Why are journals used in modern scientific academic research? I am new to research and I have yet to internalize the concept of journals and their utility in archiving scientific literature.

Almost all the papers I have read recently are from this website called arxiv. Arxiv calls itself to be a preprint archive. Anyone can upload a PDF file to the repository and it counts as a valid research. Large companies like Google and Facebook post all their research here. The research is peer reviewed, It does not have the tyranny of a fixed format and the publishing is instantaneous unlike journals which are painfully slow. It is also open access and unlike open access journals it does not cost a fortune to publish a paper.

My question is, why were journals used to begin with? Why are they used now?

I have heard some people say that if a paper is not published in a scopus indexed journal then it does not have any value. Then why are so many people publishing here? As far as I know citations from arxiv are picked up by google scholar.

EDIT: Ok, so the entire system is a huge mess.

https://gowers.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/elsevierstatementfinal.pdf
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.1351.pdf

Why are so many people publishing [on ArXiv]?

You have to be careful with terminology when making statements like that. ArXiv is certainly "publishing" in the literal sense of "making public" but would you say that you'd "published a book" if you'd just put it on your website? Probably not.

  My question is, why were journals used to begin with?

Because they predate ArXiv and the web by hundreds of years, though the format has changed over time.

  Why are they used now?

Partly through inertia, partly through a lack of alternatives. On a purely scientific level, ArXiv itself is not peer-reviewed. On a non-scientific level, ... People have an intuition about the quality they expect from a paper that appears in a particular journal and we don't have alternatives that allow us to make this kind of judgement. Correspondingly, certain journals have quite a lot of prestige, which is important for students early-career researchers who are looking for promotion; a large fraction of papers have at least one such author. It's easier for people like Tim Gowers to work outside that system.


What would be the grad program for studying Paralegal in the US? What would be the grad program for studying Paralegal in the US?

In the US, there isn't any standard- there are associate's, bachelor's, and master's degree programs for paralegals along with shorter certificate programs.  There are also professional certifications that you can take a test for.

If you really want a master's degree, there are lots of programs offering a "Master's in Legal Studies" for paralegals.


PhD advisor used my paper in his grant report. But the paper was my work I am a grad student. I recently produced a paper myself. The topic of the paper does not have much to do with my advisor's research area, but my advisor was put on the paper as an author.

What are your analyses of this incident (especially how would it affect my contributions to the work if it is perceived as being part my advisor's project)? What are your recommendations?

"What are your analyses of this incident (especially how would it affect my contributions to the work if it is perceived as being part my advisor's project, while it is not)? What are your recommendations?"

My analysis is that this "incident" is normal, very common, and would not effect at all your perceived contributions. It is normal and common for scholars to list in their grant applications and reports any paper that was remotely done under the umbrella of the project, and that this is expected, for better or worse, in the academic system, where scholars need to justify their grants, in order to receive more grants.

What is written in a grant report/application has no bearing assigning  academic credit  per se, so it doesn't effect at all one's perceived contributions.

My recommendation is thus to be generous and not petty when assigning credits, and generally act with collegiality and not in a confrontational manner when dealing with your advisor, colleagues or, in time to come, your students. There are more important and consequential fights  than nitpicking on precise credit assignment. I see too many people (usually beginners in academia) over emphasizing "precise" credit distribution, until they forget the big picture.


How to allocate my time for two subjects? I am working at my undergraduate university as a research assistant with my supervisor. Our group's research interest is in security and web, so we do projects about middlebox, encrypted searchable database etc. However, my personal research interest is in reinforcement learning and game AI. The reasons I joined a group that has a different research interest are:

I am entering my graduate university (different than my undergraduate one) in around 6 months, and I need a job before that. Staying in academia gives me chances to publish papers than joining a company.
For some reason, I had no better choice of research group in my university.

I am perfectly fine with doing research in a new subject, but I still want to make progress in my own area(which I am not sure is possible), since I plan to return to it in my postgraduate program.

Is it better to devote 100% energy and time in my group's research or allocate some time for my own research?

You just have 6 months for this current job. Your personal interest can stay with you forever, and you can invest more on that when you have joined the grad school.

For now, I would recommend giving your 100% to the current research and get more productive outcomes on this, with good papers and collaborations. If you feel like you have too much time, energy, and enthusiasm, give 200% of it to your current work!


Is that proper to get messages about your work from your lab head at the early dawn? Is that proper to get messages about your work (almost critique no constructive feedback) at the early dawn, I freaked out from my sleepings not the first time to expose that besides the high pressure to get results as soon as possible. I feel my body is exhausted and sick and sometimes crying, is this behavior normal in academia?

It is entirely proper to send emails at whatever time anyone wants to. It is up to the recipient to read them as they see fit.


How to follow up with a professor on graduate school admissions decision I applied for graduate admission to a couple of schools and a professor from one of the schools asked me two weeks ago if I was still interested in graduate studies at his university.

I mentioned that I was still interested.

In reply, he said that he was considering me for a fellowship and that he hopes that the university administration will reply before too long.

Now, it's been two weeks and he's not gotten back to me. Should I ask him if he's received the fellowship decision yet? How should I write my email?

A follow up email is fine. Be polite and to the point.


Where to locate authors’ names in sentences? Is it or is it not good practice to make an author the subject of sentences in a paper? When should their name be central, discreet, or absent in the sentence? Here are five variations showing different approaches, four of which include the author’s name. Are there particular identifiable use cases for these styles?

Johnson argued that this will never work.
Per Johnson, this will never work.
The argument was advanced by Johnson that this will never work.
This will never work (Johnson).
This will never work [42].

Version 2 seems stilted; 3 is an unnecessarily verbose use of the passive voice. The choice between 4 and 5 is really a matter of the journal's style guidelines rather than an active decision you will get to make as the author.

So the real choice here is between 1 or 4/5. The key thing to note is that you sentence draws attention to an actor and an action through your choice of subject and verb. (See Joseph Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace for a superb discussion of this and many related principles)

In 1, the actor is "Johnson" and the action is "argued".  In 4/5, the action is "This" and the action is "will not work". Thus if your intent is to draw attention to the fact that Johnson made this claim, as you would e.g. if discussing a history of ideas, version 1 might be preferred. If instead your intent is to draw attention to the claim itself, and the reference to Johnson is simply a matter of good scholarship, 4/5 will be preferred.


Fear that my thesis topic is too broad and perhaps belongs to another discipline altogether It is that time-dreaded for some, eagerly anticipated by others-where I have to start writing my MSc thesis and I face a serious dilemma. The Msc program I attend is in Computer Science and my Bsc was in Mathematics and the "normal" choice would be to focus on something that builds on my background-which offers a great variety given how connected the two fields are.

Initially I was planning to focus on exactly such a path, in particular in Cryptography, and I have done a preliminary discussion with one of my professors about a potential topic for a thesis.

But during my studies and combined with other interests and professional aspirations that I have, I developed a very particular interest in Artificial Intelligence, and specifically the broader implications AI advancements will have in warfare and their potential destabilizing effects on strategic security.

I did bring this as a candidate topic for a thesis with another professor, and he seemed quite interested, asking me to come by his office soon to discuss the specifics.

  The problem lies in that the topic-though I truly believe is worth exploring, and I am willing to fully commit myself-seems very broad to allow for a focused and scientifically rigorous approach, at least of the kind required in a "true" CS or Mathematics/CS paper. It even seems to me it would be more appropriate for a Political Science/Security student. Do you believe I am correct in this assessment and I should focus instead on a more "conventional" path?

To be specific, I plan to outline all the ways by which A.I. might affect strategic stability, for example Big Data and Machine Learning would allow real-time tracking/prediction of all enemy strategic assets thus opening the chance for a First Strike, or autonomous platforms might lead to a loss of escalation control where human operators would simply back down and so on.

Now, each one of these could be approached rigorously and in detail but all together it is impossible, though exactly what is required to cover the topic in question.

First let me say: This is definitely something you need to discuss with faculty members in your department. If you can find a supervisor who feels the topic is appropriate for the degree and wants to supervise your thesis, then go for it.

Having said that, I suspect that this topic is out of scope for your department/degree, and also too broad for a MSc thesis. It also sounds like you have already realized this.

I would guess that you can find a topic that is CS/math but also relates to the topic that you feel really passionate about -- just try to aim for a smaller piece of that very large question that you outlined.


Why do professors ask candidates at PhD interviews what specific problems they are interested in? I am currently interviewing in several universities across the U.S. for PhD programs in computer science. In every one of my interviews so far, there are always 1 or 2 professors that are eager to know which specific problems I am interested in researching (and it normally comes out as the most important question they are going to ask me). This question stumps me every time because I am not trying to enter a PhD program and start working on a specific problem right away. Instead, I want to do some lab rotations first and get a deeper feeling for the work of the institution's faculty (that works on my subarea of interest) and then, after these rotations, pick a specific problem (perhaps this is the wrong motivation?).

