying to other schools will violate the deferring rules of School B, but I hope it would not be a big issue if I have valid reasons.
Could I get any advice about this situation?

I feel very regretful now.  ... Should I ask school A to accept me one more time or reapply?

If you prefer School A to School B, then I doubt anyone will begrudge you a new application to School A.  Since you have taken a deferred entry at School B, the inconvenience to them of having you leave is less than if you had started your program.  If you decide to re-apply to School A then you will need to decide whether you want to quit School B first, or hold on to it as a fall-back.  In the latter case, you will also need to decide if you will disclose your new application to School B.

I can't speak for others, but if I were your proposed supervisor, and you had not started your candidature yet, I would have no problem with you coming to see me and telling me that you want to apply to another school.  Even if you wanted to do this, but keep your existing deferment as a fall-back, that would be fine with me.  (We deal with ranked preferences all the time in student admissions, job applicants, etc.)  I would appreciate you being up-front about this, and talking to me about it.  It is an inconvenience to lose a student that has been admitted, but it is not a big inconvenience, and it is far preferable to having a student trying to grind through an arduous PhD program in a school where they are not happy even before they start!

Now, having said this, obviously that puts you on the radar as someone who might not enjoy it here if you end up in the fall-back position of attending School B.  If worst comes to worst, and you are rejected by School A, after disclosing your application to School B, you might have to have a talk with them about whether you still want to be there.  Nevertheless, you can cross that bridge if and when you come to it.

  Applying to other schools might violate the deferring rules of School B.

It "might".  But here's a pro tip --- PhD students are expected to be able to find documents and read them, so exercise those skills to go ahead and read the rules and see if this does violate the rules.  (I doubt it would; there would almost certainly be legal issues relating to restraint-of-trade if a university had rules preventing you from applying elsewhere.)


Submit a comment or reply to own research paper? I would like to know if it is possible to write and submit a comment/reply to an article that has been published earlier (by oneself). This is because there are new results that underline the findings and conclusions of the previous article that havent been published yet and are not enough material for a seperate publication.
Would this be appropriate or are comments from the same authors not wished for by the editors of the journal?

Don't write a comment on your earlier paper. Write a short article and post it on a pre-print server, or submit it to an open-access journal, depending on your field.


Is it fair to organize conferences in beautiful tourist places? Sometimes I receive some emails to attend scientific conferences organized in beautiful tourist places.

For example, recently I got a message for a conference in the wonderful Italian Cinque Terre, that was promoting both the conference scientific relevance and the beauty of the city locations.
Or, another time, I received a message that invited me to attend a conference in the marvelous mountains of Bardonecchia next winter. In this case, the mail said that organizers would provide a ski pass for skiing activities for any participant.

These kind of conferences leaves me quite doubtful.

The aim of the organizers is obvious: to sum up the beauty of the places to the scientific importance of the conference, to convince more people to attend.
But is it fair?

I'm wondering: is it right to organize conferences in wonderful places, to make people coming more for the beauty of the places than for the scientific relevance of the event?

Should not a conference be attended just and only for the scientific relevance?

Does it have to be necessarily a partial vacation for attendees?

Fairness is not a point at all in the organisation of conferences. The goals of the organisers of an event (scientific or not) is to have as much incentive as possible for people to come.
Indeed, most of the time, the organisation part has to be done before knowing the exact number of attendees, and the organisers still need to cover the expenses in terms of room rental, catering, etc. There are many ways to attract researchers for a conference:

Organise a high quality conference, where the scientific interest alone make it worth to come.
Select a "paradise" location, such that the attendees can just show up for their session, and then relax on the beach or on the ski slopes.
Select an "interesting" location, where people wouldn't go normally in vacation, but that could be a good opportunity.
Select a quiet place, with few distractions, allowing the attendees to focus as much as possible on work. The Dagstuhl seminars are quite famous for that.
Select a conveniently located place, such that it will be easy (and cheap) for many attendees to come.
Select a "cheap" place, for instance by organising during summer in a university, where you get the rooms for free, and where housing can be cheap. It can be a nice way to attract many students.

Clearly, in general, it's a mix of those, and you can't maximise all of them. And then, as aeismail said, it's a matter of whether you can get funding to attend the conference. But the question of whether is fair or not is not really relevant.

EDIT: I have rephrased the answer following David's comment. Clearly, an important point is that there is always a targeted audience for any event. If you want to organise a conference on an extremely specific topic, maybe there are only 20 researchers who could be interested. The job of the organisers is therefore to find the best way to attract as many as possible from these 20. I also want to make the difference between the reason behind organising an event, e.g., advance science, create collaboration, make money (for some scam conf) and the goals to reach in terms of organisation.


What should be included in a disclaimer about the omission of gender-neutral language in a bachelor's thesis? I'm working on my bachelor's thesis to get my bachelor's degree at a German university. I am not sure about the situation in other countries, but German universities are very sensitive when it comes to gender-neutral language. Some professors mark it as a mistake if you use gender-specific terms instead of gender-neutral ones. For example, instead of Studenten (students) you are expected to write Studentinnen und Studenten (i.e. naming both female and male students specifically) or Studierende (the participle form of studieren (studying)).

While I don't want to be sexist, most variants of gender-neutral language in German are (in my opinion) verbose, disturb the text flow and make the text harder to read. This is why I want to put a disclaimer in the introduction of my thesis stating that I will not use gender-neutral language for the reasons mentioned above.

Here's what I want to put in that disclaimer:

Throughout the thesis, gender-specific terms may be used in order to ease the text flow.
Whenever a gender-specific term is used, it should be understood as referring to both genders, unless explicitly stated.
This is done solely for the purpose of making the text easier to read, and no offense or sexism is intended.

