Notes taking and notes management Problem 1

I have been struggling coming out an efficient way to take notes while reading papers, one commonly-used way is annotate the paper while reading, but some issues include

These notes are hard to organize since they are distributed through the text.
There notes usually could not include mathematical formula. However, it is the major part of my notes.
When paper is lost in thousands of papers, it is impossible to recover them.

Therefore, I tried to use stand-alone notes written in markdown, but problem 2 arises.

Problem 2

As mentioned in problem 1, there are so many papers (and notes) I need to keep and it is just not feasible to keep hierarchy of folders, which could have up to 5 or even 10 hierarchy. Even though problem 1 is resolved, an effective and easy way to search and retrieve previous papers and notes is still needed.

Finally, any input about your solutions is appreciated.

I like taking notes separately in an infinitely zoomable online outliner and include hyperlinks there to the papers in question. Dynalist supports KaTeX and Markdown, and there's a MathJax Chrome extension for WorkFlowy called MathFlowy, although it's broken right now since WorkFlowy redesigned. WorkFlowy and Dynalist also have a lot of user-defined tweaks on Stylish. There's a zillion other outliner options, both online and offline, but I personally like these two.

Since you can hyperlink to other items in the outline and tag individual items, it's easier to keep stuff both organized and connected. It's also possible to export portions of the outline to plain text or RTF.

EDIT: I forgot to mention Gingko, which supports both Markdown and MathJax and has a variety of export formats. I haven't used it in a while, but it's an interesting UI which is especially useful for organizing projects and long notes. The dev also recently released a desktop version if you prefer something that works offline.


Job prospects after completing graduate studies in Geology Background

I am in my mid-30s' and have recently found myself in a dilemma. Around 4 years ago I completed a MSc. (Geology) and two professional courses (in other fields) in Northern America as an international student. After concluding them I had to leave Northern America for personal reasons (I came back to Europe).

Problem

I applied for 1000s and 1000s of job worldwide (related and unrelated to my background) and consulted several career counselors to introduce myself to the industry at best, asking for help or suggestions to all the people within and outside my network. Unfortunately, I didn't find any job. I had even a lot of complications due to VISA issues.

Possible solution?

Now there seems to be the opportunity to take a PhD in my field. The fact is that I never really wanted to take a doctoral program, as I have always felt uncomfortable in academia and I am not very interested in research itself.

Question(s):

Is it too late to do a PhD at my age?
How do you know PhD is a good fit for yourself?
What job prospects are there for a PhD in Geology (in this challenging economy)?
Are my job prospects better or worse with a PhD?

Your question has several parts and may be considered too wide for this forum. From what I can see you have a question about your own motivation, which only you can answer. Doing a PhD is a hard job and you need to be motivated to do it successfully. Motivation does not have to be to love your task but also to do it for a goal further on. A PhD is furthermore not just an academic path-breaker. In a PhD are a number of useful skills that are sought after, which include critical thinking, writing, presentation, analysis, synthesis etc.

A second part of your question deals with the job market. To my knowledge geology PhDs do not seem to have problems finding jobs. There is demand for PhD level candidates within both exploration and environmental sectors of industry and government. Being from Sweden, it seems a very high percentage of our students do very well. I do not have any statistics for geology but have numbers for Physical Geography and in that field about 7% had "unknown" jobs whereas the rest had employment in academia, public sector, private sector, NGO, and a small proportion in other fields but all relevant to their education (y-scale is in number of PhDs, QG = Quaternary Geology; PG = Physical Geography):

Statistics from the University of Minnesota Geology department shows similar numbers (now, two data points is not much but I think this provides an indication of the value of a PhD in the field of Earth Sciences):

Adding to my second point is a point of social skills. With a higher ranking job, come skills beyond the factual content of an education. I already touched upon the skills but if I look at graduates who really have succeeded, in the sense they left academia and got high-paying and interesting, challenging jobs, most have been able to present themselves very well and this part is not to be understated.

In the end, the possibility of success in job searching after doing a PhD is definitely there but it will without doubt also depend on your own interest in pushing and present yourself and the quality of your work/skills and work ethics.


Accused of cheating due to the time accounted by Blackboard Since the exams this year for college is online, there is a timer. Usually, when I start an exam I click a random answer choice or what I think is right at that moment. Once I finish most of it, I go back to look it over.
I got accused of cheating since I answered the questions in 15 mins, and the system recorded that automatically once clicked, instead of recording the time of completing the whole set of questions.
When reviewing my answers after the 15 minutes, I realized I guessed correctly and there was no need to pick another answer. But I got accused since I finished so fast and so accurately.
We were allowed to use cheat sheets with equations and info, allowing me to finish so fast, so I do not understand why I am being accused. And some of the questions were similar to the homework which helped even more. So how do I prove that I did not cheat. It took me an hour and 9 mins to take the exam.
The only information that they kept repeating over and over again was the timing. I clearly stated that I did not look up anything and I had other tests to take the same day. i went over the review powerpoint which had very similar questions to the test once I started taking it. They flagged my test when they were looking for people that posted it on chegg.
There was no other allegation made besides the timing and I have all the proof that I did not cheat. The person telling me the allegation did not give me the chance to clearly defend my self.
Please help me prove that I am not cheating.

Unfortunately you can't prove a negative. You have been "caught" by a system that is insufficiently accurate to properly evaluate your actions (and those of many others).
All you can really do is insist (and keep insisting) to your professor that you didn't cheat and explain how you actually acted. If you don't get satisfaction then escalate the issue to higher authorities.
And keep insisting. People have an obligation to be fair.
A recent article in the Washington Post explores how badly online testing systems are performing. While the article focuses on fully automated systems, the problem is much wider, even when human "proctors" are used in conjunction with webcams. In my view the real problem is in trying to apply solutions from a different era into the current pandemic/online situation. Those solutions no longer work and the workarounds are badly failing. They make assumptions that are not valid given the range of normal human actions.
Any cheating detection system, automated or not, needs to have the property that it produces zero false positives. The meeting is part of that system and should assure that you aren't accused wrongfully. But it isn't well understood that a system permitting no false positives will almost invariably produce some false negatives. But the consequences of error in a cheating detection system are so asymmetrical that such a rule is required.

Artificial Intelligence is certainly artificial but it is definitely not intelligent.

Note that I hesitated to edit this after so many votes had been cast, not wanting to invalidate decisions made already by users. The advice remains the same. Insist that you didn't cheat and stick with it.


Standard method for showing changes made to a LaTeX manuscript I am about to resubmit a manuscript to a journal, having now addressed the reviewers' feedback.

The instructions say to submit my final manuscript along with a "marked-up manuscript", which is "the final version showing all changes from the former version".

Since my manuscript is in LaTeX, what is the standard way of highlighting the changes I made?  Had it been a Microsoft Word document, I would have used the "track changes" feature.  More so than technical methods, I am wondering what format the reviewers typically expect. Are they asking for a marked-up, compiled PDF? Or a marked-up TeX source code? Or a side-by-side comparison of the source code?

When submitting to IEEE journals which require to highlight the changes, I simply colour them in red (no one complained so far...).

\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand{\rev}[1]{{\color{red} #1}}
%
%...
%
\rev{Hey, I'm a change}

For purpose of reviewing, they just need a compiled PDF. For the final submission, you can simply redefine the \rev command to do nothing.


What is the meaning of Immigrant Background in a job application? I am in the process of application for a job. One of the questions is about immigrant background as follows:

Applicants who state that they have immigrant background will be
assessed in accordance with the requirements of summoning at least one
qualified applicant with immigrant background to the interview
process. Immigrant background implies that you are born in another
country than Norway or have immigrated from another country or that
both your parents are born in another country.

Could you please help me understand what this is? Is this question for those who already live in Norway and want to apply for that job? I live outside EU.

This is part of the guidance for applicants for a specific job at Oslo Metropolitan University.
This particular paragraph is, it seems, intended to encourage applicants who have some non-Norwegian heritage to apply. The original text reads:

... Immigrant background implies that you are born in another country than Norway or have immigrated from another country or that both your parents are born in another country.

If the Original Poster currently resides outside of Norway and was also born outside Norway, then they would seem to automatically qualify as having an immigrant background according to the information given.
By stating that at least one such applicant will always make it through to the interview stage, the University is actively encouraging eligible applicants to indicate their 'immigrant background' status on the form, although as can be seen on the original page, this is entirely optional.
If I were the Original Poster and wished to apply for this job, then I would indicate my so-called immigrant background on the form in good faith in accordance with the guidance.
[And were I called to interview and later it turned out that the guidance had not been explicit enough—and anybody cared—I would not expect the University to hold me responsible for the original miscommunication.]


Being artist and scientist at the same time Although I do research in science as my day job, I spend most of my free time for my life-long hobby, drawing cartoon. But I keep this fact in secret to my research co-workers since the culture of scientific community and that of comics artists are quite different, and I'm tired of looking like a person with an exotic hobby. But recently my 'career' as an artist became more successful than I expected (made a contract with a publisher, etc.), I started to worry about my future choices. Would it be wise to pursue two very different careers in my life, researcher and artist?