It does not seem to me that interest is a reliable determiner of success in completing a PhD. I could say that I am interested in Dr.X's research on complex manifolds because I skimmed through some of his papers. However, from my personal experience, I think there is a very big discrepancy between having read a little bit about a topic and claiming it as an interest, and actually doing research in that area. In other words, one might be interested in doing research in modelling the response of cancer patients to drug Y (because they want to defeat cancer or something similar) but a lot of times that person might realize that the actual research is far from his expectations and end up switching to different area.

I could list a few other reasons why I think interest is not a good measure of student's commitment but I might be wrong since professors like to ask this question. Why is this and what would be an honest way to answer it?

Other than the previous answer, we ask this question because a candidate may be interested in an area that is not in fact well represented in the department. If someone wanted to do research on numerical methods for optimization, my department has nobody to advise such a thesis -- but the candidate may not be aware of this.

I personally ask this question because too many graduate students come to me and ask whether I could be their adviser and then expect me to pose a problem they should work on for the 3-4 years. But I don't want to do that: if a student doesn't know what they want to do for research, yes, sure, I can give them a topic, but if it doesn't match their interest, it's going to be a painful 3-4 years for everyone involved. So I typically want that my students come up with topics they find interesting themselves, and then we can see how that fits into my research group and program.


Should a graduate student instructor write a recommendation letter? I am currently a graduate student at a large university in the United States and I am the instructor for an advanced course. One of my students is applying to masters programs and has asked me to write a recommendation letter. They did a good job in a hard (and fairly unique) class, so I think I could write a fine letter saying this. But it isn't clear if this will be useful to the student's application if it is coming from a graduate student. Should I agree to write the letter, or suggest that they find full professors to write letters?

If the class is yours entirely (meaning you're not merely covering one day out of three weekly sessions for a faculty member), then I hope you do write the letter. You are the instructor of record, you are filling the role of faculty in this class and the role of professor for this student, and I cannot imagine someone being qualified to teach an upper-division seminar but not being qualified to compose a recommendation letter.

If it helps you feel less impostor-like, you can disclose the nature of your assignment in the letter. "Student A was an exemplary student in my "Life as a Repeat Game" seminar--a course I taught as a teaching assistant during my final year of graduate study." I would stay concise, highlighting essentials and avoiding flowery praise, but your question doesn't ask for advice on writing a letter of rec. :-)


Should technical research papers contain a 'Proposed solution' in them? I want to publish a paper for the literature study that I have performed instead of the way I have implemented it (Planning to do this in another research paper). I have, however, evaluated different approaches that we can take to do this kind of work (Sentiment analysis). But when I submitted it to a workshop, it was rejected with the following,

  "However, the paper does not provide any detailed information, either
  theoretical or technical, regarding their proposed approach, how they would
  seek to evaluate this approach and the strengths and weaknesses of this
  approach as a set of interlinked concepts." and "doesn't have any experimental comparison of the methods being reviewed."

Can you please explain?

Should technical research papers contain a 'Proposed solution' in them?

In general, and particularly for a workshop, the answer to your title question would be "yes". The basic principle behind a workshop is that participants go there with some work-in-progress, discuss their ideas and next steps, and get early outside feedback. If you don't even tell what your ideas are, what is there to discuss? "Here is what others have tried, end of story" isn't really a great discussion starter.

Of course, survey papers exist, but a publishable survey is not just the Related Work section of a regular paper. Good surveys, such as those published in ACM Computing Surveys, are lengthy and comprehensive treatments of a subject. Workshops are not the right venue for such papers.

There is also the added problem that your approach of publishing the state of the art report first, and then writing another paper about your actual idea, sounds a lot like finding the Least Publishable Unit, a practice that many take offence with.


How to demonstrate programming knowledge in CV, while applying to academia and industry? I'm currently looking for both postdoc position(preferred) and industrial position in areas where I'd need to do programming in the language(s) my lab/company will need me to. The academic areas I'm looking for are computer vision, computational neuroscience etc.

However, my Ph.D. was in pure mathematics and I didn't write a single piece of code. In my current postdoc, I'm programming but so far don't have a published result that clearly demonstrates my coding skills (in matlab). Given this situation, how can I best demonstrate my coding skills in my CV? I mean, evryone will write: "Programming languages known: a,b,c" etc. But I'm not sure (I might be wrong) that's enough? So how could I best demonstrate that I know decent matlab and I can build algorithm?

One idea that's occurring to me is to make a paragraph named "programming experience" after "programming languages known", saying for example, "I numerically solved the differential equation (*) in this language: code available upon request".

I'd appreciate your opinion, thank you!

I would recommend not trying to use the same document to apply to qualitatively different positions.  Typically, companies do not want a CV, they want a resume.  Prepare a resume following industry standards, which includes your skills, programming languages, etc., and use that for your industry applications, while you use your CV to apply for postdocs.


Recommendation letter process I'm going to apply for a PhD position and as you know, I need my current supervisor recommendation letter.

So, I asked my supervisor to give me a recommendation letter regarding all the researches I have done in his lab. He responds that he won't provide any recommendation letter directly to me or any other student, but instead he will send a recommendation letter to any professor/university who asks about my progress.

To be precise, he told me to send an email to the professor I want to send recommendation letter for and tell him to request a recommendation for me.

The whole process looks problematic to me, for many reasons:

I can't ask my new supervisor to ask my old supervisor to ask for a recommendation for me...I feel like my new supervisor won't do such a thing because there is a really tough competition between candidates and most of them already have strong recommendation letters.
I have to apply via a webform inside the university website. The apply form asks for at least 2 recommendation letters (in PDF format). There is no place in that form for me to add my professors email.
I didn't see such process anywhere, almost all my friends got their recommendation letters from their previous professors.

My question here is that did I miss something? Is this process looks okay in academic world or its just me that feel its wrong? Why my professor is not directly providing a recommendation letter to any student?

Edit
I'm living in Iran and I'm going to apply for a position in Sweden.

Having the letter of recommendation (LoR) writer send the LoR directly to the institution to which you are applying is indeed the standard procedure in the English-speaking world and increasingly beyond. In this procedure, the LoR is confidential; only the issuer and the recipient(s) should normally see it.

The process works as follows:

Online forms usually have two "sides". The first side is for you, the
applicant. You enter the name and email address of your LoR writer,
after you have obtained their approval. An email will be sent to the
LoR writer with a link to "their" side of the website, to which they
can then upload the letter and perhaps additional information.
For the offline process, you write your application, and the LoR writer sends in their LoR independently from you before the deadline.

However, in some countries (until recently e.g. in Germany and Austria) a different procedure is used, in which the LoR is handed to the applicant who then submits it together with their application (via website or offline).

I would contact the HR department at the institution where you are applying and ask for clarification, then talk to your LoR writer again. If the institution explicitly requests that you hand in the letter, you can just relay this information to your supervisor. You may also want to make your supervisor aware of different traditions of LoR writing in different countries. Alternatively, ask the HR department whether they can accept a LoR directly from your supervisor.


What do instructors need to know to accommodate Muslim students? Increasingly, my school has been recruiting students from Central Asia, so I see 1-3 Muslim students in each section.

Near the end of the last term, one student asked for leave for some religious activity. He was surprised when I said he could go, then he told me he had missed many Friday afternoon religious activities, but his advisor (or perhaps some other school administrators) said he couldn't leave. I heard a similar story from another student.

I realized that many of the other Muslim students may have similar problems, but they are too nervous to speak out and let me know. Since they remain quiet, I'm not sure how to accommodate them.

What are some typical things a teacher can do to accommodate Muslim students?

There are a lot of places you could go to learn about Islam, starting with wikipedia.  It could be interesting to do so: I recently read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and found his description of his pilgrimage to Mecca fascinating and moving.  Last semester when I talked about Gabriel's Horn in my calculus course I wanted to be more balanced in my allusions, so I mentioned that in Islam the horn is blown not by Gabriel but by Israfil, and I was strangely pleased to figure out for myself that Israfil is the Islamic counterpart to Raphael (whereas Jibrail's role is expanded from that of his Christian counterpart).
The point of that preamble was: I do not doubt that learning more about Islam would be a worthy endeavor.  Nevertheless I am skeptical that such knowledge would directly help you to accommodate Muslim students. Like most major world religions, there is considerable variation in the way it is practiced.  I recommend rather that you familiarize yourself with the policies of your university on religious accommodations.  Just yesterday I received the yearly memo on Sensitivity to Religious Practices from my upper university administration.  It reads:

Many of our faculty, staff, and students commemorate various events of importance to their particular religions. Our institutional practice is to make every reasonable effort to allow members of the University community to observe their religious holidays without academic penalty. Absence for religious reasons does not relieve students from responsibility for any part of the course work required during the period of absence. Students who miss classes, examinations, or other assignments as a consequence of their religious observance should be provided with a fair alternative opportunity to complete such academic responsibilities. Students must provide instructors with reasonable notice of the dates of religious holidays on which they plan to be absent.
As you plan your syllabus and begin communicating with students, please keep in mind that some religious holidays affect a significant number of University of Georgia students and might require a student to abstain from secular activities or attend a house of worship. Different groups within a particular religion may also observe holidays on different dates, making it difficult to provide a comprehensive list of all potential religious observances. You may wish to search online for a religious calendar resource to serve as a guide for the dates of common observances.
Thank you for your cooperation.