Is such a disclaimer generally acceptable in a bachelor's thesis (or any scientific text)? If so, are the three points stated above both adequate and thorough to state my intention, or what should I add/remove? If not, how can I go about not using gender-neutral language without having it possibly be regarded as sexism or influence my grade?

If you can give any examples of a disclaimer like that (either in German or in English), it would be helpful as well (but not required for a satisfactory answer). Thanks!

I am going to respond to various parts of your question step by step.

For those unfamiliar with German, I am going to add a brief description of the gender-neutrality issue at the end of this answer, because things are quite a bit more complex in German than in English.

  German universities are very sensitive when it comes to gender-neutral language. Some professors mark it as a mistake if you use gender-specific terms instead of gender-neutral ones.

I am not convinced that statement is true for German universities in general, especially as there still is no single true agreed-upon consensus on what is a good way to navigate around the issues. Much rather than that, I can imagine that certain professors make it a point to enforce gender-neutral language (just like I could imagine some other professors to make it a point to enforce what they perceive as stylistically and grammatically correct language, even though it is in turn not considered gender-neutral by all).

  While I don't want to be sexist, most variants of gender-neutral language in German are (in my opinion) verbose, disturb the text flow and make the text harder to read.

While in your Bachelor thesis, your stance on this issue carries little weight, this is by far not a rare opinion, and exactly one of the reasons why some people (including professors, see my paragraph above) vehemently oppose some variants of gender-neutral language.

  This is why I want to put a disclaimer in the introduction of my thesis stating that I will not use gender-neutral language for the reasons mentioned above.

In my opinion, a disclaimer is a good idea, as it kind-of puts you on the safe side by making your intentions explicit. In fact, I would see the following benefits:

It gives you some freedom to pick the style you'd like to write in.
It might satisfy even some of the readers who would personally have chosen a different writing style.
The mere existence of the disclaimer shows you care about the document as a whole, not only the specific technical aspects of your Bachelor project.
It defines something that will be used later. In technical subjects, or at least subjects that are somewhat related to maths, choosing definitions in a convenient way, explaining them first, and then using them accordingly throughout the document, is a good practice.

Now, there is no guarantee these points will be picked up positively, but at least, there is some chances for it.

This notwithstanding, you should ask your advisor for their preferred style, if any, or check past theses (successfully) written for the same advisor.

  Is such a disclaimer generally acceptable in a bachelor's thesis (or any scientific text)?

As meanwhile shown by the other answer, yes. In fact, most things that clarify the contents are acceptable in Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral theses.

  If so, are the three points stated above both adequate and thorough to state my intention, or what should I add/remove?

The three points sound fine. I would indeed advise against expressing you are "not using gender-neutral language". You could try and focus on stating that some terms "can be understood in a gender-specific way".

Remarks on issues with gender-neutral German

At least according to my impression, gender-neutral language is a much more controversial topic in German than in English (for some further illustration of this, also have a look at a related question on German SE):

In English, a large part of gender-neutral language is replacing exclusive uses of he or his. In German, in contrast, gender-neutral language primarily tackles any noun describing a person, because these usually come in a male and a female form, the latter of which is usually formed by adding the suffix -in to the male form.

This opens up two issues that make the topic so controversial in German:

On the one hand, there is no general agreement that the male form is, in fact, not gender-neutral. It has commonly been (and still is) used when both genders were meant, and (as noted below) there often is no synonymous noun that is gender-neutral.
On the other hand, there is no commonly agreed-upon solution for how to express things in an explicitly gender-neutral way:

For a start, truly gender-neutral nouns for persons are really rare in German. Replacements such as the English steward/stewardess -> flight attendant do not produce gender-neutral terms in German. (Curiously, the terms are sometimes copied from English nonetheless, so Germans have replaced Stewards und Stewardessen with Flugbegleiter und Flugbegleiterinnen.)
Offering both alternatives every time a person is mentioned can make a text hard to read (imagine a text about actors and actresses, or actors/-resses, or actorsResses, and imagine that split happening for every single noun referring to a person). Hence, this variant is opposed by some native speakers.
There is also the suggestion of using the neutral gender for all gender-neutral nouns. (In English, this would be akin to generally referring to persons whose gender is not specified as it.) While this sounds logical, it can also be perceived as disrespectful, as (unless the person noun specifically calls for neutral gender) using neutral gender on a person is like treating the person like a "thing".
Another approach is, as mentioned in the question, using a grammatical form that is (for many words) not normally used as a noun, but that does not change by gender, and that arguably has the same meaning as the role name - the present participle. If we transfer this back to English, a sentence such as "Participants pay attention to the instructor before their conversation with the student." becomes "Participatings pay attention to the instructing before their conversation with the studying." This is opposed by some native speakers as featuring abysmal style and bordering on being ungrammatical.

Therefore, a disclaimer expressing the author's intentions can be seen as preferable compared to any of the "gender-neutral" variants, all of which are controversial and cumbersome in some way.


Is it necessary that the the chapter introduction be made up of just one paragraph? In writing the introduction of a chapter, I came up with three paragraphs.

Is it necessary that the the chapter introduction be made up of just one paragraph?

No, it is not necessary to limit your chapter introductions to one paragraph (unless your university has some ridiculous formatting guidelines that require this).


The correlation between GPA in grad school and research ability In the US graduate universities, Ph.D. students have to take courses. Can a student with low GPA do good research? I think doing research is solving problems. If someone cannot solve a homework or an exam, how the person can even solve more complicated problems to publish?

In the US graduate universities, Ph.D. students have to take courses. Can a student with low GPA do good research?

