How to keep and organize a research journal/log/diary/notebook? I have read in multiple places that it is a good practice as an academic to keep a research journal.
For example, Marie desJardins' paper How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors says:

  Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful.
  Write down speculations, interesting problems, possible solutions, random ideas, references to look up, notes on papers you've read, outlines of papers to write, and interesting quotes.
  Read back through it periodically.

My first attempt was to write my ideas in a log book.
I soon gave that up because the book would not always be with me when I wanted to write something in it, and because I knew eventually I would lose it and not be able to retrieve information from it.

My current approach is to write a huge LaTeX file which I store in the cloud.
In it, I chronicle my daily thoughts about my research project, to take notes of what is discussed in meetings with my adviser.
However, I simply feel overwhelmed by the volume of writing and the amount of repetition that I find in my research journal.
I also have other files which serve similar purposes.
For example, I have a file called results.pdf where I write out all my theorems and propositions and their proofs.

What have you tried and how has a research journal been of benefit to you?
Do you do all your "rough work" in a research journal, so that you can refer to it later?
What system do you use as your research journal?
Do you log all your experimental results into a chronologically organized research notebook? (Since I am not from a biology/chemistry/experimental background, I am curious as to how people who do lots of experiments manage to organize their results and ideas.)

Be aware that only you will ultimately be able to answer this question! Each individual works differently, so take the following cum grano salis.

As you've noted, a physical notebook does not always work well. Not only it is difficult to carry and easy to lose, it is also not easily searchable. (Despite this, I personally use a series of cheap notebooks and paper folders to enhance my thinking and contain random notes during the initial stages of research.) For many researchers, electronic files are the best alternative to paper. Your LaTeX file is a good beginning, and sounds like all you really need is a way to organize the huge mass of material now contained in a single file.

I would suggest breaking the file into several files, each containing a separate aspect of your current journal. How you organize this is ultimately up to you. Use the logic and structure that meshes with the way your brain works. Only one hard and fast rule: Never have a file labeled miscellaneous! This will end up catching all sorts of odds and ends and junk, and you will NOT be able to remember what the file actually contains.


Should I tell my PhD supervisor that I am looking for an other position? I am not satisfied with my PhD and the research group and I was thinking of looking somewhere else. I would like to stay in Academia for now and I want to apply to other programs (in an other country and university).

Should I tell my supervisor that I am looking for an other position? Or is it better to tell him once I have found something?

The problem is that I have to contact some professors and there is a minimal possibility that they know each other...

Morally yes. There are also a number of practical benefits.  How is your supervisor in general as they could be understanding and help you get a new position.  They can also be helpful for advice as they will know what other supervisors/research groups are like, especially if they know the reason you are quitting their group.

If you are applying in a similar field there is a good chance they have met at conferences.  Telling eliminates this risk.

Of course if you do tell it will be seen as you quitting your PhD and your funding will likely be cut (depending on how it is structured).  If you don't find a new position, I have no idea how confident you are of securing a new position, it could mean you get left with no position at all.  Of course your supervisor could also be understanding and let you use that group as a fall back.  It would save them the trouble of hiring someone new.

Finally, and this possibly be first, have you exhausted all options to fix your current PhD such as working with your supervisor to limit/remove the issues you have.  You could potentially switch topics but stick with the same supervisor for instance and work less with the research group itself, my own PhD did not involve anyone else in the same university working on the same topic as me (aside from my supervisor who also worked on different topics as well).

The above is very dependent on the personality of your supervisor and the reasons you are unhapppy though so don't apply it blindly but I would lean towards telling them.


Is it okay to have a good (not strong) recommendation letter from a well-known scientist? I approached my internship advisor for an LOR while applying to Masters. She said she would not be able to provide a strong one but a good one based on an internship that lasted for two months. I approached her because she holds a PhD from a good university in the USA and she's published papers in top-tier conferences and journals. Will it adversely affect my application? Will it hold as much weight as a strong one because it's she who's recommending it?

Will it adversely affect my application?

No, but it probably won’t help it much either.

  Will it hold as much weight as a strong one because it's she who's recommending it?

Absolutely not.

Keep in mind what “strong recommendation” actually means. It’s not about the forcefulness of the language; it’s about the quality of evidence that the letter provides for your success in the graduate program. The writer’s reputation/credibility is definitely part of that, but that informs how credible I should find the evidence they write about, not just how credible I should find their unjustified opinion.

Compelling evidence from someone relatively unknown has more weight than a bare thumps-up from a superstar.


How to answer "Your experience in supervision of research students"? I finished my PhD in 2013. I don't have any experience in supervision of research students. When I apply for teaching job uni. always ask me "Your experience in supervision of research students". How to answer those kind questions properly?

If the jobs you are applying to expect you to have experience teaching research students and you have none, there is really no explaining away of this problem. I see basically two fixes:

Get this experience. I am not sure how feasible this is wherever you work, but in my university in Europe, everybody who wants experience teaching students can get it. There are plenty of research master students or even undergrads that need supervision, and getting involved with teaching them is usually not more complicated than telling the lab head or responsible coordinator that you would be available. Of course, then you also need to be prepared to put in the hours - teaching research students is definitely not something that you can do with an hour on the side here and there, as these inexperienced researchers typically need some serious time commitment to get them started. Incidentally, the fact that it is so easy to get experience supervising students is also the reason why universities in my area consider it as a red flag if you have none - they interpret this as "I actively tried to get out of supervising students".
Find jobs to apply to that don't require teaching research students. If you for some reason don't want to be involved with teaching research students, you shouldn't apply to positions that require this. What you could maybe still do is apply to positions that are very (undergrad) teaching-centered, such as liberal arts colleges in the US or Universities of Applied Sciences in the German-speaking areas. That being said, if you don't want to be involved with research at all, you may be drawing slim as nowadays most universities seem to expect their junior faculty to do some research on the side.

To anser your literal question:

  How to answer those kind questions properly?

Truthfully.

"I currently do not have any experience in teaching research students, as [insert accurate reason]. Of course I will be more than willing to get this experience as soon as possible should my application be accepted."


How to effectively write a paper of N>2 co-authors? We are writing a manuscript with 7 people. I am not sure what is a good tool to write a paper collaboratively. Other than overleaf or sharelatex which cost money.

What do you do if you have technology inclined collaborators?

Git! Or more generally, version control systems, if your co-authors are technically inclined enough to know/learn how to use one.

If not, probably... write the text in google docs first and designate someone who will do the formatting in the latter stages, and decide what to cut to make the page limit.


Are there any issues with submitting conference papers in one language and publishing them in a journal in a different language? I have some research I want to present at a conference in my native language but I would rather submit for publication in English after finalizing it. Are there any ethical issues with this I am missing?

As stated in the comments. It is totally irrelevant if they are in two languages. If it would be ethical to do this one language then it will be ethical in two. If it is unethical in one language then it will be unethical in two. In my field presenting at a conference and then submitting a paper to a journal is just fine, as long as the conference does not publish a proceedings or similar. In other fields, it is not acceptable. Again, the language matters not.


Difficulties with behaviour of other PhD students in group I'm in my first year of a PhD at a top UK university. I am part of a cohort of students, most of whom have come straight from an undergraduate degree and never had any "real-world" experience. I am half a decade older than them due to getting some life experience and working in teaching for a few years before realising where my academic interests lie and deciding to give it another go.

I have realised that some of the students on my cohort are, to put it politely, not the sorts of people I would actively choose to work with. They may be very able STEM students with excellent academic credentials, but they have tendencies which are getting on my nerves and making them less pleasant to be around. These include:

Giving correct albeit unhelpful advice - for example, one of my fellow students emphatically smacked a couple of equations she wrote on the board during a group project, and proceded to have a go at me for not working through them myself, rather than politely explaining how she got them
Intellectual arrogance - for example, one student goes around, stands behind other students' computers and offers them assistance with their work regardless of whether they asked for it or not, almost as though trying to create an impression of omnipotence and undermining the merits of others
Resistance towards work of a different format to what students have been accustomed to in the past - for example, writing reports as opposed to doing problem sheets, which may not require a complete understanding of the concepts but are more akin to what an industrial role might expect
Self-opinionated behaviour from some students and attempts to attack my own opinions because they do not line up with their own.
Defeatist and entitled attitude - one student who has done poorly in his assignments takes a negative attitude towards work, constantly complains about it and tries to convince others why the work is a waste of time and why there is little to be gained from it.

I can't help but feel a bit despirited at these traits others are expressing, considering how I am rusty on some things having taken a gap from academia and yet asking some questions seems to lead to unnecessarily hostile responses. It is also despiriting to realise how much of a maturity gap there is between me and the other students, and (unlike in my previous job) I am not in a position of authority to reprimand them for their behaviour or place them on any sort of misconduct procedure.

How can I explain to these other students that their behaviour is having a negative impact on me, and how can I improve my working relationship with them?