At least if you are in the US (as I seem to recall is the case?) it seems very likely that your institution has some equivalent version.  You could keep copies on hand and give them to a student like the one you described above.  You can direct them to appropriate university administration if they feel that they are not being accommodated within the stated rules of the university.  If you really feel strongly, you could try to speak to the relevant administrators yourself.


Can publicly available datasets which are hosted in Github be used in research papers? I am in a dilemma. I have used an old publicly available dataset for some of my analysis and want to publish it. But the problem is that it was publicly available and hosted in a website (infochimps.com) some 4 years ago. But now it's not available there and I got the data from a Github repository. It's not possible to reach the owner of the dataset as the email id given in the readme file is no longer valid. But recently there have been some analyses on the web which have used this data directly from the github repo.

So my question is can I use this data for my paper? And if yes, how to cite it?

I can think of at least a couple issues.

Is the data actually available for use? Just because it is on Github does not necessarily mean that you can legally use it. You still need to determine how the data is licensed (easy if a license is published with the data, possibly difficult otherwise). I'm not exactly sure how data on Github is treated, but code published on Github is "All Rights Reserved" by default and I assume data is similar.
How do you know you can trust the data? One reason you cite the owner or original creator of data is to assert that it is reliable. If the data you're using is not from the source, you'll also want to cite where you obtained it and hope that it's a trustworthy source.


Is it a good practice to point out errors (politely) in a previously published paper in a review response Is it a good practice to point out errors (politely) in a previously published paper (from which I have borrowed idea) if the reviewers explicitly asks to do so in a review response. I mean the reviewer has asked "why you have made this strong assumption, this was something weak in the published paper". In this situation, I think I have no option other than pointing out the errors for which I have enough mathematical evidence, I even asked the author of the published paper about that, he also agreed about that.

If you are building on the work of a previous paper, but the older paper contains a material error, you should not be waiting for a referee to ask about the discrepancy.  A discussion of the error should be included in the manuscript from the start.  It could run something like

  The outline of our calculation is similar to that in [1].  However, it should be noted that [1] actually contains an error in the calculation of the r coefficient....

If your paper disagrees with the earlier literature that it relies on, readers trying to understand the details of your work are likely to be confused.  If a reader notices the discrepancy, they are probably most likely to think that you have made an error.  The referee who looked at your manuscript quite likely brought the discrepancy to your attention, and the right solution is the correct the record before you move on to your own new results.


Elsevier's 'MethodsX' journal as an additional article to my original research article (plagiarism) I recently submitted a paper to an Elsevier Journal (Biomedical Signal Processing and Control), in the revision stage they propose to me to send a part of my work as MethodX article https://www.journals.elsevier.com/methodsx alongside my revised research article and if my paper accepted for publication the MethodX article will automatically be transferred to MethodX where will be reviewed and published as a separate article.

Now, If I prepared the MethodX article, should I change the original text, rewrite  (not be guilty of plagiarism) or just take parts from the original article and format a MethodX article?

The MethodsX journal says, as part of its guide to authors:

  Your submission can also be an extension of a previously published original research paper, whereas your MethodsX paper will include all of the technical details that might not have been included in your research paper.

It also has an extremely abbreviated format,

  an abstract to outline the customization
  a graphical abstract visual to illustrate what you've done
  the method(s) in sufficient detail to help people replicate it, including any relevant figures, tables etc
  at least one reference to the original description of the method you're using

Thus, for a properly prepared MethodsX article, I think that any question of plagiarism will be moot. Abstract and context material will need to be heavily paraphrased for its new context, and any repeated material on the method will be explicitly cited as an adaptation (with permission) of the original paper.


Cheating university in the name of university campus in Malaysia. Can any higher educational institution use 'university campus' title for their unnamed building when they run franchise program from UK university?

Nottingham Ran Franchise

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/tribunal-says-nottingham-ran-franchise/310368.article

Nottingham University UK, Malaysia campus is a Malaysian university.

http://www.gen-e-resources.com/themalaysianuniversity.pdf

DISCLAIMER: I used to work at the University of Nottingham UK campus in a school that was located on both the UK and MY campuses.

As is clear from the law suit described in the linked THE article, it is non-trivial for a university to set up a franchise. The parent university can get sued and therefore needs to take care in setting up the franchise. Presumable, any university with enough legal resources can set up a franchise

There are at least three different types of issues with running a international campus. The first, of which I have little understanding, is related to income, assets, taxes, liabilities, etc. The second is related to staffing (both faculty and support staff). The third is related to students. Setting up the university as a franchise affects the financial issues and the staffing, but really does not directly affect the students.

By setting up a franchise, UoN may be cheating the UK government out of taxes, but it is not cheating its staff, faculty, or students.

By being a franchise, this means that faculty are employed in MY and not the UK. This means they are governed by MY labor laws and not UK/EU laws. From the university perspective, this means that if a school in MY performs poorly that they can close the school and do not need to bring the faculty back to the UK. To an extent UoN is cheating the faculty in MY in that they do not get the same pay and benefits as UK faculty, but the UoN makes this clear during the hiring process. This is what the law suit reported in the THE is about.

There is no effect of being a franchise on students. In my former school, all MY faculty needed to be "appointable" in the UK campus. This mean that if they applied for a UK position and were the best candidate, that they would be offered a job. At least one UK faculty member is on all MY search committees. While there are slight differences in the teaching materials, the modules, coursework, and exams, and marking guidelines are identical for the two campuses. The two campuses shared a common exam board. The school on the MY campus was accredited by the same UK accrediting body that accredits the UK campus. In fact the MY school was the first international school to be accredited. The two campuses even share the same Quality Manual:

  The provisions of the Quality Manual and any other University regulations regarding the quality management of learning and teaching apply equally to the University’s campuses in the UK and Asia.


How technical should my oral PhD defense be? I thought this would make a good question, and will ask my advisor shortly.

In the fields of optical sciences, electrical engineering, or applied physics at an RU/VH institution in the United States, how technical should the oral PhD defense be?

My last conference talk did not get any questions (on the same topics in my dissertation), so I believe that my presentations may be overly technical.

For some context : This work, some recent work by my former labmate, and recent work in this same niche by my advisor have been heavy on the mathematical/theory side, and none of us have received many questions at recent conferences.

You need to find out what the standard is in your department, since it varies. You can:

ask your advisor
attend other defense presentations in your department
ask students in your department who have successfully defended


Creating compound alerts with Google Scholar In Google Scholar, I want to create a compound alert, which returns papers that are relevant to two concepts. Concept 1 is all about a branch of machine learning, which can be triggered by the words "deep learning" and "neural network". Concept 2 is all about a branch of robotics, which can be triggered by the words "navigation" and "localisation". Furthermore, the article must definitely include the word "robot".

How should I express this as a single alert?

I know that an AND is implicit, such that:

"navigation" "localisation"

will only return articles which contain both those words.

I also know that an OR can be define, for example:

"navigation" OR "localisation"

will return articles which have either of these words.

But in my case, it is more complex. I basically want to say:

("deep learning" OR "neural network") AND ("navigation" OR "localisation")  AND "robot"

These brackets are just to illustrate what I want to achieve, but I'm sure that they're not interpreted in this way by Google Scholar.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Edit: My current solution is to just have four separate alerts:

"deep learning" AND "navigation" AND "robot"
"deep learning" AND "localisation" AND "robot"
"neural network" AND "navigation" AND "robot"
"neural network" AND "localisation" AND "robot"

However, most of these papers are triggered by three or four of the conditions, and it is very frustrating getting several emails for each one! So I am hoping that there is a way to express this all with a single alert.

I think what you're looking for is a Google Scholar Alert for

  +"robot" +("deep learning" OR "neural network") +("navigation" OR "localisation")

Google search operators include "OR", "-" and "+", and permit brackets, but do not use "AND".

Fun fact: The order of the terms will change the order of results (and content of previews). That matters if the hits exceed the number permitted by your alert.


In recent academic history, why has research funding increasingly focused upon large interdisciplinary teams? As noted in Derek Bok's "Higher Education in America," there is a trend in increased funding for large interdisciplinary research programs since the 1970's (Think NSF MRSEC, for example).

What is the root cause or viewpoint for a shift towards this style of funding, as compared to single-PI research grant? Additionally, if this trend continues, administrators will increasingly pressure their departments into focusing on this type of funding source. Will academia eventually approach a similar climate to a national lab (ie, large teams working on interdisciplinary projects)?

Personal experience, and a lot of inspiration from nature (I'm a biologist) suggests that interdisciplinary teams can view a single problem from different perspectives.
This enables teams with varying knowledge to attack a problem from the easiest angle.

For example,

When Canadians faced the problem of snow accumulating and freezing on power lines, men were sent up power-poles armed with poles of their own with a hook on the end to shake off the snow. When they were complaining about how tough the job was to each other (and coming up with pole & climbing related ideas to make the work easier), the secretary to the manager overseeing their work chimed in to say that when she was a nurse in the army, she'd seen the downdraft from helicopters knock objects around with ease.

