Aligning my Master's degree with prospective PhD's I'm at the cusp of selecting a MSc programme in Europe before re-applying to American PhD's and I'm at a loss how to decide which MSc position I should take.

I'm strongly convinced I want to do a PhD with a person at Columbia U., UT Texas and some elite schools. All of these people have a shared interest (narrowly defined field of research) and I'm wondering how I can improve my chances down the road to study with them.

First off, a PI's at one of the schools I've been accepted to is working in the same field; goes to the same conferences, visits the PhD PI's and, is probably on quite good terms with them. I could not verify this any further without asking too obvious questions. So to me it seems like an advantage, however this MSc programme is not well established and hence doesn't have the 'prestige'  like the other programmes I applied to.

I'm tempted, perhaps because of my upbringing, to contact the PhD PI's I'm interested in and straight-up asking them if they'd recommend any of the MSc programmes. Would this seem overbearing? I can't really tell and the cultural differences make it more ambiguous.

There are a number of major issues here:

In the US, you normally do not need a master's degree to be admitted. Keep in mind that in the US, the PhD program normally begins with a coursework phase, which roughly corresponds to the European master's degree, before the research phase.
Additionally, in the US, admissions are normally done at the departmental level, rather than at the level of an individual PI. The PI might have some say in admissions—particularly if she serves on the admissions committee—but there is no guarantee that you'll get admission to the school of your choice.
Moreover, in many schools and programs, particularly those where the advisor-graduate student "matching process" takes place after enrollment, advisors are normally not allowed to make commitments to particular students prior to enrollment. Additionally, the advisors generally have to show the ability to pay for the graduate students they take into their group, but also have the freedom to select any of the graduate students in the class.

So, you may be spending two or more years pursuing a master's degree that may not be needed, so that you can take a chance on whether or not a particular advisor has both funding and open positions, and also wants you over the other students interested in joining the research group. There are a lot of places where things can go wrong here.

So, my recommendation would be to talk to the programs, find out if you need a master's degree before applying (or if they'll exempt you from the coursework you've already had). You should also note that tailoring your application too narrowly to the interests of a single advisor is not always advantageous in a US graduate application, because if the advisor who you're trying to appeal to isn't interested, the other faculty will probably pass as well, and you'll end up without an offer of admission.


Is it reasonable to request an exemption from certain degree requirements? I am a physics student at a small North American university. As part of the requirements for my degree, the current policy dictates that all students must take 6 humanities courses before graduation.

I believe I understand the benefit of this requirement: it ensures that students are well-rounded. However, this requirement is making it difficult for me to take two extra math courses that are relevant to my future and my degree.

My goal is to continue my education further after graduating. I have asked two of my professors and they have told me that these two math courses would probably be relevant to my graduate studies. Moreover, I am very keen to take them because they are interesting and challenging. The reason these courses are not in the current curriculum is just due to the large number of physics courses required for the degree; they simply do not fit in the usual honours degree pattern.

As a student, is it reasonable for me to ask for this exemption? If so, what should I say to the department chair to increase the likelihood of getting the exemption?

For context: I am a physics major and the courses I want to take are Discrete Mathematics and Real Analysis.

As a former Humanities Professor and Dean, my answer is "nope."  We heard so many times from the Engineering College that they wished their students would have more Humanities, that there's no way I can say okay, go ahead without it.  So many students would rather give it a pass, but I can say (besides my being on the Humanities bandwagon just in general), that my father worked for a professional organization of engineers, and the thing they wanted most at their professional conferences was work on writing and communications.  And that's what you learn in the Humanities.


How to resolve authorship issue of a conference paper? I work in an research institute in a german university. My institute does not work in my area of research (Spacecraft GNC) but they got funding for a project in this area for which I was hired (when I was hired, institute's Managing Director (MD) did not tell me that Spacecraft GNC is not their area and that this is the first project they have gotten in this area. I found this out after 2 years at this institute because a colleague told me that if we don't lie to the candidates, no one will come to our institute).

While working on this project I found out several mistakes/illogical points made in the proposal but I did extra literature research to show that some of the ideas they proposed in the proposal were technologically not possible currently. I worked in this project solely without any guidance, help or even discussion with anyone in my institute, but when I wrote the paper for the conference about this project research, my project Manager and Institute's MD told me to put their name as authors which I had to do.

After this project, I wrote a continuing proposal within this project about developing different system for this project which is also not the research area of my institute. All the ideas in the proposal are mine. Now, my Project Manager (different guy) is asking me to put some other colleague's name and his name in the next conference abstract both of whom know little about my system, have not contributed to any research and I have not gotten any input from anyone of them as it is not their area.

I just want to include my MD's name in the abstract keeping in mind that I work in this institute I have to write his name for political reasons. He has also not contributed anything to this research, in fact it is not his area. How should I tell my project manager and MD that I do not want to include the project manager and another unrelated colleague's name to the paper abstract, as the atmosphere at my institute is toxic. My dealings with my colleagues and Managers is such that they take ALL the credit for ALL the work that I did/do and they don't like it when I do extra work in my projects. I have always been courteous to them but they have abused and harassed me. I think the fact that I am an international woman is also a factor as I have not seen my male colleagues treated like this.

I would really appreciate if someone could advise.

You may just have to go along with all the boss types. What is fair, what is customary in field, and what is forced on you can all differ. By countering the last, you can also wind up forcing yourself out of the organization. While it is probably your best option to find a better place to work, being forced out is probably not the best option for your career.

But if such things are customary in the field you work in, then you just go along with it as a (sad) consequence of working in that field. Many fields have non-contributors listed on many papers. I also realize, of course, that your field and their field are a bit different and may have different standards for authorship. But a boss can find ways to prevail or make your life miserable.


Should I accept this unfunded offer from my dream school or wait for funded offers? I just finished the grad school application process, and I'm getting my first letters of acceptance. I got one letter from one of my bottom three schools, one from a "middle of the pack" school, and one from a dream school. And, at the risk of humble bragging, this is a great school with a great reputation and true luminaries in my specific research interest amongst its faculty. I literally screamed when I got the letter. However, it is not funded.
They sent me the letter of acceptance only three weeks after I submitted my application. As I understand it, that's a very quick turn-around time, especially for a prominent research institution. I assume that's a very positive thing.
I'm not sure whether to just accept the offer right away, or wait to see if some of the other dream schools respond. At least one of the other dream schools will have funding for me from the get-go if I'm accepted. I know "non-funded for any amount of time" is a big red-flag, but I feel the pedigree of the school that I got accepted to trumps that. Having good recommendations from any of the professors I would work under would be worth more than gold. I feel like, in this situation, you just bite the bullet and go for it.
But I also feel that if you might have basically the exact same opportunity, except with funding, at another institution or two, it might be worth waiting/holding out a bit to see how things play out.
I feel left with a few questions:

Is it stupid of me to hold out at all, given the high level of the institution I received the letter of acceptance from? I worry my ego might have got too inflated, and it's wrong to  hope that another dream school (with or without available funding) will come knocking at my door.

If I do accept the offer, but then receive an offer from another dream institution that could offer me funding, would it be bad form to pull out of my agreement of acceptance? I wouldn't want bad blood.

How long is too long to wait on accepting the offer? Will they fill the open position if I take too long to respond? I don't want to miss out on what could be the opportunity of a lifetime because I sat on my hands.

Unless you are independently wealthy, you should never take an unfunded offer for graduate school in mathematics.
Even before the pandemic, some people with a dozen good papers after two successful postdocs - a well above average publication rate - were failing to find jobs.
When I was last broadly applying for academic jobs 10 years ago, the general advice was to send 80-100 applications to jobs you were competitive for in order to have reasonable certainty of getting at least one offer.  Even before the pandemic, there weren't that many jobs in total to apply for, and each job gets more applicants than they did 10 years ago.  (This year is brutal; the only people getting research-oriented jobs will be AMS Sectional plenary lecture candidates (there are roughly 40 per year, total - that's less than the number of Berkeley+Stanford PhDs per year) or better.)
There are even fewer jobs in industry for which a math PhD is a better qualification than several years of experience.
For a more teaching-oriented academic job, the funded position at a lower-ranked graduate school is actually better preparation, because you will be teaching for your funding, and because the undergraduate population at a lower-ranked school is generally more similar to the undergraduate population at most universities than the undergraduate population at a highly-ranked school.
If you borrow money for graduate school, you could end up in a situation where you are unemployed with no means of paying back your loans.  Don't forget education loans cannot be discharged via bankruptcy.
Going to graduate school in math with funding is already a costly decision from the financial point of view, though it's fine if getting to spend a few years doing math is worth it for you (as it was for me).  Going to graduate school in math unfunded is potentially ruinous.


Do editors allow authors to respond to reviewers when a paper has been essentailly rejected? I recently submitted a manuscript to a journal that focuses on short papers about software packages. One reviewer gave a very detailed (and helpful) critique of my software/paper with one major objection: another package already exists that has similar functionality. S/he mandated that I clarify what my package offers that the other package does not.