In my experience it is not uncommon for people in your situation to not "gel" perfectly with the rest of their cohort. You are used to an industrial way of working, which is, or at least should be, quite professional and focused on a common goal (e.g., shipping some product). You are also used to fairly clear management structures, as indicated by your usage of "reprimand" and "misconduct procedure". Academia typically does not work like that. As user2768 aptly observes, a PhD study is an individual project - you are not all together shipping some common product, but you are all working on your individual research (or, in the worst case, you are directly competing for papers, grants, and future positions). That does not mean that you can't or shouldn't be friends with the people in your cohort, but it certainly gives the interactions a different dynamic.

I have found the following to be a good mental model for working in a research lab: envision yourself as a one-person (or two-person, you and your supervisor) early-stage start-up company working in an incubator or shared office space with other start-ups in a similar position. Sure, you want to have a nice relationship with these other "start-ups", and often it will help to collaborate on this and that, but ultimately you don't need to work with any of them. If you feel it is more productive to do things on your own, do so - and, conversely, don't feel that they are obligated to help you with anything specific you need.

As for how to deal with the specific behaviors you mention: essentially, my tip for all of them is to tell the respective students (more or less friendly, depending on your personality and whether you would like to build up or retain a friendly personal relationship) to bugger off and annoy somebody else. You don't need to listen to them giving you unwanted feedback, you don't need to convince them of your opinions, and they don't need to explain how they arrived at a specific solution. If a specific student annoys you or is categorically unhelpful, stop interacting with them.

With all that said, I feel there is also a good chance that parts of the conflict are also related to your own mindset. I think it would help you to stop seeing yourself as mature and them as immature and in need of correction. While I am (based on your descriptions) convinced that some of your colleagues are indeed not the nicest of people, you won't be able to change them. It is more productive for you to take a hard look at your own behaviors, and whether you are potentially not as adapted to being back at university as you would like. Maybe letting go of a notion of superiority and maturity, and making some corrections in how you deal with your colleaguesm will also help normalize your relationships.

Edit:
Some specific advise on dealing with defeatist people. Yes, those are a problem. Avoid very negative students at all costs. Nothing kills your motivation to do challenging research quicker than a friend who talks about nothing else than how pointless their research, your research, and a PhD in general is. Make very clear that you are not interested in that kind of conversation, and if they persist stop interacting with them.


Using a number of equations from a paper, how to mention it in my paper I am using a number of equations from a different paper. I am using those to derive another quantity.

Is it appropriate to just mention them one after another, without stating the assumptions behind the equations etc, since I am already citing the previous paper like

Equation 1 -- (1)

Equation 2 -- (2)

Equation 3 -- (3)

.

.

.

.

.

Equation 14 -- (14)

then state the physical meaning of each parameter in the above equations?

I tried looking at some example papers but couldn't find any in the particular journal I am writing for.

If it were 1 equation, it would be fine, but I am not sure how to handle so many equations.

Or should I just reference the main equation and state the rest in the supplemental section? I just read and it seems putting too many equations in a paper is not a good idea.

I'm not sure about the common practice in your field, but, as a mathematician, I feel that you have approached this thing from the wrong direction. You don't reuse equations from another paper; you reuse theorems. A theorem is a statement like

  If A and B and C are true, then equations D and E hold, where the symbol F is defined as... and G is defined as...

Maybe the authors of the other paper did not formulate their result as a theorem, but it is one. It is a sloppy but common habit to throw the derivation of a result in front of the reader directly, instead of first stating it then proving it.

Another important point to note is that there are hypotheses and assumptions under which these equations hold; if you focus on equations rather than on the whole 'theorem' package, this information can very easily get lost.

So, my suggestion is: reformulate those results as theorems. It could be a single theorem with 14 separate equations as the thesis, if they are all related.

If the word theorem sounds too pompous, use proposition. If your result seems too simple to deserve this name, use lemma.


Do published papers always have to present an innovation? I would like to publish a/some papers online. But do the things I discuss in these papers have to be innovations. I am still a student and would like to publish a paper about aerospace engineering (especially attitude determination, control systems for satellites, GNC systems).

Those are not the easiest topics, especially as I am doing that alone on a voluntary basis. So does the paper I will publish have to discuss any innovation? I think publishing something where I explain how some algorithms work, which I tested my self, is much more doable. I could then just explain the algorithms (which already existed) and present their results. Would the latter still be considered as a decent (research) paper?

do published papers always have to present an innovation?

Not really, it has to make a contribution to existing understanding, and this  can be a very specific contribution in a very specific area. Look at this paper for example:

Gauthier, Joseph P., Eamonn P. Glennon, and Andrew G. Dempster. "Timing Performance of V2R3 Namuru Operating in Position-Hold Mode." (2013).

It provides a very useful, but very context specific, contribution.

Of course the problem which you will face in trying to replicated a paper like this is that unlike these authors, you lack equipment and data to write up such results. However, you could consider getting data from one of the research laboratories working in your area and trying to publish something with them. This could be something where you write up some part of the analysis, or, if you really know your stuff, you take the data they have and then do your own analyses. More likely than not you would have to cite them as you are building on their work/collected data and efforts.

Another option for you would be to do some sort of literature review, for instance, timing performance for GPS satellites: A review of the literature. Something like this would also qualify as a contribution and could be publishable. Plus, if you did it in an area where you would like to do research, it would serve to signal that you are serious about that research and also happen to know quite a bit about it.


Copyrights of recorded lectures? Most universities around the world are now requesting their lecturers to record lectures and post them on a repository. In my university, we use Moodle to store and share video recordings.
My question is: what are the copyirights of my uploaded videos (say in UK and/or USA)? Do I have any rights once I upload my videos to the system?
My question is motivated by a big discussion we are currently having in our Faculty (where Faculty means a group of Science Departments) on whether the University has total rights on our uploaded videos. If so, they want to recycle lectures even after lecturers leave (say, for another university) or die.
I understand this can be seen as one of those questions whose answer is: check your contract, ask your manager, read the entire Constitution, ... My question relates to a general understanding of copyrights of video lectures. Thanks.

If you, the faculty, want to retain any rights, I suggest that you (as a collective group negotiating with the administration) write them into a contract. You might be able to come to a royalty agreement, but I doubt much beyond that.
If faculty are employees of the university then most of the IP created can be claimed by the employer, just as if you were employed by IBM in a research capacity.
I don't think that universities (none in my experience) get in the way of a faculty member publishing books (or software, ...), but those are normally written at the full initiative of the author(s) rather than at the direction of the university. And since there are other alternatives for teaching a course than writing your own book, it is normally an independent activity. Lectures, however, like other explicit course materials, seem to be in a different category.
The course materials were created by yourself, but at the direction of the employer. The university provides the infrastructure and the audience.
IANAL, but guess that the above is a pretty general interpretation. Copyright law, however, is variable around the world and to some extent, so is the relationship between the faculty and the university. So, "your mileage may vary."
Absent a formal agreement, the university will probably claim to own all rights including the rights to reuse such things in the future whether the faculty member is employed there or not and without additional compensation. It would be difficult, at best, to contest this view, I think.
I would prefer a different interpretation, of course, in which the law would recognize that the faculty is the university and derives all function and authority from the consent and participation of the faculty. However, that is a late medieval view. Yes, I'm that old.
If a university wants to maintain a high quality faculty and keep them happy and productive, I think they would be willing to negotiate some sharing arrangement. It would need to be formalized. An argument for such an agreement would, I think, be an improvement in the general quality of such things.


U.S.C. sex and drugs scandal: would attending such a graduate school hurt one's chances at an academic career? The University of Southern California (U.S.C.) medical school is currently rocked by a sex and drugs scandal involving the dean of the school -- and possibly other faculty and administrative leaders that worked to cover up the scandal.

Would attending a graduate program rocked by scandals hurt one's chances of landing academic jobs afterwards?

Sources:

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/us/usc-scandal-carmen-puliafito.html

[2] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-usc-dean-pasadena-overdose-20170725-htmlstory.html

One cannot, of course, guarantee that there will be no negative outcomes for going to a school currently being rocked by a scandal. But I cannot imagine they'd have significant repercussions outside the occasional comment about "What was that like?" Especially given the current scandal appears primarily focused on a Dean (a position fairly far removed from the average graduate student) and his colorful private life.

If that scandal had major repercussions in terms of academic fraud, human subjects protections, or specifically involved the lab you were in, the answer might be different.


What is the academic value of posts on LinkedIn? As LinkedIn is a network of professionals, there is a great scope for sharing one's professional expertise in the form of a short piece (or otherwise write something to influence a cause).

Most posts are well researched (often hyperlinked to relevant sources) and reflect the writer's knowledge and experience in a particular professional field.

I am wondering what perceived value is there for this contribution in terms of any academic recognition. Would it be appropriate to list these posts in a job CV?