Her fresh perspective introduced a new line of thought that would not have otherwise been introduced into the problem solving atmosphere.

When you're a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. When you're a toolbox full of different tools, however......


How to start doing significant research? I'm a graduate student in applied math (applied probability, asymptotic etc.). I have written several articles on either solving "small" problems, or developing particular methodology/techniques towards certain type of problems. I'm at a stage where I have lots of ideas and if I want to I may be able to work out the details and write a few papers based off of them.

But none of these things are anywhere near significant much less ground-breaking etc. My advisor said a really good PhD is supposed to make ground-breaking contribution in just one problem/direction, instead of doing petty works in three and put them together to form a "pseudo-thesis". I know what exactly what he is referring to but have no clue where to start to searching for those ground breaking ideas.

My advisor does not like to suggest ideas/problems to me because he said he doesn't know what would be ground-breaking either or else he would do it himself than gift it to me.

As of now, all my ideas do not seem to carry much strength in the sense that they do not withstand much investigation or turn out to be "paraphrasing" classical paradigms. I suspect that I may need to probably read beyond my field because I reckon everyone in my field pretty much is familiar with the same set of literature and has a similar way of thinking. So they have exhausted great ideas that are possible under that mindset over the decades and only leave relatively small "fruits" for me to pick up.

My advisor said it may be good to read quantum physics as he himself is reading that and sees "lots of potential" in cross-disciplinary investigation. It would be a big investment for me because I don't know nothing about physics beyond Newton's law. But I'm in my second year so there is still time for lots of things and I think I'm tempted by the idea of learning physics and do cross-disciplinary research, although I'm keenly aware of the risk. Is learning a completely new field a good pathway towards big discovery? Should I take the risk as a PhD student? How do people stumble upon big discoveries? Is there general guiding principles behind this?

Thank you.

What you are describing is certainly not good advising, unless you have cherry-picked some particularly negative quotes and taken them out of their context.

It is true that monolithic and groundbreaking theses are regarded higher than "stapler theses" (3-5 papers combined into a thesis), but your reputation will most likely not hinge on your thesis -- and writing several papers early is most likely better for it than writing a really good thesis. (Keep in mind: You will be applying for jobs before your thesis is out! And while those jobs will not be permanent ones, it is still very important to catch a good one, since it will influence your ability to do good research in the postdoc period. In your application, a written paper counts more than an unwritten thesis, no matter how important the latter promises to be.)

Another downside of "one big project" theses is that they are more likely to fail. If 1 of the 5 papers in your "stapler thesis" is revealed to be non-novel (and that happens in most active fields, particularly when different schools use different notation and don't communicate well with each other), your degree probably won't be delayed. If the main result of your monolith thesis turns out to be non-novel, then it may be a serious problem. And that's all assuming that you do win your bet and get that one really good result.

I have written a "stapler thesis" myself (actually the worst kind, without even a Chapter 1 that connects everything; admittedly I do a lot of exposition in my papers). I have seen many "stapler theses" from MIT students who went on to do great work. There is no stigma in them; you can do better, but someone can always do better.

As to this:

  My advisor does not like to suggest ideas/problems to me because he said he doesn't know what would be ground-breaking either or else he would do it himself than gift it to me.

The honesty is refreshing, but perhaps he should not be suggesting you to fend on your own then? Graduate students are usually not very good at recognizing which directions have promise and which are stale. This is an advisor's job. If the advisor cannot do that, he should then give the student something more concrete and incremental to do.

  My advisor said it may be good to read quantum physics as he himself is reading that and sees "lots of potential" in cross-disciplinary investigation.

This is a very dim and faraway lighthouse to steer towards. If your advisor is not offering you anything more concrete (at the very least, some reading, and not just introductory textbooks), then you can just as well ignore it for your thesis. Everyone and their dead cat knows that quantum physics is connected to probability; this is not exactly a hot scent.


I got accepted to PhD program, but I am not sure with whom I want to work. Is it bad to change advisors? I got accepted to a top PhD program. I did not expect this to happen, but I am quite happy about this. A certain professor A voted for me (e.g I was accepted to a program because he liked me during the interview and voted for me). He expects me to work with him when I arrive. But, I am not sure if I want to work with him. I know nothing about the area he works in and most of his students did not join academia after graduation (which is bad for me). I would like trying to work with professor B, but I am not sure if this will work out either. Professor B might not want to work with me, or I might fail in his lab (the work that professor B does is harder and expectations are higher). So I afraid that if I try working with professor B - how will I explain this to professor A? What if I will not succeed with professor B, then most probably I cannot expect to work with professor A again, since nobody wants to feel like a back-up option.

How does it usually work for students in PhD? Can students easily try working with different professors and then choose the one they like? Is switching advisors/ coming back to them easy? Or most often students stick to the professor who accepted them?

Country: US, field: CS

[Background: I'm a full professor in a top-5 American CS department.  My answer is skewed toward standard practice in theoretical computer science, but I regularly give the same advice to all incoming PhD students in my department.]

As others have said, practices vary in different departments, and in different sub-fields within each department, but as a general rule: It's your PhD.  Of course you can switch advisors!

Professor A voted for your admission, but he did not admit you.  The department admitted you.  Prof A's vote does not oblige you to work with him at all.  It's natural for Prof A to anticipate that you will work with him, but he has no right to demand that you work with him.  (These are all shadings of the word "expect"; I'm not sure which meaning you intended.)  If you prefer to work with Prof B, you do not need to justify your preference to Prof A.  (You should still communicate your preference to Prof A, of course, especially if he asks you about working with him.)

More generally, you should never feel constrained to only work with one professor, just because that professor happens to be your advisor or happens to be paying you.  Nothing prevents you from working with both Prof A and Prof B, provided you are meeting the obligations attached to your funding.  (Exclusivity is not a reasonable obligation for a research assistantship.  Progress, yes.  Good-faith effort, definitely.  Results, sure.  Exclusivity, no.)

In my department, faculty in my research area strongly encourage entering PhD students to work with multiple faculty — in the first year, to help everyone make more informed advising decisions, and in later years, so that students develop a more diverse research portfolio, and to provide a backup in case research with one faculty member doesn't pan out.  Yes, even the students I am supporting from my own grants.

All that said, it's best to approach the situation under the assumption of good faith.  Assume that Prof A and the other faculty in your new department have your best interests at heart, and approach them to discuss options under that assumption.  Be clear with Prof A that you are not sure you want to work with him and why, and ask for advice on how best to meet your professional goals, including approaching other potential advisors.  If Prof A objects, or tries to guilt-trip you into working with him, or tries to convince you not to even talk with other faculty, then congratulations, you've identified someone who does not have your best interests at heart.  Best to learn that early, before you waste your time working with them.


Differences among Doctoral Degrees/titles I have two colleagues who hold doctoral degrees. They are moving to the US within the next couple months. Both of their doctoral diplomas, one from Europe and the other from South America, literally say: "Doctor of Engineering".

We were discussing about this situation and, although they are doctors, I don't know if it would be "legal" for them to use the PhD letters at the end of their names or if D.Eng would be the adequate choice. So far, they have not been asked to do any kind of nostrification process.

Are there any legal, formal or professional implications associated to this or is it just a matter of putting a set of letter at the end of your name?

An EngD is a different degree to a PhD. If you've got a PhD you can't put EngD after your name, and vice-versa. Both can give you the title "doctor", but they are different doctorates.

If your degree diploma says "Doctor of Engineering", it's very very likely that you can put Eng.D. after your name. But not PhD. (and I've never seen D.Eng after a name, only Eng.D. - but maybe that's UK-specific. I have seen Dr.-Ing. from Germany)


Referring to paper from some other school when writing Statement of Purpose for Grad School I am currently working on grad school applications to US Universities. Somewhere in my statement of purpose, I express my interest in working in a certain field. As a reason for that interest, I want to cite a particular paper written by members of the CS Department at the University of Toronto. The problem targeted by that paper was one that I was very interested in (at an abstract level) when I was in high school. Thus I got deeply excited and would like to extend their work.

Is it okay if I mention this paper in my statement of purpose for schools other than the University of Toronto? Could such a reference give the (mistaken) impression that I had written a statement of purpose specifically for the University of Toronto and then didn't bother to make changes for other schools?

If the paper was influential for your development, by all means talk about it and cite it.


How to accredit my Ph.D. in USA I got my Ph.D. from the Faculty of Computers and Information Technology, Cairo University in 2007. I want to know if it is possible to compensate or to accredit my Ph.D. from USA. If it is possible, I want to know the steps for that. Advise and tell me if there is any program in USA for a Ph.D. holder to improve and add on to his career.

In the U.S., most academic fields are not like medicine: there is no licensing and for most purposes there are not strict legal requirements for what constitutes a degree.  In particular, there is nothing that needs to or can be done to accredit a foreign Ph.D.  (Other countries may differ.  For example, Germany used to treat non-EU Ph.D.'s differently; see http://www.zeit.de/2008/12/C-Seitenhieb-12.)