In short, yes. GPA is a measure of your ability to follow instructions, do homework on time, and perform on exams. If the grading scheme has enough of a curve it barely does that. In any case, it's not a meaningful measure of research ability.

In the US graduate program I'm familiar with (in physics), several of the classes you take are actually not that closely related to your own research. Spending too much time on those classes can actively hurt your research output, while being somewhat beneficial to your GPA. Often there are also teaching duties to handle, so time management can be crucial. Sometimes you hear the advice to get good enough grades*, and spend the rest of your time on research. It also seems that potential employers are not too interested in the graduate GPA - the degree itself and your research tend to be more important factors.

*The grades should be enough to remain in good academic standing, and count towards your degree.

  I think doing research is solving problems. If someone cannot solve a homework or an exam, how the person can even solve more complicated problems to publish?

To some extent this is true, particularly for the courses relevant to one's research area. Understanding that subject matter and being able to solve problems is clearly worthwhile. Usually that translates to good grades in those classes, but I don't think it's guaranteed. One can have personal issues that semester, suffer from time pressure on a final exam, etc.

On the other hand, research problems are not always just more complicated versions of the problems studied in class. They may require new, creative methods that you wouldn't see in a course. They may require learning specific procedures that just aren't covered in standard courses. Not to mention that being able to pick a good open problems to work on is an art in itself. Certainly, getting good scores in a course does not guarantee one becoming a successful, independent researcher.

In conclusion, there might be some correlation between graduate GPA and research ability for large enough population sizes, but I don't think it holds any predictive power on the individual level.


Realised afterwards that I committed mild plagiarism in a paper I wrote as an undergraduate, what should I do? A few years back, while still an undergraduate student, I wrote and submitted a paper to a (low-tier) journal. It was accepted and published. None of the professors in my college were familiar with the subfield in question, so I did it all on my own, without their supervision or assistance.

It was only later on that I realised that I was guilty of plagiarism. I did write the paper all on my own, and always provide appropriate citations, but sometimes I would quote single sentences or parts of them directly from my sources without indicating that they were direct quotes (even if these unmarked quotes were always followed by a citation to the original source).

It has now been several years but I keep feeling guilty about it, and worry that one day someone will notice it and call me out on it. Or at least notice it while reading the paper and think worse of me. But since it has been several years since the paper was published, I also don’t know what I could do about it. I have thought of putting something like a public admission and apology on my website (from which the paper can also be downloaded), but maybe I’m overthinking it and nobody would actually care. In that case it would feel like a bad idea to needlessly draw attention to something that nobody would have noticed otherwise. But the paper has been cited some times, and I have reason to expect that there will be people reading it in the future.

Should I do something about it or just let it be?

but sometimes I would quote single sentences or parts of them directly from my sources without indicating that they were direct quotes (even if these unmarked quotes were always followed by a citation to the original source).

"You didn't use quotation marks where you should have in a paper you wrote as an undergrad? My god, you are despicable human being."

Nobody reading your question here will think this.

Rather they will think something like:

"Wow, you wrote a journal paper on your own as an undergrad and it's still being cited?"

I would imagine that the vast majority of readers of your paper, even if they notice, would think likewise.

Though it's technically plagarism, I think it would be quite obvious to a reasonable reader that if your intent was to plagarise, you would not immediately cite the plagarised document you stole the quote from. Omitting quotation marks sounds like a minor transgression to me, particularly if your area is STEM where the (natural) language of the text is a means not an end. (If you did not have the citation(s) at all, I think it would be a different matter.)

Mistakes happen and this was clearly just a mistake.

(I would also add that I think it's pretty common for researchers to be somewhat embarrassed by earlier papers that they wrote when they were more junior. At least I am. But that's just a sign of improving.)

  I also don’t know what I could do about it. I have thought of putting something like a public admission and apology on my website (from which the paper can also be downloaded)

I would suggest two things:

Update the preprint on your homepage.
Keep a list of errata on your homepage.

In my area (CS) people mostly read the preprints (found through Google or Google Scholar).

  public admission and apology

I don't think there's a need to apologise. I think you just need to admit your mistake and move on. Again, mistakes happen!


What is wrong with conference publications compared with journal and transaction papers? Our professor has set us to select a credible fresh paper and present it as part of our course in a computer engineering subject for an MS program in computer engineering. But, he insists that we select transactions and journals as categories to select papers from, thus he opposes conference papers. What is wrong with papers published in conferences making them probably unsuitable for such a presentation job?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with conference publications. This sounds like your professor has something specific in mind and wants his students to achieve that target. In general, publications in journals are more detailed (and deep) so would make the students work harder I suppose since there is more information to process. Having said that, some journal papers are smaller than conference papers in length too (but that's not very common at least in computer engineering)

There is also a perception amongst a good number of academics that many conference publications are just small/quick pieces of work submitted hastily and later followed up with a journal publication. Again, this may depend on the conference itself. For example, the flagship conferences in your area would feature very good papers compared to a localised regional conference. So this may be a concern of your professor that his students may end up selecting a paper that is not of a good quality. In the end, only your professor can answer that.


whether to send a follow-up email asking for research internship I send a email to inquire about a research internship 3 weeks ago to a professor leading a research group(they clearly state that they have on their web-page) and I like the research group's research area a lot, since my own field now is close to theirs. But I acted stupid in the email that I didn't mentioned anything about their work, just saying that I am doing research in a similar field(although I have read their papers, I didn't recognize the importance of talking about it by then due to inexperience). And the professor didn't respond me. I guess he just ignored it as a SPAM. Do you guys recommend me send a followup email to make up for it? Or it is no use reach him twice that he would merely consider it an annoyance?