LinkedIn certainly has some value, as a general professional networking tool. However, that value has been declining for quite a while and rather rapidly more recently due to various factors, mainly inability (or lack of care/desire) of LinkedIn's management to manage the quality of the community, provide consistent user experience, fix issues and improve features, just to name a few. Whether the recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft will help LinkedIn to remain a major player in the market and improve its dominance or, vice versa, will enable its stagnation and transform it into Microsoft's technology- and talent-focused support division, remains to be seen (I make no bets).

Having said that, the value of LinkedIn from the academic publishing perspective is quite bleak (which is a nice way to say "close to zero"), in my humble opinion. The following are some of the reasons for my such assessment.

Quality / scientific rigor. LinkedIn lacks a peer review process, which means that any published piece there should be taken with many more grains of salt than, if such process would be in place (not that is expected).
Relevancy. LinkedIn is not very relevant to academia. LinkedIn's network of people from academic circles tend to be much less comprehensive than academia's specialized networks due to some of their colleagues, collaborators, etc. using LinkedIn rarely, if ever, or just not having any presence there at all. Therefore, disseminating scientific information, using LinkedIn, is a much less effective option. Nevertheless, if one has important academic contacts on LinkedIn that are missing from the person's other networks, it might make sense to publish there a brief post (similar to an abstract) with a link to a full-text article (preferably, a DOI link).
Information persistence. LinkedIn lacks a mechanism of persistent identifiers (again, not that we can expect that from a general networking platform), which implies lack of guarantee that a link to an article published there will not become broken over time (which jeopardizes scientific information dissemination).

P.S. There is no such term, as "job CV" - I understand what you're trying to say, but IMHO it sounds pretty bad and, thus, I would recommend against using such word combination in any context. HTH


Manuscript went from 'awaiting referee selection' to 'awaiting decision'. What does this mean? I wonder if anyone has any answers to this? I am quite worried! I submitted my manuscript to a top international relations journal and it went through the usual admin checks and one day went to 'awaiting referee selection'. The next day it went to 'awaiting decision'!

I wonder if they made an error and decided to now make an editorial decision instead of sending it out for review? It seems to have skipped 'awaiting referee assignment' -> 'awaiting referee scores'.

Any info would be most helpful! Thank you!

It means nothing. These status should not be taken seriously. Just give it some time; either you will get a decision or it will go for the review process.

It it is desk reject, then reviewer means the editor herself. If it is not a desk reject, then it will surely go to the external peer-reviewers for review.

Further, if you are thinking of sending an email to them, then I would say, don't. Wait! It is not late yet. Just ignore your paper for few months (of course, depends on your fields.).


Should I report I might have been snubbed from a paper even if I don't have means to substantiate it? For my thesis, I did some programming for a project. My supervisor seemed to be very happy with the results when I was there and promised I was going to be in the publication. Problems started when I graduated and moved abroad. My supervisor said they couldn't replicate my results and started pushing me to continue into the project. I left all my scripts properly organized with README files and was available to answer emails and connect remotely to do minor fixes, but I was already fully dedicated to my masters and didn't have time to do extensive extra programming. Indeed, I was doing field work and didn't have access to computers for most of the time. After almost a month in which I was out of reach, I checked my email and found a communication claiming I have stalled the whole project and lead to its cancellation. I let things pass for almost two years, not having much contact with my then coworkers or supervisor, and just yesterday found the paper was indeed submitted around six months after that final communication and taken into publication! And I'm in the acknowledgements albeit for a menial task that anyone could do in a couple of hours!

I can't be sure if there was misappropriation of my work since the code of the project hasn't been published. They might have rewritten the code, but they might have also indeed used MY code or parts of it. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of my work, since I was doing everything remotely in the server and I now fear I wouldn't be able to substantiate my allegation to the editors in case they ask for prove to my claims (I know, I should have kept a copy for myself, but I never expected this to happen at all...).

I noticed some red flags before leaving but didn't think they were of real concern. My supervisor seemed to be resented at me leaving instead of staying in his lab. Although my supervisor is very good in his field, I didn't like the overall way in which he treated us, his students -- he is the kind of supervisor that would yell and call you stupid in front of your colleagues –. This is one of the reasons why I decided to leave the lab and even change field. I don't know if this affected his intention to include me as an author, but in any case, I think they should have informed me I was going to be mentioned in the paper, and they didn't.

Is this among the normal things that happened in academia? Should I tell the editors either they include me as author or they drop any mention of me in the acknowledgements? Also, among the authors are other students for whom I have real appreciation and I don't want to spoil their names in their first publication. Should I let things just pass and be forgotten? (The paper has been published already for more than a year and haven't been cited once. -In my opinion it's a good paper, but not a breakthrough). What would be the normal thing to do in academia?

Unless you outright had years of valuable work stolen out from under you that imperils your future career in your field, and you have strong proof of what occurred that would establish to an outsider that clearly something very seriously wrong was committed (way, way past a snub), I'd "count your blessings". From the sounds of it, you have made a clean break from the field, the lab, and most (or all) of the people. There's no huge ethical issues with the paper itself (no fraud, abuse, etc), so you don't have to worry about guilt by association.

You don't need letters from them, you don't need to collaborate in the future, you don't need to even see them passing down the hall. It really sounds like an amazingly good outcome, with the worst-case scenario being you didn't get co-authorship on a paper no one particularly cares that much about. And demanding to be removed from the acknowledgements would make you look like a bit of weirdo, from an outsiders perspective - "give me authorship or don't acknowledge me at all", honestly, will not give anyone a good impression of you to anyone. No upside to be had.

As of right now, from an outsiders perspective, it sounds like did reasonable work as an undergrad, and moved on. You were a bit unresponsive (not checking email for a month tends to be uncommon), but quite understandable given the big changes - though it would not have been cool to be aware of pending collaboration and not even tell your collaborators you are not going to be "online" or reachable for weeks on end. People in the lab may have been disappointed that you weren't more interested in continuing the project to publication, so it sounds like there was some miscommunication, misaligned expectations, and you weren't all on the same page as to where you stood on the project now that you graduated and moved on to something not strictly related. I don't know what conversations you had together, so we can't determine if someone was just being demanding or if you had indicated interest in continual involvement but then effectively didn't follow through. Not our business, but something you might consider for yourself.

Given the lack of major downside, it would be a great opportunity to learn how you might avoid a situation like this in the future, because you'll of course eventually move on from your current position and most people don't perfectly have all work tidied up and permanently finished when they leave. Reflect on how to set clear boundaries, avoid making promises (expressed or implied) you aren't dedicated to following through on, set clear limits to what you are agreeing to, communicate your availability to collaborators, have direct conversations with people to ensure everyone has matching expectations, etc. These skills will be invaluable to your future career, so no time like the present to improve on them, learn from past experience, and build up to a more happy and productive future.


Can I reliably determine the quality of a journal by checking citation numbers in Google Scholar? I have recently come across this journal International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA)

The journal provides acceptance notification within 15 days. This raised red flags, but then I performed a Scholar Search for thesai.org and seems that most of their papers have decent citations. So, how reliable is scholar search when evaluating the quality of a journal or how to interpret the results from scholar search ?

EDIT: As pointed out by Nate Eldredge in Publishing again acknowledging the original publication of oneself
this journal is on  Beall's List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers. But this again raises the question how reliable is scholar search then or what are ways to search reliably for a research papers.

Even in case you generally accept numerical measures such as citation counts or the h-index as a measure of quality, Google Scholar seems to be rather unreliable in them. In the case of evaluating individual authors, let me cite the Wikipedia article on Google Scholar:

  Vulnerability to spam — Google Scholar is vulnerable to spam.[26] Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg demonstrated that citation counts on Google Scholar can be manipulated and complete non-sense articles created with SCIgen were indexed from Google Scholar.[27] They concluded that citation counts from Google Scholar should only be used with care especially when used to calculate performance metrics such as the h-index or impact factor. Google Scholar started computing an h-index in 2012 with the advent of individual Scholar pages. Several downstream packages like Harzing's Publish or Perish also use its data.[28] The practicality of manipulating h-index calculators by spoofing Google Scholar was demonstrated in 2010 by Cyril Labbe from Joseph Fourier University, who managed to rank "Ike Antkare" ahead of Albert Einstein by means of a large set of SCIgen-produced documents citing each other (effectively an academic link farm).[29]

I'm not aware of a case where this has been exploited by a predatory journal, but if a publisher wants to do that, it doesn't seem to be too difficult.


Should a special issue follow the regular frequency of the journal or separately? If a quarterly journal wants to publish a special issue, should it be published as an additional issue or it should replace a regular seasonal issue? Are there any guidelines on this or it's a matter that depends on the journal's policies?

Both ways are possible, but usually they are called differently. If the issue is replacing a regular issue, it is called special issue.

If the issue is added to the standard set of issues, making an extra one, it is usually called supplement. And even here the conventions differ; some supplements are published with a regular issue, and some are published separately. Most often, they are numbered as 1S, 1A or alike, but form an integral part of the volume.