Unfortunately, I was not aware of the other software package when I started my project (which I'm pretty embarrassed about). On further inspection, I realize that this other package is far superior to my own in terms of functionality and performance. I've come to the conclusion that my project is not salvageable. This is disappointing but not soul crushing as it was a side project that is only tangential to my dissertation work. Frankly, I don't have time to improve my software to point of being a significant contribution, and I'd only do so for the sake of "getting a publication," which does not seem fruitful. Improvements wouldn't be immediately useful to me. and thus I don't have the motivation to submit a revision.

That said, I'd really like to submit a genuine word of thanks to the anonymous reviewer for their detailed critique of my paper/software. Through their comments and working through a revision I learned a lot (how to use Docker, sharing and recording terminal sessions through
asciinema/asciicast, general improvements to my writing, etc.) Do editors allow authors to respond to reviewers even if their manuscript is essentially rejected? It seems as though editors would generally disallow this since authors responding to a rejection may often want to say something nasty. Would it be best to email the editor directly with my request or respond through the submission system?

The most likely scenario is that the authors can respond to the editor, and the editor will decide (at their discretion) whether or not to pass back the message to the referees.

After all, there are valid reasons to message the referees afterwards (for example if the main argument for rejection is based on a misunderstanding). For a simple thank you, it will depend on the editor's preference, but it definitely doesn't hurt to try.


How should I refer to myself (single author) when addressing reviewers comments? I'm referring to the detailed answer to each of their comments. For example, under each comment, which of the following is appropriate: "The author believes that...", or "We believe that...", or "I believe that..."?

It's up to you and it doesn't matter much. Even if the process is double blind, it does no harm for the reviewers to know there is a single author or, conversely, to think there are multiple authors if you use "we". However if you don't consider yourself a "we", use the singular I. Exclusion of "I" in academic writing is absurd in all circumstances and while this isn't a place for that particular trench war, the comments letter is directly from you to them and "I" is appropriate in such cases.


Publish work extending on PhD with supervisor I recently completed my PhD and have started a position at a different institution. I am writing a paper which extends a model I introduced in my PhD. It wasn't a significant part of my PhD, more of an aside (about 2 pages). The idea of how to extend it came out of a discussion with the external examiner during my PhD defense (my supervisor was not present). I have a good relationship with my PhD supervisor and I know they would be interested in the project.

I would like to publish this as the sole author. Should my PhD supervisor be a co-author? They have not been involved in (or aware of) the work to extend the model. How do I let them know without potentially affecting our relationship?

Note, I have no reason to believe they would be upset about such things and may be overthinking this...

I would suggest to mask your question by asking for advice, e.g.

  I recently wrote this paper (attach paper) and as I am still relatively new to the academic world and the basic idea for this paper originated during my PhD (see pages X,Y of my thesis), I would like to ask if I should put you as a second author.

If you already send a finished paper, they will most likely understand that you are politely asking for the ok to publish it as sole author, but you are not burning any bridges this way.


Should I pay for a certificate showing the quality of my manuscript before I submit it to a journal? Some commercial services sell certificates to manuscript authors.  Frequently these certificates are marketed to authors in developing countries where English is not widely spoken.  These services claim that the certificate indicates that the manuscript meets a certain standard of quality.  Often the certificate states that the manuscript is written in correct English.  The certificate may be accompanied by editing services.

Should I pay for a certificate and send the certificate to a journal?

This is a general question is inspired by this one to avoid talking about a specific service.

No (reputable) journal is going to give any weight to such a certificate when assessing a paper. If the editor/reviewers aren't satisfied with the quality of the English, they will reject the paper.

Thus, paying for a certificate for its own sake is a waste of money. Of course, if the certificate is issued in conjunction with editing services, there may (or may not!) be value in the overall package.


How often do publishers change/tweak articles to achieve visually appealing results? When reading this question it seems the theoretical answer is that LaTeX is not perfect and manual/human intervention is required. In the TeX Book Knuth says:

  But the problem of page make-up is considerably more difficult than
  the problem of line breaking that we considered in the previous
  chapter, because pages often have much less flexibility than lines do.
  If the vertical glue on a page has little or no ability to stretch or
  to shrink, TeX usually has no choice about where to start a new
  page; conversely, if there is too much variability in the glue, the
  result will look bad because different pages will be too irregular.
  Therefore if you are fussy about the appearance of pages, you can
  expect to do some rewriting of the manuscript until you achieve an
  appropriate balance, or you might need to fiddle with the
  looseness as described in Chapter 14; no automated system will be
  able to do this as well as you.

In the LaTeX Companion Mittelbach writes:

  For this and other reasons, getting the final layout of the book was fairly labor intensive and even required minor rewriting (on maybe 10% of the pages) in order to avoid bad line breaks or page breaks.

Ignoring the fact that LaTeX is not the only software that publishers use, I am curious if the theoretical answer is actually the practical answer. Specifically, I am interested in:

How often do journals make manual tweaks to their templates/layouts
when typesetting articles?
How often wording of the text is changed to increase the visual
    appeal of the article?

Since some journals provided me not only the final typesetted result but also additional documents that captured the editing (for example a scanned document with the remarks or the copy editor or even a diff of the "source code" (actually a mix of text and source code for the formula)) I can say, based on this sample size of about a dozen: Always.

To be more precise: The text has been changed always, but I can't really tell if this was for better visual appearance or because of the text. Also the figures have been shifted  around in all cases (and I guess that this was for the visual appearance). I can't say whether the journal tweaked their template (because I don't care too much about the templates in the first place).

Maybe I should add that I have been more or less always pleased with the editing. In most cases I did not notice the changes from the typesetted version, but only after a closer look at the diff. At a few places the editing introduce a wrong wording (most cases there was a note to check this passage) and in some cases the typesetting of the formula was worse.


Importance of Undergraduate Research How important is it for an undergraduate student majoring in Physics and Mathematics (or any other science) to have experience in research (e.g., have a peer reviewed paper to his name most probably in collaboration with a professor) at the undergraduate level, keeping in mind that he will be applying for a master's or other postgraduate degree?

If you want admission to the very best PhD programs in the US, prior formal research experience is very important, if not necessary.  Admissions committees are primarily looking for evidence of research potential.  The best possible evidence for "I'll be a good researcher someday" is "Look, I'm already a good researcher."  So having formal peer-reviewed publications is better than having publishable but unpublished results, which is better than having research experience but no publishable results, which is better than having no research experience.  If you're applying to the top PhD programs, you will be competing with applicants (yes, plural) who have peer-reviewed publications (yes, plural).


Want to go to grad school but I lack expected coursework I am, or was, a math major in a big state university, and just graduated this year and I am taking a gap year. I finished my undergrad in three years and took some extra math courses. I also have one-year independent research experience with an Honors Thesis and a research award by the math department. The upper division courses that I have are :  Linear Algebra, Analysis I&II, Adv Applied, ODE, PDE, Prob, Stats, Stochastics (All A's). some of them are in grad level. I also have an independent study on Fourier Analysis with Stien's book. As for the Application, I will have two very strong letters. Just haven't taken the GRE yet.

I understand that relatively good grad schools take the courses that students took seriously. And my problem is mainly about this.

However, every school's webpage that I looked at prefers students who also took Algebra and Topology, which I did not take for some reasons. But I am trying to learn Algebra with Artin's book and some more analysis with Stien's books myself in the gap year. Can someone please tell me just how much disadvantages would this bring me, and would what I am doing help with the admission process.

I am getting mixed messages about this. Some people say that I am pretty much locked out of top 50 schools, my professors could not really answer this, and my friends said it is not a big deal. I am very confused now. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks a lot.

I have never been on an admissions committee and can’t really speak to if it’s actually disqualifying or not. However, even if we operate under the assumption that it is disqualifying that doesn’t mean you can’t go to graduate school, it means you can’t go to graduate school this year. You can enroll as a non-degree student in the university of your choice and take the necessary courses. This may be expensive or difficult depending on the country / situation, but if you really do need the courses it’s an option available to you. I know several people in the US who have done this in math and math-adjacent fields, more commonly for a MS degree but also for a PhD.


Is there research on the extent to which complexity of the proposed method(s) impacts the acceptance rate? I heard this speaker at IJCAI complained that his paper got rejected because the methods he used were too simple despite the results being highly competitive (twice the state of the art, at least according to one metric). The complain can be listened in this video at 29'30''. Excerpt:

  (Addressed to reviewers) Accept simple papers if they demonstrated what they were trying to
  show.

It wasn't the first time I heard such a complain, as simplifying existing solutions is arguably a contribution, yet sometime despised.

Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the impact of the complexity of the method(s) proposed in a submitted paper on its acceptance rate?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science > machine learning / NLP / data mining, and English-speaking venues.

I haven't seen any research on the correlation between the complexity of the methods and the acceptance odds of a work and I think it is relatively hard to do a study on this. First because being simple or complex is completely subjective and domain dependent and hard to quantify. One can not generalize a pattern that is seen in a particular scientific community to others. Moreover, the information about rejection of papers is not publicly or easily accessible making the hypothesis hard to investigate.