Regarding more specific issues:

Employers sometimes verify CVs, but that is not your responsibility.  If they need to check that you have a legitimate Ph.D. from Cairo University, then they will get in touch with the university directly to verify this.  You do not need to help (and in fact they won't allow you to help, to make sure the verification is unbiased), so all you need to do is to make sure everything on your CV is true.

You may run into people who acknowledge that you have a legitimate Ph.D. but have no idea what the standards of Cairo University are.  That will give you a modest disadvantage compared with students from, say, Stanford, but there's nothing you can do about it.  Ultimately, if you publish strong papers in prestigious venues, then that will matter much more than where your Ph.D. is from.  If you don't, then you will not get a research job anyway, wherever you studied.

If you are talking about upgrading the degree somehow - perhaps getting additional certification or even another degree from a particularly prestigious school - then it basically can't be done.  It's not truly impossible, and I know of a couple of cases in which people with Ph.D.s from other countries enrolled as students in the U.S. in order to improve their job chances.  However, most U.S. universities strongly discourage this, on the grounds that it's a waste of time and resources to devote a space in a graduate program to someone who already has a Ph.D. in the same field (or a closely related one).


A journal appeared indexed until 2016 is now cancelled in Scimago. What does this mean? In some online databases such as DBLP some journals or conferences appear that are canceled or not appear at all after a few years. For what I know that is because, according to DBLP, the mentioned conference does not uphold with some criteria of quality to continue to appear on that database.

In Scimago, I have seen that a journal appeared indexed until 2016, but now it appears a message saying "Cancelled", what does it mean apart of the obviousness of that message? maybe that the journal has become a predatory one? or that it quality has decreased?

Any comments?

Scimago seems to draw from Scopus' journal coverage (according to its About Us-page):

The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.).

Scopus regularly re-evaluates its journals. It even offers an Excel-list of recently discontinued journals (at the bottom of this page).
In that list, you can see the column Reason for discontinuation (column F). This should at least provide a vague keyword as to why a given journal was cancelled.
It seems that there are four such reasons:

"Metrics" (under-performance of a journal)
"Publication concerns" (I see journals from predatory publishers like OMICS who carry that reason).
"Radar" (outlier performance; "an algorithm that flags journals based on approximately 40 outlier predictors, including sudden change in output volume, sudden change in publishing country and/or affiliations, and high journal/author self-citation rates" -- citation from this F1000 article, at p. 14)
"do not meet Scopus criteria" (probably refers to Scopus' journal selection criteria, e.g. peer reviews, lack of publication delays, editorial board diversity, online availability of articles etc. As this Scopus blog post indicates, some journals are indeed simply discontinued by the publisher, which might fall under this reason.)


How long should I describe when asked to talk about my past research experiences by a potential PhD advisor during Skype interview? I have done two projects in the area of molecular biology. I have a Master's degree. So, I find that it requires more than 20 minutes to talk about them. My first-language is not English. I think this is too long, right? I would be tired, and the interviewer may also be tired. We may need additional time to discuss the research projects I did. So, should it be short? How many minutes are appropriate?

They ask about your research experience to learn more about your suitability for the position. They are not necessarily interested in the specific research results. If they are, they will look for publications after the interview or simply ask for more details.

Prepare a sales pitch with three main points:

background/topic of the projects and also why you participated in them
main results and conclusions
what did you learn from doing them (project management skills, exciting new technique, ...)

You should be able to explain this in about 5 minutes. Be prepared to answer questions if they ask for more details.


Open Lab Notebook in early postdoc career, advantages vs disadvantages so I've found a few open lab notebooks such as this online. I think the philosophy is great, basically an extreme form of open-access. I work in theoretical neuroscience as a fresh post-doc. I'm also continuing to work for my PhD supervisor, but I plan to look for a position elsewhere ASAP to 'fly the nest' so to speak. I don't have any of my own publications yet, just the publications that came from my PhD. As a general career move I would either like to start publishing myself or with new collaborators.

My question is about the advantages vs disadvantages of starting an open lab notebook. A few pros would be:

Increased scientific visibility
Extra motivation
Possible feedback, discovering new research directions

The the big danger are:

Getting 'scooped'
Getting sidetracked from current post-doc

If anyone has any advice for a person in my position, I would like to hear your viewpoint. Specifically, it should relate to an early career researcher looking to make a name for himself.

I really like that you put 'scientific visibility' on top of the list. That is one side of open notebook science (ONS) that is often overlooked. Also, one thing I would like to add to the pros part of the list is how ONS really facilitates collaboration between researchers. If you are going to keep several projects going and collaborate with different groups, then I think you'll find ONS really helpful.


Suggested tablets/writing pad for online teaching and giving maths lectures I am a maths masters student, and am looking to buy a tablet/writing pad device. I will primarily be using it for writing when collaborating with a group on a paper, giving lectures/talks, and online tutoring.
I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for something suitable (that can be purchased/shipped to the UK), ideally under £50. I would love something that is a decent size (at least 6x8 inch), and which has a screen on which you can see what you are writing.
A related question was closed as being off topic- as a 'shopping question', though I think that it was a perfectly valid. I don't know where else I could ask for advice for this; the students\lecturers that I know have something similar generally have high-end tablets or ipads that are out of my price range, and I am sure many users of this site have good suggestions.

XP-Pen is a good off-name cheap brand. However £50 for a device with a 6x8 screen seems unrealistic, especially after the pandemic drove demand up. If budget is your main concern, the first thing I would cut is the screen. Getting used to a tablet without a screen takes some time, a bit like touch-typing, but once you do it it's not that bad and you can get some good deals.


During peer-review, should I comment on the authors' messy code? I'm reviewing a paper in pure mathematics. A lot of results in the paper depend heavily on computer computations, and the authors have provided in the article a link to the Magma code they used for most of these computations. However, this code is almost impossible to understand due to the messy way it is written. For example, it does not use any indentation, and all variables are given names like 'aaa' or 'X' that do not give any information about their purpose in the program.

On the one hand, the mathematics underlying these computations is explained sufficiently well that it is possible to reproduce the results without using the authors' code (this is what I ended up doing). Also, the paper contains only a link to the code and not the actual code itself, so I'm not sure if the code is really in scope for the review. Moreover, hard-to-read code seems to not be uncommon in academia, and most people don't seem to mind. On the other hand, I think a small amount of work from the authors (who presumably do understand the code) would make this code a lot more usable for others, just by replacing some of the variable names with names that actually convey some meaning.

My question is, is it reasonable for me to tell the authors that their code is needlessly difficult to understand and should be improved?

If the authors have provided a link to their code as a reference, then it is appropriate to offer commentary, particularly if the article is based on the code.

However, I would recommend making the critique constructive: offer concrete suggestions for how to improve it rather than just saying it’s “messy” or “sloppy” and needs to be “cleaned up.”


How to guide more number of graduate students? I am researcher (Assistant professor ) in computer science. I work on topics which takes more than one year to publish a single paper. Due to my interest I work in these kind of topics. There is one problem which I am facing due to my interest which is as follows. I will not able to advise lots of students due as the field in which I work is not hot and publication takes longer time. I came to academia with a mindset that I will advise as many students as possible. I feel motivated when my graduate students discuss research problems with me and other kind of discussions also. Due to my field in which I am currently working I can only advise one graduate student. The one solution which comes to my mind is to pick a hot topic and start working on that topic and then many students will approach me but I may not be that much interested in these kind of topics.
Question : How to guide more number of graduate students?
Note that the meaning of 'more number' is to advise roughly like 13-15 students in the entire career. I am also interested in producing quality students instead of just quantity.

I will advise as many students as possible.

Don't do this.  It's unethical.  Graduate education, especially for PhD students, should be about quality, not quantity.  If everyone worked to maximize the number of PhDs, then there would be far more PhDs than are needed.  This has already happened in most fields, but maybe not yours.

How do I recruit more graduate students?

If you insist, then

Raise funds, probably through applying for grants.
Advertise that you have money to pay graduate students a competitive stipend.  In my experience most faculty underestimate the current free market stipend.
Publish frequently.
Ensure your students graduate promptly.
Treat them decently.
Help them find jobs.

If you have a reputation for these things, you will have plenty of students - unless your university has a reputation for not doing these things, in which case you will have to move.


How should I email a group member from an international group in my area that I previously worked with? I am PhD student in biomedical signal processing area. Before starting my PhD in January 2015, I was researcher in a research group in which I had the opportunity to know one of the best researchers in my area of interest who is also a member of the best group in the world.
After starting my PhD I decided to continue in the same area but with a different group. Now I want to get in contact with the researcher, I mentioned above, and ask for collaboration.

What should be the content of my email regarding the researcher's relations with my previous group? Should I explain the about the reason's of changing group or not?

Young students are expected to move around for any number of reasons, so I don't think there is any particular need to explain your reasons for changing groups unless the other person asks.  Instead, I would recommend getting back in touch with a simple greeting and a focus on the new collaboration that you are aiming to establish.  An example of an email along these lines might be:

  Hello, Dr. X:

  You may remember me from our previous work when I was studying under Prof. Mysterio.  I am now pursuing my Ph.D. under Prof. Moriarty, working on the same subject of penguin wrangling.  As before, your work on penguin tracking devices would be very useful; would you be interested in continuing our collaboration?