It is quite possible the email just got lost in the flood. Some professors, especially the more famous ones, get up to 100 emails a day - not including the spam. It is also possible that the professor is waiting for all the applications to come in, or for some funding for the intern research costs to be decided, or just didn't get round to deciding what this summer's intern projects will be.

I would recommend you write a slightly more detailed email (don't go crazy, but a bit about why you want the internship and how it fits with your studies/projects, the kind of things you identify in your email that you perhaps could have written). You can frame it as "I thought I should provide more information" rather than "I want to bug you".

The other alternative is to look for clues about who might be the actual supervisor in reality - in a large group, interns often work for PhD students, postdocs or associate professors. If the research internships have their titles on the webpage, do some sleuthing and write to the most relevant person. Or if there are associate professors or other experienced researchers in that same group, pick one who does something interesting and write to them.
Good luck!


Under which circumstances (if ever) should a prospective post-doc apply for a position advertised for a PhD student? Many academic positions are advertised for PhD students. Does it make sense to apply for such a position even if you already have a PhD, in the hope that they might also consider a post-doc instead? Why would the hiring institution not want a post-doc instead of a PhD student? Why would a prospective post-doc not want such a position?
In case somebody wonders why I'm asking:

Often, there are many more projects advertised for prospective PhD students than for prospective post-docs.
Many of the projects seem to be scientifically challenging enough to be interesting also for a post-doc, especially if one is switching fields or completing the project in a shorter time frame.
I cannot see why institutions would be opposed to hiring post-docs instead of PhD students, considering the much higher qualification they bring. I can imagine that there are some limitations attached to funding, though.

For context, I am in an engineering / computer science field in Europe, where PhD and post-doc positions offer comparable salaries.

While it might sometimes be possible to convert the funding from a PhD to a postdoc position, in general I don't think it's a good idea to apply as a postdoc for a PhD position. That being said, you can always contact the PI and ask whether they would have another position for a postdoc.

Often, there are many more projects advertised for prospective PhD students than for prospective post-docs.

This is due to several reasons:

First not every PhD student continues as a postdoc: a lot of them go to industry, some of them quit or fail... and some of them achieve a mediocre PhD which doesn't allow them to get a postdoc job. So mathematically there must be more PhD positions than postdoc positions: if say only 20% of PhDs continue as postdocs, there must be roughly 5 times more PhD positions offered than postdoc ones.
Universities have a duty to teach students, they don't have a duty to hire temporary research staff. The number of PhD students taught is an important target indicator for an institution, whereas the number of postdocs is more a result of their success at grant applications.

Many of the projects seem to be scientifically challenging enough to be interesting also for a post-doc, especially if one is switching fields or completing the project in a shorter time frame.
I cannot see why institutions would be opposed to hiring post-docs instead of PhD students, considering the much higher qualification they bring. I can imagine that there are some limitations attached to funding, though.

I've heard the very vague estimation that one year of postdoc is equivalent to 3 years of PhD in terms of research productivity (incidentally, they are often paid around 3 times more in countries where the PhD is a grant). There's some truth to the idea that a postdoc can do the same job as a PhD faster.
However there are also important differences which can make a PI choose a PhD rather than a postdoc:

a PhD topic can be more prospective and evolve over time.
the PI might want the PhD to test their own research ideas, so they want to supervise the work closely. On the contrary, a postdoc is usually more independent.
supervising PhDs is a must to advance their career.
co-supervising a PhD student is a common way to start a collaboration with a colleague, whereas a postdoc doesn't need much supervision (if any).

It's important to understand that universities are not like companies, they are not looking for the best quality/price ratio for a task. The goal of funding a PhD is not only to answer a research question, it's also to teach somebody how to do research so that they can contribute to society later. This is why the main reason for an institution to hire PhD students is simply that it's an essential part of their mission, that's why they receive public money. This is also why there are indeed very often limitations on the funding, simply because a lot of PhD funding comes from national or international programs meant to increase research capacity by training researchers.


To what extent do the religious beliefs of an author affect a paper's chance of being accepted? Implicit gender bias is present in academia (at least in the sciences). I've heard that some journals hardly accept any manuscripts written by Muslims. To what extent do the religious beliefs of an author affect their paper's chance of being accepted? Have there been any studies that look at implicit religious biases?

In my entire scientific career, I have seen religious belief come up precisely once: an (apparently Christian) author closed a paper with "AMDG," which apparently stands for Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.  Of the set of three peer reviewers, one ignored it, one was confused by it, and one asked for it to be deleted as irrelevant to the substance of the paper.  The authors removed the acronym as part of their revision (amongst other changes) and the paper was published.

The other place that I know that religion comes into play in scientific publication (though I have not personally encountered it), is when a person attempts to use statements from their religion as evidence for a position.  This never goes well: in a scientific context, claiming "the Bible says ..." or "the Koran says ..." is equivalent to saying "The Lord of the Rings says ..." or "Fifty Shades of Grey says ..."  Such a document is a secondary source at best, and one that has no particular reason to be regarded as a reliable source of evidence, despite the magnitude of cultural belief.  Such books can, of course, be cited and analyzed just as any other literary/historical work, but that is different than using them as evidence for a scientific position.

So, in short: if you don't make your religion an issue in your manuscript, it should never come up as an issue in the normal scientific publication process.  This doesn't mean you might not encounter horrible and inappropriate behavior (scientists are just as capable of being terrible people as anybody else) but it is definitely outside the norm of the peer review and publication process.


Tenured position to be started very soon...what to do with the old affiliation Nowadays I am a second year assistant professor (without tenure) in physics at a German university (rank W1, Juniorprofessor), advising 2 PhD students.