That being said, in computer science machine learning community, I have seen that people are pushing towards critiquing the unnecessary complexity of the suggested methods and putting more emphasis on the actual results rather than the simplicity or complexity of the methods. There are many simple methods that are being published because they actually work well. I personally don't think that simple ideas which show good results are necessarily prone to rejection, but the opposite argument (complicated methods having higher chance of acceptance) is sometimes true.

On a related note, explanation of the ideas and presenting a work in the most simple way for people to understand, is being emphasized more and more. One reason of people trying to complicate things is that they think the less it is easy for reviewers to understand their work, the higher their chance of acceptance. I personally think that ideas in the papers should be explained simply and clearly because if it can’t be explained simply, probably it can be done better. And reviewers should not praise the work they don't understand, because it is the duty of the writer to explain everything simply enough so that the corresponding community understands it well.


When citing a paper on arXiv, how important is the category? The arXiv documentation says that we should reference arXiv documents using references of the form:

arXiv:YYMM.NNNNv# [category]

e.g.:

arXiv:0706.1234v1 [math.FA]

However, most papers that I am aware of do not bother to include the category.  i.e. they have references of the form:

arXiv:YYMM.NNNNv#

Furthermore, I can't find a bibtex bibliography style which automatically includes the arXiv category (taken from the primaryClass in biblatex).

Also, the arXiv documentation page "Preparing TeX/LaTeX Papers for Submission" suggests that arXiv documents should be referenced using just the arXiv ID, e.g. arXiv:0705.1234  (i.e. without the category)

My question is: is it OK to produce a list of references without any arXiv categories (i.e. just arXiv:0705.1234)?

The arXiv documentation page on "Understanding the arXiv identifier" contains the following sentence which directly answers my question:

"Note that the identifier no longer contains any classification information and thus reclassification after an article is announced is possible."


2nd-Year PhD student. PI is taking a new job. Will I be able to transfer? I'm a second-year PhD student and my PI is accepting a new job. My PI has yet to confirm whether or not I can transfer with her, but I am anxious about the whole situation. Are there any circumstances where they wouldn't let me transfer?

I'm her only student, and the other two technicians cannot come with. I am hoping that this will somehow give leverage to letting me transfer, rather than her having to move and start the lab all on her own.

Much thanks in advance for all of your assurance...

anthony

As others have said, it is difficult to predict. The factors include:

Where your professor's funding is coming from. Presumably, your salary and tuition (after the first 1-2 years) will be paid by her Government grant. Those may be to her directly (and therefore be likely to move with her) or they may be to the university (in which case she will be reliant on startup funds until she wins new grants).
Your professor's startup funds at the new university. These may be sufficient to pay you while she waits for new grants to come in, or not.
The other university's process for admitting transfer applicants. They may give faculty in this situation permission to circumvent the normal PhD application process; or, they may require you to apply and be accepted. (I imagine this would be more difficult if she is moving from a less competitive to a more competitive school).
How far along you are. If you are ABD, it probably makes more sense for you to be advised remotely while you finish; if you are brand new, it probably makes more sense to find a new advisor at your current school. Depending on your field, second-year seems like you would be just finishing coursework.
Your professor's preference (and your preference).

Good luck!


Mentioning my clinical depression in a statement of purpose I have been struggling with clinical depression for over an year now and that has affected my grades. Is it a good idea to mention that in a statement of purpose while applying to a university (for a M.Sc+Ph.D programme)?

No. It is not a good idea. These statements are to show your positives and potential. You are not cheating any one if you did not mention that. But no one asked you about your medical history.


Can my doctoral adviser take my dissertation and publish it without me? I'm a doctoral student who is trying to graduate. The requirement at my university is that students write 3 publishable manuscripts. Because my adviser knows that I don't want to stay at my current university for a post-doc, she wants me to submit my manuscripts before she'll let me graduate. I spoke to the assistant chair of my department to ask if this was normal, and she said that it's understandable because if a student leaves and doesn't publish, the adviser has to "take responsibility for finishing and publishing the papers." This sounds weird to me - shouldn't I be able to decide if I want to publish my dissertation work? Obviously, I'd like to get them published, but it seems unreasonable that my adviser could take my papers and publish them herself if I don't do it in the time frame she wants.

I think there's a disconnect between what the assistant chair means when they say "take responsibility for finishing and publishing the papers" and what you're interpreting it to mean.

What I imagine they mean is that your advisor would have to do all the editing to get the results into a publishable format, tying up loose ends of experiments, submitting the paper to the journal, etc. -- coordinating the myriad things needed to get a body of work into a publishable form. I don't think she's talking about taking the paper, removing your name from the author list and submitting it behind your back. -- You'd likely be informed about the submission, even if it's merely at the level of your advisor emailing "here's the finished manuscript, any comments before we submit?".

You're absolutely correct that you, as author and a person who did the work, have a say in whether something gets published. And you're also correct in saying that it's unethical for your advisor to ignore you and publish without your consent (either with or without your name on the author list). However, it'd also be unethical for you to hold up publication of an article for non-scientific reasons [1]. As such, it's normally expected that any research work you do is probably going to get published, and if you don't do it yourself someone else is going to do the legwork to make it happen. (Giving you the appropriate credit [2].)

So it's all about how much "with[out] me" you're thinking about. Once the results are done, coauthors can have very, very little to do with the actual publishing of the paper. Other authors can do all the work of collating the results, analyzing them, writing, formatting, etc., and the coauthor can just look at the manuscript and say "Yup, looks okay to me!" and that counts as permission to publish.

[1] If you have scientific objections to the article as written, that's one thing - work with your advisor to address them. But if you think the article is scientifically sound but disagree with publication because you no longer care about it, or you want to hurt your advisor, etc., that's another.

[2] "Appropriate credit" drops off the less involvement you have in writing the paper. In certain circumstances, not actually writing the paper could knock you off of "first author" status. (For those fields which order authors by contribution amounts.)


Phd interview travel paid by interviewer - Is it bad form to ask to stay for the weekend? I have been shortlisted in the Phd application process at a research institution in a neighboring European Country.
I have therefore been invited to go there for a serie of interviews, visits to their laboratories and informal meetings. All of this will last from Tuesday to Friday and the institution is paying for all travel/hotel expenses.

Since I have never visited that city, and the interviews take the whole week, I would enjoy spending the weekend there and flying later on sunday.

In the forms they provided they write explicitly

  Please note that you are expected to arrive on Tuesday and depart on
  Friday

Would it be bad form, or put me in a bad light, if I politely asked to delay the return flight to sunday? Of course I would take care of my accommodation expenses for the extra days.

If you make it completely clear at the time of asking that you would cover all additional expenses, then staying for a day or two extra would be regarded as perfectly normal and reasonable. (Academics travelling to conferences and workshops do this sort of thing all the time.)

Indeed, it may even be regarded as a positive sign: if you do join their PhD programme, then you'll be living in the city for several years, so the fact that you want to get to know the place in advance demonstrates that you're serious about your application.

My guess is that the somewhat intimidating wording "expected ... to depart on Friday" is intended to make it clear that you can't depart before Friday.


How do I go from Math BS/MS to Exercise Physiology PhD? I'm graduating with a BS in Math in April 2014, and I'm starting a Math MS program in September 2014. I realized (a little late) that my true passion is in Exercise Physiology. How do I get from a Math MS program to an Exercise Physiology PhD program?

The only relevant courses I've had are freshmen-level general biology, junior-level chronic disease prevention, and senior-level plant physiology.

The way to get into any PhD program is to apply to it.  If you are interested in staying at your current institution, you can seek out faculty in Exercise Physiology (assuming there are any; I must admit that I know nothing about this particular program, including how common it is) and ask them whether your coursework so far would make you a reasonable candidate for the program, and if not, how much more you need to do.

One obvious question: are you interested in using your mathematical training in a significant way in your future career in Exercise Physiology?  If so, then continuing on to get the MS is math could be an advantage: I imagine that relatively few Exercise Physiology PhD students have that much mathematical training, but like in most academic fields there is always room for people who do have that training and want to use it.

If you are having a real change of heart, I have to ask: why begin a master's program in math if you have decided you don't want to use mathematics later in life?  Why aren't you trying to take courses in Exercise Physiology?  Also, I am a mathematician, so I can say that getting an MS in math is not a triviality: it most typically takes two years, and if your heart's not really in it, it could drag for longer than that and really not be fun.


How do I paraphrase a table? I have to add a table to my thesis but it is detected as plagiarism. I have used data from this table in my thesis.
However I wish to prevent this table to be detected by Turnitin. Is there any way I can paraphrase my table without changing its contents?

Tables can typically be included verbatim (under fair use), just cite your source.
Turnitin is presumably just detecting verbatim inclusion. Assuming you've correctly cited your source, you can ignore.