Many famous comics (e.g. PHD comics, xkcd) from ex-scientists are mostly for the people who are already in the culture of science and maybe it would be OK to be that kind of artist and you could still be accepted in researcher community. However my art style is pretty different from that of other many famous scientist-comics artists. When I draw comics, I try to be like other usual professional artists so that I can draw more attention from the general audience. As a result, my works may contain stimulating elements that would be considered absurd or obscene when read out of context. I'm not saying that my works are particularly unhealthy; comics in general are for fun, and my works are just one of them. It's just that my works are not very educational. Another concern is time and effort; drawing absorbs lots of time and energy when your art style is not simplistic.

Because of these reasons, I ask for advices from researchers who also have large passion for their asrtistic desire; how do you manage to do both of them? Would being a commercial artist give you disadvantage as a researcher in academia?

There are many people in academia with hobbies. Some very famous scientists like Heisenberg and Weyl are prime examples. I know a professor who paints for a hobby and keeps pictures of his paintings somewhere on the personal web page. It's tough to juggle work and hobbies, but you are already doing that.

However, you are now under a contract from the publisher. Will you have time to do your research? If I were you, I'd take a vacation from my research job, and focus on the contract work. If it takes you many more hours than your hobby took, you need to make a choice. Or you'll end up burnt out.


Recommendation Request and Academic Misconduct What do I tell the student in response to a request for graduate school recommendation from an otherwise-qualified student who cheated by copying homework in one of my classes?  I am unwilling to write a strong recommendation for this student, based solely on the episode of misconduct.  If it hadn't happened, I'd recommend him strongly.

Edit: I was searching for something less blunt than "no" and something a bit less accusative than "no because you cheated."  With the help given below, I've decided on the following:

  While every recommendation letter I write is tailored to the particular student, all include comments on each of those things I believe are relevant to admissions committees.  One of those is academic integrity.  In your case, a comment from me on academic integrity would likely be fatal to your application.  For that reason, I must decline to write such a recommendation.  I am confident that you can find professors who can write strong recommendations, and I wish you the best in the future.

Edit: The question identified as a possible duplicate whether whether the professor is obliged to write a recommendation for the student who cheated.  My question is about the best way to decline.

If you are willing to strongly recommend the student for graduate study, despite his past cheating offense, then tell the student you are willing  to write the letter, and then write the letter.

Otherwise, tell the student you are unwilling to write the letter, and then don't.

Your edit clarifies that you are unwilling to write a strong recommendation letter, because of the student's past academic misconduct.  I suggest telling the student, "I am unwilling to write you a strong recommendation letter, because of your past academic misconduct."


Worry about stealing of research ideas I have gotten an idea in the field of Computer Science that it can result in a research paper. The problem is that I lack the adequate background in one part needed for this research, mostly mathematical stuff. I have contacted one professor in Europe by email, and asked some mild questions about some topics that could be helpful. The doubt that I have is if I should better tell to that professor about my whole research idea, so maybe he/she would be able to help me more.

Actually I am a university lecturer and independent researcher, but in the university that I am working they do not give any salary or benefits for making research. I am doing this mostly because I like it.

Should I tell to that professor my whole idea? or maybe that person could steal it and because he/she has research funds can do it and leaving me aside?

You need to consider what role you want the math professor to take: are you looking for a co-author, a collaborator, a consultant, or a service provider.

Since you lack background in one area and are working in a place that does not prioritize publications, I would consider bring the individual on as a co-author. If that is your decision you need to provide the co-author with everything you are planning on doing so that he/she can make an informed decision. This obviously puts you at risk of being scooped. This then leads to the question of how to minimize the chances of being scooped. The first thing to remember is most researchers do not want to get into a publish first race. Scooping tends to be accidental and a result of two people independently starting the same/similar projects. You can minimize your chances by contacting an established person who is known to play "nice". The second thing you can do is to bring the research along as far as you can without the collaborator. This means they will be starting from so far back that it is unwise to enter the race.


Should I say/write the n-word in a quote? I'm quoting a book (To Kill A Mockingbird) and using a quote where the n-word is used. Later I'm going to have to read that out loud while my teacher also has a copy. Should I censor the word when reading or writing it?

I'd suggest being faithful to the original. If you are quoting, you should provide the passage verbatim as it is in your source material.


Popular proprietary program or obscure open source substitute for reproducible research? For a long time, I had been using open source software for my work to boost "reproducible research". I believed that if I made my codes open source and the softwares to run those codes in were open source too (or at least free), my research would be utmost reproducible. However, recently, in a discussion, it came through that research is more reproducible if one uses "popular" softwares instead of "unpopular" free ones.

For instance:

I had been using Scilab (Free) for a lot of my work and distributed my files to others. But I was surprised that more people had MATLAB ($$) and preferred if I sent  them MATLAB files instead (little modifications).

My question is :

Assuming I'm starting a new project and I wish to make it as reproducible as possible. Should I be using relatively unpopular free software or extremely popular proprietary ones?

I think there are two kinds of reproducibility:

The ability of someone else to run your code and obtain the same output.
The ability of someone else to write their own code that does the same thing as yours based on your description and on examination of your code (reproduction from scratch).

The second kind of reproducibility is much more convincing, since the main point of scientific reproducibility is to verify correctness of the result.  For science that relies on code, it is usually impossible to include every detail of the code in the paper, so verification requires examination of the code.

If you use proprietary software, your code probably makes use of closed source code, and therefore it cannot be verified or reproduced from scratch.  If you use open source software, then all of the code that your code calls is probably open source, so it can all be verified or reproduced by someone else from scratch.

At present, it is probably true that the first kind of reproducibility is more achievable with proprietary, widely-used software.  I am optimistic that the current trend will lead to open-source software catching up in terms of wide use (consider SAGE, for example).

Addendum, in light of Epigrad's answer below, which I mainly agree with:
The problem with relying on closed-source code isn't that someone else won't know what that closed-source code is expected to do.

The problem is that if you have two closed-source implementations of the same algorithm and they give different results (trust me, they usually will), then you have no way of determining which (if either) is correct.

In other words, closed-source code would be fine for reproducibility if it were bug-free.  But it's not.


In-class pop quizzes (online) and how to moderate them I teach an undergraduate course in thermodynamics. In class pop (surprize) quizzes account for about 10% of the grade. I use canvas for my in-class quizzes (and to collect homework assignments, start discussions).

The class room I teach in doesn't have computers so when I set up an pop quiz on canvas, I generally let the students out of class during the last 10 minutes to log in to one of the several campus computers to take the quiz.

However, I know that our computers aren't top notch and one can easily spend about 5-7 minutes just logging in and another 2-3 minutes launching a web browser to access canvas.

Given these technical issues (that can't be sorted out because of a lax IT department) I generally keep my quiz open for about 9 hours. This also takes into account the other classes that my students may have to rush in to right after mine which might prevent them from attempting the pop quiz until later that day.

Isn't this unfair to students who take the quiz immediately? By keeping my quiz open for 9 hours, it takes away the surprise component of it substantially. Is there a way I can do this without having to have quizzes on paper and in-class?

Should I just be mean and keep my quiz open for only the 20 minutes or so at the end of my class?

Edit: I was thinking about this and I thought of a couple of things that I'd like to add:

One way to nullify this is by announcing that there would be a quiz in the next 3 days. That way, the students will try and learn and not just haphazardly flip through their textbook as I assume they would if it were a true pop quiz.
I could tell them that the examinations which account for 70% of the grade will be tough and it would be sensible to be honest with pop quizzes.
Borrowing from Zenon's comment below, why not mix multiple choice questions with single valued answers with only 1 attempt?

Given the limitations of the material of the students and at your disposition why do you do a quiz on internet? You can be assured that students talk between themselves. I think that you should simply do the quizz in class with pen and paper to be really fair.

If you have a large number of students, you could do most of the quizz as multiple choice questions and use a device (scantron?) to correct them automatically. As a complement you could have a few questions with one word answers.


What is the rationale behind requiring a meeting before filing academic misconduct charges? Some universities have a rule that, for example, "if it appears that a student in your class may be guilty of academic misconduct, you must promptly ask the student to meet with you informally to discuss your concerns."  The quote is taken from one such university, the University of Wisconsin.  UW's Academic Misconduct Guide for Instructors goes on to say: "You can discuss the matter with the student in person, by telephone, or online. During this meeting, you should explain why you believe the student may have committed academic misconduct and give the student an opportunity to respond. It is not necessary to inform the student in writing before this meeting."

What is the rationale behind this type of requirement?

Bonus: How common is this?  When did universities in the US start instituting this type of requirement?

I believe that the main impetus for a meeting with the student is to inform them directly that they are being charged with academic misconduct, and to know that they are consciously aware of such charges, so that they cannot claim "no one told me." In general, until recently, at my school, the process dragged on and on because the students need to sign a form indicating their willingness to accept or refuse the sanctions.

However, in recent years, this process has become more digital, and, for instance, at my university, the school no longer requires a face-to-face meeting. The forms are filed and processed electronically, and notification of the intent to file charges can be provided to the student via the campus email system.