Should you include your main supervisor as a co-author? I'm currently close to finishing my first paper in a PhD degree (applied maths). I have a supervisory team of 4 academics, 1 of which is the designated main supervisor.

My problem is that in reality, all of my work for this paper has been in collaboration with only one of the supervisors (not the main) who works in a different department. As well as this, they also gave the advice for the direction of the PhD and is also the only person I have meetings with. It seems to be a culture within my environment that all the supervisors are included as co-authors. I'm not comfortable with the idea of other people getting credit for something I have worked hard on or the ethics of it; but at the same time of course I don't want to ostracise myself from the group or harm my future prospects. They did after all get the funding for my position and I have no problem with working with just one supervisor.

Unfortunately I didn't have any conversations about co-authorship before I started the program. Any advise?

ASK THEM.
Academia is a very 'political' and 'incestuous' environment.  If it is common to do that, then in order for you to succeed there, you might should do what they do.
  si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre; si fueris alibī, vīvitō sicut ibi (“if you should be in Rome, live in the Roman manner; if you should be elsewhere, live as they do there”); which is attributed to St Ambrose.

If you don't, and they expect it, then you might just piss them off.  They may never mention it, but they might take it out on you in ways you could never prove. Retaliation likely won't be something you even see - not getting that scholarship, journal, presentation, etc.

TL;DR - Ask them what to do, then do it.


Academic Gowns and Hood Colours for Overseas Students Where the University Does Not Have One My university has asked me (actually, a friend) to process in a graduation ceremony, and expects me to wear full academic dress. However, my home country and home university does not have an academic dress.

Is there a standard hood colour in the UK which means "master's degree; overseas university (unspecified)"? And indeed the same for a bachelor's / doctorate degree?

Ask the university. There will be administrative offices and a secretariat of some kind, and they will be delighted to be able to help. It is a lot more interesting than most of the stuff they find themselves having to do.

The general rule is to wear the gown and hood corresponding to this university's equivalent degree if there is one, so if you are a masters student then presumably you will have a bachelor's degree and so the B.A. dress would be appropriate. But ask them, and they will happily tell you.


Because of past conflicts, I don't believe my advisor will write me a good LOR for postdoc positions. What should I do? How essential is having my advisor's letter for post doc application?

I had a pretty bad relationship with my advisor for more than 4 years since I joined his lab and sometimes the relationship feels like slow inflammation that can easily flare up. We had very different opinion on how I want to approach my thesis and we argue very often on the experimental approach and the angle of attack. After that, he turned passive aggressive and completely hands-off. I noticed that he started slow to response to my email and given me very small amount time for meeting in comparison to other people in the lab. However, I proved to him that my approach was right and wrote the full paper myself and got published.

Recently, I got contact by a post doc employer who interested in my own work and request letter of recommendation. I asked my advisor for letter and he told me that I should write my own from which he can modify. I feel this is quite strange as he had wrote for all the other people in the lab, including a departing post doc who is currently interviewing for job. He told me he had done the same for other people but obviously he lied to me.

I further asked if he can provide me a copy of a completed version of the recommendation but he refused.

My question is should I still trust him to write my letter and is it essential? This post doc position is a great opportunity for me and either way I do is a big gamble.

Update: I decided to let my advisor wrote a letter for me and I think I may have made a big mistake. Since he wrote my letter, I asked the post doc lab head if my letter is completed and I no longer be able to hear back from him. Before that, he was quick to response to my email and showed great enthusiasm. As an insurance, I use one opportunity I have less desire to as bait to test the water and I still have one more shot at another position I really want.  Now, I'm thinking requesting open letter from advisor from now on for any future position or use letter service to check the letter.

Any suggestion? Thanks.

update: Great news! Got interviewed and offered at top ones! Thanks everyone!

Once it became clear that you were not going to follow your advisor's advice on important issues, it might have been better to switch advisors to one you could work with. Instead, you continued, in effect, without an advisor. The limited meeting time, slow e-mail response, and requiring you to draft the LOR all suggest to me an attitude of "Why waste my time giving advice that won't be taken anyway?".

You cannot be sure he is lying about having other people draft their own LOR unless you have talked with every person for whom he has ever sent one. He may feel he knows some students well enough to write an LOR from scratch, but needs a draft for others.

The best you can do at this point is to write what you consider to be a reasonable LOR and give it to your non-advisor.


What is a TA called when he/she is in charge of organization? I am a non-native speaker and writing my cv. In my subject (mathematics), there are small exercise groups where you have to grade the students' homework and discuss it with them; some are hold by students; some by PhD students or postdocs.

What are the correct terms if you have done the following things:

You are a (PhD) student student holding the exercise group, grading homework, but nothing more.
You are the one who is in charge of organization, i.e., you design questions for homework and the exam, you make announcements, moderate the meeting of those people having an exercise group (see 1), but you don't have an own exercise group.
Same as 2, but you have an own exercise group.
The course is so small that there is only one exercise group. You are holding this group and are in charge of the organization.

Thank you very much!

First to answer your titular question:

  What is a TA called when he/she is in charge of organization?

Such a position does (in theory) not exist, as a TA as by definition supposed to "assist" somebody else and not run the show on her/his own (I am aware that this is not how it sometimes works in practice).

Generally, you need to keep in mind that title and scope of academic positions, especially regarding teaching, are quite different between US and Germany, so you will likely not be able to do an accurate 1-to-1 mapping. I would write "Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter" in the CV and explain what you actually did. Translating it to english is prone to confusion.

If you write TA, people will underestimate your responsibility in the course, if you write something like lecturer, people may infer that you already had a faculty position and will be confused by the perceived mismatch with the rest of your CV.


What are the typical differences between doing a math phd and an engineering phd on the same research topic? What are the typical differences between doing a math phd and an engineering phd on the same research topic?

Take, for example, fluid dynamics.

Does working on a phd thesis on a problem in fluid dynamics, in an engineering program make the problem "more applied" than working on the same problem in the math program?  Do engineering phd programs do any work on theory at all? Or is it strictly applications?

There is a wide spectrum of possibilities in doing research in either mathematics or engineering. There are definitely people doing research under the auspices of an engineering department that is nearly as mathematically rigorous as in a pure math program.

The only exception to this is that pure mathematics programs do not look highly upon a fully applications-driven project under its auspices: there needs to be some sort of additional theory or analysis development.

But it's certainly possible to do a very highly mathematical project in an engineer department. My own thesis work amounted to algorithm development and analysis, with very limited application demonstrations. While I didn't have formal proofs the way you might in a pure math thesis, the project wouldn't really look like an "engineering" project—and certainly wasn't published in engineering journals!

So, in short, the main distinction I'd make is that one might expect to see more formal proofs and analysis, but no real distinctions in the kinds of problems that are tackled.


How could one prepare for a telecon interview for a government lab? Suppose that, after applying to a publicly advertised position, a person gets invited to an interview for a regular (not time-limited) scientific job at a national scientific research laboratories in the United Kingdom.  Due to the location of the candidate, the interview is scheduled to take place as a teleconference (i.e. Skype).  The candidate is instructed to give a 10-minute presentation titled ”Background experience of the candidate” for a panel of four scientists.  The candidate has a conventional career-path so far with Master, PhD, and post-doc, but has so far not had any “real job”.

What might be effective strategies for the candidate to prepare for such an interview?  Needless to say, summarising Master + PhD + postdoc/postdocs in 10 minutes is, to say the least, challenging (read: impossible).  How could one focus a presentation and what kind of questions might one expect?

10 minute job talks in the UK are pretty common. While it is not helpful. You really should have some canned talks, of various lengths between 2 minutes and 1 hour, that provide an overview of you research. For versions that are 5 minutes or less you should be able to deliver them with and without slides and the longer versions you should be able to deliver them with slides but also with a pen and napkin while sitting around a table with a few people. You never know when you will be asked to describe your research. In terms of preparation, I would focus on being able to describe your research at various levels of depth.

The best 10 minute job talks I have seen in the UK have demonstrated that the past research is important and has depth, but also has breadth in terms of fitting in with other people in the department. You do not need to be over the top in terms of saying how you fit in with the others, if you really fit in, they will see it.

I would say in terms of timing provide a 2 minute intro covering your MS, PhD and postdoc(s). That is a 30 second description of each. Ideally, the descriptions show how they fit together, and how one led to another. I would then spend another 2 minutes talking about breadth and impact; basically how your research fits I to the big picture. I would spend the remaining 6 minutes talking about a single research project. This is similar, although shorter than, a conference talk. In terms of ordering, this could come in the middle or the end.

In terms of questions. After the talk, you can expect typical research talk questions. At some point they will then switch into the formal interview. In the UK, these are scripted and they need to ask each candidate the identical questions. They have some leeway with follow up questions, but it is pretty narrow. There is often an "outsider" from HR or another department who makes sure the script is followed. The questions often focus in the essential and desirable qualities from the job description, so re-read that carefully. Brits are all about box ticking, so make sure you are able to clearly explain how you meet all the essential requirements and as many of the desirable requirements as possible.