Are IPython Notebooks code or slides? (for licensing purpose) I prepared a short tutorial in IPython Notebook and want to release it on an open license. However, as it is something between code and slides, I do not know if Creative Commons licenses are suitable (they are not meant to be used for code) or should I rather something specific for code (say, MIT or BSD)?

If you are not familiar with IPython Notebook, it looks like that (not mine):

Introduction to Linear Regression (from this course)

Deep Dreams (with Caffe) - Google

While CC licenses aren't really appropriate for code, and code licenses aren't really appropriate for text, there's no real downside to assigning both kinds to the same material. This is "dual-licensing" (reasonably common for software), and it allows the reuser to choose whether they wish to use and redistribute your material under license A or license B.

They can then pick the particular license which is most appropriate for their purposes without having to (eg) try and work out how to apply the BSD license to a graph.

For example, you could use a license statement that says something like:

  This material is copyright Piotr Migdal and made available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (link). Code is also made available under the MIT License (link).


Required items for undergraduate's CV who is applying to grad school There are many guides for writing an academic CV available online, but nearly all of them are not clearly addressing undergraduates who are applying to graduate school. This group obviously need to include different items on their CV than those applying for a post-doc or a job.

I wanted to know the specific requirements of this kind of CV in addition to the general guidelines of writing an academic CV. specifically, I wanted to know that:

Should I include my research interests? I understand that many senior undergraduates may not have specific research interests, but there are many others who have, and I think this can be a positive point in their application to research based programs.
Should I list courses I've taken in addition to my main courses, that are important for the program? For example, during my undergraduate I have taken many graduate pure math courses (voluntarily), that are very important in the discipline I'm applying to. Should I list them under Education section?
Should an activities section be included, in which my favorite, relevant activities are listed? As an example, I have written many  bots in Python for daily repetitive Wikipedia tasks, and this shows my proficiency in Python (a positive point). Can I list under activities that I have written many scripts for Wikipedia?
Should an Objective section be added at the beginning? (I will write and submit a statement of purpose separately)
Is a References section required at the end of the CV? (I've already made all of the mentioned names in the CV a link pointing to their homepages)

From what I've heard, CVs/resumes do not get a lot of weight in application decisions. The vital information is available elsewhere (particularly in the recommendation letters and statement of purpose), and the rest is almost always fluff and/or unverifiable.

There's a few things that you should definitely do. Focus heavily on research experience and any tangible evidence of research potential. Provide citations/links to publications or working papers. Include academic honors, especially national ones, mostly because they are unlikely to show up anywhere else. Depending on the field, there might be other relevant information (e.g. patents in engineering).

  Should I include my research interests? I understand that many senior undergraduates may not have specific research interests, but there are many others who have, and I think this can be a positive point in their application to research based programs.

No. That's what your statement of purpose is for. There's no need to duplicate it here.

  Should I list courses I've taken in addition to my main courses, that are important for the program?

You can, but I wouldn't. That's what your transcript is for. Some programs will also ask for lists/descriptions of classes. If a specific class is particularly important, you should consider mentioning it in your SOP or getting the professor to write you a recommendation letter; putting it in your CV is unlikely to draw attention to it.

  Should an activities section be included, in which my favorite, relevant activities are listed? As an example, I have written many bots in Python for daily repetitive Wikipedia tasks, and this shows my proficiency in Python (a positive point). Can I list under activities that I have written many scripts for Wikipedia?

Will almost certainly be viewed as fluff. If you an activity is important enough to mention, then include it in your SOP.

  Should an Objective section be added at the beginning? (I will write and submit a statement of purpose separately)

No. Again, this is what your SOP is for.

  Is a References section required at the end of the CV? (I've already made all of the mentioned names in the CV a link pointing to their homepages)

No. Generally there will be a separate section for entering your recommenders and their contact information, so it is unnecessary.

An exception might be when applying to fellowships. I suspect that some fellowships will consider leadership experiences, community service, and other factors that graduate schools generally ignore. Including these activities (e.g. varsity sports, student government, eagle scout, volunteering) might be helpful depending on the evaluation criteria.


How do I teach a course that has an extremely clear textbook? I have decided to use Head First Android Development for my mobile application development course this spring. Like other Head First books, it is easy to read and understand. In my 15+ years of college teaching, I have never before found myself in the position of not needing to explain the textbook to my students (perhaps because this book is written for a general audience, not an academic one).

In typical classes, I assign reading before lecture (sometimes with questions to force students to at least skim the material) and then spend lecture explaining the harder material from the book, providing illustrative examples and having students work simple problems.

While I could present the examples from the book, I think that would be babying my students, who should be perfectly capable of reading such material themselves. (This is an upper-division capstone course, with many prerequisites.) The subject matter does not lend itself to doing small-scale exercises with pencil and paper, the way I would when teaching computer architecture or programming languages. While I plan to have some guest lecturers, I can't do that every class session.

The class will have about 25 students in a traditional classroom, not a computer lab. Lectures are 75 minutes long, twice a week.

What do other teachers do in this situation, or is having a clear, understandable book unprecedented?

For many classes, one doesn't have the students read the material beforehand.  I personally am having students do that in my classes this semester, but I'm also not typically lecturing.  If you are lecturing, I feel it is often counterproductive to make students read the material you will lecture on in advance (the ones that get the reading won't get much out of your lecture, and some of the ones who don't the reading may be wasting their time).

The main thing I suggest is to think carefully about what are your goals for the class, and use that to guide your course design.  (Are the goals just to have the students understand what is in the book?  Or something more?)

Here are a few concrete possibilities to consider:

Don't make students read the book in advance, just lecture.
Cover some of the material with out-of-class readings and some with lecture, and maybe have students present some of the material.

Or if you really want them to do a lot of out-of-class reading:

Even if it is a normal lecture class, you can treat many of the classes as labs, and give the students mini-projects to do (possibly in groups/pairs).
Since you said non-computer exercises aren't appropriate, come up with meta-exercise questions for students to discuss in groups (what are pros/cons of Method X?  how would you design Y?...)
Spend a little time reviewing the reading and design lectures around additional applications of the material.


Do editors really follow suggested reviewers? I was wondering if the editors really follow the list of reviewers the author/s suggested upon the manuscript submission in the journal?

If your paper is especially esoteric, they might. They might find it difficult to find another reviewer and so the list will help them. But they would rather send the paper to someone that they can assume will be unbiased and evaluate the paper on its own and not because of a possible relationship to the author.

But, your list is also a resource to the editor who is looking in the long term to build a large "stable" of reviewers. It may be that someone you list is not chosen for your paper but for another paper on a similar topic sometime in the future.

In addition, the list might give an editor an idea about the "sort of person" who would be a good reviewer, rather than a specific person.

Ultimately, though, the editor needs someone he/she can trust to do an impartial but thorough review.


Is it OK to ask a school about average GRE scores and other admission information? I am looking at applying to a couple of schools abroad (for math grad school), and outside of the fact that they are fairly well known, I have little idea about how competitive they are to get into. Internet searches haven't really helped me out, so I am wondering if it is it acceptable to email a school about what the school's expected/average GRE general and subject tests scores are for a given Ph.D. or Master's program are and how the school feels about a student coming from my background.

American grad schools generally run admissions through departments rather than the central administration. Ask the graduate student advisor (usually listed in the faculty web site) -- or your cognizant POI. They may not have a data about averages, though, as GREs tend to be deprecated except as a first-round screening mechanism.


What is the correct procedure to report typos or errors in journal articles? I have found an error in a journal article which I believe to be a typo. It is minor but it does affect the technical aspects of the paper so it should ideally be corrected.

What is the correct procedure in these cases? Should I contact the authors? Should I contact the editors? Does this vary on a case-by-case basis? If so, what should I consider?

If an error is grave enough to change the results, conclusions, meaning of a published article, the journal and probably also the author is keen to publish an errata to rectify the problem. If there is an error at a point but which is not carried through to the conclusions, I doubt an errata will result. Given that we cannot see the example you are referring to, it is impossible to asses the gravity of the problem. But, since you mention a typo, I doubt that the article as a whole is affected but rather a sentence or a paragraph. So at best you approach the grey-zone.

So, it would never hurt to write a short mail to the editor to check if the problem is deemed serious enough for action. Depending on how you perceive the problem, a mail to the author to check that your perception of the error is correct may also be pertinent. Which action you take first is of less importance, you may even decide to send a mail to both at the same time. Without knowing the details the best or most appropriate way forward in detail is difficult to judge.


How to choose a proper research topic potential and/or having no strong competition Background

Nowadays, academic research has been becoming an arms race and there are millions of paper published every year. Besides, a potential research topic/area means the research group is eager to know and answer it. Therefore, researchers are facing strong competition in most potential research topics and areas (e.g. deep learning today).

Question

How do researchers choose the proper research topics and areas to avoid strong competition, especially when their research interest is becoming popular?

Choosing an another research topic, but less interested in that.
Keeping the strong competition.
Quitting academic career.
Others.

Thank you for your suggestion.