Having preferred and non-preferred reviewers in journal submissions IEEE asks journal authors to submit the names of their (non-)preferred reviewers. Given it may not be appropriate to list an acquaintance as a reviewer, how does one judge if an anonymous person will be a good reviewer or not?

Is giving "non-preferred" reviewers akin to the author confiding about his academic relationships to the editor? Do people really need to fill this column up at all?

Just to add an editor’s perspective even though it partially duplicates the other answers:
Having seen the effect of preferred reviewers in the journal where I serve, I am not altogether happy about these options. The non-preferred category is one that I take seriously because conflicts can lead to bad or poor reviews for reasons other than the science. My problem is instead with the preferred reviewers.
When I assign reviewers I basically steer clear of the preferred reviewers as a rule. In the past when I have selected from this list, I have been extremely disappointed. Almost exclusively I have received accept reviews (accompanied by rejects from other reviewers), which I have been forced to deem practically useless and look for additional reviewers. I do not mean to say that all persons put on these lists provide poor reviews, but what I perceive as the original purpose namely to provide examples of names of persons whose objective opinion the author highly values is rapidly being drowned by names of friends. This has led me to stay clear of this list unless I myself recognize a name as somebody with integrity. I will nevertheless scrutinize that review with a hint of suspicion based on the experience I have. One way to avoid this could be to add a line or two stating why you have selected these names as preferred. This would help evaluate the usefulness of such reviewers. Sadly many submission systems do not allow for such comments except in the submission letter.
So I agree with the others answers, provide particularly non-preferred names but feel free to add also preferred but do not count on the preferred names to be used.


Why has the status date changed while the status remains unchanged at "Editor Assigned"? I submitted an accepted paper after a second revision to a springer journal on 24th Avril and the status stayed at "Revisions Being Processed " for two days. The status changed to "Editor Assigned" on the 27th. However, it remained at "Editor Assigned" for two days, and the date changed on 29th Avril. What does it mean?

Thank you very much.

Most likely someone touched the submission, but the status didn't advance. My guess would be that an editor was assigned but declined, and they've assigned another editor.

In any case it's not something to worry about, because it's just the journal's interior processes over which you have no control.


Do you need to define standard abbreviations like "EEG" and "fMRI" in the abstract? I am preparing to send my first paper to a springer journal (journal of computational neuroscience), in the instruction author there is an instruction say Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter. I think that the abbreviations in the abstract are known for the neuroscience community. Do I have to define them first?

abstract

Based on clinical data collected using different brain imaging and recording techniques (fMRI, CT, PET, EEG, MEG, NRIS,...),

Yes, define your abbreviations as per the instructions. Each reader may be familiar with all, none, or some of the techniques you mention. There is certainly a set of acronyms and terminology which readers in your field will be familiar with, but anything you can do to help your reader understand your material is potentially beneficial.

You can also use the other published abstracts in the same journal as a guide: note how this one defines otherwise common acronyms like EEG (but, as pointed out below, does not define some other terms).

Or, if you're worried about abstract length, avoid discussing every individual technique in the abstract and save it for the body of the manuscript.


Advisor not letting me publish I am a final year Ph.D. student and will graduate soon. My advisor is still asking me to run problems instead of publishing any paper on the work that I have already done over the last few years. I will be joining a postdoc after I graduate and he says I should keep working on these problems on the side after I graduate. Can someone please suggest me how to stay motivated.

I don't know what sort of hold the advisor has over you. Perhaps you are in a field that "requires" that he be a co-author on your work.

After you graduate, assuming that your postdoc is elsewhere he would seem to have little control over your actions.

But, if it is really just motivation that you want to maintain, you can always write the papers and see what you have. Even if custom prevents you from publishing now, it won't always and it might also serve to bring your thoughts together.

After you graduate and move on, your relationship to the advisor will also change and you should have more authority over your own actions.

I realize that this advice is somewhat optimistic and my field may be different enough from yours that it is inadvisable. But, my view, is that you should be treated with more respect.


Is there any (comparative) statistics on h-indices of old scientists during their lives? In my country (I live in Russia) the government puts in place some reforms in Education, and, in particular, the possibility for a person to have a position at a university now depends on his bibliometric rates. This causes numerous debates among academics because there is a difference between this bibliometry and the real value of a scientific research.

Since in the West this way to estimate the success of an academic is not new, I believe there are many investigations in this field, and, in particular, I think there must be some statistics on how the modern bibliometry evaluates the research of old scientists during their lives. Did anybody hear someting about this?

In other words,

  Does anybody know if there exist statistical researches on bibliometric rates (like h-index) of old scientists (like Karl Weierstrass) during their lives?

(I stress this "during their lives" since this is important in the debates I am talking about.)

I am a mathematician, that is why I am intrested first of all in the statistics on mathematics, but this is not necessary, I would appreciate any references. Of course, the more data  such a statistic would contain, the better.

P.S. Dear moderators, please, do not change the title. My question is not about a technical possibility to compute the bibliography, I wonder whether (and where) the statistics that I am talking about exists.

As mentioned in comments, this is hard to estimate offhand, as it could depend on things like nationality, field of study, age, degree of "success", and so on. I suppose that's why a question is justified.

I'm less familiar with other indices, so I'll focus on the h-index.

h-index compared to age?

Nevertheless, some have considered this. Here's a quick post by Colin Mathers: H-index and age: a new criterion for success?. Among some commentary, Mathers suggests that having a h-index greater than one's age is a good sign.

Also in that post:

  JE Hirsch, the author of the h index estimated that after 20 years a
  “successful scientist” will have an h-index of 20, an “outstanding
  scientist” an h-index of 40, and a “truly unique” individual an
  h-index of 60.

Estimating h-index

  The h-index does not provide a significantly more accurate measure of
  impact than the total number of citations for a given scholar. In
  particular, by modeling the distribution of citations among papers as
  a random integer partition and the h-index as the Durfee square of the
  partition, Yong arrived at the formula h ~ 0.54*sqrt(N), where N is the total number of citations, which, for mathematics members of the National Academy
  of Sciences, turns out to provide an accurate (with errors typically
  within 10–20 percent) approximation of h-index in most cases.

  Source: Alexander Yong, Critique of Hirsch’s Citation Index: A
  Combinatorial Fermi Problem, Notices of the American Mathematical
  Society, vol. 61 (2014), no. 11, pp. 1040–50.

We can then estimate N as a function of time. Assuming academics begin publishing at age 25 yrs and publish an average of two papers per year and two conference proceedings (see also) -- which is clearly a very rough estimate -- P ~ 4*(A-25 yrs), where P is the number of papers published and A is the academic's age in years and must be greater than 25 yrs. One could apply some weighting function to estimate citations per year per paper and integrate, but for the sake of a crude estimate, we could assume the average paper garners roughly 10 citations/year (source). The number of citations per year for just Career Year t (where t~A-25 yrs) is then 10 * P(t) == 40*t. The cumulative number of citations N(t) is then the integral of that over the person's career up to year t: 20 * t^2. Finally, we plug this into the formula above (h ~ 0.54 * sqrt(N(t)) and get 0.54*sqrt(20)*sqrt(t^2) ==> h ~ 2.4 * t.

After Hirsch's 20 years, this gives an estimate of a h-score of 48.

Again, this is an incredibly crude estimate. It likely overestimates the h-index for older researchers because most papers receive attention in the first decade or so after publication, but the average number of citations per year per paper would likely decay off in subsequent decades after publication. It also assumes that the researcher is continually publishing.


Conducting interviews independently? I'm an early career researcher who would like to conduct interviews for a research project on my own, and I was hoping to get some advice about whether this sort of thing is advisable.

I recently graduated and published my work in a peer reviewed journal, and I'm planning to continue my research through a PhD sometime in the next couple of years. However, I would also like to work a documentary type project related to my field of study, not for an academic audience but for the broader general public.
I'm not currently affiliated with a university though, and have never conducted any interviews before (all my work so far has been archival), so I'm a little concerned about the ethics of my doing so without any kind of official backing. I'm not even sure if this is something I COULD get backing for as it would be a side project anyway.

Due to my area of research the window of opportunity for conducting interviews is rapidly closing, and I'm concerned about missing the chance. It wouldn't be feasible for me to wait until I'm more established, as the younger interviewees are already in their early 80s.

Would it be possible, and more importantly ethical for me to be doing this? Could I get funding for this? And should I be getting a university or other academics involved?

There is a whole science about conducting and structuring interviews, and drawing scientific conclusions from it. If you are unfamiliar with it, then the interviews you will conduct are likely going to be poorly designed, and you may not be able to get out of them what you wanted, or with as much clarity as you hoped. That doesn't mean than it may not be entertaining, or of interest to the public, but it's probably still worthwhile reading up on how to best do interviews.

An entirely separate question is institutional backing. It is not unethical or wrong to conduct interviews as an individual -- journalists do it all the time. But you will need to have the approval of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) if you eventually want to use the interviews for scientific research you want to publish.