Today, it came to me the information about a permanent position abroad (in Europe) and I am strongly considering applying for it.

My problem is the following: the selection process had just started now, and I will not know the decision until middle july. The preference in the new institution is to start the new position is September 2015 (which means that between the decision and the start is less than 1,5 months).

My questions are the following:

At which point should I say something about this to my present institution: of course I do not know if I will be selected for the position, but I also understand that it is very bad for my present institution now to say them: "Well, I will leave the institution in one month."
At which point should I explain my Phd students about this change: this is definitely my most important headache. How should I present this point to them, and more important - when? Do you think it is good that I tell them that I want to apply for this position?

I would not tell anyone anything until you have accepted the position (ideally with a signed contract). Leaving a position on short notice leaves your colleagues in a bind to cover your teaching and leaves your graduate students (and possibly lab personnel) at risk. If you are given an offer, you may be able to negotiate solutions to these problems (or the offer may be made so late, that it is not an issue). It is not unheard of for graduate students to be allowed to transfer. Delaying the start date by a semester, even a year, is not uncommon. If the start date is not flexible, you may also be able to negotiate some sort of teaching buyout which will allow you to teach a reduced load at both universities for a semester/year with each university covering a portion of your salary.

The reason not to tell people is two fold. If the position falls through, you do not want to upset your colleagues. Telling your students also seems premature. They really little to no control over the situation and it is likely going to make them anxious.

In terms of control, the student can drop out immediately. By telling them early, you save them 2 months of "wasted effort". They can also work harder with the goal of graduating early. The 2 months additional warning time is not going to result in a significantly quicker graduation. Arranging alternative supervision is really out of the hands of the student and requires the current supervisor, the new supervisor, the department, and the funder all agreeing. They are not going to move quickly on the issue until the PI confirms he/she is leaving.

Not telling the student is not the same thing as not preparing the student. Hopefully, when you took the student on, you created a safety net for them (e.g., a second supervisor and alternative research paths). You should reconsider this safety net, alternative supervision, the key resources they need, and the time lines of their current and future projects. It is probably worth discussing aspects of the safety net and steering them into now (e.g., increased collaborations with a potential second supervisor and reducing the resources needed).


Is the conference a scam? I have submitted a paper for a conference organized by the IRES. (details here: https://www.allconferencealert.com/event_detail.php?ev_id=80364) they accepted my paper within one day and instructed me to register. How will I know it is scam or not? Thanks in advance!

Usually conferences that are overly generic are a scam because anyone's work can fit in this category. Which field of engineering is this conference on? All engineering? This would hardly be an interesting conference to attend for engineers, because it would be very unlikely that someone else publishes in their specific field, on their topic or problem. There are conferences on sub-sub fields of engineering of more than a week in duration and this journal will cover any and all innovations in engineering in 2 days?

A good first start is to ask your supervisor or other professors in your field of study. Since your supervisor's name has to be on the paper alongside yours, they should guide you in this regard.

As a second filter, you should try and publish in a journal or conference that you cited often, or that published on work related to yours, as typically your own work would be a good fit there.

As a third filter, try and find papers that are published at this conference and see if they are any good, and if they all have the same style / formatting. I cant seem to find a template for this conference on their website, which is another red flag. Why would they allow everyone to just post in whatever format they choose?

Something odd, there is a gallery link to a generic gallery website (why would they have this unless it is a general catch all for a bunch of conferences), and none of the photos have any significant number of people in it. In the photos no one is smiling.

Finally, if your paper is accepted in 1 day or in a week, or in two weeks you know no academic or researcher looked at it. A good conference provides peer review feedback, typically of 3 reviewers, sometimes more. A response in a single day, guaranteed fake conference.

Random idea: Maybe we should have rubbish fake papers to submit to conferences before we submit our original work to test if it is a fake conference.


A question about continuing education in an Engineering major or Sciences I am MSc student of civil engineering and I am so much interested in sciences, mostly applied mathematics. My MSc thesis research is also focused on some analytical and numerical solutions to governing equations in field of the civil engineering. It is too difficult to start a BA in Mathematics, because I have to whether continue my education in civil engineering and apply for a PHD or seek for a job. I am so much interested in analytical solutions which exist in mathematics and applied mathematics; differential equations and PDEs. How should I satisfy my interest in mathematics, besides my future job or in my future academic life?

It is very possible to go to a PhD program in applied math with a masters or even bachelors degree in engineering. I am in an applied math PhD program and many of my colleagues only took a couple of upper level math classes in college. Applied math is very broad and people with all sorts of backgrounds can get into these sorts of programs. But the question is what can you do now to explore your mathematical interests (an perhaps get into an applied math PhD program too)? The key is to do a few of the following

take a few junior/senior level undergraduate math classes (or if you can handle it, graduate level math courses). You likely have the requisite background to take a class in undergraduate Real Analysis or differential equations. Basically you need to convince an admissions committee that you are capable of writing proofs. You don't need a math degree to do this; you don't even need a math minor to do this. If you do well in a single semester of real analysis some great applied math programs are more than willing to take a gamble on you if you have interesting engineering research and a good personal statement that really explains how you got a passion for math while working in engineering.
incorporate math into your research. You say you do numerics, so prove your method converges, develop analytical error bounds, prove the existence or uniqueness of a solution. If your method is too complex to do the above, or you lack the knowledge to make progress in such an endeavor, create a "toy" problem which is similar but vastly simplified and prove something related to it. Toy problems often lead to stand alone publications, they are interesting to us applied mathematicians in and of themselves, and they have the added benefit of giving insight into your engineering research.
Read math. Get yourself a book and work your way through it in your spare time. Just 1-2 hrs a day, of intense mathematical focus will surprisingly allow you to learn a lot more math than you would think. Start at the right level, for some this will be advanced and for others this will be not so advanced.
think about math a lot. Just ask yourself questions a lot. Math is a mindset. Get away from the computer and coding and work with pen and paper (or a whiteboard) for a couple hours each day. Do problems -- putnum exams, course websites, math.stackexchange. They are all great resources.