My suggestion about choosing a research area and topic is to choose something that interests you personally and that you won't mind spending time and effort on. Time and effort for perhaps a significant amount of time. Advisors can be good at suggesting problems worth the effort.

If it isn't fun, it isn't worth doing, personally.

Actually, research in most fields is extremely balkanized. You are likely "competing" with only a few people in a very narrow area no matter what you choose. Math is like that. Better to form collaborative circles and stop thinking about competition. Most of the "millions of papers" are of no interest whatever to nearly everyone else. Some exceptions, obviously.

My own doctoral work was very interesting and significant. But significant and interesting to only about six people world wide, most of them at my own institution. It took years for anyone to decide to follow up on it and more years to find an application. But it was interesting enough that it was remarked upon immediately on publication. So, extreme balkanization.

Moreover, if you do wind up with competitors you are likely to be surprised when it happens and surprised too late to take action. Some people work in parallel at different institutions. I know of a fairly public case in which this happened and two people submitted nearly the same paper to a CS conference based on their independent doctoral work. Their advisors were well known to each other, but no one suspected that the students were working on the same problem.


Setting up a Mathematical Institute of Refereeing? This question is mainly focused on the field of mathematics, although it might make sense for other areas too.

  would setting up a Mathematical Institute of Refereeing be a good idea ?

To explain the idea, I have noted several things that seem to go in the same direction :

referees today are not paid for their work (at least by good quality journals, I'm not talking about predatory ones), they do it by goodwill to be active members of their communities ;
discussing a result with a colleague always speeds up one's understanding ;
in many cases it is difficult to find a referee for a paper, and the process can easily take 9 months just to get a first report ;
many people experience a draught at some point in their career.

So what about an institute where members have a temporary affiliation (say a 5-year contract, which they can quit at any time) and are tasked to only do refereeing, any involvement in other time-consuming activities (teaching, grant application, but also one's own research) would be banned (and checked regularly by the administrative staff and citizens).

The members would be sworn to secrecy (like a medical one, with cash and jail sentences if found guilty of breach, say during their membership and the 2 years beyond it), which would allow them to discuss papers they are reviewing with other members on-site.

Funding would be provided by a variety of sources (Universities, Private sector...).

And to make sure that there is no change from traditional anonymous refereing, these referees would not mention in their report that there are members, so it would look like it had been done by a standard referee at a university (but much faster).

The idea would be both to speed up the process, and to lower the pressure to publish mediocre papers (i.e. it would be valued more highly by the community to know that someone is a hard-working member of that institute, rather than someone is painstainkingly publishing small papers every couple year which consume refereeing ressources while adding little value to the area).

[edit: thank you for the answers and comments, many good points there of course. Clearly not all sub-fields of maths would be covered this way, but I thought it might help in some where this is high traffic. Plus, I thought people towards the end of their career, who have taught for 25/30 years and, in some cases, have also lost a bit the will of finding new stuff all the time, might be interested. (If you don't find it lacking courtesy, I think I'd like perhaps not to accept an answer to let it open-ended.)]

I'm an assistant professor of mathematics and while I regularly referee papers (in fact, I have a few papers I'm supposed to be refereeing right now), I have to say that joining a Mathematical Institute of Refereeing sounds awful. It's right down there with joining a Mathematical Institute of Departmental Meetings.

Perhaps it's just me, but the aspects of my job that I love the most are being able to teach mathematics to and mentor talented students, working alone or with collaborators on research projects, and writing up / publishing papers. Although I definitely get something out of refereeing papers (and seem to referee ten or so a year), this is mainly something I do in order to be a "good mathematical citizen". That is, I expect that when I submit a paper it will be competently refereed, so it's only fair that I referee the papers of others when I'm qualified and able to do so. There's no way I would give up all of the aspects of my job that I love in order to focus full time on refereeing. (If such a thing were even possible. I'm not sure how my college would react if I told them that I'm going to be refereeing papers full time for a while but will be back in time for the Fall 2024 semester.) At the end of the day I think what it boils down to is this. I also enjoy doing yard work. But I'd never consider quitting research and teaching in order to focus on it full time.


How to politely ask for feedback following a job interview I had a job interview three weeks back. To date I have not heard anything from them. Do I send them an email to seek feedback? What do I say to them?

I had a job interview three weeks back. To date I have not heard anything from them.

That really depends on the place. In most cases, I would assume to not be the first choice if not hearing anything after three weeks. However, there certainly are departments and research institutes where it takes much longer than three weeks to get any official decision on the road.

In general, and this is true for academic and industrial jobs alike, asking for "feedback" on how you did at a job interview is usually not useful as long as you do not have personal contacts to an insider (e.g., somebody on or close to the search committee). If you get any answer from the official channels at all, it will likely consist of platitudes. For instance, "the search is still ongoing" if no official notifications have been sent out, or some generic reason if you ask afterwards why you have been rejected: "Although you have been a very strong candidate, we have chosen to go with a different candidate due to a better match with the department's future development plans."

I understand that it is very awkward for a candidate to not know why they have not been selected (were you indeed just not the best match? was your job talk weak? did you not interview well? were you perceived as arrogant or not nice in some other way?). However, giving this kind of feedback truthfully is unlikely to help the employer in any way, and has a very real danger of backfiring. In the best case, it may lead to annoying discussions (e.g., you tell a candidate that she was not selected due to her research output being below the hiree's, and she starts arguing and negotiating about how this is not the case). In the worst case, and this may be true particularly if somebody from a protected class is involved, it may lead to a law suite.


I'm an invited speaker. Can I send a coauthor in my place? I was invited to give a talk at an upcoming conference. The abstract has myself and two other authors listed. Is it unreasonable for me to back out of the presentation (they were only paying for the hotel, food and conference registration fees and not flight) and have a co-author do it? The reason for me backing out would be over extending myself due to a combination of poor planning on my part and some luck on grant pre-proposals.

One question is whether your coauthor will do as good a job of speaking or otherwise contributing to the conference.  If you are well known as an excellent speaker and your coauthor is not, or if you are a much better known researcher, then the organizers may be unhappy with the substitution.  Another potential issue may be if your name has been used to advertise the conference, on posters or the web.  However, if you and your coauthor are more or less on an equal footing, then I doubt the organizers will object.

I'd recommend apologizing for being unable to make it due to reasons beyond your control (without going into detail), and offering your coauthor as a potential substitute, while still giving them the chance to decline and just cancel your talk or replace you with someone else entirely.  I'd make it clear that you are suggesting the coauthor as a possibility without having asked the coauthor yet, so that they don't feel trapped by not wanting to insult a substitute you have already lined up.


"scholarly activities" vs. "research activities" in Australia for the purpose of applying to a lecturer position For the purpose of applying for a lecturer position in Australia in computer science (CS), what are "research activities" and "scholarly activies", and how do they differ? The applicant is asked to provide "scholarly and research activities" according to the selection criteria stated in a particular job description on the website of the CS department to which I am applying to.  However, both terms seem to me way too vague or broad from a purely linguistic viewpoint.  The discussion in What does "research activities" mean? touches only the "research activity" term, but even this discussion is incomplete and contradictory.

I am currently out of academia, but have worked at Lecturer level in Australia (US equivalent of Assistant Prof).  To my understanding, asking about your "research activities" is a cue for you to talk about your published (and in-progress) papers, and your field of research, and "scholarly activities" is a bit broader, allowing you to talk about other activities that do not result in publications to you (e.g., refereeing papers, editing a journal, holding an administrative position in a professional body, etc.).  That is how I would interpret it, but if in doubt, be proactive and contact them; there is zero chance of your enquiry being taken negatively.


I noticed an error in a graded exam during office hours. Should I give the student the lower grade? You are a professor. A student comes to you with a question on an exam they have taken and received back. The student wrote 5 as the answer to a question, and they want to defend why 5 is a correct answer and they should receive full marks. Their argument is invalid, but you notice that the answer was misread as 9 and the student was given partial credit (5 is entirely incorrect and they should have received zero credit). Do you regrade the question, giving the student zero points, or do you leave it alone?

Arguments for regrading the question:

It would be unfair to the other students to give this student marks they did not earn.
Pursuing accurate grading is what is important and is the objective of the course.

Arguments for leaving the question alone:

The student came forward with a good-faith intention to learn why their argument wasn't correct, and shouldn't be penalized - this would break an implicit contract, and encourage students to not seek further feedback.
The unfairness actually stems from the misgrade itself, and there isn't anything wrong with leaving the misgrade alone now that it already exists. After all, if the student hadn't come forward, the misgrade would still have been left alone.

Let the grade stand, but point out your error.

The principle I try to follow is that students shouldn't be negatively affected by faculty mistakes (or that such effects should be minimized).

I wouldn't suggest adding an additional assignment to maintain the grade, since this is effectively another kind of penalty.  But I would suggest being transparent with the student, explaining your mistake, and showing them where they went wrong (otherwise they are deprived of the feedback that the correct grade would have provided).