Should a graduating doctoral student "care" about his or her advisor's tenure considerations? I am a doctoral student in a large state university in the eastern US. I'm in my final year of work and will likely defend my dissertation shortly. I already have a job in "industry" (i.e. non-academia) lined up.

My advisor would prefer that I stay for another semester to finish up another publication with him. My contributions to the publication are relatively minimal now, but I am the last remaining person on the project that knows any of the details about it. My advisor, while topically knowledgeable about the subject, would need to put in significantly more time to produce the paper.

Because I anticipated this, I wrote a document to allow for a transfer of knowledge to anyone who joins the project when I leave. It assumes the person is familiar with Python, R, or MatLab. My advisor knows none of those languages, so he cannot immediately pick up the work himself.

Long story short, my advisor wants me to stay and finish up one last project with him so he can include it in his portfolio for tenure. If I leave before the project is complete, he will likely be unable to complete the project in time to have it considered for his tenure evaluation. This would weaken his tenure application and could also lead to the loss of a grant.

As such, he offered me a small stipend of $5000 or so to stay on and complete the paper with him. I would need to turn down a job offer that would likely pay four times that, plus an offer that would place me in a long term job in a field I want to be in. I would also have to go without dental and vision insurance for another semester.

Is there a tactful way to tell my advisor I really couldn't care less if he doesn't obtain tenure because of this? It's not that I hate my advisor, but I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect of still having to work under him. (Especially for a quarter of the salary.) It's nothing personal, it's just that I don't want to write a paper for the advisor just so that he can obtain tenure.

In all, how much I care about my advisor obtaining tenure?

Added While it may be feasible for me to contribute to the project while also working in a full time position, this is not a desirable outcome. To be blunt, my advisor should have figured this situation out before now. He has had several opportunities to become involved in this project more fully. He has resisted learning the necessary theory and technology relevant to the project. As can be inferred by his current pursuit of tenure, we are not talking about someone who technology has passed by. If you got a PhD after 2010, yet cannot deign to learn new technology....it's hard for me to feel very inclined to continue to help you write a paper that you should be able to oversee on your own. Ultimately, I am wondering how I should go about telling my advisor that I am not going to become more involved in a project at the very end of my work with him, when I in fact want to distance myself from working with him in the future.

I think your approach to this situation is a bit misguided. Yes, you should absolutely care about your advisor’s success (and he should care about yours). But “caring” doesn’t mean that you should sacrifice your own career and self-interest to the cause of helping your advisor, just as, by the same token, I wouldn’t expect your advisor to sacrifice himself for you either. Thus, the way you frame the question as a dichotomy between the extremes of “couldn’t care less” and “will do anything to help my advisor get tenure” is a false dichotomy.

The truth lies somewhere in between those extremes, but broadly speaking I tend to agree with your assessment that the advisor is unreasonable to have an expectation that you will defer the launch of your career for a semester and give up money, health insurance and professional opportunities to stick around and help him finish a project that is no longer a priority for you, for whatever reason. You need to stand up for yourself and explain what your priorities are. But do it in a civil and polite way that shows that you are grateful for the mentoring and other help he has given you (and may yet give in the future through letters of reference etc). Don’t say you don’t care (and better yet, don’t even think it). Do say that you would be willing to make reasonable efforts to ensure a smooth handoff of the project, as you seem to have been doing already. And finally, as @aeismaeil said in his answer, don’t mention the tenure or the grant, since they are simply irrelevant to the discussion. Good luck!


How is literature that contains racially charged language treated in the context of academic discourse, and what is the etiquette for using it? One of my good friends is a history professor at a local college; in order to preserve anonymity I will not specify which one, but it is a conservative Christian private school in my state. We were discussing some of his curriculum and he mentioned that he is feeling nervous about one of his literary choices, since a paragraph of the document contains one instance of a racially charged word (ne---) and he is not sure if this is appropriate to present to students in the context of an academic discussion. He is not going to read the passage aloud or say or write the word, but the word does exist in the passage and the students are probably going to bring it up. He doesn't want to just not use the passage because it feels wrong to just discard a historical document for that reason alone.

I was intrigued enough by our discussion to ponder what I would do in that situation, since I am hoping to become a professor or educator in my own career, so here is my question:

How does academia treat literary texts that contain offensive/racially charged language? What is the etiquette around presenting texts in class that include these words? Would it be better to simply present the passage in a censored version where the words are modified or removed, or is it better to use the source without any modification but carefully explain it to the students and make sure it is treated in its proper historical context? How would you handle this situation as an educator?

It is counterproductive and anti-intellectual for a historian to "sanitize" history. One of the reasons to study history is to learn from it. If we provide only a nice-nicey view of history it is basically impossible to learn anything. We use innuendo instead of plain facts, perhaps, but that is just sweetener in a bitter pill.
Historically bad things have happened. The bible, for example, has some pretty brutal sections. Does a "christian" educator also want to sanitize that.
If you sanitize Huckleberry Finn, for example, the story loses its point entirely. It is what it is.
I don't think there are any black people in America over the age of two who aren't familiar with these terms and how they have been used. Sanitizing the history of racism only erases their experience to make others feel good about themselves.
We need to learn to behave better. Pretending that we haven't behaved badly doesn't help us get there. The fact that some dehumanizing terms are still used today is the problem, not that that we find them in the historical record.


How to organize a good "special session" at a conference? Many organizing committees set aside time and space at the conference for special sessions, which are often planned and organized by select individuals that have been invited to highlight a particular subject or scientific direction.

For example, if you work in computer science and you're specializing in deep learning, you might propose (or be asked) to organize a deep learning special session.

Once your proposal has been accepted, you have to spread the word to interested researchers, issue a call for papers, collect papers, invite an important speaker, and make sure the event runs smoothly.

For those of you that already had this experience, what are your suggestions and advice for organizing a good special session?

For instance, should you get in touch with potential participants before the session is announced?

A useful start is to try to get some well-known researchers to commit to providing talks to a session. It could be one person or maybe a few more depending on the size of the conference and the session. The point of doing this is basically two-fold. First, you gain interest from others when they see names they recognize. Second, by having someone well-established involved, the session gains a certain amount of credibility. People who may be very selective in choosing how they spend their time are likely less inclined to go to a session filled with people they do not know than one where they at least know one or a couple.

Once you have established a core for the session, the rest might solve itself. You do of course have to consider the main direction of the conference so that the session theme does not deviate to the extent that any person interested in the session finds the rest of the conference of marginal interest. So chose the venue with some care.

Getting the ball rolling is the hard bit. An invitation is usually not enough. It may involve pulling strings left and right to entice a core of attendees to show. In one meeting I co-organized, we managed to get an international group to attend that were looking to also run a project meeting at the same time. This meant the meeting gained a wider interest.


Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list? I have an article with in-text citations and list of references. I have not used any of reference managers, just used word.
Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?

Yes. It is quite easy to do, once you know how.

First, go to the References tab, then click on Insert Citation and Add New Source.

Next, fill out the information as appropriate.

When you want your References List produced, go to Bibliography.

This is extremely helpful when you need to change some detail (say publication date) and you have many citations to the same material. Change it in one place and Word will update all of the in-text citations as well as the references list.


Presentation Rules (e.g. 7x7 in Undergrad Communications Courses): are they supported by evidence? I taught a Business Communications course that brashly asserted that good presentations follow the 7x7 rule (max 7 lines of text per slide, max 7 words per line). I also "learned" this in my undergraduate communications courses at a fairly decent state university (and in some MBA prerequisite work).

I see docs online at Columbia (and, other, sources - this one linked to by MIT...)that hold forth in the same manner.

I did find this bit of research that may give some credence to the above doctrine, although it failed to reject the null hypothesis, that there is no difference in number of lines per slide, in favor of the idea that retention was better for 5 lines per slide versus 10. (But it's still something, some kind of evidence, right?)

So if the evidence is spare and specious, why are we reciting it like it's the gospel truth?

In industry (and to a lesser extent in graduate level education) we sometimes see vast amounts of information contained in single slides, and it is unclear what is the specific downside of this, particularly when well-warranted (i.e. the visible whole paints an important picture that would otherwise not be seen viewed at finer granularity, slide by slide).

A lot of information is packed into those slides, but I print them off one or two to a page. Decks don't get much bigger than a dozen or so pages, and the information I'm particularly interested in may be packed into one or two slides. And the audience is fairly sophisticated, whereas the accepted introductory wisdom might be targeted to more average audiences.

So the question is, are these heuristics worth sticking to? Or are they artificial constructs designed to give criteria for ranking the ability of neophytes to follow instructions?

Or are they a little of both?

All axiomatic principles with respect to presentations should be taken with a heavy dose of salt, not just a pinch.

The important issue at hand is that you need to communicate your information to an audience effectively. Putting too much text on a slide makes audiences read the slide, and possibly tune out your elucidations and elaborations of the material on the slide. Similarly, putting too many graphs on the same slide causes the same problem—there's too much to focus on, so you get "lost" in the course of the talk, which again is entirely unhelpful.

Principles such as the "7 x 7" guideline are an attempt to balance between having too much and too little information on a slide. They're useful as rough guidelines, but need not be treated as strict rules to follow.