Adjust as appropriate for your particulars.


What to do when your idea turns out to be an old one I learned yesterday that an idea (let's call it Idea A) I came up with on my own and that will appear in a paper I'm writing actually appeared in a paper 15 years ago.  (My field is math, I'm a PhD student, for context.)
The paper has other ideas that I think are significant on their own so I could remove the section where Idea A is used crucially.  However, that section helps put the overall results into perspective.  One way or another, that part of the paper should stay put, I think, even at the risk of proving results that some might claim are not really new.  (At the risk of flattering myself, I think the value of the paper will be greater than the sum of its parts: even if you might claim that many of the arguments, like Idea A, aren't hard or appeared previously, I seem to be the first one to see that they could all be combined into a considerable collection of interesting results.)
My question is how to address this in the paper.  Certainly, there's no question the older paper  will be cited and I'll mention it somewhere in the introduction.  It's just a matter of how much credit to give and to what extent it is appropriate to mention that I stumbled upon the idea "independently" of the older paper.  (I understand that "independently" usually refers to results that appear within a few months of each other rather than a decade and a half later.)
To make it slightly more concrete, in the introduction, I was planning to write: "The analysis here is based on the approach in Paper 1 and Paper 2.  However, some additional arguments are necessary to deal with additional difficulties that arise in our setting."  Those additional arguments include Idea A, which I had planned to sketch immediately afterward.  I could then say later, when I give a literature review, that "The idea sketched above appeared previously in Paper 3."  A difficulty with that, though, is Paper 2 cites Paper 3.  While the way I conceptualized the issues involved, Papers 1 and 2 were the starting point, it may be that Paper 3 influenced Paper 2.  One way to fix that would be to say, immediately after "However, some additional arguments...," the following: "(Actually, one of the key ideas here appeared previously in Paper 3.)"  If I write "it appeared previously," is the implication that I came on the idea on my own clear?  (Usually, in cases where other work informed my approach, I would say outright, "this idea was inspired by..." or "it's an adaptation of arguments appearing in..." or even "this result relies crucially on previous work of...")  Another phrasing I have in mind is: "One of the key ideas here, which was new to the author, actually appeared some time ago in Paper 3."
Similarly, I will probably mention Idea A in a conference talk next year.  Is saying something like "This is an idea I stumbled upon and really like.  It turns out that the authors of Paper 3 had the same idea in mind." appropriate?  I would prefer not to think about questions like this, but it's much easier to navigate this kind of issue when you build on others' work knowingly.
Of course, all of this is actually irrelevant as far as the content of the paper is concerned.

Push Idea A into a background section and push novel results elsewhere. There's no real need to explain why you include a background section, but you might like to mention where your presentation differs from the original and explain why.

I seem to be the first one to see that they could all be combined into a considerable collection of interesting results

That's (part of) the novelty your paper provides.

to what extent it is appropriate to mention that I stumbled upon the idea "independently" of the older paper.

You could mention this somewhere, but it isn't necessary. Your paper has changed direction, like many papers. There's no need to provide a history of such changes. (Unless they are particularly interesting to your story.)


Whether to accept co-authorship for conference presentation after making only a small contribution? A collaborator sent me an abstract he's submitting to a conference, listing me as a co-author (middle position, implying not a major contribution).  It's for a conference presentation, not a manuscript, and it will not be published in e.g. a supplement or anything like that.

I've spent a fair bit of time with him discussing and planning the project, I'm listed as a co-PI on the grant, and I expect to provide important contributions later in the project, but at this point I haven't specifically contributed, in any hands-on way, to the exact work described in the abstract.

I thanked him, made some minor suggestions about the abstract, and suggested that he didn't need to include me as I hadn't contributed enough yet.  He replied saying that he was happy to include me.

The work is fine and I have no concerns or reservations about it.  We're roughly at equal career stages and neither of us is new, so neither of us is looking for extra prestige etc. If we cared about fine balances, I'm probably helping him more than he's helping me in the project, but I'm happy to do it. I have made significant contributions to the overall experimental design and planning, and it's not ridiculous to be an author, but it is for a smaller contribution than I consider authorship-worthy.

Should I continue to battle to be taken off the authorship?

My answer is based on experience in the field of applied mathematics.  I'm assuming (as stated in the question) that there is no written publication involved -- just a talk.
Don't worry about claiming unmerited credit
You have made some contribution.  Coauthorship on a conference presentation carries almost zero significance for purposes of evaluation.  It's not something you list on your CV, no matter how "early career" you are.  Usually, if you are not already well-known and the results are not earth-shattering, then nobody will even remember, five minutes after the talk, that you were a co-author.
When to insist on being removed
Obviously, coauthorship of the talk has some significance to you and to the presenter.  Since the presenter has already made it clear that he wishes to include you as coauthor, I would only insist on being taken off if:

The scientific work or the quality of the talk is so bad that you think it will reflect negatively on you; or
Your involvement is so minimal that you couldn't say anything interesting about the project (if asked by someone who attended the talk).

It doesn't sound like either of these conditions apply, so my advice is to let it go.


How can I add an article to my Scopus id, that is already associated with another author's profile id One of my articles shows on other author's Scopus id. How can I claim that article for my Scopus id?

Go to your profile page.

Click on "Edit profile".

You will be redirected to the "Author Feedback Wizard", where one category is called "Review documents".

Scroll down and click on "Search missing documents".

Find your paper and confirm - if you cannot find it, perhaps make sure that the publication is indeed eligible to be indexed in Scopus.

You could also try to link your profile to your ORCID, to see if that helps.


When applying to a masters program, is your undergraduate school important? Is the prestige / difficulty of my undergraduate school taken into consideration when I apply to graduate school? I understand that it is not an excuse my lower grades (however, my GPA is respectable). I am wondering if this has an influence.

The admission committee I serve has 11 members and there will probably be 11 unique answers to this question. Generally, it matters, but the degree it matters and how much it'd factor into the decision varies member to member, committee to committee.

There is thought such as "A grade B+ in prestigious university is better than a grade A in a so-so university." And there is thought such as "This so-called prestigious university tends to inflate grades, so a mediocre grade is going to be a bad news." The amount of subjectivity and variation can be astounding.

To complicate the problem further, what is "prestige?" Generally, people can name up to 10 prestigious universities, and then the rest are somewhat hazy. Some committees attempt to use acceptance rates as a representation and yet it's far from perfect: program by program the acceptance rates can differ, and such fine information is seldom available.

So, they do care, but it's difficult to predict how much. I'd say don't worry too much about the existing GPAs. If you can improve it, take some relevant courses and get some good grades, if not, then present the best aspects of yours through showcasing your course combination (e.g. did you take more challenging courses over the easier?) and trend (e.g. did your grades improve along time?), clear sense of a long-term plan, a convincing personal statement, and impressive open exam scores (such as TOEFL and GRE in the US) to order to leave a good impression.


Issues with unfinished PhD I was doing my PhD in computer science from a university in USA. I had done most of the work, the research, papers, proposal and the like. I had some personal issues and had to leave it unfinished (just 3-6 months from my final defense) and come back to my country. I did talk with my advisor and he said I can come back any time (as in a few years maybe) and defend my thesis.

Now the problem is it's been a 3 years already and it's very unlikely for me to go back even for a week. I have already stated everywhere (my employers) that I have almost finished it and they know that I had to leave because of personal reasons.

My questions are:

Is it worth trying to go back and finish it risking my health.
What kind of problems should I expect to face because of it in my future.
What are the likely setbacks I will have in my career.
How to deal or what steps to take to minimize the damage?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

As @Alexandros said, it is not clear why you would be risking your health, should you decide to finish the program. Working remotely on dissertation is certainly feasible (I've done that personally), if your committee doesn't mind and the program allows it. However, defending dissertation remotely might be more challenging to obtain permission to, but still possible. All that very much depends on your university, the program office and, to a lesser degree, the faculty involved. In regard to your specific questions, they are IMHO very broad and, thus, impossible to answer without knowing lots of personal circumstances and even after that the advice could be taken with a huge grain of salt.


Statement of Purpose in Graduate School Application First, I hope this isn't the wrong place to put a question like this.

I have a very specific graduate school question. I graduated last spring with my BS and intended to go to graduate school. I accepted an offer from (Big State School). However, during the summer before I could go, one of my parents became terminally ill; so I ended up declining the offer (well after the acceptance deadline) to move back in with my parents and help them out. At the same time, I also arranged it with my undergraduate institution to continue towards my masters there (since I had already acquired a bit of graduate credit) with the intention of transferring to complete my PhD elsewhere.

I am considering mentioning in my statement of purpose the reason why I graduated as an undergrad, have a semester gap, and then started taking graduate classes again at my old institution (I've heard going to grad school at the same place you did your undergrad looks bad?). But I'm also not sure if it's relevant to applications or even the sort of thing that belongs in a statement of purpose.

Would it be in poor form to do this, or should I leave such things out of application materials?

(reposted from MSE)

Yes, you should mention your situation in your statement, briefly and unapologetically.  Omitting any explanation might raise a red flag with admissions committees, and most people will be sympathetic to your family situation.