If the exam were graded on a curve and re-grading this one question on Student A's test would materially improve other students' grades, I would give other students the boost (i.e. the grade they would have received had Student A's exam been correctly marked the first time) but leave Student A's grade intact.


Publishing while changing institutions I'm submitting an mathematics article concerning research that was done entirely while I was an undergraduate at University A.  This August I will be a graduate student at University B.  The only funding I received came from NSF through a ten week program at University C at the very beginning of the project, after which I finished the research on my own while attending University A.  On the other hand, while University B has nothing to do with the publication, it is the most up to date institution as far as contact information goes.

Should I put University A or University B as my affiliation (or both)?

The standard solution for your question is to indicate your current address in a footnote:

  Alexander Gruber a,†, Another O. Tor a

  a University A, Department of Criminology, 221B Baker Street, London (UK)
  † Currently at University B, Logic Department, Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Sq, London (UK)

If you didn't use any of the resources of University B, that is the way to go. Otherwise, University B should be listed as an affiliation.

The situation regarding your University C is less clear to me: if you were affiliated with them, you need to list them. If they only “handled” the money given out by NSF, then simply mention them in the funding or acknowledgments section:

  Acknowledgments
  A. G. is grateful to NSF program #132-1237 for funding, administered by University C.


Using a data set collected against the terms of service of a company? Many entities (companies, websites) clearly state on their terms of service that data collection is not allowed. For example many websites don't allow scraping.

I plan to collect data and then publish a paper using them. I will state how I collected them.

Can my paper be denied if I do the above?

Note: This is not about possible legal consequences. I am simply asking if my paper will be published or not.

Most serious organizations (journals, conferences, etc) have standards of ethics they abide by, and individual peer reviewers also have their own standards of research ethics. In some fields these are very explicit and written out at length, such as with the American Psychological Association (APA) or the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).

When submitting to a venue, there is almost always some statement of ethical/legal compliance which you must agree to. As such, violating any aspect of the codes, ethics, or legal principles the organization (or editors, or reviewers) value is absolutely grounds for rejection of a paper, or retraction if violation is discovered later. The editor is fully within their rights to reject a paper that violates any of their standards, and the individual reviewers are free to suggest the paper be rejected on any such grounds.

Various people and organizations value things differently, so some venues might be more comfortable with some types of violations than others. Some might be OK with violating a terms of service to scrape data, while some others might be happy to reject you outright for such a practice. I'm certain this area is also changing and evolving quite rapidly, so even venues that previously published similar papers might no longer be interested in such methods. Some will even way your methods against the outcomes, and if the research is interesting enough they'll look past the other failings - and some just don't care at all; your research could have been about electrocuting kittens to see how loud they cry and they'd publish it just the same.

I would encourage you to think more long-term than whether or not a paper gets accepted, however. A single accepted paper which shows a researcher to be dangerously negligent, in terms of legal responsibility or ethical guidelines, can quickly find themselves considered a liability to future collaborators, advisers, and employers. Academia heavily relies on reputation, and a reputation of taking short-cuts, ignoring ethical guidelines, and not caring whether what they do is illegal or could result in losing lawsuits...I don't know whether such a reputation will open the kinds of doors you'd be happy to walk through.


Why writing about experimental results is difficult? When writing about experimental work, you either describe other people's work or your own. In both cases you're not inventing anything new (at the stage of writing). Then why is it so difficult?

It's difficult to write about other people's work because:

It feels redundant repeating the same introduction that appears in all other papers over and over again.
Oftentimes it's impossible to get an in-depth understanding of other people's work, but yet you're expected to describe their work as if you fully understand it.
The way other people explain their work in writing can be difficult to understand because of terminology, background or perception differences.

It's difficult to write about your own work because:

Quickly after you start writing, you realize that there are so many more experiments you could have done to confirm your results, and that your readers may expect you would have conducted in the first place.
Explaining your results is easy only when they match existing theory. When you have unexplainable results, you actually need to come up with an explanation (= theory), which is not easy.
The way you end up ordering your text only rarely matches the actual chronological order of the work you've done. Creating this somewhat fake narrative may feel dishonest and demotivating.
A typical pattern in presenting information is hierarchical organization into mutually exclusive abstract groups. This could be difficult to do, simply because the world is very complicated.


Rationale behind lack of transparency regarding thesis defence committee At my department, a thesis defence committee consists of 3-4 professors (including the advisor(s)), one of whom does not belong to the department (so could be pretty much anyone related to the field).
It is common for a grad student to know who his thesis defence committee members are going to be quite ahead of the defence date (usually the student will know before copies of his thesis are sent to the members for review).

In rare cases, the student can even assemble his committee together with his advisor -- this makes sense for example in the case where the student wishes to pursue a certain research direction after graduating, and he would like a potential advisor or reference who is an expert in the subfield to take a part in his evaluation.

However, the general policy of the university (and of some faculty members) is that a student is not supposed to have the information on who is included in the committee until the defence.

While I understand some potential reasons for it, such as avoiding bribery in any form, those precautions seem quite far fetched at a small department where everybody would probably know if any foul play was going on. Also, if it really were an issue, there should have been anonymity in other examination-related situation during one's studies. From a different perspective, I personally would rather not discover that Euler is on my thesis defence committee when I walk into the examination room (and not because of the startling discovery of the existence of zombies).

What reasons, from your experience, lead to such no-transparency policies?

(I am not facing such a situation, the question arises from a case involving a colleague.)

In some cases, there is an external bureaucratic entity within the university that imposes such rules on departments, along the way insinuating that an "outside examiner" (even if there is none qualified) is necessary to "maintain standards", because (supposedly) otherwise departments might grant crappy PhD's... But, at my university, such secrecy is not required, in fact, nor is prior communication of student with committee prohibited. After all, wouldn't such communication help everything?

Similarly, some faculty suspect or even explicitly accuse other faculty of having low standards, etc.

Oddly, my university gives PhD students exactly one attempt at a "final oral exam" (=thesis defense): if they "fail", they are terminated. That is, there cannot be any "message" to go back and do more work... which seems to me bizarre.

In my opinion, the scenario in which a student presents a thesis as a fait accommpli with a short time-table to do trivial revisions (as opposed to altering the scope, or, heaven forbid, really learning more things to do a better thing...) is a bad thing. That is, interacting with the committee only at the end of a multi-year project strikes me as bizarre and not useful. All the worse if the committee's composition itself is a last-minute surprise, so that nothing positive could have been done.

But, yes, some of my colleagues apparently believe that there are universal absolutes, so that the notion of discussion and negotiation is what is incomprehensible or corrupt. Indeed, as with some coursework, it seems that a large part of the "test" is to figure out what the "test" might be about. I suppose there is a watershed of opinion about whether such a meta-test isn't at a seriously more-expert level than the literal material. Certainly at the PhD level, the meta-questions can easily become so serious that experts don't agree, so it seems unreasonable to me to require novices figure this out on their own.


How can I find the DOI for an old mathematical paper which is not in English? (Not sure if this is the right SX site, but math.sx seemed to have no questions concerning DOIs.)

Everything I cite in my thesis has a DOI or URL (I think that's important), but I'm citing an article that was the first to mention a kind of problem,

  Arkadi Nemirovski. Nonparametric estimation of smooth regression
  functions. In: Tekhnicheskaya Kibernetika 3 (1985)

which seems to be quite obscure, it's not even listed on the author's website. It's not in our library (or any catalog I searched), but just a handed-down copy of unknown origin.

The journal doesn't seem to exist any more (or it doesn't have a website), and crossref.org yields nothing. The article is translated, there are some inconsistencies with transliteration, i.e. the author's last name is sometimes written Nemirovskiĭ, the journal is sometimes written as Techničeskaja, the title might be completely different, etc.

Any pointers where I could find some canonical information?

As others have said, not every (old) article has a DOI or a URL. However, in mathematics every article since 1940 has an MR number which uniquely identifies it. So go to mathscinet and look up this article. I just did, it has MR number MR0844292. The bibliographical information on mathscinet (like the transliteration of the author's name) would also be considered the "canonical information".


What's the easiest way to get a references section into a single citation format if they vary to begin with? I have a ~5 page references section with citations added by various authors in varying formats. What's the easiest way to get them all into the same format?

The two options I see are to do it manually or use citation management software like Zotero. Doing it manually is feasible but tedious, prone to mistakes and will probably take an hour or more. I'm not sure if it's possible to import these varying format citations into Zotero and export it in a common format, but that's what I'm about to try.

I wanted to check with experts here first. If I find Zotero works or not I'll add that info to this Q&A.

Doing this in a reference management software (I use Zotero, which you mention, but there are others) is absolutely the way to go. Of course, setting up the reference database for one paper may take the same amount of time as manually reformatting, and learning how to use it in the process may take longer. The advantage is in reusability. For any single paper the up front cost may not be worth it, but the time savings on paper number 2 and beyond is incredible.