How will I be viewed by an employer if I choose to do my own research? I have recently been awarded full funding by the Canadian government's research council (NSERC) to do my Master's Degree (M.Sc.EE). I have the option to do a thesis with many different research projects that are ongoing in my department, or to find my own research to work on.

  How will I be viewed after I graduate by an employer if I choose to do my own research vs. working under a professor's project?

well... you can't escape having a thesis director/advisor, nor do you wish to escape having a thesis director.  You may end up working with someone who will let you what you want, but choose wisely as this is not guaranteed at all;  a scholarship will allow you greater freedom in this choice.  A good advisor will suggest a project that will challenge you and force you to "up your game".

It seems you me more than anything you are putting the cart before the horse.  The person(s) you want to impress in the short term is your advisor and/or members of your supervisory committee.  Your job prospects will be greatly improved if you can get an outstanding reference letter from your advisor or someone from the supervisory committee who can speak with authority to the strength of research project: this argument alone quite clearly favours doing a research project under competent supervision.


Applying twice for the same position I applied for a tenure-track assistant professorship position in computer science (CS) in the US. The particular opening announcement was broad, non-specific to the subarea. In my application, I emphasized the subarea X. After applying, I inofficially found out that the CS department doesn't hire in the area X, but hires in a nearby area Y, for which I could also produce a different but still valid application. Technically, I cannot change my application documents any more or withdraw my application through the website of the hiring department. The best I could do is submit a new application using a new e-mail address. This might raise concerns on the side of the reviewing faculty, or, on the contrary, it might be considered pretty normal. Any advice on whether to submit a new application? Pro/contra arguments are welcome.

Technically, I cannot change my application documents any more or withdraw my application through the website of the hiring department.

Says who? Did you talk to a real live person about this? It's quite possible they can accept an "overwritten" re-application even if the public web interface, or what-not, doesn't support this.

  The best I could do is submit a new application using a new e-mail address.

Not so. You can write a letter, explaining how you understand that the department's hiring focus is Y rather than X, while your earlier application emphasized X, and asking the application reviewers to consider an enclosed summary of your activities and plans regarding Y.


Postdoctoral job search: positions and job titles As I'm currently pursuing an academic job search (in parallel to the industry one), which includes potential postdoctoral positions, I would appreciate some clarifications on the following aspects.

Positions (terminology). I have seen various titles for postdoctoral positions, i.e., postdoctoral scholar (or researcher), research assistant, research associate and similar. Question: Are there any essential differences, implied by these titles, or they are just terminology variations (perhaps, geographically- or university-dependent) for essentially the same type of position?

Note: My field is Information Systems, a discipline, which can be considered as a sub-domain of Management Science, which, in turn, is a social sciences discipline.

Contrary to StrongBad, I would say there are important non-terminological differences. While both are junior positions that a recent PhD grad may hold, at my university, a postdoc or Postdoctoral Researcher is intended to be a temporary position for 2-ish years. On the other hand, the Research Associate title is the first in a sequence of permanent full-time research staff positions that goes Research Associate, Research Scientist, and then Senior Research Scientist. While there is no tenure for these positions, the levels are intended to parallel the professor levels here (Assistant, Associate, (full) Professor), and the requirements for promotion are similar (minus teaching).

These permanent positions are expected to continue as long as there is funding to cover them, whereas postdocs are expected to move on after a few years. Given the commitment, most professors, especially the junior ones, will not have Research Associate positions to offer. These are more often affiliated with large labs, centers, or institutes that are large enough and diverse enough to be able to offer long-term funding stability.

There are other differences as well. Postdocs at my university require a special exception to be allowed PI their own grants while Research Associates may PI them from the start without special permission. RAs usually not involved in teaching, where postdoc positions seem to be more flexible in this regard. Also, given the permanence, RAs come with considerably higher status than postdocs, though the respect doesn't really kick in until Research Scientist is reached. Postdocs are a further training position intended to allow a recent grad to finish publishing things from their thesis, branch out into some new areas, and get ready for a faculty position.


How do you develop research skills? I'm a PhD student in applied mathematics
I’m in a quiet period since I’ve submitted all that my supervisor asked for (I’m a first year), I like to read as many articles as I can get my hands on. I’ll use connected papers and google scholar (as well as Microsoft academic) to find all the associated articles I can and then import them into notability where I highlight, read and find good search terms for future papers. I also like to make notes and repeat any calculations I see so i can gain a deeper understanding. What should I be doing so that I can develop my skills as a researcher?
Am I doing this right, is it good practice do this?

Research is about answering unanswered questions. Primarily those that are important in a field.
So, to get started, ask a lot of questions and keep a notebook. Find out if they are already answered by reading and asking others. Figure out if they are significant in some way or could lead to things that are.
Let the questions lead to hypotheses - what the answers to the questions might be.
In applied math (not my field) the questions might involve things that are particularly difficult in some domain. Ask why? Ask whether they can be simplified. Make a hypothesis about how they might be simplified. Then validate/invalidate the hypothesis. Along the way, other questions will occur to you. Write them down (notebook).
Then...
Ask more questions.


How is tenure-track start-up in Europe? After 2 postdoc positions, I applied for tenure-track assistant professor positions. I am from mechanical engineering and my research is strongly experimental. This is critically important for me to have a considerable start-up package to run my lab to get funds and students.

In two interviews for positions in the USA and Japan, I was told that the start-up package is about $800K, with a possibility to be negotiated to reach 1 million too (not Japan).

However, in an interview for a position in the UK, I was told that stat-up package in not part of the position (though it is a normal faculty position, not teaching only). They can offer up to 200K pounds, subject to approval.

I am very interested in Europe, but it made me wonder if this is the common situation in Europe or this position was exceptional?

Do European university normally offer start-up package for building a lab (in experimental fields) for a new assistant professor? I mean, as it is common in the United States. Or European universities have a different scheme for funding new faculty members.

I am referring to the Western Europe: Mainly UK, and also Germany and Scandinavia.

I think the issue is that the concept of "tenure-track" doesn't really exist in many European countries—at least not as it's interpreted in the US. Consequently, start-up packages can be difficult to compare.

When I started my present position, I got a very small package, if you reckoned it in terms of what's needed to buy equipment and pay for travel. On the other hand, I was guaranteed two full-time scientific positions for the lifetime of my appointment. (These positions could be used for either PhD students or postdocs.) Reckoned in that sense, however, the package is quite generous (close to $1 million).

In other nearby countries (Netherlands, for instance), the support is not nearly so strong: typically just one student supported by the university, and relatively limited budgets.


How do (STEM) professors keep up with the latest tech or development in order to publish research? From an outsider/student's view, STEM professors are:

not taking courses
mostly not doing things outside of their research comfort zones
not (?) studying up much except for their research, certainly not doing exercises from the back of a book and looking up solutions somewhere
some graduated 40 years ago or even more.
teaching the same course for past 20 years, which let's face it, is sort of like teaching history with numbers.
not visibly getting taught by their research students or anyone else for that matters.

How is it that a lot of the professors are publishing cutting edge research (especially in STEM) involving the latest tech and gadgets? If I am not reading the news, I wouldn't know what Apple is doing right now let alone develop an algorithm that mimics what their Face Recognition AI is doing.
How is it possible that a professor with a PhD in analog circuit back in the 70s could do research in today's massive microchip fabrication process when a tremendous amount of information/material is needed to get up to speed both in terms of theory and practical knowledge? Do these professors have fabrication facilities in their garage or something? How would they know without being in industry or taking a course?
How is it possible that a professor with a PhD in numerical optimization from the 80s where the latest and the great was quasi-Newton method is doing research on the latest deep learning algorithm? How can this person even be proficient at this? Are they taking courses on Coursera or something?
How do you do it?

In short, your premises are wrong.

Professors read papers to learn.
Professors meet with their peers, both at conferences and informally, and learn from them.
Professors do learn from their research students.

These are slow methods of learning, but over many years they add up.
Further, in fast-moving fields of research, nobody "keeps up" in the sense of knowing everything that is going on.  It isn't necessary to know everything that is already known to create new knowledge.


What is difference between funding an MS and a PHD student I am trying to understand this regarding aspects of funding only and not quality of research.What is difference between funding an PHD and an MS student.

I thought both took courses, get some stipend and advisor funds them.Maybe for PHD they fund students for 5 years instead of 2 years of MS ?

Is there any other major difference?

I understand PHD student's research output expectations are completely different.I am asking this question with specific regards to state universities in US.

Disclaimer: this is US-specific and quite likely engineering specific.

The only potential difference is that the rates for funding Ph.D students (post-candidacy) might be different to that of an MS student. But the difference is usually between types of funding(RAship, TAship, etc), not who gets funded.


Bonus Quizzes to entice students to read their syllabus? Please inform me if this needs to be moved to the meta questions forum, I wasn't sure whether this would qualify or not

As I'm sure many lecturers/professors would attest, one of the frustrations of teaching can be the continuous asking of questions that had a student read their syllabus and/or navigated the online learning site, would have most likely been answered.