Additional funding for PhD students Are there 'additional' grants/fellowships available for Mathematics PhD students (who already have their funded positions) in Europe? In other words, does any program analogous to the ERC Starting Grants exist for PhD students?

As for a EU-wide database of research funding opportunities, see EURAXESS:

Go to EURAXESS Funding Search.
Select your RESEARCH FIELD (probably "Formal Sciences").
Select your FUNDING TYPE ("Funding"? "Mobility Incoming/Outgoing"? "Travel Grants"?).
Select your CAREER STAGE (probably "First Stage Researcher" up to the point of PhD).
Click on Search and browse through the results!

Other than that, there are also national databases. If you tell us the country of your affiliation, perhaps we could link to it. (E.g. https://grants.at/ for Austria.)


Can advisor list a former PhD student, who changed advisors, in his/her CV? I found that my former PhD advisor was still listing me as his student and he was the chair of my committee. I changed advisors a few years ago and left him. He didn't remain in my committee. It is true that he was my advisor to that point. But I feel it's not fair to my current advisor, who actually supported me and guided me to dissertation and graduation. Since I didn't graduate under the former one, my name doesn't have graduation year in his CV, which looks like I dropped out. If a professor was an advisor of a student at some point, can he list the student as his student forever?

TL;DR: Yes, he can.
He can list you; probably he'll hide that you left him, but who cares?
You graduated and whenever you apply, your CV will show that. Nobody will check his CV for your graduation.
Theodor Fontane (a German novelist) famously said, "Happiness is a good stomach and a bad memory." Forget about him and care about your future.


Is it considered ethical to sign yourself with name followed by PhD when in fact your doctorate was a DTech? Is it considered ethical to sign yourself with name followed by PhD when in fact your doctorate was a DTech?

Ethically, you should portray yourself accurately. So don't say PhD unless that is your degree. It might even be considered, by some, as an attempt to defraud.

If the DTech degree stands on its own, then there is no issue with using it. But if some consider it a "lesser" degree then they would interpret saying PhD as an attempt to give yourself a promotion.

So, not only an ethical issue, but a practical one.

Note that the US NSF has definitions of which degrees it considers "research doctorates" and hence "equivalent" to a PhD. But not that they are PhDs.

Of course, for usage outside the US, there are different conventions. If the country in which the degree was earned considers the degree to be equivalent then it is, but it still is not a PhD. Be accurate. When it matters, you can, of course, explain the background.

However, DTech is a bit tricky since it can be a higher level (than PhD) degree from some UK institutions, but a lesser level degree from others. Higher-level degrees normally require a doctorate be earned previously.


Mentioning a Professor and his comment in a mail without his permission Can I mention someone's(academic) name and comment which I got from a mail, to another academic (to increase the credibility of my work) without informing the first academic that I am going to use his name and comment?

For example, I sent my work through an e-mail to Professor X( Ph.D ). He wrote me back briefly that   -

"the analytical results are correct
but they are not practicable. You should work on approximation algorithms for .... ...."

I think the part "analytical results are correct" adds some credibility to my work and I would like to mention  Prof X and his comment(whole comment)  when I write my next mail to someone else. Since, academics have issue with mail from strangers(tagged as 'crackpot' or 'crank'), this comment might interest them.

But do I have to ask permission from Prof. X to mention his name and comment to another academic ?

You should ask permission from Prof. X.

Quoting a statement like "the analytical results are correct" implies endorsement to some degree.

You should be very careful not to say anything that could imply endorsement without permission of the "endorser."

Note that if he does give permission, you still have to be careful not to quote his statement out of context. For example, you should not say

  Prof. X said my analytical results are correct.

instead, you should explain what he really said, more like

  I showed this work to Prof. X. He said that the analytical results seem correct, but not practical, and he suggested that I look into approximation algorithms.


What is the meaning of this poem on a professor's personal webpage? I've found a few extremely high performing computer science professors listing The Satrapy, a relatively obscure poem, on their personal webpage. Does it have any special meaning with relation to CS/academia or is it just a coincidence?

This poem was an enjoyable read. I think it certainly does hold some relevance for computer scientists and academia as a whole. In the translation available here, the poem reads
Too bad that, cut out as you are
for grand and noble acts,
this unfair fate of yours
never offers encouragement, always denies you success;
that cheap habits get in your way,
pettiness, or indifference.
And how terrible the day you give in
(the day you let go and give in)
and take the road for Susa
and go to King Artaxerxes,
who, well-disposed, gives you a place at his court
and offers you satrapies and things like that—
things you don't want at all,
though, in despair, you accept them just the same.
You long for something else, ache for other things:
praise for the Demos and the Sophists,
that hard-won, that priceless acclaim—
the Agora, the Theatre, the Crowns of Laurel.
You can't get any of these from Artaxerxes,
you'll never find any of these in the satrapy,
and without them, what kind of life will you live?

The opening six lines describe the feeling that one is destined to be doing great things, but instead finds oneself working away without encouragement or success, and succumbing to bad habits. This could resonate with academics who perhaps entered their field of study dreaming that they'd solve the biggest open questions out there, but instead find that the reality is much harder and far less immediately rewarding.
The poem then contrasts the difficulty of this situation (in our analogy, working in academia) with the even worse choice of giving in and taking the easy option, which in the context of the poem is going to King Artaxerxes and being offered a place in his court. In our analogy, we could see this as leaving academia to work in a stable job in industry, where you will have a good income and an easy life.
The poem ends by questioning us, asking us that if we take the easy option, will we find the fulfilment we sought in the first place? And what kind of life would that be? I think these are questions that many academics have asked themselves.