Unfortunately you won't just be able to paste in the formatted citations and have Zotero recognize them (so far as I know). Zotero does have a way to add items by an identifier, so if your coauthors included DOIs, adding the references should move quickly. Additionally, if your coauthors used any reference management software themselves, you can ask them to export it to a common format (BibTeX is pretty commonly supported) and import those files.

If worse comes to worse, searching for each reference title in Google Scholar and using Zotero's automatic ingestion should also be pretty quick.

Zotero's documentation on these various ways to create items:

https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library


Research Interest in physics (Transferring would be good idea?) I'm a first year PhD student at a university in the USA. Still I haven't finished my first semester. After I come here, I feel right now, I like  a different  research field (based on job application and doing empirical research). The problem is that, there is only two professors who do that type of research work in my department. One of the professor doesn't have a good reputation doing research work and another one's  review is not good (I heard his from previous students. He is very rude sometimes, this scared me a lot). He is very furious if his students can't satisfy his expectations. Therefore I don't have wish to work under his supervision.

I have two options right now, 1. changing research field and 2. finding another university related to my research interest.

Please note that I have not taken the first qualifying exam and even my first semester core courses haven't finished yet. The university gives the MS certificate if anyone satisfies the requirement of MS.

I have received suggestion from one of the PhD student which is: I should take the physics GRE to increase my score and apply this upcoming fall. If I get admission, I can inform the International office that I will leave.

This suggestion didn't seem good to me because my department may take this in negative way, as I will require a recommendation letter.

What's your suggestions in this case? Should I wait more and talk to the professors after my qualifying exam regarding my research interest.

I'll start off by saying that transferring is not unheard of, but also definitely not common.

As a first year, you can't have gotten that far into your studies given that it is still September. In general, in physics at least, it's uncommon for someone to go to grad school with a very specific topic in mind and then follow through on it through dissertation. You'll move around as you naturally move through problems of funding, finding an advisor, and just as your interests evolve. The professor and topic you start working with doesn't necessarily have to be your advisor and your dissertation topic.

I would recommend talking more to the professors who do what you might be interested in, and expanding your search. It's not uncommon to only have one or two professors working in a specific field at a department, but if they are unappealing you might find another professor you like works on something similar. For that matter, when talking to other professors, you might find that you really are interested in what they do and want to work on it.

If that doesn't work out, you CAN apply to transfer. However, as other questions have noted previously, it is an uphill battle. You'll need a convincing reason (WITHOUT sounding bitter or negative) and a very strong application package. Just applying doesn't commit you, but I would consider that a last resort only after you have tried everything else.


How can I finish my PhD? I have M.Sc. in mathematics, and I was/am working on a PhD for almost 10 years now (on and off), but I haven't published a thing. I have many results (most in a single field) and potential paper drafts, but I never finish up and publish, because I always find something new to learn or a new problem to research. I left the university eventually and got a part-time job as a data scientist, but I was never satisfied about leaving things open. I was working completely alone and didn't get along well with my adviser.

Today, while I have the time, I lack the discipline and environment to finish. None of my close friends are mathematicians, so I can't really talk about math with anybody (besides Internet forums). I love math very much, and I'm learning new things all the time, and I want to have my results finally out there and have my resume match my skills.

I will be glad to hear any advice, if anybody was in a similar situation. Any help will be appreciated.

Do not get distracted and focus on completing a thesis rather than publishing. After 10 years, you should have enough material to write a decent thesis, even though what you have done may not be publishable. Get support from your supervisor and anyone supportive from the your department to achieve this. Otherwise, self-fund or reach out for coaches or mentors are able to achieve this aim. Ideally people that know your area and can help support you to focus on your thesis rather than the publications.

I understand and respect that publication is important especially in mathematics. Publications is the focus for an academic career but you have already invested 10 years of your life and it does not sound like you are going to be hitting a string of publications soon. Also, if you are already working part-time, it seems to me, getting the PhD and then working full-time is a very reasonable and respectable career goal.

Recognise that you get a high every time there is a new challenge. Every one does. It is far more exciting to mov from one exciting topic to the next. Every new challenge has a buzz to it. You have to decide whether this buzz and excitement is more important than completing your PhD. Going over old material and old "stuff" would be drudgery and probably your previous traumatic experience (as you remember why you were not able to achieve publication), but it is important to swallow your pride and decide whether completing a thesis and your PhD is more important than achieving the goal of publication.


In U.S. universities, do male professors get paternity leave? Do American universities typically help male professors transition into fatherhood by offering (paid) paternity leave?  If so, what is the standard amount of paid time off that is offered?

Feel free to compare with maternity leave benefits for female professors, but my question is mainly on the availability of paternity leave.

The answer varies wildly across university to university, even within the same class of university. This can go from the mandatory FMLA minimum of 12 weeks (unpaid) to 12 months, with some pay. I've attached a comparison table from a 2009 survey by Robert Drago and Kelly Davis,  Parental Leave and Modified Duties Policies across the Big Ten.

I found this from the AAUP's page on family leave, which is fairly useful: https://www.aaup.org/issues/balancing-family-academic-work/leave-policies

In addition to the formal leave offered, there can also be varieties of teaching relief and tenure clock stoppage for both mothers and fathers. All of this seems to vary from place to place, and probably some details could be negotiated at the time of a job offer.


Is calling a staff member "selfish" harassment? A faculty member wrote to a staff member that "you are selfish." The staff member wrote back to the faculty member asking for an explanation. The faculty member did not respond and wrote: "I would not respond to you any further." Is this harassment?

It's brusque and ill-advised, but it's not harassment per se.

Harassment is the creation of a hostile work environment through pressure or intimidation. A one-off heated email and the use of a single adjective to describe someone in a negative light is certainly not sufficient of proving anything more than the person who wrote the email probably should have waited a while before hitting the "send" button. A sustained campaign of emails and a larger pattern of behavior would be needed to make a believable harassment argument.

There's no reason for this to be escalated into a larger situation that will ultimately accomplish very little except inflaming tensions further.


Asking a faculty member at my university that I have not met(!) about his research, and about courses that deal with his specialty/my career goal? I am an undergraduate student pursuing a double major in Computer Science B.S. and Mathematics B.S.
My dream career is to work in quant. finance. However, my school does not have a dedicated department to this field, resulting in lack of dedicated classes and opportunities for it. The page for "Mathematical Finance" is simply a white page with nothing but a list of three faculty members, linking to their page, two of which are Ph.D students.
I have found an associate professor who I believe can help answer a few of my questions and confusion about going down this path, but I have read a little here and generally, emails like this are frowned upon, and the last thing I want is for him to be offended by my request.
However, I don't really know any other professors or faculty members who would be able to give me insight on this.
My email would start off something like this
"I would just like to start off this email by saying please excuse me and forgive any informalities or unprofessionalism. I hope to not offend you with this sudden email from a student you do not know.
I have found your email and page from MyCollege's "Mathematical Finance" page: mycollege.com/mathematical-finance"
Then I would say something along the lines of "given your expertise, what courses/concepts are important...what steps should I take now..."
And then finally I'd say something like "I know you are incredibly busy with research, school, among other things, so I hope you do not mind this email."
I will also make sure not to completely bombard him with questions, but ask general, non-pressuring questions.
Is this a bad idea? I am not quite sure where else to get in contact with someone in this field with such close proximity, and aside from LinkedIn with people I will probably never meet, this seems like my best bet.
EDIT: this might be a duplicate of OK to ask a professor at my institution with whom I have no previous relationship some questions relating to hobby-project?
but this is about a community college professor who is not doing research, which may be different from my circumstances, also his is about a hobby, while mine is about career and industry.

It is completely fine to send an email. Your request is totally reasonable. You are a student, at university to learn. The professor is at university to teach. If they get offended by a simple enquiry that shows interest in learning more about their favourite subject then you have a bigger problem on your hands.
It will not be the first or even the hundredth time this professor has received an email from a student they don't know and writing such an email is not going to cause offence in any way, shape or form. The worst that can happen is you get a polite "Sorry, I am too busy" or perhaps no reply. The professor will not be offended by you asking -- in fact, it's more likely they will be annoyed or frustrated that they don't have the time to help you, not at you for asking.
Finally, I would not start off with such a grovelling/self-deprecating tone. There's no need to apologise for sending a perfectly innocuous email. However, please bear in mind that academic cultures do differ, and I'm writing from a UK/Western European perspective, where the culture can be a little more blunt and far less deferential towards authority (i.e. professors) than in the USA (where I assume you are from). To me it would come across as more professional if you write to them as though you are a peer wanting to initiate a scientific discussion, rather than as a lowly student who isn't worthy to interact with an esteemed professor.
In summary, the best thing to do is make sure your email is short, polite and to the point. Briefly introduce yourself, ask your question and thank them in advance for their time.


How important are poster sessions in conferences? Many times I've attended and will attend international conferences presenting a poster in my life.
I used to think that this poster works have been considered less important than scientific papers or oral communications, but important anyway for scientific divulgation.

So, when presenting a poster, I've always been thinking: "Okay, it's not as important as a oral communication, but, if they accepted it, this means they found it interesting".