To publish or not to publish There are two parts to this question.

As a student interested in pursuing a doctoral degree; how important is it to publish an article or "something" before one applies? Will it help your chances? I plan on writing a MA thesis but whether it is publishable or not, remains to be seen.
What are the main steps to go about publishing?

It would certainly help your application if you have previous publications. It probably won't tip the scales too much.

On (2), ask your advisor. To show you the ropes on this, a part of what research is all about, is part of their job.


What to change between Conference and Journal Paper? If one is extending work previously published in conference proceedings, what must be changed?

Specifically, does one need to change the Introduction, Background Work, or similar sections that are not actually the new material being presented?

I understand that some journals use a plagiarism detection system that would throw serious red flags if sections were untouched; so, how do editors view this?

It seems reasonable to not have to modify every sentence, especially where the material has not changed.

Thoughts?

Edit: Typically, 25-30% new material should be presented, but does this have to come at the cost of rewriting some portions of the work that remain the same?

There is no good reason to simply copy large portions of an existing publication to make a new. By rewriting everything, you have the opportunity to rephrase your thoughts and most likely produce a better paper, at least from a writing point of view. Some journals definietly look at plagiarism and in this case self-plagiarism and the only way to avoid it is to rewrite. I think the benefits of rewriting clearly outweighs the possible time-saving by just copy-pasting.

Just to provide an example. I have written tens of papers about the same natural physical object that I have studied. In each paper, I have to provide a descritpion of the locality and characteristics and not once have this been copied. It is in fact interesting to see how many dofferent ways the same (dull) information can be conveyed.

As for a percentage of new material, I really would advice against relying on a numbr. It is possible this is a silent understanding in some fields but in general, only new insights and conclusion should warrant a new publication. Another year of data or something similar to that is in itself not enough. The paper might be published but such publication strategies are not looked upon favourably in the long term.

So, I strongly recomend rewriting each paper and not rely on copy-pasting. I am convinced you will develop as an author and also generate better papers by doing so. consider each paper a separate new entity.


Considerations for transitioning from a teaching to a pure research position Understandably, there would be some adjustment needed, particularly if the academic had been in the predominantly teaching role for a long time (or it is the only academic role they've had).

What practical considerations are there that would help an academic currently fulfilling a primarily teaching position to seamlessly and effectively transition to being in an all-research position (any job that is all research, no teaching)?

Some issues that will need to be considered are:

getting up to date with the current developments in your field – this will involve intense and selective reading
finding new topics to work on
justifying in grant applications the gap in publication record and demonstrating potential to produce results
attracting students to work with you – this may be easier if you've been teaching a lot, as you've put yourself in a position where students can see you.

Good luck.


Pestering senior colleagues for drafts I've talked a surprising number of graduate students in several disciplines, all in the same bind:

They have a very senior and well respected academic as a coauthor
That coauthor has been sitting on the manuscript for a year or more
They have written several followups with no luck.
They can't (or feel they can't) pull that person from the paper,
partly for desire to benefit from the glow of fame, but largely for fear of offending this kind of person, who so often functions as a gatekeeper to their discipline.

I don't know what to tell them, besides keep following up, or give up on getting the paper published. Any better advice?

I remember one of the early pieces of advice that I received from my primary supervising professor on this issue was that when I send a draft manuscript to coauthors, that I should set a deadline for responses. i.e. that I should say to let me know of any comments or feedback by a particular date and that I will be submitting the manuscript directly after making any amendments.


Why do German universities rank so low internationally? There are very well known American and British universities, which have a very good reputation in a lot of different fields. Obvious examples being Cambridge, Harvard or Princeton.
But what about the state funded German universities, how is their international reputation? Why are the German schools ranked so poorly in international rankings like the Shanghai ranking?

There are lots of biases in international academic rankings, they tend to favour US and UK universities because they use criteria which are mostly relevant for a market-oriented academic system, such as the US/UK ones.
In many European countries the academic system is not market-oriented, or at least not as much as in the US and the UK: students fees are very low because higher education is mostly funded by public money.  Universities are seen as a public service offering education to society as a whole, rather than a kind of commercial institution which sells knowledge and qualifications to those who can afford it. As a consequence Non-US/UK universities are not as incentivized to attract international students, they don't make big efforts to play the competition game since their income doesn't depend (at least not much) on their international ranking.
Of course this is only a simplified explanation, but this is the main reason why US/UK universities perform better than German universities (among others) in international rankings.

[Edit] Originally this was only a quick answer to explain what (I think) is an important structural and cultural difference with respect to international rankings between UK/US-like academic systems and others. My point was only to emphasize this difference to the attention of prospective students looking at these rankings, knowing that this is a common source of misunderstanding among them. I didn't imagine that the question and my answer would attract so much attention. I gladly admit that this is a rather simplistic answer, and I'm happy to see that other answers have done a much better job than me at analyzing other aspects of the question in detail.


Applying to PhD programs; do I need to include transcripts from unrelated master's degree program? I'm interested in pursuing a PhD in a particular humanities field and I feel that my undergraduate GPA is strong enough for me to get into such a program at a top school. However, my path to deciding this has been somewhat circuitous. Along the way, I completed a master's degree in a completely unrelated subject which I became uninterested in and disillusioned by while I was in the program. I decided to complete it anyway and as a result of my lack of passion for the field, I didn't perform very well in my master's program and just did the minimum to complete my degree.

Now when I look at PhD applications, I see that every school's admission page says you must submit transcripts from all university level courses taken even though only a bachelor's degree is required for admission. My question is, if by omitting transcripts from my master's program, would I be violating most admission policies and/or risk having a misleading or unethical application?

"All university level courses taken" means "all university level courses taken", so yes, you should submit it too. Otherwise, if at any point they discover that you had been enrolled in that masters, you could be in trouble for lying.

Even if they don't require you to submit it, you will have to explain what were you doing during that time. And a bad master's is far better than sitting at home doing noting.

Now, you don't want it to hurt your application, so you should consider explaining in your cover letter why you did poorly. That shouldn't be too difficult, I think a good bachelor and a bad master is still better than just a good bachelor.


How do I know that an educational institute is accredited? How can I investigate whether an institute is authentic and accredited?

Which web-sites or listings can I check?

For instance, say I want to investigate The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Googling  'The Chicago School accreditation' leads to their accreditation page. There it is stated that

  The Chicago School of Professional Psychology has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) since 2011. To learn more about WSCUC, please see their contact information below. Click here  to view our Statement of Accreditation Status

You can then go to the WASC list of institutions and find The Chicago School listed there.

Having tried several other semi-random institutions, googling '[name] accreditation' usually results in a page on their site listing who accredits them. A second google search will get to that accreditation agency's list of schools that it accredits if you want to double check.

A further complication is that there may be multiple accreditation organizations involved, some for specific departments or schools within a university. For example, Princeton University is, according their Office of Institutional Research, accredited through the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. In addition, the Engineering School is accredited through the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, Inc. So, you may need to dig deeper to discover if a particular major, program, or department is accredited appropriately for what you need.

Although, one should be aware of just what accreditation means. Fortunately, what was horrendously prescriptive in the 1980s (particularly in engineering) has become more holistic in approach and focused on outcomes, not specific courses with a specific syllabus.


Accused of cheating on online exams This week I was accused of cheating on two online exams in two separate classes.
Both professors are claiming the lockdown browser recordings show "evidence" of me cheating. When I asked them what the evidence was and why I was being accused they stated that it is in the video and has been sent to the honor council for review. I did not have any extra papers, cell phone, iPads, etc. There was also a baby monitor in front of me because I have a baby at home and no one else was there to watch. We were allowed scratch paper and I used it heavily to the side of my desk but that is it.
I'm assuming my writing/reading what I wrote caused me to be out of frame for too long or I was looking down for too long. Is this enough to convict me of cheating? I am facing failed courses and expulsion.
UPDATE
Regardless of my innocence. I now believe that my university is not giving me a fair due process.
This excerpts below are from the university handbook regarding academic dishonesty and a FL law that applies to all public universities.

The student shall be provided with written notice of the violations against him/her in sufficient detail and in sufficient time to prepare for a hearing or meeting before an appropriate committee, hearing body, or designated University official;
The University shall establish a minimum number of days in advance of the hearing or meeting to present the written notice of violations, but in no case will this notice be less than five (5) business days, except in cases of emergency hearings as specified below;
The student and his/her advisor may inspect all of the information that will be presented against the student at least three (3) business days before the student disciplinary hearing or meeting, except in cases of emergency hearings where the student may inspect the information at least one (1) business day prior to the hearing.