You might also get back in touch with (Big State School) to see if they would be willing to reactivate your earlier admission.  It's a long shot, but it couldn't hurt.


Not ticking boxes in recommendation forms Like many people, I hate the recommendation forms for graduate schools, particular the part where you're asked to rank/rate a whole bunch of abilities.  When the electronic application allows me, I omit this part or select an option like "cannot evaluate" and maybe make a comment somewhere to see my letter for everything.

I know many people just mark the highest ranking for everyone, but I don't even want to do that (for one, it seems dishonest; also, sometimes it's not clear which is the highest ranking without carefully reading the question).

The places I'm familiar with (some math grad schools) probably don't care about what you put here at all.  As far as I can tell, the people who design these forms are pretty far removed from those who make admissions decisions.  The only time I could see these coming into play is if a student gets very bad ratings or one person has lower ratings from the same recommender.

But I want to make sure I'm not doing my students a disservice, so:

  Does anyone know of any US grad programs where not ticking these boxes on recommendation forms will hurt my students' chances?  If so, please indicate what kinds of graduate programs (e.g., maybe it matters for MBA but not STEM programs).

It can definitely hurt the students.  Having worked on master's and doctoral admissions in my own department (physics and astronomy) and occasionally been consulted by faculty in closely related departments (chemisty and applied math) about unusual applicants, I can attest that there are some faculty members that do pay attention to those checkbox rankings.  They are not numerous in my department, but they do exist.

In most cases, the students' test scores, grades, and recommendation letters speak for themselves.  For a strong applicant, those checkboxes are probably never going to cost them an admissions slot.  However, when there are some questions about the strength of a recommender's letter, some people of the committee do turn to the numerical ratings to try to get a clearer idea of the applicant's abilities.  So if you write a student a compelling recommendation letter, those boxes will likely never matter; however, if your letter is short or expresses possible reservations about a student, you may be further hurting the student by leaving the boxes blank.


How to Proceed: Journal Agreed to Publish, 6 Months Later Reneges I would like request some advice regarding my situation.  Here is a summary: I submitted an article for review for publication in an upper-tier academic journal.  I have been published in this journal before and thought I had a good relationship with the editor in chief (EIC).  Six months after submission, I received an email from the EIC, telling me that the article was excellent and after I made one small change, they would agree to publish it.  I made the change to the EIC's satisfaction and the EIC agreed to publish the article.

Six months after this, I unexpectedly received an email from the EIC telling me that, upon further review, the journal would not publish the article.  The EIC then listed three "incorrect" words (yes, words) in the article (it is 20+ pages in length) as the reasons for not publishing it.  The EIC stated that publishing the article in its present form would damage my career goals.  The EIC also informed me he would not work with me on the article any longer, as he had "spent enough time on it."  The EIC then stated that I needed to re-do the entire article and work with "experts in the field."  After this was completed, the EIC stated I could resubmit, if I wanted.  Again, all of this is completely out of the blue.

Needless to say, I am stunned.  Also needless to say, this situation is unacceptable.  How would you suggest I proceed at this point?  In my opinion, the EIC made a commitment to publish my article in its present form and the EIC should honor this commitment.  Should I attempt to contact the EIC's superior(s) about this behavior?  It is very strange, and is a huge breach of academic standards.  Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

This is a very bizarre situation—I must admit that I've never heard of a paper being rejected because three words are incorrect. It seems that the level of response from the journal is not proportional to the level of the problem.

I agree with Nate's answer that you will probably need to publish elsewhere. Since the decision has been made by the editor-in-chief, the only appeal would be to the publisher, who would be reluctant to overrule a scientific decision by the editor-in-chief absent signs of foul play.

However, in addition to submitting to a different journal, I would definitely try to get in contact with the editor-in-chief to understand what's going on. If he's someone you already know, I would try to see if I could talk with the person directly on the phone, rather than just email. You might be able to get a better sense of what's going on with this rejection than just in an email. I would not try to force the editor-in-chief to change his mind; I would use this opportunity to figure out what caused the paper to go from essentially accepted to rejected in one step.

If you don't get any response, then you should escalate to the publisher. Such behavior is highly irregular, and should be brought to their attention. (Just state it as: "This is what happened and this is why I think it's unusual." But again don't expect a reversal.)


Postdoctoral length before landing a professorship job? professorship: tenure-track position, or "good" assistant professorship. Basically, a position that upgrades the postdoc status, and gives a much higher chance of a future permanent position.

I'm currently going to start a postdoc in applied mathematics and I wish to land a permanent position at some point in my life. Naturally, the situation seems dire, and albeit I'm highly confident of my skills, one never knows.

So, my plan is to fix a deadline time to do my best, and if I don't get a professorship by that time, I should start, without a question, to seek for a job at the industry.

The natural question arises, which is this optimal stopping time? According to my advisor, I should land a professorship in 3 years, but I'm not sure if this is true.

So my question to academia.stackexchange: What is, in your experience, the postdoctoral length of a freshly hired professor at your institutions?

For sure my question is highly dependent on country and research area, I would appreciate answers for my specific case (Germanic world, Applied mathematics), but I think the presented answers could be meaningful for a lot of other fellow postdocs.

For what is worth, I would love some sort of database on newly hired professors, as it would also make possible to compare "strengths". But I've briefly scanned the internet with no positive results.

Speaking for Germany: in former times, a "Habilitation" war required for a full professorship - which you usually wrote during your post-doc phase. It usually took about 6 years (of course with strong variations). Now, you can qualify for a full professorship by being a "Junior Professor" - which takes 6 years with an interim evaluation after three years. In some cases, junior-professorships can be transformed to full professorships after six years, but if this really happens depends strongly on your university and faculty (in fact politics says it should be the norm, but in fact universities are having much more junior professorships than full professorships).

So the general norm in Germany is 6years+, since you usually won't get a position right after your PhD.


How can I contact potential PhD advisors without jeopardizing my position in my current PhD program? (Sorry for the long question in advance! If it's too long, you could skip the first two paragraphs.)

I'm currently enrolled in a PhD program in a relatively prestigious school, which is very well-known in my field and in the specific area I'm interested in. Despite the department being a very good match for my interest, for some very personal reasons, I really need to move to a different place. (I assure you that my reasons are absolutely convincing, but unfortunately are too personal and complicated to explain it here, so I'd appreciate it if you could suggest answers to the question I'm asking and not discuss whether I should change my mind about leaving my current program).

Before I explain where in the application I could get into trouble, I need to say, that I can't explain my reasons for leaving my current university to my professors. Although the reasons are not at all about the department (I'm actually pretty happy with the program itself), and are only related to the location, since understanding them requires some background on what my reasons are about and some familiarity with me at a personal level, I have very little hope that they could actually sound convincing to my professors. They're the sort of reasons that I could explain to a friend and I'm quite sure they'd find them absolutely convincing (as those I explained to did), but I can't explain it to a colleague or a professor unless I establish some level of friendship with them beforehand. So, I prefer to reserve that option as the last option.

Although I'm trying to go and continue/do my PhD somewhere else as soon as possible, I'd want to do that next year if my applications weren't successful this year (especially because next year I'll have more publications, could possibly get a little closer to my advisor here so I could get their help and explain my reasons to them, and will have a higher chance in general). That's why I don't want to jeopardize my current position at all, because I might end up staying here one year longer. I'd appreciate any suggestions to solve the problems explained below.

I would consider my problem to have two main parts:

Part 1:

Since I'm going to apply for PhD positions, mostly in Europe, but possibly a few in the US, I need to contact potential advisors (in most of the programs I'm considering, the department-level admission is almost just a formality and any PhD student has to be accepted by the advisor first). I'm afraid that the prospective advisor might know a professor from my department (especially because they work in the same field and my department is very well-known in the field), and they might contact that professor and ask about me, which could get me into trouble in my current program (possibly resulting in the school cancelling my scholarship). I do try to make sure that they haven't published a paper together recently, but sometimes it's hard to figure out for sure if they're collaborating on a project at the moment or not, or if they're going to meet at a conference soon.

Part 2:

It could be difficult to justify why I want to leave this department given my interests. The department is a great match for my interest and I'm assuming that whoever reads my statement letter is not going to ask "why won't you complete your Ph.D. with prof. X or prof. Y at your own department then?!". Any suggestions on how to minimize the amount of annoying personal explanations, while trying to explain why I want to go somewhere else?

I'd greatly appreciate any solutions you'd suggest. Also, do you think these stuff are actually something to be worried about or am I just overthinking it?!

I don’t have an answer to the first part, but the only possible answer to the second part is to say something along the lines of:

  Due to unreconcilable personal issues, I’m unable to complete my PhD at the University of Stack Exchange. I have the highest regard for the faculty there and Professor Advisor was an excellent supervisor, but I could not continue to pursue my studies there. These issues would not interfere with my ability to pursue a PhD at the University of Overflow.

You shouldn’t lie and pretend there was some kind of problem with the university. I think that making it clear that you have no issue with the university and your professor is probably the best thing you can do to avoid accidentally starting any rumors or make it seem like you’re besmirching the old university. I think it’s important to simultaneously stress the the issues are personal and that they won’t follow you to your new location.