Then I read the "Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation" article by Thomas C. Erren and Philip E. Bourne, and I was pretty disappointed after reading point 4:

  Rule 4: Poster Acceptance Means Nothing

  Do not take the acceptance of a poster as an endorsement of your work.
  Conferences  need attendees to be financially viable. Many attendees
  who are there on grants cannot justify attending a conference unless
  they present. There are a small number of speaking slots compared with
  attendees. How to solve the dilemma? Enter posters; this way everyone
  can present. In other words, your poster has not been endorsed, just
  accepted. To get endorsement from your peers, do good science and
  present it well on the poster.

Do you agree with this statement?

What is the overall importance of a poster session during an international conference?

Is is just a way to collect subscriptions and money, or is it an important occasion for science divulgation?

Thanks

Edit: I'm speaking about poster session vs. oral session, I do know that a poster with presence is better than nothing. As Woody Allen once said: "The 80% of success is just showing up" ;-)

A poster session is a good way to disseminate your work: but it has nothing to do with how you get credit for your work.

Some computer science venues have moved to a model where papers are reviewed and accepted, but the vast majority of papers only get a poster presentation at the conference. Another model is where all accepted papers are invited to a poster session. So it really depends on your area and venue.


Is it plagiarism to hire a freelance programmer for an assignment but change a lot of it before you submit it? I took freelancer tutor help for a Python programming coursework  during my MS but did not submit the exact code he gave, I refracted it and changed a lot of it. Is it considered plagiarism?

I am asking this question to clear the self-guilt and to know more about code plagiarism.

If you used code that you paid someone else to write (or found for free online) for an assignment and don't disclose it, then you have plagiarized.

Plagiarism is the practice of using someone else's work and pretending it is your own, in a situation where there is an expectation of originality (as there is in coursework assignments).

If you use someone else's work and you disclose it (by citing it and telling the professor you have done so), and then build on that work by adding your own work, then you haven't plagiarized. You may not have done a good job on the assignment - your professor may decide that the work you have done on your own is not sufficient to earn a good grade, or your professor may set a rule that students are not allowed to use outside sources and then penalize you for not following the parameters of the assignment; but as long as you are honest about the source of the work, it isn't plagiarism.

But it is absolutely required that you make it clear what part of the work is not your own, and what parts are your original contributions.


Non-degree courses and Masters admissions I had a low Undergrad GPA, around or below the cutoff of most of the masters programs that interest me. I have since started pursuing a graduate certificate (Mining Massive Datasets from Stanford) and am doing much better (A's) than I did as an Undergrad.

What should I expect in terms of how universities look at the non-degree courses I have taken towards the certificate? I realise I could draw attention to the grades in my personal statement, but is there any precedent for including post-degree courses in the GPA calculation for cutoff purposes? How might they be weighted? What can I do to emphasise them?

A few more specifics for my case if the question is too general: I did my bachelor's in Math and graduated in 2012. I am interested in a Machine Learning-focused Masters in the US, UK, or Canada.

I was an international student and did not have amazing bachelor GPA. But I got accepted master degree in NY, plus without TOEFL which was requirement.

How?

I met department chair once. So, probably the department chairman liked my works and it was a good enough first impression on him.

Conclusion:
Show your works to department chair. Proof that your bachelor GPA is just some numbers on the paper.

Good luck


Is it acceptable for professors to plagiarise material for an academic textbook? I know a professor who has recently written two books which are used as textbooks/academic books. However, I spotted a pretty recurrent pattern of plagiarism. They copy sentences and sometimes paragraphs up to several hundred words from Wikipedia, other articles, books, reports without referring to that work through both of the books. Often when they do copy, they include the references they copy (e.g. they copy A which refers to B and C), and they keep the references to A and B.

Is this in any way considered common practice? I obviously think not, but I am interested to ask whether I am simply too draconian in this regard.

Replicating large portions of material from other books without permission; copying major portions of published work without citation -- this is blatantly plagiarism at all angles. This is downright unacceptable unethical practice.


Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal I have sent a paper to the journal that was predatory and I had no idea what that was. Today, they sent me an email that I need to pay 1819 euros to publish my manuscript. On their internet pages stands that publication fee is 1819 USD and 1705 euros. This means that they have changed their "price". They also said that in case of withdrawal I will need to pay 919 euros and that it is a half of price (919 euros is not 50% of above mentioned fees). If i do not pay, what could be legal consequences for me? Please help.

Get legal advice. I don't see any other way about this unfortunately. They could easily say the 1819 EUR charge was a typo and it should've been 1819 USD. It also clearly says on the website that there's a withdrawal charge, although it doesn't say how much. They have removed the reason for the withdrawal charge from their website; however I'm sure I saw in previous versions of the page that the reason is you've taken up the editors' + reviewers' time, which is a defensible argument.

You may have to provide an explanation for why you submitted an article to them in the first place. If you can e.g. point to a deceptive call for papers which did not mention the article processing charge, you have a stronger case.

Having said that, don't worry too much, you're probably going to get away without too much pain. Reasons:

The publisher is OMICS, which has a reputation as the worst predatory open access publisher out there (see their Wikipedia page). You can point to action by the US government against OMICS, which should be especially relevant if you're based in the US.
Because OMICS is so bad, there're likely to have been many authors who wanted to withdraw their articles. If OMICS has initiated legal proceedings against these authors, I'm not aware of them (and they would undoubtedly have been publicized by the victims).
OMICS has already been involved in lots of legal suits, on the wrong side (i.e. they're the defendants). Courts are not likely to be sympathetic to predatory OA publishers.
OMICS has little to gain by filing a suit. The most they can hope for is 1819 USD. That's probably not enough to be worth the effort.

I'd guess that the most likely result is that you'll be blacklisted by OMICS. They might refuse to consider any more of your papers or they might charge higher article processing charges the next time you submit an article. They might even take you off their mailing lists. Do you care? One might even send them some genuine thanks if they do.


The editor of a jounal asked me to withdraw the ArXiv version of a paper and only upload it after acceptance. Is it possible to do that? I submitted a paper to Elsevier recently. The editor told me that its similarity tool found more than 80% of word coincidence and sent me the report. I realized that the test actually referred to the same paper, specifically the version posted in Arxiv. I thought this was very odd because the Elsevier recommends uploading the manuscript by retrieving the sources directly from Arxiv, which is what I did. After explaining to the editor what happened, he asked me to withdraw the paper from Arxiv and only submit it again after acceptance.

I would like to know if it is possible to upload a new version of the paper on Arxiv after having withdrawn it. Has anyone ever had a similar situation before?

I totally agree with the comments of @anyon and @david-ketcheson. I'd suggest that you

point the editor to the guidelines regarding self-archiving of the journal and/or Elsevier in general and, if this fails,
contact your library, because there are people dealing with this kind of situations very often and they usually have (other) contact persons/options at the publisher.


As a discussant, should I discuss my points with the presenter beforehand? There is a good question about how to be a discussant here, but it does not cover my question.

I was chosen to be a discussant for an upcoming seminar (actually, it was proposed to me by the same author I am discussing). I have several comments to make about the work, which I will put on slides. Should I talk the author through them before my presentation, or perhaps send him/her my slides beforehand? Or is it well understood that discussions are "surprises" and presenters should be able to address the discussion "on the spot"?

I have no intention to put the presenter into trouble, but perhaps, for the sake of the audience, it is better if I send the slides/discussion beforehand, so the quality of the answers might be higher. But I am not sure this is standard. Any ideas?

I would go with the second option; send the slides to the author beforehand. This will help the following:

The author would be prepared in terms of the questions and topics he is going to get the questions from. He would think on a lower level and add more clarity to his answers.
Give the author a higher confidence to defend, if there seems to be any surprise.
If he feels, he can ask you for additional clarification beforehand.


Frequency of appointments with Ph.D. supervisor I am a recent PhD student. My adviser is really a very nice, kind, and open-minded person. They are always open to discuss about subjects of my interest.
As I am almost at the half of my first year, my rhythm of working has evolved from making lectures to doing something concrete. So, I have started to contact my adviser more often in the last month.

How often a PhD student can see his supervisor? Is it really disturbing to send them some results to take their opinion every week? For the moment, my adviser does not seem to be disturbed but are there some "implicit" norms that have escaped me?

The frequency that students and advisors meet depends a lot on the particular student and advisor, and also varies highly by time.  In my experience, once a month is quite a bit on the low side, but not unusually so.  A more typical pacing is once a week or once every two weeks.

The reason for this frequency is not for the sake of "norms", but rather is a good spacing for giving enough time for the student to accomplish something but not so much so that the student is likely to end up wasting a lot of time or becoming very frustrated going down a bad path that the advisor might have been able to detect and help remedy.

If your advisor is meeting with you once a month and happy with your progress, then perhaps you are simply doing very well at self-direction.  It is quite reasonable, however, to ask for more frequent supervision if you think that you will benefit, and as a new Ph.D. student, I think that you likely should do so.