I did not receive a letter outlining my offenses, I instead received an email stating that my hearing is on Thursday. That is 1 business day from my professors accusing me and 3 business days from notice of my hearing. I still have not been told what I did wrong and I am expected to defend myself.

First thing you may want to do now is to read and understand the policies of your university related to how academic misconduct cases are processed. You may receive support from Student Support or similarly called unit in your university.

Typically the process goes like this: professors suspect a group of students of academic misconduct and file forms to the relevant person (responsible for academic misconduct).  They quickly go through and decide which cases to dismiss instantly, and which to pass on to the misconduct committee panel.

If your case goes to the panel, you will be asked to come and respond to the evidence. Normally, it is sufficient to provide a brief explanation like the one you provided in you question here.  A sensible panel will then dismiss the case without a penalty.


How many and which references to own publications should be included in a research statement for post doc position? I am composing my research statement for post doc applications in astrophysics/cosmology. I found that if I cite all the work associated with my work, then the references itself are taking around 2.5 pages. Some of the job applications have a restriction on the length of the research statement including the references. In such cases, do I not cite all the references? How do I pick which reference to keep and which one to ignore?

I think it would be best if you cite a small number of most relevant work. Readers from your field will probably get an idea from a limited bibliography. You can perhaps provide with a link to a page that you set as an extended version of bibliography related to your work. If page limit is an issue you can explore various alternative citation styles which might be more compact and save you space. One example is to use just the name of first author followed by et al.


Is it valid to pad an axis slightly in order to enhance point visibility? My apologies in advance if this questions is better suited to be migrated elsewhere.

In a standard (X,Y) Cartesian line/dot plot the axis should be placed in a contextually logical place.  In a graph presenting real world quantification with only real positive integers that are possible (>= 0) I am told that the only possible intersection for the axis is (0,0).  Even it seems at the expense of clearly seeing a point at X=0...

I would like to ask if in academic publications there is any validity to permitting your reader to see all your points clearly by applying a subtle shift (padding the axis to the left).  See figure included.

The opposition I am receiving to this concept stems from the inference that the y-axis being placed in a negative region gives rise to the possibility that negative values are possible, even though it's a physical impossibility in this context to go below  0 in terms of having a physical entity.  But because the axis stops (without labels) at the y axis and doesn't carry past it (deeper (except for the tick mark at y=0) into the negative quadrant, it is obvious and better to see the point and it's error bars.  The range is quite significant and so these error bars are hard enough to see.

Here are some of the consequences I see when I plot the axis at (0,0)

Point gets a little hard to see and the error bar almost entirely disapeers
Error bar caps look y axis ticks which make the y axis messy and the error bar almost invisible.  Increasing thickness of error bars looks very messy.
Increasing point size could encompass the error bars in this particular context.

The point of a figure is to convey meaning and to do so in as easily understandable a way as possible. So, if you have a case where you think that the result is clearer if you offset the x-axis slightly, then do it. The guiding line should be: Does it help the reader understand better what you think the important point is than any other way of presenting the data?


Manuscript accepted date is just one day after revision -- How to interpret? I was reading few journals (in Elsevier) in my field (Biology) and I noticed the time of acceptance period from the revised version is received "Received 8 November 2016; Received in revised form 17 April 2017; Accepted 18 April 2017". Does this mean that the revised manuscript received today is immediately the other day? Or is there any other interpretation for this?
Thanks!

These dates hide the intermediate revisions that have had happened during the whole process.

One possible time line could be:

Received 8 November 2016
First revision (Major) 12 February 2017
Second revision (Major) 18 March 2017
Third revision (Major/Minor) 17 April 2017
Accepted 18 April 2017

In few journals, two dates are also mentioned like this: Received 8 November 2016, First Revision received 12 February 2017, Second Revision Received 18 March 2017, Accepted 18 April 2017. It might also happen that the article gets accepted after first revision itself, if the revision is suggested as "Minor". Major revisions are usually followed by peer-review, which takes time.

It is mostly journal specific.


Time between Viva (minor corrections) and the letter I have been awarded a PhD today with minor corrections (yay!). I am not very relieved yet, because I signed a job contract that says that the deadline to provide a proof of a PhD award is September. I tried to search for the answer in the research regulations of my university but it was not there. I also asked my supervisor and she told me we're going to try to do that. Do you know roughly how long does it take usually to receive the letter after the viva in the UK? (minor correction that need to be sent to my supervisor).

The process of getting the official papers for a Ph.D. degree can last for months following the oral examination, depending on the university's policies and procedures.

That said, most universities are aware of the need for Ph.D. recipients to start jobs before the "official" Ph.D. degree is sent out, and there's usually a mechanism in place to issue a document stating that the oral examination has been passed and that the candidate is done except for the formal procedures required. Such paperwork is usually provided at an administrative level higher than the professor advising the Ph.D. candidate. You should consult with the graduate advisor of your department for guidance on who to contact.


Is it appropriate to cite a piece of academic work when the author has been charged with child pornography? It has recently come to my attention that a renowned scholar in my field whose academic journals have been highly influential in my area of research has recently been charged with child pornography. Is it possible to separate the scholar from their work? And will my thesis research, in turn, be judged for referencing the work?

Of course it is appropriate. Why not? They did relevant work, so you have to cite them. With citing, you do your duty -- you are in no way saying you "like" the cited persons.

Of course, I am assuming that their research is sound and is not somehow influenced by the child pornography. It was a different case if there were problems with the research.

On the other hand, not citing them could get you into big (or small) trouble.


Choosing between letter of recommendation writers for grad school A little background... I attended a community college for 2 years, then transferred to Northwestern University where I studied mathematics.  After spending seven years in the workforce, I am now planning to apply to graduate programs to study machine learning, and am looking back to see who I could ask for letters of recommendation.

During my years at Northwestern I lacked the foresight to forge any kind of relationships with my professors.  However, while at the community college I made a strong connection with one of my math professors - in fact, taking the calculus course with him was the reason I decided to major in mathematics.  I believe the community college professor would write me a strong, personalized letter of recommendation.

Which would I be better off with - an average letter of recommendation from one of my professors from Northwestern, or a strong letter from my community college professor?

I would recommend the strong letter of recommendation, if he/she is able to give specific facts about what you did, or comment on your motivation, interest, and relationship. You might want to also let him/her know what you have been up to recently, so the reader doesn't think "well he/she used to be interested in math, but I don't know if they still are".

The main issue with "average" letters is that they are probably things that apply to everyone, so it's not really a benefit.

You might also want to make sure to "diversify" if you can -- so you don't end up with two letters that look the same. So if your other letters are coming from the community college, you might still want one from your stronger school (as long as they can write you a good letter of recommendation)


Why do we call a research paper, a "paper"? I am curious to know why we call a research paper, a "paper" in the singular form...?

People put a huge effort in writing this "paper" ... when you talk to an outsider (non-academic) about a "paper" they think its just a single paper. It is very funny.

Although I agree with Cape Code that this is not a question related to academia and should be closed, I know this one of the top of my head so i'll save you some Google-ing.

The reason is because the first mass production of "paper"s of a standard size where printed for distributing the news. The word "news" is a very funny English word, for all sorts of reasons. It ends in an "s" but is not plural, eg "what are the scores?" is correct, but "what are the news?" is not. Furthermore, it is uncountable, so although it can be followed by a singular verb, you cannot count it like "Do you have a news for me?". People instinctively know "Do you have news for me?" sounds unusual, and so they often pop in an "any" into the middle to make it sound more grammatically compliant.

For this reason, early usage of "news paper" referred to a collection of 1 or more printed news. "news papers" referred to several of these collections. This eventually became 1 word, newspaper, which as a single noun now plays by the rules a bit better, masking the weirdness of "news". However, the concept of a "paper" being one or more sheets of printed information stuck, and is still used in academia and elsewhere where some form of news is being printed, but not as a newspaper.

For the record, I know all this because I got into an argument with a colleague about it, and I insisted it must be because of paper (the material) is what people are referring to. "I brought the paper!", since the common person would have only seen paper in relation to multiple sheets of it. I was wrong.


Invited talk had to be withdraw for visa reason, can it be on CV? I had been invited to give a talk at a summer school abroad, but had to cancel due to a complex visa issue that could not be foreseen at the time I accepted to give the talk: it turns out that I'll be transitioning between two visas because of a job change, and will be unable to leave the country at that time. I had already spend time preparing and had bought airplane and train tickets. I've explored possible solutions to be able to attend in person, none of which panned out; I've offered the summer school to give the talk remotely, but this wasn't an option; I have since been working with the summer school to find a replacement and have offered to help them if needed. At this point I've invested a fair amount of effort, energy, and money into this invited talk that is not even going to happen. As a not particularly fancy postdoc, I only get very few invited talks. I was also looking forward to this particular summer school (which doesn't help with me having trouble letting go of this CV entry).

Is it OK to list this talk on my CV under the invited talk section, with some unambiguous qualifier e.g. "withdrawn for visa reasons", or perhaps something similar? Or would it do more harm than good?