Cryptocurrency 3rd year dissertation using other source code? I am doing my third year dissertation / thesis based on cryptocurrencies & blockchain. This is an amazing topic I am truly passionate about as it's a fast moving industry.

At the core of ALL cryptocurrencies there is Bitcoin. Believe it or not but Bitcoin created the foundation on which other cryptocurrencies were built such as Dash and Litecoin.

I plan to have a faster cryptocurrency for the purpose of my dissertation but obviously as a core code I planned to use Bitcoin's one, Litecoin's one and few others. Based on my observations I will build a better one or find any alternatives to achieve my intended outcome. Is this considered plagiarism!?

Plagiarism is representing the work of others as your own. There may be patent restrictions on your work (I don't actually know), and there are copyright restrictions on published material. But if you use ideas and cite the sources, then you aren't plagiarizing.

Science, in fact, works by extending the work of others. We just give them credit for that earlier work.


Hourly rates for industry consulting? I have a friend who is considering a part time (~10hr/week) consulting gig with a large, well-established software company, doing a mixture of research and coding.  However, there appears to be little quantitative data on past consulting rates for academics, i.e., professors, postdocs, and PhD students whose primary career is not consulting.

Q: How does an academic determine a fair rate for consulting?

...Assuming that a consulting gig is actually compatible with their academic contract! I do of course realize that in many circumstances external employment is prohibited by a contract with the university.  I also realize that consulting rates are largely a function of 1. perceived expertise and 2. negotiation skill.  But a key component of successful negotiation is an objective view of the facts—in this case, some kind of upper and lower bound on reasonable wages.

As Fomite correctly stated, it is going to vary a lot by field and also individual circumstances.

In my experience, if the consulting work is roughly equivalent to what a non-academic in industry might be able to perform, then the rates will roughly be equivalent, too.  This happens a lot in the engineering disciplines, and especially often in computer science (i.e., many computer science professors can moonlight as software engineers).  In such disciplines, I have found that companies in industry often classify their engineers into five levels.  These go by different names at different companies, but they usually are along the lines of: associate, full engineer, senior, lead, and principal.  Associate is the level a freshly graduated undergrad would start at. Full engineer usually implies three to five years experience and/or a master's degree.  That is likely the level equivalent to a Ph.D. student.  A fresh Ph.D. just having defended would usually start at such a company at the senior level, so it is roughly equivalent to post-doc and junior faculty.  The lead level is usually achieved 7+ years after that, so it is roughly equivalent to tenured faculty.  Likewise, principal is equivalent to full professors.

Once you have an equivalent job title in mind, you can use websites like glassdoor to search for average salaries for that job title (e.g., "Senior Software Engineer", "Principal Electrical Engineer", etc.).  I find that typical hourly rates are in the range of 0.1% to 0.2% of the yearly salary of an equivalent professional, but once again this may vary by profession; my experience is in the world of software.

I have found that some companies will allow a slightly higher-end consulting rate if you can demonstrate that your abilities are above and beyond those of a non-academic alternative.  This is especially true if the nature of the consulting work is research-oriented and/or directly related to your research, or if you can reasonably argue that you could complete the task faster than a non-Ph.D or a full-time employee.

You can usually charge a slightly higher rate for short-term work.

Many academics I know often do consulting in the form of acting as expert witnesses at trial.  Rates for that type of work seem to be more standard across disciplines, and is more of a function of how unique and qualified you are for the job.  Prep work for trial is usually charged at a standard consulting rate, but then days at trial can be charged as much as two to four times that rate.


How to transition from pure biology PhD to bioinformatics/biostatistics? I've been working as a PhD student in biology and currently in my last year. However I realised just a year into my PhD that I hated doing experiments, I really hated it. I think one of the reasons may be that in the beginning, most of my experiments did not work. Also, I couldn't justify spending years of my life working on a tiny protein that no one cared about, all in the name of basic science. I initially wanted to quit but it was a difficult decision because I am an overseas student and may have had to immediately return home if I did.
During this period, I did find that I enjoyed working on statistics and taught myself to code a bit, mostly at night. I'm currently taking online coding courses and I really enjoy using computational methods within my field especially in statistics. My main question is: is it realistic to switch to a career in bioinformatics and statistics, and how can I go about this immediately after my PhD?

As a PhD student in Math with Computer Science background who is working in Bioinformatics exclusively: it is definitely possible for you!

In the Computational Biology Institute at The George Washington University where I work as GRA we have PhD students, Post-docs as well as Faculty from different backgrounds (including pure biology) working purely in bioinformatics area.

I do believe you don't have to switch as much, as you think. It only takes a group that is more focused on the "informatics" part more, than on biology. But still caring about Biology to change the main daily routine of yours. And your background will be needed, as bioinformatics can not exists without biological reasoning and biological guidance / insights.

If I were you, my first step would be to find what is the most "informatics" related problem close to your current research. It might be not your group, who is doing it, but still. Educate yourself a bit about such research by reading related articles. And after that it is as simple as writing a couple of emails to PIs of respective studies and telling them, that you are very interested in collaboration on their topic. This might yield a joint publication or even a post-doc position offer from respective lad.

I wouldn't count much on pure "career" in statistics, as it usually requires more math background. But biologists in bionformatics, who at least knows how to do statistics are very hard to find. So the more you know from the programming / statistics side, the better you are off go to more informatics groups.