I do think that being forthright and honest, but vague, is your best approach. I would seriously recommend putting this in your statement of purpose as well. At the end of the day it’s never not going to occur to the people reading your application to ask, and you’re usually better off heading off and explaining obvious worries than letting them sit there in their mind.

I know someone who was sexually assaulted by a community member at his university and found himself in a similar position. This is along the lines of what he did.


No reply after declining a PhD offer Couple of weeks ago, several professors from one of the universities I received an offer from wrote me asking if they could help me with anything (to decide on a place I choose). As pleasant as it was, I wrote (what I think was) a very nice email declining that PhD offer to each one of them. It's been quite a while now, but none of them have replied, while from other places I've received wishes of good luck. Have I burned some bridges there?

Probably no burned bridges. Like everyone else (especially now) they are busy and just focused on the essential things they need to do to keep everything else together. In normal times you might have gotten a few more replies, but not from everyone. They just say to themselves "oh well" and move on to the next crisis.

I suspect that even those who haven't replied hope you succeed. When one does, we all do.


Becoming an Engineer with a Math degree I'm not sure if this is entirely the correct stack exchange for my question, but the career stack exchange seemed to have a different focus from what I'm looking for.  My question is:  Can I work in engineering (Aerospace), specifically in modeling/simulation/analysis, without an engineering degree?

There is a fair bit of background for this question so be warned.  I am sophomore Aerospace engineering student currently working through my 4th semester.  I'm taking 16 credit hours.  My classes are fairly challenging for me, as would be expected, but I can and do get A's in them so far.  I work for an Aerospace engineering company for about 30 hours a week with school, I've been with this company for about a month.  I've been hired on as year-round intern to do (obviously basic) modeling and data analysis.  My problem is that I really like doing the modeling/data analysis, and in school I have a hard time caring about my non-math and non-numerical methods classes.  If I switched to a math major, I would have a halved class load, and I would be able to take only courses on modeling and data analysis.

The obvious solution here would be for me to switch to CS, but every time I import 'system' into Python I die a little bit.  Its not something I personally enjoy, so I would like to avoid that if possible.  Basically, I want to focus on becoming more skilled at what I enjoy doing without doing unnecessary work.  But I don't know if I can continue doing what I enjoy in my future career without a degree that says "Engineering" on it.  I don't have enough information to make this decision so I'm hoping for advice from those that do. .

Note that in many places, engineering is a licensed and regulated profession. One of the requirements may well be a degree from an accredited engineering program. That depends on local laws, of course.

The aerospace industry employs a lot of engineers, of course, but not everyone there needs to have an engineering degree. It may well be that, depending on laws and the policies of an organization, modeling of various phenomena may not require such a degree. In fact, as a guess, it may well be that engineers (licensed) may only be required in the actual design and development process.

And, it might all be that a degree in math or statistics or CS might be a better qualification for some of the tasks required in the industry.

However, you are in an excellent position to learn the specifics for your case just by asking someone at your current company. You can get some pretty good advice by going to the employment office and just asking for a bit of guidance. Professors in your current program are also well positioned (or should be) to answer this question in light of local laws and such.


What is a typical teaching load? Are four 3-credit classes a typical burden for full-time faculty? Assume all are in-person courses, no new preps, no new books, no TAs, 15-25 students per class, no research/publishing required, and committee work is required.

It's probably reasonable.  The teaching load for a full-time lecturer with no research responsibility tends to range between 10 and 15 units, equal to two or three 5-unit lecture courses, perhaps one more if some are 3-unit.  What constitutes a full-time load at any given school is largely dictated by the financial reality imposed by their average class size and, thus, the tuition revenue per course from which you and all the other expenses must be paid.  If their class sizes are really small, as they are at your school, they pretty much have to load up each instructor to make it work.


How to detect cheating when students take online quizzes or exams from home? I am currently teaching a basic R programming course with about 80 students.
Under normal circumstances,
a core course assessment component is a programming exam,
which is done in the computer lab using the lab computers.
I will arrange for the Internet to be cut off,
and we will have exam invigilators who are patrolling the exam venue
to detect or dissuade students from cheating.
At the end of the exam, the Internet is restored,
and students submit an R script (basically programming code)
using the course learning management system.

This semester, due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19),
the university where I work has replaced all on-campus teaching activities with online teaching for the entire semester!

With regards to teaching,
the faculty have been asked to teach our classes online using Zoom,
which gives students the freedom to take classes wherever they like.
With regards to exams,
the faculty have been asked to administer their course exams online,
with students completing the exams online from home. (What??!!)

I am very concerned about students taking exams online from home,
because I am worried that some or many of the students may use this as an opportunity to cheat on the exam —
whether it is collaborating with their classmates,
or even asking another student to take the exam in their place.

My questions:

Is there any way to detect if students are cheating (e.g., sharing answers),
when students are doing an online quiz or exam at home?
Is there a way to dissuade students from cheating?

Response to comments:

How much help do you have for these 80 students?

I do have one PhD student who is a grader.
She is supposed to spend about 6 hours a week to help with the course.

I also teach a data and programming course, though I mainly use Python.

Is it possible for you to shift grading away from an exam and toward something else?  A project, for example?  Before going back to academia I spent years working as a policy researcher, and exam conditions simply aren't a realistic test of real-life coding abilities.  For that matter, coding with the internet turned off is also not remotely what real work looks like either.

In my class I like to give a larger project and let them have a few weeks to work on it, but I could also imagine a more simple project that they only have a few days, or even hours, to do.  Real data work often comes with time constraints, but it does not come with a lack of internet access in exam-like conditions.  Just scale the scope of the project based on how long you want them to have to work on it.

There is still a huge advantage to knowing the material, rather than having to look it up.  You can also grade on the quality of code and correctness of results, and allow for creativity with open-ended questions like "summarize this data with two plots".  This way each student is not only tested their knowledge of R, they're tested on their actual ability to use R in a realistic environment.

If you, unfortunately, are required to give an exam, I know there is software available for proctoring online tests.  The sort of thing that utilizes their webcams to make sure they don't leave during the test, or consult other devices, or open other web pages.  I've not used them though, so I couldn't make a recommendation.  I imagine they all require university subscriptions.


Why don't colleges and departments teach social skills? After all, to do research with a professor, a student has to have good social skills. So why not have classes that teach social etiquette and social skills? It seems that many courses in college are "book courses." Yet, when students graduate, what really matters is how they present themselves and their social skills.

During one's university life as an undergraduate, there are many opportunities to improve one's social skills and confidence as an adult. These range from the various sporting and political clubs students can join, through volunteer activities students can participate in, through coaching activities (of more junior students or even high school), all the way to activities like having a few drinks in the uni bar (soda, for US students). During the summer, one can participate in spring break-style activities or get an internship at a law firm.

All of these activities, I dare say, help shape a student into a person. There's no assessment, no assignments, no grades, but such is the school of hard knocks.


how to share to mention/publish large datasets? When writting an article with outputs (by outputs I mean a big dataset created), how do you share them?

Do you ask the readers to contact the main author? Should I pput them in a university website?

Take a look at http://thedata.org/, which provides free, permanent hosting of data allowing you to cite a specific iteration of a dataset in your printed work.


Workshop versus conference deadline I noticed a particular conference had a deadline in January, whereas a workshop collocated at the conference had a deadline in May. Does this mean the workshop is merely using the location of the workshop, but is a distinct event? Example. I noticed the workshops proceedings are considered "non-archival meaning contributors are free to publish their work in archival journals or conferences" Is this the case with all workshops?

It happens from time to time. The idea is to give people who did not make it to the "normal" conference an opportunity to attend and present something. E.g. it could be work in progress without evaluation or projects at their very start. Usually, the deadline for workshops is after the final acceptance / rejection of the host conference.

Depending on the conference, there might be an extra fee for the workshop.

It depends on the workshop organizers (who are often selected by a "call for workshops") on how the contributions are published.

This might differ between conferences!


What changes should be notated in a journal resubmission? I am currently in the process of submitting a manuscript to a journal.  During this process my manuscript has come back for revision, and the journal has asked for an updated manuscript with revisions annotated.  What level of changes should be annotated?  Similarly is it acceptable to provide a generic comment when changes are for flow and not for content (e.g. "sentence rephrased for clarity")?

As an example (in my perceived order of required-ness):

Adding or removing significant content (figures, paragraphs, sentences)
Rephrasing a sentence changing the meaning
Rephrasing a sentence changing the grammar, but not the meaning
Adding/removing words that are superfluous (or change the meaning in an insignificant way)
alteration of comma's, periods, etc.

An editor once "requested" that I submit a "tracked changes" or latexdiff version of my resubmission if I wanted him to deal with it in a timely fashion. Since then, my strategy has been to submit:

revised manuscript (no annotation);
latexdiff of revisions against version submitted last time, to highlight every last comma changed;
cover letter, describing all scientific changes plus any major textual changes ("we substantially rewrote the methods section in an attempt to improve its clarity"). I refer the editor to the diff for minor textual corrections.

No editor has complained yet... ;)