Related question: Invited to give a talk but could not attend, can it be on CV? --> it seems the answer might depend on the specific reason for not being able to attend

As long as you're honest about it, I suppose you could put it on a CV.  However, I don't think an invitation to give a talk is likely to count for anything if you didn't actually give the talk - it raises more questions than it's worth.


Is it acceptable, or advisable, to include self-assessed ratings of your skills on your CV I am in the process of updating my CV. Since I often get labeled as "the bioinformatician" I get to play with many different languages and technologies, and similarly what people expect from a bioinformatician varies from person to person. So I figured it would be a good idea to indicate how much I feel I know in respective fields/languages.

Inspired by this question, I came to wonder whether or not its acceptable to have self-assessed ratings of your technical skills, such as: proficiency programming languages, familiarity with relevant software etc.

My own feeling is that such ratings are useful to indicate what you feel most confident or comfortable with. It would also be useful to show any potential future employer the level of competence you have in different fields. If you think about it a bit, it is common to have some type of rating for the languages one speaks, so I think an analogue to programming language proficiency should not be that alienating.

On the other hand there is the risk of rendering your CV like, as a friend of mine put it, a role-playing game character sheet.

Is it common to have such ratings on skills? Are there any potential problems with it?

Edit: What I was thinking is a small listing something like:

What scale do you intend to rate yourself on?  Maybe that sounds like a silly riposte, but that's a serious issue.  If you say you're proficient in Java, how does the person reading the CV know what on earth you mean (assuming they're willing to take your word for it).  I would be much more inclined to focus on what experience you have with a language (I have X many years of Java programming experience, I've done such and such projects), since that's actually something which people understand the meaning of.  You also don't necessarily need to cover this in a lot of detail in your CV, since if you're applying for a job where these skills are relevant, you can mention it in your cover letter.

EDIT: In response to the proposal of using stars or a 0-5 rating:  DON'T DO IT!  If you want to write "I'm proficient in Java and have some experience in C" that's harmless but won't make too much of a positive impression either without some more concrete information.  The stars will make you look eccentric at best, and lunatic at worst.  I know that some times the usual convention about how to do things seem constraining and silly, but if you've never seen something on a CV before (and I've never seen giving yourself numerical ratings on an unknown scale), there's probably a good reason.


Co-author wants to remove herself in author list after revisions I am a graduate student (biological sciences) and had a collaborator and a co-author who wanted her name removed from the list of authors after she is not satisfied with the revisions made.

Just to give a brief background, I am the project leader and lead author of this work, this co-author is a collaborator, who didn't do much work but helped me get access to the facility (which is also not hers). After a few months of working in the facility, I got unexpected results, which is worthy to be published as short communications.

To make the story short, we submitted the paper, then a revision request from reviewers came. It was major but doable, I addressed all the concerns and responded to the reviewers' comments and made some rebuttals. I send to her for her inputs and perspectives; and she decided to remove her name after feeling unsatisfied of the revisions and wanted more information, which is already out of my work. This is her prerogative to decide, but this decision seemed unhealthy for collaborative work. I'm wondering, should I consider her as a co-author in my future work? Or what should be the best response I should make?

I suspect she doesn't trust the work. She suggest she knows better but it's frustrating she doesn’t give any sensible edits.

It sounds like she withdrew from the paper, but not from the collaboration. In other words she's saying she doesn't trust the results of the paper enough to have her name attached to it, but not that she doesn't trust you. Therefore it doesn't mean the collaboration is over. Besides, if she contributed to your future work at the level of a co-author, she should at least be approached for co-authorship.

In response to her withdrawing from the paper, the best response is probably talking to the other co-authors, if there are any, about how to answer the reviewers' comments. If the consensus "best way" is unacceptable to her and she wants to withdraw anyway, then c'est la vie.


Writing References for a Weaker Candidate Two of my students interns have applied for graduate school and are now asking me for references. Both did well, but one did really well. The weaker student is still excellent, and will do well in grad school I’m sure, but my reference for him will not be as strong.

They are applying to some of the same programs.

How do I reflect their ranking in the letters without completely killing the weaker candidate’s chances?

How honest do I get with the weaker candidate? I think it may be better that they apply to more (and different) programs, but don’t want them to get the impression they are not good enough.

More context:

The interns worked on one project together where the weaker student was the lead (culminated in a submission to a top venue). The stronger intern had a separate project that he successfully completed, in addition to two more projects that are currently in the works.
Both are applying to top US schools.

Let me suggest a few things you might consider. The one thing you don't want to do, of course, is to explicitly compare them. Depend on the fact that an application is multi faceted and while letters are very important, so are other things.

I suggest that you first think about what would happen if it were turned around and you were receiving the letters. What would you want to know about each of them. What positive traits, especially, are you looking for and would want some assurance about. You might make a list, separately, for each candidate.

Next, I would write the two letters on different days, giving yourself a bit of time to let the first one settle out so that it isn't the freshest thing on your mind when you write the other.

Finally, I would write the letter for the "weaker", but still strong, student first. Say what you need to say about that student to best support the application. Be honest, of course, and stick to facts. What has this student done to make them a good candidate? How strongly do you feel about their future success? You don't need to send the letter yet, but set it aside.

Then after, a day (or so), think about the other student and write that letter. Don't refer to the first letter, but use the same criteria.

Ideally, the letters should be independent, but it is probably impossible to assure that completely. But give it a try. Use some technique in which you can think about each of them independently of the other. And if you would surely accept one or the other of the students, or both, into your own program, say that, but separately for each. That is the most important part of any recommendation, perhaps.


How to quantify potential supervisor's reputation at a non-top university? I ended up in a decent but below 50 ranked PhD program for math, and I'm going to try my best to get an academic job after my PhD. I want to work with someone who is well-respected and well-known, and who allows me to do a great thesis, in order to even put my foot in the door for a career in academia.

How can I quantify a potential supervisor's reputation?
Should I look for number of citations, number of publications total, number of publications in recent few years, or number of students/where they end up?
Is there a threshold I should be looking for (e.g. at least 20 citations total, at least a few good journals, etc)?

The reason I ask:

This may be field-specific, but I'd like to know what risk I am taking with working with a new professor who has only one student and maybe 8-10 publications, the most popular of which having been cited about 13 times by other mathematicians, vs. an older professor with not many students total but with many publications and many citations per publication.

Assuming both of them are still research active, in the sense that they are publishing and going to conferences, you're looking at a lot of noise and very little signal.

Both advisors got a job at a university with a PhD program.  That already means they are pretty good and have significant research networks.  If you end up doing exceptionally good research for a PhD graduate from your department, they will both have the networks to recommend you for a postdoc.

For positions that are not research-focused, it really doesn't matter what their reputation is, because the people hiring for non-research positions are generally out of the network anyway (and even if they are not, they won't be hiring based on whether they know your advisor or not).

Work with the person you like working with better and whose projects interest you more.


Why aren't scientists richer? I am an undergrad right now and I want to go into research. My question is not about whether I will be able to become rich (I am okay with a small life), but more from a civilization perspective.

For the progress of a civilization, shouldn't it focus more on increasing its scientific knowledge? So shouldn't the civilization focus on getting more people into scientific research?  Why is this not the case? Why is the simple application or mixing together of scientific principles more valued that the actual creation of scientific principles? In the long run won't this lead to a reduced pace of scientific progress?

Most people want to be the next Zuckerberg or Kalanick, Gates or Jobs, but isn't their contribution to Society's progress minuscule compared to say that of Shannon or Hamming? Shouldn't society encourage more Shannons and Hammings rather than Kalanicks or Zuckerbergs? I fully realize the importance of Kalanick or Jobs in the progress of civilization, but it seems to me that society values them much more than it does Shannon, heck most of Society does not even know who Shannon is! Yes the iPhone is wonderful, but it is pretty meaningless compared to Information Theory. Isn't this huge bias adversely affecting society and its ability to move forward?

Also, if people like Shannon or Hamming had access to more resources, won't they use it to fund more research rather than say waste it on some big house / yacht etc? We have huge poverty in this world, many children die, who knows how many Einsteins civilization might be losing? If scientists had more resources, won't they focus on reducing this? In the poverty present in the world greed plays a role, but isn't a larger cause of it simply lack of access to enough resources? Won't faster scientific progress solve this problem ?

What is the benefit of society following this policy? From my perspective this will only harm society in the long run due to reduced progress. I am assuming that my thinking is flawed, but could you help me understand why I am wrong?

PS: If this is not a suitable question please remove it. I might be able to get an answer to this someplace else, but I wanted an answer from a scientist.

Your fundamental mistake is to assume that our civilization is run with goals.

It is simply not the case that we have a well-coordinated world of that type.  Instead, the allocation of money and political power are tightly intertwined, and the resources that are devoted to science are determined by the interplay of political struggles and economic markets.  Those produce very different outcomes in different places and times, from the fairly high investment in science in places like 1950s and 1960s America to the dismally low investment in science in, say, the mid-Ottoman empire or contemporary Somalia.