I spend a lot of time on my syllabus, and even more time on the learning site we use. I have an abundance of extra resources to help students out and everything is neatly organised. Regardless, I still receive countless emails and questions not about the content of the course, but when my office hours are or where my office is, or when is the assignment due, or do they have to attend class, and so on.

In speaking with a number of academics, some of the solutions have been creating assessments based solely on the syllabus, such as a 5% quiz in the first week of class. A colleague of mine who was concerned about students not knowing how to navigate the library created an assessment where students had to go to the library and answer a set of questions.

My faculty is quite strict about assessment tasks though, and I've been informed I can only have a max of 2-3 in my unit, so I'd rather not waste them on a syllabus test.

I was thinking about setting up some online bonus mark quizzes where students who wanted to earn a little extra credit could complete them. They wouldn't be worth much, maybe .5% per quiz, perhaps totaling to a bonus of 2.5% or something similar. They'd be on the syllabus, the learning website, perhaps a research bonus quiz (navigating online databases) and so on.

Other than consulting with faculty policy about the use of bonus marks:

Lecturers/Professors, have you used bonus quizzes/bonus marks? What might be some things I need to consider? Do you think this would at all be effective?
Students, would the opportunity to complete some bonus quizzes for a little extra credit entice you enough to actually read the syllabus and take some time exploring the learning site?

EDIT: My course is a social science course and considered 'subjective' in its content as its qualitative and not quantitative, so no student can earn 100% on their assessments alone. I think the highest marks we can give out are around 94-95, so an additional 2.5% would still keep students under the 100% mark.

I'd avoid setting summative assessments (i.e. for course credit) on topics other than the subject material you expect the students to learn. Doing so might come back to bite you, even if you keep the relative contribution to a final grade as low as you are suggesting.

Perhaps you could spend half of your first lecture rhetorically asking the sort of frequently asked questions that get your goat, while at the same time navigating your course webpage, to show where a student will find the answer to your questions. After  reading out five or so of the most commonly asked questions, the students will get the message:- the answer is likely to be on the webpage. Look for it.


What should I do if a Professor yells at me and a fellow student in class? So I'm taking a storyboarding class at my college and we have a big project coming up. I've been working on it a lot and talked about the story with my professor and he seemed to really enjoy it. We're on week two of working on it and I've finished my treatment and have been working on the storyboards digitally at home. When I went to class, my friend who gets sick often was there (a rare occurrence even though she tries her hardest) and we chatted a bit at the beginning of class. The professor handed out a list of shots we should use in our story if we wanted. As I already had my shot list at home with my storyboards, I decided to help my friend since she didn't completely know what to do.
I was helping her develop her story and we decided to watch some videos on my computer for inspiration. The project theme was "Escape" so we were watching escape scenes from movies. The professor notices and comes over and I make a joke about how we're watching one of the best scenes in film history (it was a scene from Shrek with the princesses). He tells me to stop the video so I do, but at this point I can't tell if he's joking or not. I stop the video and he tells me to turn it off so I exit full screen and close the video. He then proceeds to ask me a question I don't hear (tight fitting mask plus my anxiety making my blood pound made it hard to hear). I ask him to repeat his question and he gets mad. He then asks me what the video has to do with my story and if I'm using it for my shot list. I explain to him, no, I'm helping my friend since I'm pretty much done with my project. Then he asks me something else, this time I didn't understand him at all and my anxiety was through the roof. The class by now is dead silent. I ask him to repeat his question and he takes my handout of shots he gave us earlier and rips it in half. He asked me what about the shots we talked about last week. This still confuses me because we didn't discuss shots. I told him about my story and that was it. He then asked how long we've been working on this project. I say "around two weeks" he said it's been longer than that (it really hasn't). Then he tells me if I don't tell him what shots I have I get a zero in class for the day. I said that I have my shot list at home but I can gladly go through the script with him and tell him what I remember I wrote down for that scene. He gets mad and rips the paper in half again.
At this point, he turns to another student and makes him read what he has so far for a shot list. Then other students. By now, my friend has gone to the bathroom because she started crying. She can't handle being yelled at.However, the teacher keeps going. One class member has less than I do, but he tells them good job. I keep working silently and decide to just copy down what I have on my computer at home onto my notebook so he won't blow a gasket again. I felt humiliated and angry, and I don't know what to do about it. My brother says I should go talk to the head of the department but I don't know if that's appropriate to do in this situation.
TL;DR: I was helping my friend in class and my professor thought I had done zero work, embarrassed me and my friend, yelled at us, threatened me with a 0, then humiliated me by using my classmates as "examples"

I recommend following up with the professor himself. Ideally by asking for an appointment, but e-mail will do in a pinch. You should (1) concisely and clearly explain what happened (much more concisely and clearly than you did above), and (2) state that you found his reaction in class to be humiliating and unnecessary, and you would like to request that he not do anything like that again.
I also recommend being polite and avoiding accusatory language; the goal is to smooth over a misunderstanding, not to assign fault. Hopefully, this will lead to a friendly conversation, and he will take the lead in acknowledging that he misjudged the situation and his reaction was inappropriate. Sadly, I cannot guarantee this; he may entrench himself further into an adversarial position. In the latter case, it would not be inappropriate to discuss the situation with the department chair or another trusted professor; however, I do not think that doing so is terribly likely to lead to a more favorable outcome.


PhD hopping due to professional but non-research issues I'm a foreign PhD student and have had extreme difficulties in the last six months due to the university school administration not providing the documentation required to get a residence permit in time to start working on the date agreed to by said administration. This means I had to wait for about four months past the intended start date... meaning that I had also e.g. formally canceled my work and living arrangements by that time, making me homeless and jobless while still trying to sort out a bureaucratic nightmare all by myself.

The university continues to be extremely unhelpful to foreign students (apparently there is no support at all for them despite the university having loads of foreign students.). I'm finally here, but the situation is not getting better. My experiences in combination with the issue being effectively ignored by administration has soured my feelings on staying for the years it takes to get a PhD.

Irrespective of this, I do respect and like the actual people in the department I work in, and I still am interested in my particular area of research (despite feeling like I need to take several months off already despite having done very little actual research); I feel bad about "abandoning ship", but the problem won't get better as I'm not going to suddenly acquire another, better passport.

Is this a valid reason to give other departments when inquiring about working with them, and, if so, how can I formulate this in a way which is positive?

Is this a valid reason to give other departments when inquiring about working with them?

Yes, absolutely!  By not providing the necessary resources for you to begin on your expected start date, the university has released you from any obligation to attend.  You are a free agent.

  How can I formulate this in a way which is positive?

It's not clear that you need to formulate it at all.  Since you never attended your intended university, you are under no obligation to mention it in your CV or application.  At most, you may need to explain the one-year gap in your education/employment record, in which case — if asked — I'd suggest something simple like "I was admitted to the graduate program at [University X], but I was unable to attend because of unforeseen delays in processing immigration documents, which was out of my control."

As a courtesy, you should also explain your decision to pursue other opportunities to the department that admitted you, and in particular to your prospective advisor (if you have one).  In fact, I would recommend starting there; your department/advisor may be able to pressure the university bureaucrats into providing the paperwork you need.


US Postdoc in Japan not allowed to be first-author due to being foreign. How to proceed? I am a US postdoc at a lab in Japan doing niche research in computational biology. I recently found out my advisor will not allow me to be first author on papers. He says the datasets (which were my primary reason for joining this lab) were funded by the Japanese Government (although the data collection was international) and so a foreigner cannot be first author (though I would be doing most of the work).

There is a half-Japanese/half-American professor who teaches a short course for foreigners about how to survive/excel at the university. He told me this is common and that most foreigner postdocs leave the university with zero first-author publications - because first-author credits are typically reserved for Japanese researchers. He said I will need to creatively navigate these issues while not stepping on toes.

I want to figure out a way to obtain first-author publications during my postdoc without stepping on anyone's toes.

Question: Is this typical for foreigners in Japanese Academia? How can I navigate it? I know it is difficult to switch labs in this niche field, but if I do not take action, I will finish my postdoc with 0 first-author publications.

Possible solution: I have connections with a scientist at a government lab in the US. I have a negative impression of him from our past interactions, but he does have datasets in this niche research area. I could ask if he would be willing for me to remotely analyze one of his datasets. Does this seem like a reasonable solution? Any caveats I should be aware of?

While what you are describing is entirely inappropriate from a perspective of scientific ethics, I would not be surprised if:

there may be a language/culture miscommunication causing you to misinterpret the situation, or
there is indeed an informal policy of this sort amongst some laboratories (but individual labs all over the world sometimes have odious policies)

Anecdotally, while I have not worked in Japanese academia myself, I have Japanese colleagues who don't appear to have such a policy and have non-Japanese colleagues who did postdocs in Japan and published as a first author.  Such a policy is at least thus not extremely common.

So, what should you do?