Is there a list of all online creative commons based journals? I know there is a good list of all paper peer-reviewed journals but I would like to know is there one specially for creative commons based online journals? I am kind of trying to figure out which is better to publish in terms of access to "outsiders"-people who aren't research scientists and most likely will never care about research journals but if I post a link to my paper on a social media site would make the effort to see it. Is there anyone here who has experience with such audience? Publishing not for the colleagues, but for the general public. You know people these days don't like to pay to view something on the Internet and if your audience isn't a member of a faculty impact factor is crap. But I wish to know can my papers go through at least some kind of(even very rudimentary)peer-review process. This is why I am looking for a list of free online journals who have at least someone with academic background on their editorial board.

Does such a thing exists?

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is "a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals."


Is creating fully functional software considered to be a quasi experiment? I'm sorry if this is a bit subjective, but I really don't know where to find the truth.

In my hometown, lecturers usually will only approve research in computer science & information system where the result is new software.  The goal is creating a software that can be used directly by business.  Usually, research that can't be 'seen' and used directly will be rejected and considered useless.

As in my university, lecturers said that creating new software is a type of research called a quasi experiment. Students are expected to perform the following activities: gathering requirements, designing UML models, and implementing the source code.  In the seminar (final exam), lecturers will ask a lot about business process and customer satisfaction.  No maths.  Most questions are subjective and hard to prove.

Is it true that creating a fully functional software or web site like this is a kind of quasi-experimental research?

As undergraduate research, you mostly don't have the time, experience nor support to create a full fledge project from scratch. By that I mean creating original work in you field. Thus, given the scope of the project, implementing a software is a valuable exercice that can also be really useful for research. For exemple, in my domain (bioinformatics) there is a special issue of NAR (Nucleic Acids Research) solely devoted to webservers. The latest issue can be found here.

I think one of the big issues you are facing (in almost every field) is that the amount of knowledge you get when leaving the bachelors has been pretty constant for the past 50 years. At the opposite, the level of new research has grown exponentially in these time. Thus, the gap to create something new is constantly growing.


How to handle authorship issues in an international multidisciplinary collaboration? I am writing a paper that is co-authored by researchers at several national and international universities. The collaboration is also interdisciplinary, meaning that conventions for authorship vary a little regarding where to set the bar for inclusion/exclusion and how to order the names.

One of the co-authors would like to inflate the authorlist too much that I am comfortable with. There's several people I have never even met but who were involved in planning this big project some years ago.

I think we can discuss the situation just fine but I would like to find some material that I could use when arguing my views. What would be some good strategies here? Is there any guidelines for this kind of collaborations?

Lots of folks around here seem to prefer these guidelines which are known as the Vancouver Protocol (quoting directly, here):

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

These are among the strongest criteria, and I would suggest that many scientific publications fail to live up to them. Gift authorship and other sorts of additions to the author list are common. E.g., maybe you include the PI of a large grant as last author even if they only lightly supervised the work and did not read the final draft or write or revise any of the actual words.

At another extreme, the LHC project has a sort of communal authorship process that led to to a recent paper with more than 5000 authors. If you think this paper meets criteria 2 or 3 above, you are kidding yourself. Now, that whole community has agreed to this authorship mechanic, but it is substantially different from the Vancouver Protocol.

You need to ask yourself what the norms of your community are. Does your field have a professional society that has authorship guidelines or guidelines associated with its publications? If so, you can use those to bolster the arguments you want to make with your advisor. If not, you can look to other, similar areas and their approaches. In the end though, you may have to follow your advisor's lead until you are out on your own. This is not a hill for a grad student to die on, and postdocs and junior faculty may want to use caution.


Can I collaborate outside my supervision on a work and add to my PhD thesis, me being the first author? I wish to work with my Master's supervisor on an idea. The idea is mine and I do the implementation and write the manuscript. My Ph.D. supervisor is not open minded and will surely deny a  collaboration. My question is if it is legal?
Can I add it to my thesis?

It is my work, done during my Ph.D., will get published with me as the first author but no other advisor from my current university.

Please note that I do not work on funding given by my supervisor but survive on a university scholarship. So if I am using resources, it belongs to the university.

I wish to work with my Master's supervisor on an idea. The idea is mine and I do the implementation and write the manuscript. My Ph.D. supervisor is not open minded and will surely deny a collaboration.

Since you specifically want to know whether this is ethical and legal, I will answer these aspects first.

Legal

Sure, why not? It's your thesis, and an advisor is just an advisor. There is definitely no law or regulation that says that you need to run every contribution you wish to include in your thesis by your advisor.

Ethical

Here things become a little more nuanced, as your advisor usually has, or at least should have, a vested interest in your academic well-being and success in grad school, and you purposefully doing something decidedly unsmart (more on this below) could be considered unethical towards your advisor. That being said, it's easy to infer from your question that you are not on best terms with your advisor anyway, so I guess doing something that may put your advisor into a bad spot may not be that much of a deterrent to you.

The elephant in the room

So sneaking a surprise research contribution behind your advisor's back is legal and not overly unethical (imho, at least), but it's also decidedly not smart. Keep in mind that your advisor will typically also be the most important person in your thesis committee, so it's hard to imagine that a research contribution that he does not like in the first place (otherwise why would he "not be open to a collaboration", as you say?) and that you have also hidden from him will in his mind improve your dissertation. You should also consider the mindset that finding out that her/his student mistrusted her/him enough to hide work will put your advisor in for the final, crucial phase of your thesis.

I understand that as a student who has troubles with their advisor it is frustrating that they are in such a position of power, but trying to ignore this fact and hack around her/him is most certainly not the way to improve one's situation (changing advisor, while awkward, typically is).