Arguments such as the one that you put forth must contend against many other arguments, including people's need for food, shelter and security, their desire for power over others and to advance other causes (wise or foolish), etc.  Right now, scientists are not rich, and if you wish to change that fact, you should not look to science to bring about such a change.


Can a prof affect my admission to a highly reputed department even though I don't have the perfect background for that department? I am a prospective PhD applicant at a highly reputed department of an Ivy college. I have been in touch with one of the top profs in the department for the last one year and he has been supportive of me. Even though I was rejected last year, he offered me an internship but due to the pandemic it was scrapped.
Now I mailed him highlighting what I have been upto and he mailed me and the grad committee head prof that I would be an idea student in his group and if the head could help me with my application.
I don't have the perfect background for the department but I have an ideal background for his research group.
I am assuming this is a very positive sign... am I reading too much into it?
Edit: He cc'ed the admissions committee head as well as the head of grad admin

This would definitely help your chances, and in any case you should apply to preserve the relationship since this prof has gone to bat for you.
I would not see this as a guarantee, however, and I would continue to apply to other schools. I'm not 100% clear on the timeline, but it seems like this prof has already been unsuccessful in securing your admission once, so they may just not have enough power to get you admitted. It could be the case that admission decisions (especially at Ivy leagues) are done with more consideration for the student's impact on the department rather than on a specific research group. Also the politics here could be more complex than meets the eye.


Statement of Purpose: How much detail in describing one's research I am currently writing my Statement of Purpose for graduate admission in mathematics. I am wondering how specific I should be when describing my own research.

Should I merely include the (broad) area of my research? Should I explicitly state what I am working on, but not more? Or should I also loosely describe the main idea, and explain why this is interesting (possibly also mentioning some results)?

Two equally successful statements of purpose can look very different from one another. Some graduate students enter with broad interests and others enter already knowing a specific question they want to work on. Both types of students can be good applicants and will have very different personal statements, potentially with very different levels detail when describing past research. Your advisor will give you much better, and more specific advise than the general advice you would get from academia.stackexchange.

Write a draft of your Personal Statement and then show it to your advisor [or other math professor who knows you well] to get feedback. After editing it based on this feedback, it is also a good idea to ask for feedback from professor(s) you intend on asking for a letter of recommendation. This serves two purposes (1) likely these letter writers will be less knowledgeable of your research area and give you a different perspective than your advisor (one that may mimic the academic diversity, to some degree, on an admissions committee) (2) Them giving you feedback on your Personal Statement will allow them to get to know you better and hence write you a better reference letter.

Generally speaking, if you can go into some detail, this is a good thing, and will set you apart from other applicants. In pure math, it is quite rare for students to have a very specific research direction before graduate school. Of course don't go so far into detail that only specialists can understand it.


I have a UK DClinPsy. Can I use a plain 'Dr.' title in Germany? A resposible german executive body (Kultusministerkonferenz) decided that certain doctorates from the EU grant the right to use the title 'Dr.':

  Inhaber von in einem wissenschaftlichen Promotionsverfahren erworbenen Doktorgraden, die
  in [meiner Uni] erworben wurden, können anstelle der
  im Herkunftsland zugelassenen oder nachweislich allgemein üblichen Abkürzung [...] wahlweise die Abkürzung „Dr.“ [...] führen. Dies gilt nicht für Doktorgrade, die ohne
  Promotionsstudien und -verfahren vergeben werden (so genannte Berufsdoktorate) und für
  Doktorgrade, die nach den rechtlichen Regelungen des Herkunftslandes nicht der dritten
  Ebene der Bologna-Klassifikation der Studienabschlüsse zugeordnet sind.

excluding non third cycle qualifications (Bolonga EHEA term) and doctorates that do not require some not further defined sort of studies ("doctoral" studies) with professional doctorates given as example. However, a UK doctor of clinical psychology (DClinPsy) is usually considered equivalent to a PhD.

So, am I allowed to use Dr. MyName in Germany?

And will I be after Brexit?

There is a department in every state in Germany at the Kultusminister / Senator for Science & Education that deals with exactly this issue. You submit your degree papers and they will tell you in a written letter if your degree is able to be used as "Dr." in Germany. But we are trying so hard to lose this business in Germany about being "Herr Doktor" and "Frau Doktor", why would you want this? Indeed, the KMK paper is just about the EU partners, so if there is a Brexit, this may change. No one knows yet what the results of Brexit will be.


Workshop(s) for application to Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellowships (formerly IIF, IEF and IOF, now just IF) I believe there are workshops offered to people who want to prepare application to Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowships (now part of the Individual Fellowships offered by them). I am trying to find out when the next workshop is or the general schedule of such workshops over the year.

I tried to find online information on them, without much success, I noticed some heavily charged workshops that happened before. My questions are:

Where can I find information and schedule of such workshops?
Are they always held by the authority/organization offering Marie Curie fellowships? Or, there could be other universities wanting to get Marie Curie postdocs and hence could offer a workshop?
Is there a "local" workshop for a region, for example, people from Spain might not want to travel to Germany etc.
Are there free ones, or is a fee always required?

Typically, universities organise these workshops (training events) for their own faculty, possibly in collaboration with commercial companies that provide this kind of training. This is the case not only for Marie Curie fellowships, but for all kinds of EU Horizon 2020 funding opportunities.

Contact the research support people from your own university and ask if they are planning to organise such workshops. Most likely, it would be free for you. Your university would cover the expenses.


Should I write a thank you note to a professor for his recommendation letter even if I didn't get the scholarship? One of my favorite professor is a very gentle, kindhearted, and extremely-well-teaching man who wrote a recommendation letter for me back in February 10th or so. Well he is super nice to all people and is extremely skillful teacher, making him a favorite teacher to all people, but when I asked for a recommendation letter for a scholarship I could tell that his letter was very good, just by judging from how thick the sealed envelope was - probabily at least three pages, if I am not mistaken. I told him thank you right after getting his sealed letter, but have not had the chance to say thank you to him after that.

The result for scholarship came in July 30th and I found out I wasn't selected. But given the factors like: (1) the professor has a liking on me and put pretty decent amount of time for my letter, (2) I will probably ask him for another letter for grad school, and (3) I didn't get the scholarship, and (4) the date I last talked to him (about the scholarshio, in particular) was about 5 months ago, should I write an email/note telling him that I thank him for the letter and let him know of the bad outcome?

If yes, what things/how should I write such a letter to him? A rough template and/or an example letter would be great - not trying to copy but to get a sense of things

Also do you think an email is fine? I'm like over 2000 miles from the campus so if I decide to go for an actual hand writtrn thank you card, I wouldn't be able to do that until the beginning of next school year, like September 22nd or something, although an actual thank you card shows more thankfulness than an email. So I guess my second question is: would a quick email or 2-month-later hand-written thank you card be better?

Absolutely. He probably feels bad that you weren't selected. Not as bad as you, of course, but he will want to know that you are ok in spite of a setback. Moreover he may be in a position to help you in future so you will want to make sure you keep lines of communication open.

Beyond that, however, a professor who thinks enough of you to write the letter in the first place, probably is the sort of person who wants to be kept in the loop as your career progresses. He will greatly appreciate your thanks, I assure you.

I once had a mentor in grad school. He was not my advisor, but I always used him as an example of a great professor, just as you describe your professor.

Many years after I graduated I had occasion to revisit the campus, where he was still teaching (Dept Chair, I think). I told him how much is model of a professor and his mentoring meant to me, not only at the time, but over the intervening years. He thanked me and also said that professors don't hear such thanks very often. That saddened but also surprised me. He died not long after that, so I've been happy that I was able to express that to him in time.

As for the words to use. Thanks is enough, but fill him in on your current plans and what has happened to you since you were last his student. Wish him well.


How to cite own unpublished work in text and reference? I would like to cite one of my own unpublished work (under review). Is it okay to cite as following?

In text
According to author et al. (year of submission).................
In reference
authors list, year of submission, title, name of the Journal (status)

How about the results?

How will the reviewer access those results cited here?

Is it okay to provide them as supplements?

If I provide couple of figures as supplements, whether it will violate the copyright of the under reviewed paper?

When citing unpublished work that is still under review, it's best to leave out the potential publication venue, saying only:

  Authors, "Title," under review.

(or the appropriate equivalent in the citation style that you are using.  The reason for this is that venue doesn't matter until they decide to accept your paper: you can get your most terrible work rejected from as fancy a journal as you like.

When possible, it is indeed appropriate and useful to provide the unpublished material as supplementary material for the reviewers.  You need not worry about copyright for this, however: there is a distinction between "supplementary to be published paper" and "supplementary material for review only," and you just need to make sure that the under-review material is labelled as being for purposes of review only.