First, I would recommend starting from the position that this is a mis-communication and asking how your advisor recommends you getting first author publications during your postdoc, since this is important for your career.
Your advisor is unlikely to say no (for a number of reasons), but if they do not give you a clear path to getting first-author publications, then I would indeed suggest finding other people to work with, while doing what's necessary to maintain relations and face with your current laboratory.
Finally, note that while first author publications are wonderful, "co-first-author" and second author publications are also good, and if the common denominator amongst a number of papers is you, then people will likely recognize that fact.


Journal submission cover letter: length and references I wrote a cover letter that takes 2 pages: 1 for the main text explaining the purpose of the research and why it is important, and 1 consisting of my name and institutional details plus references.

1) Should a cover letter be of 1 page maximum in general?
It is not mentioned the journal's website. If this is the case, I guess I should play with the font size and line spacing.

2) Is it ok to include two citations to emphasize my writing?
I included the two references right after mentioning my institutional details.

Shouldn't "explaining the purpose of the research and why it's important" be in the paper's abstract and introduction rather than in the cover letter? I'm accustomed to cover letters of the form "Dear [Editor's name], I would like to submit the [enclosed in the old days / attached nowadays] paper, [title of paper], for publication in [name of journal].  Sincerely, [name of author]".


PhD course grade impact on postdoc and fellowship applications? This past spring was the second semester of my PhD program. A professor of a core course refused to grade my final assignment because it was late after deadline had been extended. The professor had read and provided feedback on various drafts of the manuscript throughout the semester.

However, I only missed the deadline because of an emergency. A couple of days before the deadline I had to drop everything I was doing to tend to urgent institutional review board (IRB) issues. On the day the manuscript was due, my  old thesis advisor emailed me demanding to withdraw a presentation from a national conference immediately until IRB exemption was granted. This was more urgent than submitting the paper because there were serious legal implications attached.

Thank goodness the Chair of my Doctoral Committee was made aware of the issue. I spoke to the Chair, who suggested I explained to the professor I had an emergency and even told me to drop their name. I did just that, but the professor still refused to  accept the paper and gave me a C+ (38.9/50) without counting my final. I also explained the emergency situation, to no avail.

I don't want to push too hard on this matter, but I am very worried that a C+ will prevent me from receiving fellowships and getting a good postdoc position in the future.  For those of you out there with first-hand knowledge of the impact PhD-level course grades have on one's career, will a  C+ diminish my chances of getting a fellowship and being strongly considered for competitive postdoc positions?

In my field (math), nobody looks at your grades, so this will not make any difference.

A personal anecdote: I had a first-year grad course with a tough grader who gave me a B- in a core subject. This did not affect my trajectory in the least; I still passed my quals ahead of time, I wrote a thesis and graduated on time, and I'll be starting my post-doc in the fall.


Doing Ph.D in another country and Master in Italy at the same time, is it possible? Doing Ph.D in another country and Master in Italy at the same time, is it possible? I am already Ph.D student in Armenia and I want to apply for one of Erasmus Mundus Master programs in University of Bologna. Is that possible?

I'm not sure of the rules in those specific locations but it was my understanding that you can only be registered on a full time course at one university at a time. This is something you should check with both institutions.

Further to this, do you really think you would have the time to study for a Masters and a PhD at the same time and if you did do both then could you honestly say you were dedicating yourself 100% to one or the other? A PhD is not something to be done on a whim and requires a huge effort on the part of the student to complete.


I solved their problem. Should I involve them? I have dedicated time and effort to solve a theoretical problem posed by two other people.
Now I think I have resolved it, and I have material for a publication.

Should I involve them as co-authors?

Here are more details:

those other two people (hereafter, "they") are academics (as I am), but not colleagues: I have met one of them once, the rest of contact was by e-mail.
while I resolved their problem, I have no idea of the relevance or applicability of it (they are in a less theoretical field than I am). I assume they do;
their only contribution has been to make me aware of the open problem I resolved;
my work has developed completely independently, with methods, techniques and formalism utterly different from theirs; indeed, I think they'd never have been able to reach the result with their approach;
at one point, they informally made me their collaborator, by just saying "welcome to the project" by e-mail, and sending me a draft of their attempts to resolve the problem; we had very little contact on the project, besides that;
one of them is "strategically relevant" for me: despite the mere feeble connection established by the fact that we were working on the same problem, he provided recommendation letters and proactively promoted me when I was in need;
I already have a paper illustrating my solution; however, since I don't have the competence to understand how this result is useful in the application domain, my paper at the moment is missing proper introduction, conclusions, and, generally, context;

One strategy could be to publish two disjoint papers, one with their problem with due context, and the other with my solution.

However, I would like to hear any piece of advice or consideration on how to move: I would like to do what is globally most convenient for me (e.g., balancing the good of having a publication with that of keeping my allies in the academia), while not infringing any ethics.

If you solved an open problem working independently, the polite thing to do is acknowledge the source(s) of the problem in your paper, and perhaps send a preprint to the source(s).

But, if they have not contributed towards the project, it would be inappropriate to include them as co-authors. Co-authorship is properly used to recognize joint work, not as a gift.  If you are able to write a publishable paper of your work, there is no reason etiquette would require offering them a co-authorship, based on what is written in the question here.

On the other hand, it might well be reasonable, depending on your field, to ask someone else if they would like to join with you to extend your work to something that is publishable. For example, if you cannot provide enough context or application to make a publishable paper, and they can, then you could collaborate with them.

The main drawback of the collaboration (I don't view collaboration in itself as a drawback) is that it would take time for them to work on their piece, delaying publication.

One polite alternative would be to send them your preprint and ask them whether they feel it is publishable, or whether additional material is needed. If they say that additional material is needed, that might open the door to a collaboration.

P.S. added a few days later I do agree with others here that it would be very valuable to discreetly inquire about what the others meant by "welcome to the project". The question describes them as "not colleagues" and "their only contribution has been to make me aware of the open problem I resolved"; this answer is written under the assumption that those are correct. If the others don't think they are correct, you run a significant risk of burning bridges. The advice to write a joint paper combining your work with theirs, which was also mentioned in other answers, shouldn't be dismissed too easily.


How to deal with a complete failure in a group research? I’ve led a small research project with another researcher. I’ve proposed a certain approach to a problem, but in fact, this approach doesn’t work, as even its simplest toy version doesn’t work. In retrospect, this toy problem should have been tested right after my part of algorithm was completed, so that two months of my co-worker’s subsequent effort wouldn’t be wasted. But coming up with such a toy problem wouldn’t be possible given the level of our experience, and especially this is my first group project.

Is this kind of situation common? How do I deal with it?

Failure is intrinsic to science: how can you think of exploring the unknown without ever failing? Alas, it's a certain modern, distorted, entrepeneurship view of science that brought us thinking that science should always be successful.

For my master's thesis, my PhD thesis and part of my subsequent research, I worked on an experiment that eventually didn't work. Ten years. But I learned a lot, and now that more than ten years have passed from the moment I realized the failure, I don't regret it.

So, don't be discouraged and focus on what you have learnt and not on the failure.


Isn't it injustice on behalf of editor to assign article status as "under review" when actually it is not? This happened to me second time that my article got rejection after several months of review when article was not under actual review. Ten months ago I had submitted my work to mathematics journal of Elsevier, one month after submission my article status changed to under review, and I started waiting for review outcomes, but after ten months of review, editor responded: "I have checked your manuscript with care and I come to conclusion that your work is not suitable for publication in our journal". How could they take 10 months to decide the eligibility for aim and scope, why they put "under review" label for article when actually it is not under review?

"Under review" may include the review of the editor or editors, so in this case it may be under review. It also may be (as Maarten commented) that the paper was sent out and the reviewers indicated that the paper was not suitable for that journal without comments.

A few years ago I had a terrible experience where a journal had a change in editors and management and they lost my paper. I had no idea and they would answer my emails about the paper, but never get back to me about why I couldn't get any information about my paper. This went on for about a year. Ultimately, it worked out, but remember that editors and reviewers are often volunteers, so some may not put their reviews as a priority in their schedule. This isn't fair to the authors, but it is the truth. I'm sorry you dealt with this frustrating situation, but I find that these things are a lesson learned and if anyone asks you about your thoughts on submitting to that exact journal, you know what to tell them.


Tips for useful note-making when learning by oneself When I'm learning new material, it helps me if I take notes (I usually use emacs org-mode). I read on Xournal (annotating on the way) and Alt+Tab to emacs to punch in important points. My question is:

How organized should my notes be while I am authoring them?

The way I see it, I can either make chapters-sections-subsections etc. while I am writing the notes (but this breaks the flow and is sometimes I feel it is irritating since I'm fretting on unnecessary details) or I could write the notes as bullets and organize them later (Something I like but overhead time is spent on organization after reading).

Here's the method I found works best for me:

Read a section
Put the paper down, summarize verbally (mentally or out loud)
If you can't summarize, re-read the section. If you can summarize, write down the summary.

This method has the benefit that your notes don't reflect the stream of consciousness that I found went through my brain as I read the paper, but rather only a concise summary of what I actually understood from the paper.

Note that there were definitely papers where I read a particular section numerous times and had no idea what it was talking about, and I wrote that in my notes (e.g., "The authors then performed a mathematical transform involving  technique, and I was not able to figure out how it works from reading the paper.").


Math PhD adviser - The easy choice or the more unconventional choice I have kind of an interesting scenario that I would like to get advice on. I apologize if this is a bit lengthy, but I want to get all the facts out there.

A bit about me first: I have just finished my first year of grad school in an applied math program at a top 40 program in the US. I have undergraduate degrees in both pure and applied math, so I really have a love for both topics, although I lean more towards applied.

I have spent about 9 months doing some investigatory research with a distinguished professor at my school. Let's call him Dr. G. I have really enjoyed this research and I feel like it is a no-brainer to pick Dr. G as an adviser. He is very active in research, he has plenty of grant money, etc. He is also one of the top people in the world on the work that he does. On top of that, he is very supportive, great to work with, and willing to be my adviser.

So I thought I had definitely found my advisor.

Here is where my doubt comes in. There is another professor, Dr. T, who recently spent 3 hours helping me with preparing for my qualifying exams (this was way above and beyond what I thought he would do). I had so much fun talking about the math with Dr. T. He was so patient and helpful. We talked briefly about my research with Dr. G as well. He told me that sometimes people struggle with working with Dr. G because Dr. G is so busy traveling and such. This kind of made me doubt my decision a little. Dr. G is very busy, but we meet almost weekly, although not for very long. Dr. G has also told me that he is a very hands off adviser.... and I think a more hands on adviser might be better for me.

With all this said, I was considering doing a reading course with Dr. T IF he was interested in having me as a student. I don't currently know if he is accepting students or not. My thought was that if Dr. T was willing to spend 3 hours with me working out problems together, that he might be much more involved in helping me when I am working on a thesis than Dr. G could be.

I don't know if I have a misconception on this or not, but those 3 hours that I spent with Dr. T talking about the math problems was what I really pictured an advisor doing for me. Maybe not 3 hours worth, but enough time to really talk and ponder the problem at hand. Maybe someone could comment on the truth of this idea for me... Is it true that some advisers actively work on the problem with you, or do they just check in with you on the work that you have done?

A couple further notes: Dr. G has had about 5 students graduate and Dr. T has had 2 (only 1 recently). I also don't know about the level of research that Dr. T is doing; however, the quantity is definitely much less than Dr. G.

I would really welcome any advice or comments you may have. *My big question is if I should even ask Dr. T if he is interested in having students or not (I don't think he has any right now). I just feel like that although Dr. T might not be as flashy as an advisor as Dr. G, Dr. T may be way more involved and helpful. So I am trying to figure out if working with Dr. T is worth looking into, or if I would be unwise to not work with Dr. G.

Thanks for your time.

You want the advisor who best fits your needs as a student. This is some combination of research area, advising style, career connections, funding, and interpersonal chemistry, but--and this is the big but--only you are in a position to know exactly what that combination is.

From your description it sounds like T is the frontrunner, but a few hours prepping for quals isn't that much data. Ask T if he is accepting students (or find this out from his current students) and do a reading course to see how it goes.


How to review a major revision of a paper? A few months ago I reviewed my first paper. The authors submitted a major revision and I am asked to review the paper again. I received a long cover letter where my comments and the comments of two other anonymous reviewers have been answered.

The paper is relatively long (40 pages) so I am trying to avoid unnecessary work. Should I:

Re-review the entire paper as if I saw it the first time,
Just check if all comments have been addressed, or
Just check if my comments have been addressed?

I am afraid that if I just check the comments, it is possible that the authors have made some other changes, or that their changes might have broken the integrity of the paper as a whole. On the other hand if I re-review the entire paper it might be unfair to the authors.

When a major review has been requested, I think you really do need to go through the whole paper, for exactly the reasons you cite—the changes you've requested may conflict with the changes another reviewer has requested, and therefore the authors may have had to exercise significant discretion on which one to formally include in their revisions. Similarly, there may have been other changes that arose from your comments or those of your fellow reviewers.

Minor reviews require a lower level of commitment, unless the authors have indicated more substantial changes have been made.


How important is research experience of undergraduates in the application for graduate school? I'm planning to apply to graduate school in applied mathematics, but I do not have any research experience. The reason being is that I did not become a math major until my junior year in college. How will a lack of research experience affect my application?

Evidence showing a research experience is definitely a plus.

However, do not get discouraged if you have none. Show in your application that you know what you want and why, be persistent and proactive and see how you can stand out in a positive sense from the rest of the applicants.


Is it okay/possible to quit a PhD program in the 4th year and apply someplace else? I am a 4th year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at a Tier 1 University. I have joined the current research group due to funding reasons but never really liked the project. The project is not academic in nature (Not possible to get any decent publications, no design or innovation aspects), more like the sponsoring company had an engineering problem that needed a solution.

My advisor is a good person but he is not an expert in this field and not sure why he accepted the project. I have struggling for some time and my hate towards the project has recently increased and I feel that I cannot carry on with research anymore. I tried speaking to my advisor but he did not like the fact that I was belittling the project, and said I was ungrateful towards him even though he funded me.

That coupled with scare of poor job prospects in mechE have been haunting me. I am also sacred that if I tough it out and finish I might end up being overqualified for industry.

Did anyone else face a similar problem? Would like to know how acceptable is it to leave a PhD program in the 4th year and apply to a different program?

EDIT: Thanks for the answers everyone. I probably should have given more background information. I was unable to secure any funding in my first year (spent time doing courses on my own dime) and towards the beginning of my second year I was ready to accept whatever project came my way and chose this project when there was an availability.

The project was a collaboration between a simulation group (Prof. B) and a mechanical testing group (My advisor's, say Prof. A) and was already halfway through when I joined. Prof. B was the lead PI and had dictated the terms and I spent the next few years just doing the required testing for simulations. Regarding the project (can't name it due to privacy concerns), it has very little academic value, we were able to get out only one article in a low impact journal in the entire duration of the project of which I am the second author. People in my lab usually publish 4 journals for graduation. The project was also very hectic with meeting the sponsors twice a week. It felt more like working in a company and the skills I acquired are more of a master's level.

That is the reason I called it overqualified (a PhD with Masters level skills). I had tried a few times to change the project but was met with resistance from my advisor and I did not oppose strongly for fear of being fired. Now I am really scared of job prospects. I understand that I am responding very late. I did speak to a few people in the department and most are suggesting it is stupid to start another PhD at this stage. Another option I was suggested is quitting with a Master's and finding a job. Frankly, I am not sure what to do.

Yes, it is is a bad idea.  (I will give you a definite answer.)

You need to finish up.  You are too far down the road.

It is very natural to be close to the end and look at your Ph.D. and think you could have done more ("I coulda been a contender.")  But you need to resist the impulse.  The first 3 years are sunk. You can't go back.
You have the rest of your life to do useful science.  Just collect the sheepskin (even if your advisor wasn't that smart or your project that momentous.)  You can go after good future work just as easily with a Ph.D. as without one.  In many ways easier and at at least marginally higher pay.
Your goal is to be an independent researcher.  It is normal for grad students to transition to this during their career.  Some of them lag and still need supervision as postdocs, but some are basically great indepedent scientists halfway through the Ph.D.  Do NOT hang out in the comfortable quasi-adolescent world of studentdom.  Get that Ph.D. to show you are an independent thinker (it is the credential for that) and move on.
There are a LOT of ways that a new Ph.D. could go wrong. (bad advisor, money, experiments not working, etc.) Yeah, this guy is a nebish.  But at least you are not working with a jerk (and there are plenty of tin pot dictators in academia).  Count your lucky stars and just move on and do your own thing.  Sure he wasn't the perfect father figure mentor. But you need to do your own thing.  Maybe you can be a better mentor for others when it is your turn or you can be a better scientist/engineer.
It WILL look bad that you made this switch, especially at this stage in your career.

Net/net:  let the dissatisfaction (very common, I had it too) to be motivation to finish early.  Not to try to recreate a better experience and stay longer.

Anecdote:  I had same feelings during my Ph.D.  Was basically done with my work 2 years in but dissatisfied...advisor was nice but not a cutting edge scientist.  We got along mostly but clashed at times since I really didn't need him for anything.  He gave me one fair piece of advice (graduate early), but I failed to take it.  Hung out for 4 years and did an extra project when I really could have been out in 3 (or faster).  And I had money saved from previous work.  And it is a nice lifestyle in some ways to be a grad student (beats working).  But same time, it was a waste...should have moved on faster.

You are actually putting yourself in way more danger by moving to something new and having some 7 year plus of Ph.D. time.  Even from a personal perspective you are not getting any younger and you won't have the same fire in your belly at 50 as at 30.  Move on and don't spend your whole youth in student-dom.


Include code snippet which is licensed under the MIT License in a paper My paper is about a software I created which uses part of another software licensed under the MIT license. It is available on Github and includes a copy of the MIT license correctly. Additionally the paper cites the repository.

I want to to include a code snippet of the other software in my paper, but the code is licensed on Github with the MIT License.

Currently I include the code and cite the source for it, is there anything more I need to do?

The MIT License is very permissive. You can certainly do what you suggest.

Quoting:

  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: