If you change your name while doing research, can you list both names on a publication? If you change your name, can you list both names as authors?

For example, consider a PhD student named John Doe who after finishing his PhD undergoes a sex change and name change to Jane Doe before starting a postdoc. After the sex change Jane continues to work on a project that she started as a PhD student. Assume that the authors on the resulting paper are the PhD advisor, the postdoc advisor and Jane/John Doe. Can both Jane and John be listed? What happens if Jane never worked on the project, can she be the author or does it have to be John?

This is indeed a weird question, though not an uninteresting one.

Fundamentally a name is a pointer to a person, of a formalized and official sort, but of course for every person there are multiple phrases that point to them.  Any article byline gives a mapping to the set of objects named, and the idea that perhaps this function need not or should not be one-to-one is a very curious one.  I don't know a general principle to invoke from which to deduce the "injectivity of authorial bylines", but multiple names pointing to the same person would be highly nonstandard and powerfully confusing to many.

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that your example of a name change is motivated by a sex change.  Name changes are common occurrences for people of all genders, and the percentage of name changes which are motivated by issues of gender identity and/or sex changes is very small.  The largest percentage is surely when people (not just women, though still more women than men) get married, and then comes people who have moved from one part of the world to another where their name is difficult to pronounce, written in a different alphabet, sounds like something undesirable in the language of their new home, and so forth.  Also papers published in one language are often translated into another, with the effect that e.g. many Russian authors are known by several moderately different names in the anglophone academic community.  Adding a clarifying note that say that multiple spellings point to the same person could be helpful.  In this recent preprint the byline is "Yuri G. Zarhin (Zarkhin)", which is perhaps the closest thing I've seen to the practice you're asking about.

However, there are nuances in your question that suggest the sex change example is not accidental: you actually mean to consider deeper issues of personal identity.  In other words, what if beyond changing their name, someone considers themself to actually be a different person? I get this for instance from

  What happens if Jane never worked on the project, can she be the author or does it have to be John?

The obvious answer is "What are you talking about? Jane Doe and John Doe are the same person.  So of course Jane worked on the project.  The fact that the name 'Jane' was not applied to this person while she was working on the project is totally irrelevant."  However, it could be that Jane feels that she is really a different person from John.  Maybe she arranges [illegally, perhaps; I don't know how this works] to get a new social security number and otherwise systematically denies and delinks her new identity from her old one.  In that case it could be meaningful -- even critical -- to her that Jane didn't work on the project, rather John did.  However, though Jane's perspective is a highly interesting one, it is not going to hold up in the practicalities of an academic career, as she presumably wants to regard John's training and credentials as her own.  If she tries to make a CV of Jane Doe's work only, she is going to at best confuse everyone and more likely shoot herself in the foot.

It would be worth hearing from a transgendered academic [I am not one] for more nuances about this.  My understanding is that the above exigencies essentially require them to explain carefully in their CV that they have changed their name from John Doe to Jane Doe and thus cannot professionally behave like they are two different people.  If you are including the identity "John Doe = Jane Doe" anyway, then if it has deep personal significance to you to list yourself as John Doe on a paper that you worked on while you were John Doe even though you now sign all your papers Jane Doe, you can make that choice (and certainly it is your choice: the idea of anyone else telling you what to do here is somewhere between cruel and absurd).  What you cannot do is list both John Doe and Jane Doe as authors.  Well, not unless you wish to be truly transgressive: perhaps there are some areas of academia in which the jarring, confusing nature of such a byline would be viewed positively.


When an academic researcher decides to file for a patent, where does the budget to pay for the patent-related costs typically come from? When an academic researcher decides to file for a patent, where does the budget to pay for the patent-related costs typically come from? From the academic researcher's budget? From the University's intellectual property/legal budget? From somewhere else?

In my experience, in the United States, patenting is typically provided as a service by the university, budgeted to its intellectual property office (or equivalent).

Since the university typically owns the rights to all work done by its employees, it is more or less compulsory for them to use its services if they wish to patent.  Moreover, many of these organizations will actively solicit interactions with faculty and offer them assistance in patenting as otherwise many faculty will not bother to patent things the university might be interested in licensing.

For most universities, this office is probably able to effectively pay for itself via licensing fees, though there might be any number of complexities in how the actual accounting might be done.


Is a diploma updated in new request? When requesting the diploma/transcript for a new job, the transcript is signed by the current registrar, as transcript has issuance date. However, a diploma does not have issuance date (only the date awarded). Will the university reprint the diploma with its original signatures or generate a new diploma with signatures of current university officials?

I mean is it possible to check when a diploma has been issued from its signature or the signatures are always the same as the original print on the date awarded?

Will the university reprint the diploma with its original signatures or generate a new diploma with signatures of current university officials?

The policy depends on the university.  For example, replacement diplomas from Harvard include the names of the officials who were in office at the time the original diploma was issued, but without signatures, while those from Stanford include the names and signatures of the current officials.  Some casual web searching suggests that Stanford's policy is more common, but it's certainly not universal.

  However, a diploma does not have issuance date (only the date awarded).

Reissued diplomas are typically marked as such.  For example, this is part of both Harvard and Stanford's policies, and web searching suggests it's very widespread.


How to address email to professor your advisor knows My advisor recommended I email a well-known professor at another institution because of our shared interests.

He said I should use his name in my email so I'm good on that.

I (of course) refer to professors in my department and other professors who I have met by their first name. But having never met this particular person I am wondering what the least awkward least offensive most professional salutation would be in an email to hopefully set up a meeting.

Probably "Dear Professor [name], I am a student of Professor [your advisor's surname], and (s)he suggested that I write to you about ..."

At worst, a bit of excess formality may seem silly, but it will not seem disrespectful or rude, in any case.


Can I send math subject GRE scores to programs that do not require them? I'm applying math graduate program and know that some program reads "gre math subject is not required". Does that mean I can't send gre subject score to them?

And if I also want to apply cs program, can I send gre math sub score to them to exhibit my mathematical ability?

You can still send it in. You can always add more information to your application, but there is no guarantee that they will consider it. I know a few schools have stopped asking for GRE subject scores because they don't feel that it's a good way to predict performance, and if that is the case they will not look at it. Assuming you have a good score, it will not count against you.


What should/can I do on finding an error in a published article? Recently I found a paper that has a number of typographical errors, esp in equations. Should one notify the authors or the publishers on such issues? How do the approach change if the article is somewhat aged?

When should/can one write a 'Comments on ...' article? How different is an Errata and a 'Comments on ...' article?

Here's what I would suggest:

First, alert the authors to the issues. Wait to see how they respond, or do not respond. But in all cases, they should be the first you write to.
If the issues do not severely impact the correctness of the work or its utility, stop there. It's probably not worth making a fuss about something most readers will either not use, or can easily correct themselves.
If you publish something on the topic yourself, especially if you build on the authors' equations or otherwise use them, you should make a note of the issue in your article.
Finally, if you believe the issue is important and/or the equations are widely used, you should contact the journal's editor and ask for guidance.

Errata are “authored” by the original authors. Publisher's corrections also exist, when the responsibility for the issue (typo in equation, misprint in figures, etc.) is that of the publisher.


I drunkenly told a professor something fundamentally wrong about a friend's thesis work. Should I clarify and/or apologize? TL;DR: I told a professor something fundamental about a friends' work that is absolutely wrong, and I should have known, but I was drunk. Will it help the situation if I clarify and apologize via e-mail?

Yesterday evening I attended a festivity at my old university. I got drunk and talked to a professor who is working in a field related to my studies.
In particular, I told him that a friend and coworker of mine did his master thesis on a topic that is related to a project the professor is working on. However, I got it mixed up and this is not true. He appeared surprised and said he was going to look into that.

Now I regret getting drunk and I am wondering whether I should email him to clarify (and apologize). Either he did know that I was in the wrong, and did not correct me out of politeness, or he will actually ask around and several people will know that I gave the professor wrong information. The latter option would be very embarrassing to me, since I actually attended my friends' thesis defense and I know what it was about.

I don't see why Germany should be any different from other places, but generally it is a good idea to apologize for stupid things said drunkenly. And since this may have a bearing on the reputation of a third party you probably have an obligation to make sure the record is correct.

Sooner is better than later in such things, so the professor doesn't spend effort on a lost cause.


Giving talks on ongoing, unpublished research (dangers of getting scooped?) In my school sometimes the graduate students have to give a talk on what they are up to, i.e. present their ongoing research. Often at this stage the work is not published yet. This is an internal event within the school, within the department. The audience are mainly other graduate students, and professors.

Are there any tips to give such a talk? More specifically, how to reduce the risk (if any) of getting scooped, and ideas stolen? The context is in the subject of mathematics/ mathematical sciences.

Thanks a lot.

Getting ideas stolen is a common fear when starting out (or at least all my Ph.D. students had that worry, and I did too when I was one) but it is much less common that one would think. While the risk does exist, the benefits of opening your research to get feedback from other people greatly outweigh it. Keeping your research secret is just not worth it.

In any case, if you want to reduce the risk, something that you can do is (paradoxically) open up even more! Announce the talk at your website, put your slides online, tweet about it, etc. This means that there will be publicly available evidence that you had ongoing research on topic X by date Y, so prospective scoopers would be easily exposed.


Applying for a faculty job without history of external grants I have worked in a research institute (R&D for a parent company) for 10 years after my postdoc. I used to teach occasionally as an adjunct professor. Despite our R&D theme, I have an excellent record of publication (comparable with my peers in terms of quality and quantity; unquestionably good). However, I never applied for external funding, as our research fund was directly provided by the institute.

I applied for some faculty positions but unsuccessful. They didn't give me a detailed feedback but mentioned that a criterion for the job is "demonstrated success in securing external funding".

Should I give up? Because this is something I cannot do anything about it. Unless I assume a faculty position I cannot send research proposals for external funding. And if this is a mandatory condition, I can never assume a faculty position.

I understand that external funding is important for universities, but I wasn't unsuccessful, just didn't need to apply because of my job. I understand that proposal writing might be different but my successful research shows that I can write winning proposals too. I have conducted all my research projects based on initial proposals, but they were internal.

While having a history of external grants is helpful, it is not mandatory. I was in a similar position as you were, and managed to secure several offers. What you need to do is have good answers prepared for these two things:

Why Not?: In my case, as with yours, I was in a research institute, which meant things were supported by large grants that were well beyond my "pay grade" to pursue, and where the priorities for postdocs were producing research and doing the things that kept funders happy, rather than chasing new funding. People were very understanding of these sorts of positions.

How Will This Change?: Given you don't have a track record of getting external funding, you need to be able to articulate how you will go about getting one. Having a clear idea of what mechanisms you'll target, how you'll frame your research that way, etc.

Basically, you need to frame not having grants as a deliberate, strategic choice in your old position that will change in your new one as you become an independent researcher.


Strange Sign on Lab Door I saw a strange sign on a door to a geophysics lab in a museum in Switzerland. I was really curious about what it means and wanted to know if anyone is familiar with this sign.

Here's the full image of the door so you can see the context/type of work going on in the lab.

I notice that the sign:

Doesn't quite match the other signs for scale or style
Isn't obvious in what it's communicating (unlike normal warning signs)
Looks like a monster (apparently "We Must All Stop ManBearPig" from South Park):        .

I conclude that it's a joke by the museum staff, much like this "velociraptor-free workplace" sign at the Field Museum in Chicago.


Is it rude for me to ask professors for assignments in advance of the class starting? I will be starting my first semester of an online graduate program in ~20 days. Because of my full-time position, I am expecting things to be quite chaotic over the next month or so and I have considered asking the professors whose classes I will be taking for homework assignments (not exams or lecture notes) in advance, prior to the courses starting, so that I can finish them as soon as possible.

The material in this program is not new to me; judging by the textbook, I am very familiar with a lot of the material and would rather spend the time teaching myself what I don't know now before the courses begin, if possible.

Would making such a request be considered rude, and if not, how would you suggest wording such a request?

It's not rude, but the professor might want to adjust the assignments later on, in which case he/she won't be able to satisfy your request. So go ahead making the request simply being honest in the wordings, but be prepared to be denied.


Trying to get into undergraduate research, is it discouraged to contact both the PhD students and the professor? I attend a university with a fairly large undergraduate computer science program - our introduction to programming course was ~1400 students during the last fall semester and many of the upper division courses have 400-500 students.

I am interested in doing research to gain experience and to get to know a few professors, but it is difficult to get in contact with said professors because of the course sizes.

Given this situation, I am thinking about skipping the step of trying to get in contact with the professor I am interested in researching with and directly contact the PhD students with interesting projects.

On the other hand, it seems that contacting a professor may expose me to more interesting projects that I didn't know he/she is involved in.

Is it discouraged to contact both the PhD students and the professor?

Some universities and faculty are more interested in getting undergraduates involved in research than others. I've had quite a few undergraduate students do research with me with great success (publications even). I've never taught at a university with a PhD in CS though - my institutions encouraged undergraduate research and often even provided funding for it.

I would recommend against approaching PhD students to work on their research unless directed to do so by their advisor - they are focusing their time and energy on finishing their degrees as well as any research/teaching duties assigned by the university. You can ask graduate students for advice on which professors are interested in working with undergraduates - they usually know the faculty pretty well.

As far as professors, there are a few different approaches. Your department should have research seminars - probably more than one - have you been attending? They are usually open to anyone who is interested and it's a good way to hear about interesting research. If the faculty member you are interested in working with has a research group with a seminar series then sitting in on that is also a good way to show that you're serious about doing research with them (but ask if that's ok!). Figure out a specific faculty member or research group you're interested in - you're more likely to get a positive response if you can demonstrate knowledge of what they are doing and genuine interest (in the research - not just in getting a recommendation letter!).

Does your department have programs for undergraduate research? Many have summer scholar programs that partner students with faculty or with research labs. Faculty who have grant money can often get extra funding to pay an undergraduate to work with them.

The other thing you can do is to look into Research Experience for Undergraduate programs - summer programs where you'd go to another university to do research. They are competitive to get into though so it's another situation where you'll need a letter of reference. This can be from someone whose class you've taken (I've written them for my students).


Is it allowable to use an organization's name to publish a paper in a conference, even after I graduate from it? I just graduated from my university, and I have a paper to submit to a conference. I was filling out the information to submit my work to them, but I am not sure what to put as my organization. Since I have now graduated from the university, can I still use their name to publish my work? If the answer is no, is there any solution to get my work published?

The affiliation to your name on a publication should reflect where most of the work was done and where most of the funding came from.

Scenario 1
You just graduated and you want to publish your results in a paper. The manuscript will be written after graduation, but essentially all the results come from pre-graduation work. The affiliation is clearly the university where you graduated.

Scenario 2
You just graduated and continue researching on the topic. The new paper is an extension of your previous work, but all the work has been done by you after graduation. The affiliation is clearly not the university where you graduated. All the previous work should be cited accordingly. You can submit a paper independently, but it will be easier with a university affiliation. Talk to your former supervisor for advice.

Scenario 3 (in between 1 and 2)
You just graduated and you did some new research after graduation. However, a non-neglible part of the manuscript is from before graduation. In this case, you should talk to your former supervisor and ask for their opinion. In my opinion, they will be more than happy to have the paper submitted under their affiliation.

This answer is an extension of what Vladimir F said in the comments.


What should I be asking when publishing my materials with for-profit websites? I am a published academic, and I have a commercial for-profit website asking me to volunteer my some original work (that has not been published anywhere) for publishing with them on their site. They have stated that they will ensure that I am given credit for my work with my name and credentials after my articles.   I am concerned that I am being taken advantage of. Are there questions that I should be asking?

Money.

Or clear evidence that "Credit for your work and your name after your articles" will manifest itself as a benefit to you in some clear way.

While the currency of academia is published articles, these won't really count for that (which you clearly know already). You're being asked to supply a commercial entity with product (content) for free. There needs to be some benefit to you.

What you have essentially just been approached with is the classic "It will look good in your portfolio" line that companies use to try to get free writing or art out of creative professionals. They shouldn't do it, and neither should you.

That being said, it's possible just being there is a benefit to you if you want your name out in the public sphere (for example, if you want to work mainly in public health communication, enjoy outreach, etc.) But it doesn't sound like that's true at the moment.


If boss is my PhD supervisor, is a wage negotiation inadequate? I got the offer to do a PhD at an university while being employed at a company. In that scenario, my boss is also my supervisor.

Is it inadequate to start negotiations about my wage I get from the company?

I am asking since I come from Germany, where there is a standard wage for scientific staff. So, I cannot change what I get from uni, but that does not hold for my job within the company. Eventually my boss expects me to accept the standard wage for the company job too, but I generally have good arguments to get more money, e.g. work experience, talent and good motivation. However, I want to avoid that he cancels the offer due to inadequate behavior from my side.

Thanks in advance for ideas!

P.S.: Comments about if the constellation boss=supervisor is problematic are also welcome!

Your post has the unusual feature that part of your first question actually answers your second question. Namely, you write:

  However, I want to avoid that he cancels the offer due to inadequate behavior from my side.

and then ask

  Comments about if the constellation boss=supervisor is problematic are also welcome!

Well, yes, it's indeed quite problematic, and that is precisely related to your worry about your boss/supervisor rescinding the offer. What's got you worried is that there is a huge, glaring conflict of interest here: one person is making decisions that two separate people should be making on behalf of two separate entities with very different interests. There might be some rare individuals who have the ability to separate their different interests and act objectively and without malice in a situation like this, but I fear that the mere fact this person has put himself in such a conflicted position already does not send out a very reassuring signal about his common sense and good judgment. Consider this: if I were in a similar situation and through some unlikely turn of events ended up as a dual boss/supervisor looking to employ and supervise the same person (something I'd be already very wary of doing and try my best to avoid), the first thing I would do is to bend over backwards to reassure my student/employee that I am taking every step imaginable to separate or manage my conflicted interests, for example by emphasizing repeatedly and vocally that the discussion of the student/employee's salary in the commercial employment will have no effect whatsoever on their graduate school funding or supervision, or by having the salary negotiation be done by a different person in my company, or taking various other measures to alleviate any concerns the prospective student/employee might have. From your question it sure doesn't sound like he has given you any such reassurances, which suggests he doesn't consider anything about the situation to be problematic -- not a good sign.

Now, I'm not saying such hybrid PhD/commercial employment arrangements never happen or cannot be made to work. Maybe his intentions are completely noble, and maybe in Germany there are cultural norms that make such behavior acceptable. But based on the details you've provided, and from my (U.S.-centric) point of view, this situation raises some serious red flags. Honestly, this whole arrangement doesn't sound like a good idea, which makes the question about salary negotiation a bit moot in my opinion. Before starting to talk about salary, I'd want to have a good long discussion with the prospective boss/supervisor about the viability of the arrangement, including discussing specific details about how you can make sure that he will not be incentivized to abuse his dual position of authority over you.


How can a software developer best volunteer to help childhood cancer research? I have 30 years of professional experience as a software engineer and I'm at the point in my career where I can volunteer lots of time. I have helped with several childhood cancer organizations over the years but mostly was pulled into raising money.

At this point in my life, I would like to help with a closer connection to the research aspect in either finding a cure, better medicines/trials, or similar. I do not have experience in the sciences, bioinformatics, etc. but I am willing to learn. Where do I best find researchers in the field of childhood cancer (which I know very well is many different cancers) who might be looking for the help of a software developer?

I work in a biomedical field and most of us are awful programmers. We tend to be more interested in getting the underlying back-end algorithm to work than worrying about the front-end, comments, documentation, version control, unit tests, etc.

My suggestion, would be to look through the web pages at a nearby university and see if you can identify someone doing something you think is interesting, preferably something computational. Then email the PI explaining your skills and experience and that you would like to volunteer to help people with their programming and that you could help people move to the next level of using tools like version control and work with them on documentation and the front end.


How to email the heads of a department asking about whether they accept applications from undergraduates from a different discipline? I'm an electronics engineering sophomore at an Indian university, particularly interested in quantum computing, quantum information theory and quantum engineering. However, the problem I'm facing is that we do not have the possibility to take up extra theory courses in computer science (e.g. complexity theory, analysis of algorithms) or mathematics (topology, differential geometry, discrete mathematics, etc). I feel these theory courses are extremely important to understand quantum computing properly (more so, with stuff like topological quantum computing and relativistic quantum information, coming up). By the end of the 4 years of my undergraduate course while I'll likely be having sufficient background for further study in the area of quantum "engineering", I feel I'll be lacking in the theoretical aspects. For the record, I do have some experience with research in the area of quantum computing (I'm currently pursuing a undergraduate research project at a nearby university in my city). Also, I've been trying to learn some of the mathematics and computer science topics on my own, using various online resources.

For that reason I was thought if it would be possible for me to apply for a masters degree in computer science/mathematics, after my undergrad, before directly applying for a PhD in quantum computing. I feel that such a masters degree focused on the theory would make my PhD application stronger. A course like the one offered by Oxford: MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science would probably be perfect for me (at least that's what it seems from a reading of the course contents). But, I'm a bit worried because the acceptance rate in such courses is already very low (for example Oxford has only 17 places available in this course while on average 115 people apply for it per year).

So, in short my question is: Is it okay if I mail the head of the Math/Computer Science department head, asking whether they accept applications from electronics engineering students and what I can possibly do as an undergraduate, to improve my odds of getting accepted to such a course? (For example, the heads of activity of the Oxford's Quantum Group are listed here). Also, if yes, how should I frame my email? Suggestions are appreciated. Thank you.

There is nothing wrong with sending an email, but it should not be sent to the chair or head of the department. Instead, the relevant contact person is either:

the chair of the admissions committee, or
the head of the graduate studies program

Either of these officials in the department should be able to provide you with the requisite information. Sending it to the chair of the department is a waste of everybody's time.


How can I get a PhD position to work on solving a particular mathematics problem that I have formulated independently? I have a pure mathematics problem which I formulated after years of research in signal processing of audio signals and years going into formulating a problem on precise mathematical terms, which is a provable/disprovable mathematical statement. (I avoid using the term conjecture as I am not qualified enough)

My belief is that it has very important applications in real world signal processing. I want to solve this math problem, and I need funding, research environment, collaborators, and access to mathematicians for discussions. All this I believe is provided by a PhD position in a University that is serious about path breaking research. My goal is to solve this particular problem and not any other problem.

How can I go about achieving this goal?

Edit : summary of problem

In effect i have proposed a new formula for inverse fourier transform with no assumption on its jumps except that they are finite and absent beyond a certain point. This new formula ensures not only pointwise convergence but also convegence of variation. Classical Fourier formula does not have convegence of variation in the presence of jumps.

Unfortunately, I expect it will be difficult to find a supervisor who will take you on under these circumstances.  It's not impossible, but it will require finding exactly the right match, and that will require a lot of luck.

Here are some of the issues that will worry potential advisors:

What if the problem is too easy, and turns out not to be substantial enough for a Ph.D. thesis?  Will you drop out from graduate school in disgust?  Will you angrily insist that you signed up to write your dissertation on this topic and now they have to let you graduate?
What if the problem is too hard, and you spend several years in graduate school with no hint of progress or even the potential for future progress?  When your advisor suggests changing course, will you listen?  Or will you keep banging your head against this problem until they kick you out for lack of progress?
What if the problem doesn't end up being nearly as interesting or important as you hope?  Will you accept this outcome, or will you turn into a crackpot who insists that the rest of the research community is just wrong?
Are you too emotionally invested in this problem to judge whether you are making progress or how interesting it is?  How painful or awkward would it be to work with you on this topic?
Are you interested in learning how to do anything else besides work on this specific problem?  The purpose of a Ph.D. program is to train researchers with some breadth, not just to solve one specific problem, so you need to maintain some perspective and longer-term goals than any single problem.

It's possible that none of these issues is an actual problem, but few people will agree to supervise this thesis unless they have enough knowledge of both you and your problem to feel reassured.  Unfortunately, the bar for "enough knowledge" is probably pretty high.  I wouldn't do it unless I knew you relatively well and had spent some time thinking seriously about the problem.  This is not going to happen during the ordinary graduate admissions process.

Instead, I think you're probably best off not worrying too much about graduate admissions, and instead just focusing on convincing people that this is an important problem.  If you can make a real intellectual connection with a professor based on this problem, then you can explore whether it might be a suitable topic for a Ph.D. thesis.  Otherwise, applying to graduate school for the sole purpose of working on this problem is likely to be fruitless.

(To be clear, I might be wrong about this, but it's my impression based on the limited information in your question.)


Publication from PhD thesis my PhD thesis is very comprehensive and contains a lot of data.
My advisor says that we need to publish this thesis in 2 parts. (two interconnected articles, different findings but the same material).
In this case, would it be a problem to publish it as 2 different papers? There will be different findings in both but there is the same material as it is produced from the same thesis.
Would it be more advantageous to send both articles to the same journal or to different journals?

What a journal will publish is up to them. So, whether is is a problem is up to the editor(s). There is an advantage to readers if the two articles are in the same journal, but also if you just publish a single long article. I doubt that it matters much for your reputation whether the two articles are in the same or different journals. Having two papers instead of one is good, but having a longer, highly significant, single paper is also good.

But, let me point out that you may be building in a problem for yourself with two papers. It is possible (likely?) that the novelty and impact of each of the two papers is lower than that of a single paper. If that is the case, then you lessen the likelihood of either getting published. But you know the material and you may be fine here.

I would proceed strategically, however. First outline the two articles and get a good sense that both would pass the threshold of publish-ability. Your advisor can give good advice here. Then, develop one of the papers completely (rather than both) and get it off to the most appropriate journal. While that paper is in progress with the journal, develop the second paper. Make a decision about whether and where to send it based on what you hear about the first paper.

This gets you into the process earlier than if you spend the time to complete both papers and also gives you feedback.

In the worst case that the first paper is rejected or requires a lot of revision, you can then submit the other to the same or another journal, or, potentially, make a further strategic decision about how to proceed.

This seems, to me, to be a better option than spending time to develop both to the same level and sending them both together. But that is only an opinion.


Send updated manuscript before referees' response Is it common to send an updated manuscript to a publisher before the initial referees' report, if you have fixed a number of typos and ambiguities in the meantime?

EDIT: By fixing ambiguities, I mean for example writing down definitions that were previously just implied, or adding short examples every here and there.
That is, I think the changes I made are likely to help the referee understanding the manuscript.
The manuscript is on a mathematical subject.

There is nothing you can typically do during review -- the reviewers have received their copy of the manuscript that they were asked to review, and as an editor I would leave it at that even if I got an updated version. My response (in different words) to the author would have been "Well, these are things you should have thought about before submitting the paper."

But assuming the first version wasn't terrible, you will get the opportunity to roll your changes into any revisions you make in response to the reviewer comments.


What does it mean when a department has 'retired professors' as part of their faculty? Can I still work with them? What exactly does this mean? Could I do work with them? If not, why are they listed there? I am confused!

Retired (or emeritus) faculty are generally not available as research advisors for graduate students, although depending on the university's and department's policies, a retired faculty member may be able to hire postdocs and other technical staff ("soft-money" positions that can be eliminated if the funding isn't there).

As for why they're listed: in many cases, retired faculty still retain some active affiliation and involvements with their departments. For instance, they may be involved advising undergraduate students, teaching classes, or continuing to do their own research, but absent a group to work with. (As an undergraduate, there was one chemistry emeritus professor who was still working in the laboratory—at age 80!)


My original data is in someone else's thesis without my knowledge or consent I encountered in a Master's thesis some of my original and important findings. I finished my experiments and left the lab to home to write and while I was writing my supervisor put my data into someone else's thesis.

Funnily enough the data is also in my thesis but masters thesis came earlier. Even though, I am the original observer, I have the position who did plagiarism.

What is the best action to take?

In a case like this, the most important first step to take is preserve all written records. In particular, you need to have the proof that you were the one who collected the data—perhaps it’s in the form of laboratory notebooks in your own handwriting, emails showing that you were the one who collected the data, or anything else that unambiguously shows that you were the data collector. This protects you from any charge of wrongdoing.

The second step is deciding if you want to take action in this matter. If you feel the use of the data is sufficiently problematic and you are willing to deal with the fallout of reporting your advisor and a fellow grad student for plagiarism, then you should cautiously proceed. However, if no one has raised any issues and you don’t want to make an issue out of it, it is understandable that you might want to wait until you are no longer directly part of the group before taking any action (or doing so anonymously).


Can mathematics professors do consulting work external to their university? Is it generally true that mathematics professors do not / cannot engage in consulting work external to their universities?

If I'm not mistaken, plenty of business school / law school / economics professors do consulting work, in addition to their academia work (researching + teaching).

I have heard of one reason, from one of our professors in numerical analysis:  for example, a company like eBay.com or Amazon.com would never agree to show its proprietary algorithms to a math professor, without the professor (and his / her school) agreeing that the work to be done is then owned by the company and not by the school -- and even the emails would be monitored.  In turn, the school would never agree to this sort of arrangement, and so nothing would ever get off the ground.  And that it wouldn't be worth the risk to an eBay or an Amazon to pay for the expertise of a math professor.

So, are there instances of academia mathematicians working something out with industry and doing external consulting work?

Thanks,

Is it generally true that mathematics professors do not / cannot engage in consulting work external to their universities?

No, it's not true. Doing external consulting may be less common among mathematics professors than among faculty in certain other academic disciplines, but it's fairly common nonetheless. The professor would need to make sure that the consulting arrangement they are entering into is compatible with their other responsibilities, and specifically (in connection to the theory you mentioned in the question) the intellectual property policy of their university. While this issue is not something to be casually dismissed and certainly it can create difficulties in some cases, there are still many consulting opportunities in which the work the professor wants to do would not be in conflict with their institutions' IP policies. Examples may include:

The professor is on unpaid leave from their institution so the IP policy doesn't apply.
The professor is doing the consulting over the summer when they are not receiving a salary, so again the IP policy doesn't apply.
The consulting work is of a kind that generates deliverables such as code or data analysis that the IP policy doesn't apply to. Specifically, in the U.S. all university IP policies I'm familiar with apply only to patentable inventions and do not cover copyrightable content, which remains the property of the faculty member. If the consulting work does not require anything sufficiently creative that it might result in a patent, there is no conflict. (Of course, the professor still needs to make the contracting company aware of their IP-related commitments and let the company make the decision about whether they are willing to take the risk of losing rights to a valuable patent. It seems likely that some companies in some situations would be averse to entering such an arrangement, as you described in the question.)
The consulting work is in an area sufficiently unrelated to the professor's area of research that the IP policy doesn't cover the work.
The professor takes sufficient care to perform the consulting work on their personal time and without using any university resources. In that case, depending on the legal jurisdiction it may be the case that the IP policy cannot legally apply to them, since courts in certain places have ruled that an employer does not own work their employee has created in the employee's private time and using private resources, even when the employer claims otherwise.

Finally, I was discussing consulting to commercial enterprises, but mathematics professors also engage in various other forms of consulting to governmental and non-profit organizations, where IP restrictions would usually not be much of a consideration. For example, in the U.S. it is quite common for professors to be invited to sit on panels for the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. This is a form of paid consulting, although it usually doesn't pay very much.


Journal requests reviewers' comments from previous submission to other journals Someone I know is submitting her work to a scientific journal. As part of the submission process she is requested to include in the cover letter the reviewers' comments, should the manuscript had already been submitted to other journals previously. The journal's rationale for such a request is that this expedites the acceptance process.

How is this information used by the journal in the acceptance process? What are the pros and cons of providing this information?

I haven't encountered this myself, but as an editor, I think it would work in the author's favour if:

The review comments were generally positive, but the first submission was to a higher impact journal with a very high bar for acceptance; or
The review comments were mixed, but the authors have convincingly addressed all the major criticisms in revision the manuscript before submitting it to the second journal.

In this case, the author benefits because the editor and reviewers for the new journal are likely to treat the paper as a revision rather than an initial submission, so the re-review may be faster and requested revisions may be more likely to be minor.

It would work against the author if:

The review comments were very negative or impossible to address in revisions; or
The authors have chosen not to revise the manuscript and respond to reviewers' comments; or
The original submission was sent to a journal that the editor of the second journal believes has low standards for acceptance.

In this case, as an author, I would be inclined not to comply with the request.


My first day as a teacher, how should I proceed? Quick background; I study Computer Science and have been asked to take the role as a paid student teacher for college students.

I am extremely nervous about it, although it's a fairly familiar role as I'll be teaching what I learned only three years previous.

I'm far from the extrovert type and as such, find it really difficult to hold a room.  How do I keep the attention and respect of students that are almost my age?

Calm down! easier said than done. Remember you know more than they do but do not put on a suit that does not fit. If you get questions you cannot answer, do not get nervous, simply say: it is a good question and you will check up the answer. Don't start putting out excuses that you are inexperienced, haven't done this before, or whatever. Let what you do speak for itself, I am sure it is more than fine.

Now that the emergency is over, what can you do? Be prepared. Check out the material ahead of time and if you are in a lab or have to help out in exercises, run through them yourself to figure out where problems may arise. This takes a little time but will help you run things smoothly. In the case of a lecture situation, you also need to be prepared, read up on the material, make a good series of slides. Show what you plan to do to someone more experienced to perhaps get feedback and pointers on improvements. A typical rookie mistake is to overwork things, put too much stuff into a lecture and set the level too high. Assessing the right level is something you learn but if you have a chance to look at others' lectures or perhaps go back to what you experienced, you may be able to find your level quicker.

If yo want a quick check on what you have done you can do a quick feedback at the end. Give each person a small piece of paper (e.g. index card) and have them write one or a couple of things they found good on one side and something they think could be improved on the other. Do not use the word "bad" on that side, you want to know what you did well and what might improve. Collect the feedback and check it immediately. It may help you get a sense of how you came across. You can do this on a regular basis if time permits.

In the end, it is tough to get started, we have all been there with different amounts of self-confidence, experience etc. Expect some things to go less well, it is bound to happen, we all have off days. If something is less well, use it to improve. Use your colleagues as support if you find it rough, everyone has some experience of that sort.

I wish you luck. It can be really fun to teach. Look for pointers on teaching on the web and check out journals for higher ed. teaching to get ideas. There is no reason to approach teaching less seriously than what one would do, say research. The butterflies you will inevitably feel when you start will disappear and your confidence will grow with experience. Just keep calm and on top of matters.


How many co-authors are enough? I am doing research in an industrial organization. Now, I have written a paper describing my work and outcomes. The idea was completely envisaged by me and the paper was written solely be me.  It was an outcome of a funded research project, but the research done was no where in the scope of the work, and I managed to squeeze time to do this work.

Now, I am confused on whom to include in my co-authors lists.
I have only one teammate, with whom I worked in the project but didn't take any help for doing this area of work and writing the paper. But I think he deserves to be a co-author since we discussed various related things.
I also gave the paper for review to my reporting officer who gave a few grammatical suggestions and tips on paper writing.

Now, the problem is, I have two more level of hierarchy above my reporting officer one of them being the director of the organization. Would it be ethical to include their names as co-authors when no discussion was made with them regarding this or should they be acknowledged ?
Note: The usual practice in my organization is to keep your superiors name before yourself(some red tapism probably), and I have already violated that by keeping myself as first author(thanks to ASE).

People who have made no intellectual or scientific contribution to a paper should not be listed as authors. So, unless your upper-level supervisors have had an active role in designing the project, carrying it out, or writing the papers, they should be excluded. This is the practice normally carried out in corporate environments.


Is it acceptable for professors to send letter of recommendation via a personal email? I am applying to mathematics graduate programs in the United States. One of my professors does not like to use his official university email address that is listed on the departmental website. According to him, it is difficult to use and he never monitors it. He wants to use his personal (AT&T) email address to submit the letter. I am worried that if he uses his personal address, someone could think it is a ploy by me to submit a fake letter or something. That being said, a quick Google search immediately yields several links from his official university website that lists his personal email. Is this acceptable?

I would not worry about this

Professors using personal email is not uncommon.  I have encountered this multiple times in the past.  In academia, there are fewer standards of professionalism and is a lot more freedom for people to do what they want (compared to the business world, for example, where using personal email would typically be frowned upon).  A professor using personal email for work communication just isn't that unusual.

The sender's email address is not a good way to verify identity, anyway.  Nobody should be relying on this as a way to verify that something really came from a sender, because your professor's work email could easily be spoofed, with no completely reliable way to detect it.  Here is one discussion of that on Security Stack Exchange.  Of course, even if it is not reliable someone still might do it.  But these days, practically everyone has experience of spam that appeared to come from someone they know.  Hopefully people are not using the "from" field on the email to verify anything important.

If anyone did suspect fraud, the logical response would be to check.  In this case, that would mean getting in touch with the professor and discovering the letter really was from him.  It's exceedingly unlikely that they would discard your application based on the mere suspicion of fraud, without any real evidence (and doing so would be extreme incompetence on their part).


Can it be unfair when the same referee reviews a manuscript again at a different journal? I know it is fairly common to review the same paper twice. However, I want to ask whether this can be unfair to the authors.

I recently had a paper rejected in two very prestigious applied math journals. Both times I received one very good review and both times I received the same very negative review (with minor adjustments to accomodate for the improved manuscript).

The problem is that the negative review is blatantly wrong and off the mark, criticizing everything and not suggesting anything specific. It seems to be a very peculiar opinion about my paper, written by someone that can only appreciate his own views of the subject.

It seems unfair to me that one single person was able to ruin my chances in both journals, with a possibly odd opinion. When I was at the other end of this situation, I denied to review the paper for a second time, as I'd want the authors to have a fresh judgement of their work.

So, can it be that our common policy of giving multiple reviews of the same paper, especially when we don't propose any improvement to be done, is unfair to the authors as we can be the ones wrong?

And can I, as an author, do something about this situation?

If you have concerns that the reviewer isn't being fair or just, you can always contact the editor and ask for a new reviewer. It is not entirely uncommon, I know of researchers that have a "blacklist" of people that they do not allow to review their works.

But consider that the reviewer might have a point. I know it is not your case, but I get really disappointed when I get the same paper twice and it is exactly the same text. Regardless if is the same process or not, a proper review would most likely improve the paper, so to see that not even the typos got fixed (in my case) is hard.

More to the point, how did you change your paper to make sure nobody else reading it would reach the same conclusions as this reviewer?


Rude interviewer on an interview panel I just had an interview for a role that was a perfect fit for me. This is a research role in a University. During the interview, the professor who was making the hire commented on how my skills in computational modelling was a close fit to his research project including the amount of upper division quantitative units I have taken; in my undergraduate program I took two math and two physics units every semester.

Of the remaining two other guys in their 50s, one was constantly berating my Alma Mater for being slightly lower ranked than this current University.
He also berated my average GPA without taking into account the level and load of the units I was enrolled in.
In addition, he was constantly berating my long term career goal while also putting down Elon Musk and the national research group of the country I did my undergraduate in.
He even went as far back to nit-pick my grades in middle school.
There are no standardised questions asked by the two other interviewers aside from the professor making the hiring

At some point the professor who was making the hire had to rebuke this old man who was on the panel.

Throughout the interview, I politely yet logically articulated my argument as to why his views were flawed.

To be honest, I was shocked at how the interview turned out given the culture in academia and research.

Is there anything I should do in the future if something similar comes up? How common is this?

You have nice and professional and less nice and less professional people in every field, you unfortunately met one of the less nice people. The fact that other members publicly rebuked him shows that you are not alone in your interpretation that his behavior was not OK.

The important (and very hard) thing to do is not to stoop to their level, and you seem to have achieved that.


Thesis: what is the difference between discussion and conclusion? I am currently writing my bachelor thesis and I would like to have a clear definition of discussion and conclusion. Preferably including a distinction between the discussion and the conclusion part.

As far as I've understood the conclusion introduces the research question (again) and supplies the a (final?!) summary of ideas / solutions as well as an evaluation of the solutions...leading to the acceptance or refusal of (research) hypotheses. No new information is given, no examples are made, no issues interpreted.

In contrast to this the discussion starts with the results right away, highlights the best results, describes the contribution / purpose of the thesis and so on. Therefore less general than conclusion; more like a detailed view on the results and keeping in mind the specific topic.

Is this right?

Can someone supply a more descriptive or formal definition?

How can we determine which texts really fit to discussion or conclusion? For example, describing the contribution in the discussion needs to somehow mention the problem, that instantly leads to the idea behind the whole thing and here we are: writing conclusion stuff into the discussion :/

Note: I'm working/writing in a STEM-discipline (would suspect that things are really different in STEM fields compared to, for example, philosophy?!)

Can someone supply a more descriptive or formal definition?

There isn't a common definition. Furthermore, how you're supposed to define formally a humans' texts.

  Is this right?

It depends on a field, country, journal, etc.... I'll give a more general and brief explanation.

Discussion unrolls the main results, explain their meanings. Put there the new questions and perspectives, describe the most interesting points for the entire field. Define the possible answers, write down why and how and what for, your suggestions.

Conclusion is a summary of the discussion or the whole work. You can put there the main points and results, their factual meaning for the field and a possible further direction. I like to describe this as "discussion's points and facts without the discussion."


Logistics of asking for letter of recommendation after graduation I graduated from by undergrad two years ago (this May) and now I am applying to law school and require letters of recommendation from my undergrad.

Although I did well in their classes and spoke with them to some extent outside the classroom, I haven't stayed in touch with my professors, so I am not sure how well they would remember me, due to the length of time.

My question is how I would logistically go about asking for LOR's. I live relatively near the University, so I could conceivably ask them in person, but it would seem odd to just drop in on them randomly (at office hours?). Would this be the best approach?

Or should I email them ahead to ask to meet? If so, should I allude to the fact that I want to discuss a letter of recommendation in these emails or should I just ask to meet without giving specifics.

Final point: I am planning on applying September, so does it seem to early to ask     in this March, or is that not an issue?

Thanks for any answers/suggestions!

Just send them an email (or make a telephone call).

Any time you ask for a reference (to include job hopping when 40), always try to help out by being brief (but explanatory) and giving info on what/why you are trying to do something AND helping the letter writer with any info on what the recipient is looking for as well as your particulars.

"Hello, Professor Buffylaw:

I was a student of yours in Euro history 1 (required) and then Babylonian Craziness Seminar (elective).

I very much appreciate the great education I got from Enormous State University and have done well as an insurance adjustor for Franco.  But I have recently decided to go back to school for a law degree.  Think I can do a good job there and the added degree will help me move ahead.

Could you write me a letter of reference for the Amco fellowship in Law for Roadrunner Devices?

I think Amco is particularly interested in candidates from ESU, so emphasizing the unique things we do here would help the cause.

For a refresher on my interaction with you:

*A in EUH01.  A+ in BCH05 (special dispensation to take course as second semester freshman).

*Strong oral presentation in round table seminars in BCH05, including debates with much more senior students with more historiography training.

*Weekly submission of 2 page (max) precis in BCH05 and mastery of the format after first two papers.


Knowing that most students submit assignments right around the deadline, is it advisable not to set deadline that is very late at night? Like many on this site, I use a Moodle-type online Content Management System to give assignments to my students, and receive the finished work for grading. This is in a traditional context where the students are physically present in the classroom, and the online part is seen as a simple tool to be used in addition to the classic paper-based route. Students' first class for the day usually begins at 8 a.m.

For the last few years, I put the deadline for assignment acceptance at midnight, with plenty of time (2-3 weeks) to do the work, so each student can handle his/her workload as they wish. These are young adults aged 18-25, and are in theory very much responsible for their acts. Observation gives us actual hand-in times with approximately the following distribution:

1-2 days before deadline: 5%
3-24 hours before: 10%
1-2 hours: 10%
less than 1 hour: 65%
emails in distress after the deadline has expired saying they have encountered a computer glitch or some other excuse: 10%

Which I guess is about par for the course. :-(

So it is clear that while in theory these students are responsible young adults, in practice they tend to plan ahead in a less than stellar way. The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation - although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines.

OK, here is the question: without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better (and possible ways in which I and other teachers could help them do so), would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day? Do I get to patent this Great Idea?

No, that last bit was a joke. ;-)

Reactions from people who are not actually teachers, but have experienced this context as a student are also welcome.

Update

I have ended up accepting the answer by Superbest below, basically because I liked his discussion of alternative possibilities. This is a bit subjective, since many other answers are also of very high quality IMHO - and I would certainly encourage the reader to peruse all the answers given here, and the varying points of view expressed (also in comments). Much appreciated.

First of all, I think the distribution that you're seeing is not very unusual, and indeed looks very similar to the distribution of times that I see coming from mature scientists submitting conference papers and grants.

It is simply that people, including your students, tend to overcommit themselves and to underestimate the difficulty of work. When that is combined with tasks on which there is a flexible amount of effort that can be invested (e.g., quality of work on an assignment), it is generally the case that "this work is done" is an ill-defined notion, and instead it gets triaged at some point of time shortly before the assignment.  Better and more prepared students (or whoever) simply climb farther up in quality before triaging.

Given that, I generally advocate for a policy of "tight deadlines, lots of mercy."  That means setting the deadline slightly before when you really want the assignment turned in, and then being very liberal about accepting requests for extension up until your secret "real deadline."

Addressing your specific question about timing, I think that if you want your students to get more sleep, moving the deadline up a couple of hours is a totally reasonable tactic: given the phenomena at work, it is unlikely to affect the distribution or quality of the assignments you receive.  Depending on how your automated system works, you may also be able to explicitly support an official deadline of 10pm, with the de facto ability to leave the submission system open longer to receive the main tranche of "just a little bit late" assignments.


Can a professor use his/her student's work as his own work? I'm studying in a college in India. I have a course with a professor who is insisting that we submit our presentations in ppt format so that he can use them as his own ppts for his later batches.

Is the professor allowed to do this?

All learning activities you do as a student of University should, ideally, serve one purpose — to benefit your learning. Your assessment is only a way of measuring this learning. All requirements/restrictions for assessment should, ideally, serve one purspose — fairness of assessment.

I see no problem in lecturer taking samples of student's work to teach next cohort, as long as these samples are properly attributed and/or anonymised as appropriate. The lecturer should not, of course, pass students' work as his/her own — this is plagiarism. Samples should be clearly marked as such.

However, working with samples is lecturer's job and it does not justify the restrictions imposed on the format of your assessment.

I can understand a requirement to submit work in a format that lecturer can read — e.g. typeset not handwritten. I can understand why files need to be submitted using a universally accessible/open format, such as pdf. Forcing student into a proprietary format with no clear benefit to their learning is a bad practice. Forcing them into this format only because the lecturer does not know how to take a page out of a pdf document is very bad practice — it only demonstrates that the lecturer is incompetent with IT. The lecturer is not using their position of power and trust to the best.

Unfortunately, the world is not ideal, and in quite a few places educational system leaves to be desired. If you decide to file a formal complaint, assess your strategy and make sure it does not backfire you. It is a good idea to consult someone local — don't act simply based on advice from the Internet.


Undergraduate research paper Is it possible to publish a research paper in economics at the under graduation level without studying it? I am doing BSc in physics math and statistics at Bangalore University. However I have independently studied economics and started doing research. How do I publish a paper? Please guide me.

Do you have a sufficient background in Economics to publish a high level research paper? I would say share your paper with a researcher/professor in Economics near you, and see if he/she thinks its a good idea to publish, from there, you can ask his experience and ask him to go forward. You need to connect with a local professor though, so I would say email one, and share your ideas (or find one at the university you're attending)


How to evaluate an open access journal? Possible Duplicate:
  How do you judge the quality of a journal?

How to evaluate the genuineness/authenticity, impact, significance & reputation of an open access journal? The prestigious journals have Impact factor & various indices, What about open access journals?

EDIT: Although a previously asked question has garnered many responses, this question is only toward open access publishing.

In the same way you evaluate quality of a non-open access journal: who are the people on the editorial board, what kind of papers do they publish, etc.


How to disseminate a methodology proposal to those who may be interested? I am currently doing research in the field of non-linear narrative design.
As it is still quite a small field, few sources and set jargon is currently available that hasn't bled in from paternal fields.
As such, I have written a proposal regarding the documentation of non-linear narrative structures.
The problem comes that not only is there no real viable place to publish this, but most tangential journals won't look at it twice as it is an unsourced inductive reasoning piece.

I feel like I'm effectively starting a subfield with this publication, so I want to do it right.

What would be the ideal way to get this paper out to those who it may interest the most?

I currently do not have an academic position, but am pursuing research on my own time.

Submit to the closest journal and cross your fingers. This is something that applies to researchers even in established fields. You've written up something and think it's great, but when you submit it to a journal that you think might like it, they send it back with a desk reject, saying it doesn't fit the scope of the journal. It happens.

Figure out which journals the people you think would be most interested in the paper normally read, and submit there.

Don't get upset if the editor sends the paper back with an "out of scope" reason. (Although if the editor makes any comments about the quality of the paper, take those very seriously.) Sometimes you have to shop a paper around until you find a journal or an editor which is receptive. Sometimes your paper has better luck in journals which are ultra-focused on a particular sub-field. Sometimes it helps to go to a journal with a broad focus, one which publishes across a wide variety of loosely related fields. With the advent of online publishing and loss of page number restrictions, there's a number of journals who are much less focused on "scope".

Don't, however, be tempted to publish in vanity or pay-to-play journals. There's a large number of predatory journals out there, which will publish any old nonsense, as long as the bank transfer clears. Publishing in these journals are really no better than tacking it to your mother's refrigerator. The point of publishing is to get others to read your paper, and no one with any sense reads these predatory journals. (Because the papers there are junk.)

Don't just propose something, do something. It sounds like your paper may be just a proposal, without any conclusions attached. These are notoriously hard to get published, even when in scope, especially if you're not a luminary in the field. The way around this is to actually use your proposal to do something concrete. Your proposal makes things better? Show an example of where it does.

This means that instead of having a paper which is "How to do Y" you can refocus the paper as "Getting X done by using Y". There might not be any journals interested in Y, but the latter paper might be interesting to a journal where X is in scope, even if they're not all that interested in Y. -- I can't help you much with specifics here, but think of situations where your paper might be useful to others. Is there notable literature with non-linear narrative? Can you apply your techniques to Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, or Don Quixote? Is there anything interesting that comes out of it? If so, you might be able to publish in a journal which is interested in those stories, even if they're not focused on non-linear narrative itself.

If you can't come up with an application that's of interest to others - if your new approach doesn't come up with any new results - then that might be an indication that your methodology just isn't worth much as it stands now. You might want to sit on it, and refine it further. Wait to publish until you have something that other people will be interested in reading.

  I currently do not have an academic position, but am pursuing research
  on my own time.

This will make things harder for you. The problem is that there's a bunch of crackpots out there, who often come up with "new" and "innovate" ways of doing things. The problem is that, on the whole, they're 1) not actually new 2) not actually useful, and 3) have gaping holes in the implementation. The problem with "outsiders" is that they typically don't understand the field well enough to know where the current problems are, what solutions have already been tried and failed, and what the typical "gotchas" are.

That might not be the case with you (though no "crackpot" thinks they're a crackpot), but being an outsider means that the editor can't easily separate your submission from that of the many crackpots who are also sending them meaningless drivel.

You can certainly get around that by exuding competence and knowledge at every step of the submission process, but it may help to find an established collaborator to help ease your transition into publishing. (Note this can mesh well with the application suggestion. You can supply the methodology, and a collaborator can supply the example application.)


Question about unpaid presentations to organizations I recently published a policy-based article in an academic journal that initially received some good attention from both practitioners and researchers.  Buoyed by the praise, I shared the publication with the Executive Directors of several nonprofit organizations that I admired in hopes that these organizations might find the arguments useful in their work (I am a both researcher and practitioner myself).

Much to my pleasant surprise, a few organizations wrote back and asked if I would have a Skype conversation with them (as well as forums of researchers with whom they have worked) to brief them on the publication and my findings.

Should I include these presentations on my CV to demonstrate my expertise on this particular policy issue?   If yes, how would I write this up and list this, especially since this is not a formal conference and the 'consult' with them is unpaid.

Thanks for the guidance in advance.

If it's a conversation, I agree with Najib -- no, don't include.  If it's more like a seminar, then you could include it.  But there's another approach possible.  You might want to join a Board of Directors or Advisory Board of a relevant nonprofit.  Either as a regular member, or as a technical advisor.  That would definitely be appropriate to put in a CV.


Should research service labs accommodate client requests for reformatting their data for publication? We had a client who submitted samples for chromatographic analysis years ago to our research service lab. The client is now an assistant professor in a state university campus. The research is now under editorial review and the editors want some "cosmetic" touch ups to the chromatograms prior to publication.

We provide data processing fees since the processing of her data requires specialized software. We already sent the raw files and the plot numeric data in text format so the cosmetic processing can be done in Excel or Origin or other generic plotting software.

Yet the client still wants our lab to do the processing of the plots which can be done in Excel. Honestly I think the client is just too busy to replot the data with customized annotations themselves for their own publication.

The data processing request includes:
1) Replot the chromatograms so the more prominent peaks are better seen overall
2) Add annotations to the peaks

Honestly this is the first time I encountered such a request where the client requested something to be done by us that could be done by anyone who is publishing academically.

I mean an assistant professor who is about to publish their research should be able to plot data from a text file and do the annotations themselves...or get a subordinate do it for you and not ask the service lab to do it in Excel for their benefit...

Payment:

Don't do it for free.  Tell him what it will cost and make sure he gives you a valid charge code or prepay (if external) ahead of time.

To be diplomatic, I would say something like "We can't do this service unless paid and will charge [double whatever you are first thinking].  However as you have the raw data, please feel free to make these edits yourself."

Ethics/responsibility:

If you think the data modification and presentation moves you too much to making an analytical inference (and taking responsibility for it)...or for sure if it is in any way "overegging the pudding", then just decline and tell him to do his own presentations. With some diplomatic comment about your center only providing data files and presentation work being responsibility of researchers.  I would also lean this way if you are worried about becoming his "secretary" (having the images sent back and forth for inevitable revisions and further touchups).

People:

He's probably hoping to get you to do extra work for him.  There will always be people who push a bit and who try to get away with what they can.  Just be calm and firm.


What is a "TV-L 13" position? I just received a PhD invitation letter from a German University which mentions that my remuneration will be 2/3 of full TV-L 13 position. I do not know what a TV-L 13 position is (Google is of no help here), and didn't want to be rude, so I am asking here first.
Is this a common position or specific to Germany? If anyone knows, currently how much remuneration corresponds to a TV-L position?

TV-L is the German public servant remuneration grade table (Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (TV-L)). It is how civil servants Germany are graded for their salaries and similar conditions for their work.

Depending on where your position is, you'll be under TV-L West, or East, or Berlin, or Hessen. Something in your letter might specify this. Either way, there is information on the details at the Öffentlicher Dienst website.

Assuming you'd be in West Germany, taxed as a single (i.e., not married or living with a life partner or children), this boils down to a basic salary of €2103/month with a net salary after all taxes and health insurance payments of €1383/month.

This will increase as you remain hired, you'll go up the staircase of salaries, going from 1 to 2 after 1 year, from 2 to 3 after an additional 2 years, etc. Each step is a monthly salary increase of about €150/month net.


Funding for writing a computer science dissertation When I look around, most of the funding opportunities in computer science require a PhD to hold.

Now, I have finished the courses part of my doctoral school and have a reviewed research proposal. Are there funding bodies that allow to apply for a grant to work solely on my journal papers and dissertation for a year?

I think I could make an advance, not having to teach classes what I otherwise do for a living.

I work in the EU.

Is this highly unusual, or there are organisations who would support this?

There exists funding for PhD, yes.

As always with such questions, it is better to ask locally instead of asking random people on the Internet.
Ask your advisor (if you already have one in mind), ask the student office at the university, ask other PhD students, ask the student counselor (if you have one; take the one for administrative and study questions, not the mental health one^^).


Writing a recommendation letter for student with low GPA I have an undergraduate student who has been working in my lab for quite some time, doing relatively advanced work and has even been able to mentor other students in getting up to speed in the workings of the lab and the methods we use. I never had this student in a class, but they approached me in their second year asking if I had any opportunities and I was happy to provide an unpaid opportunity and the following year a student job for them after seeing their exceptional work.
This student is now applying to graduate school and has asked me to write them a recommendation letter, and I said I would be happy to do so since the student has demonstrated competence and has even started asking quite interesting research questions related to our work. As part of the recommendation process I always ask for the application materials, including transcripts, personal statement and so on. Upon looking at the transcripts I found out the student has a very bad academic history and has even recently been on academic probation. They got C's in classes closely related to our subject (but taught by people I don't know well in the department). I'm not sure what to think or whether to include that as part of my recommendation letter, or to ignore it overall?

When I write letters for undergrads (in math, in the U.S.), I usually aim to speak exactly and only about things I know from first-hand experience. For that matter, transcripts (whether high-GPA or low) are usually part of the application, so second-hand comments from me add little.
Now and then, I am surprised to learn that a student of whom I think quite highly has had some rough spots earlier. I can only infer that they've done a great job of turning themselves around, and I'm happy to vouch for the positive things they're doing.


"Duke University Press" vs "Duke University Press Books" Which of these bibliography citations is preferred?:

  Weld, Kirsten. Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

  Weld, Kirsten. Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2014.

Google shows both forms are in use for this particular book (and many like it).
 In total, Google yields 442,000 results for "Durham: Duke University Press" and 14,200 results for "Durham: Duke University Press Books." Why are there two competing forms?

Their web site says Duke University Press (see also here) and the copyright page from the amazon.com "Look inside" option says Duke University Press. Googling "Duke University Press Books" suggests to me that the addition of "Books" is extra, not part of the official name, such as saying "Dover Publishers Books" rather than "Dover Publishers". Thus, I think Duke University Press is what you want to use.


Question about ethics and possible misappropriation of research funds I am working for a professor who started out recently. Most new professors get start-up funding from the department which helps them pay for their first students. Right now I am working in the lab with another PhD candidate; both of us have been funded by departmental funds until now.

The PhD is working on a project which has no funding. I am working on a corporate-funded project for my thesis.  Now I am the PI for this project internally. So I did the whole project as my thesis and I was listed as the PI on consent form (approved by my university IRB) when I carried out the final testing of my product with the corporate sponsor.

Here is where things turn shady. When I carried out my testing, we paid the participants through my research funds (the account number for the project is listed on some departmental documents that I had to sign to get cheques for test participants). In my GRA contract, it was specified that my funding was coming from the departmental account and when the PhD candidate showed me their contract, it was getting funded from my project account (the stipend account number was my project account number and I have confirmed this with a student departmental assistant). Their stipend was coming from my project funds.

I spoke with few other people in the department, and came to know that when the department gives seed funding to new professors, there is a limit in stipend they can give.  So to give the PhD student more funding, my advisor is using my research funds (for which I am PI) to pay this stipend and thus is getting double my stipend.   I am still getting funded by the department, so I get a lot less.

Screwed-up thing is this project is highly successful as I did a lot of hard work and I am not getting any financial incentive. In fact, it's all going to the other researcher who is nowhere involved in this project. The sponsor is giving my advisor funding for a second phase next month and also offered me a full-time job at their corporation. I should probably mention that I don't have a good relationship with my advisor and we fought multiple times in past due to some other issues but the PhD candidate gets along very well. They are like  family friends and have  very good social interactions.

I am graduating this December, so it probably won't matter anyway, but is this ethical? Can I speak with my department chair about this? I had asked my advisor multiple times to increase my stipend but they said they cannot. The questions is not about money — it's more about betrayal by your own advisor who you trust to be fair.

I still have the copy of the departmental documents used to order cheques for testing showing my account project number and a copy of the PhD candidate's contract.

I cannot really tell what you question is about, but let me try and clarify a few things.

First, being the PI on an institutional review board application does not make you the PI for the funded project. It is not clear what you mean by "your" project funds, but from your description it does not sound like it is your funding, but rather funding that your supervisor was awarded and is providing you access to for you to accomplish your thesis.

Second, applications for funding generally have around 3 aims. The linkage between these aims can be pretty loose. It is not uncommon for students working on different aims of the same grant to think their projects are completely independent. Often a grant might not provide funding for all the staff required to complete the aims. In fact a selling point to potential funders is the ability to leverage their funding with "outside" funds like a departmental studentship.

The real issue I think in your question is if it is ethical for your supervisor to use her funding to pay PhD students different amount. The answer to this is that it is most likely ethical. It is possible your supervisor has circumvented the policies of both the funder and the department, but this seems unlikely. It is quite likely that your department has a fixed, relatively low, stipend for internally funded PhD students, but allows for PhD students funded from outside grants to be paid more. In my mind there is nothing unethical about that.

So then the question is why is your lab mate being funded by the grant while you are being funded by the school. No one but your supervisor can answer this. Maybe she flipped a coin. Maybe she thought your the project of your lab mate was closer aligned to the aims of the grant. Maybe, as you say, she likes your lab mate better and cannot be trusted. Before going down that road, you need to remember that it is quite possible that the decision of who to fund from where may have been made prior to either of you applying to grad school.


Papers on ArXiv as main references I am going to prepare a math research paper and one of my main and necessary references is an article on ArXiv. I do not know whether I continue to prepare my article or not. Since I have doubt with ArXivian papers and I think it is not good choice arxiv papers as a main part of a research work.

In my experience, it is common and acceptable for papers in mathematics to rely on arxiv preprints.  While there may be something in the idea that if you have a choice, it is better to rely on peer-reviewed publication, if the choice is to use an arxiv preprint or delay the publication of your paper, almost certainly you should use the preprint.

To go a little deeper: the imprimatur carried by a peer reviewed publication is partially real but mostly cultural.  Most veteran mathematicians can point to any number of published papers with (sometimes serious) mistakes and also can point to papers of theirs that were accepted by reputable (or strong, or top) journals with so little commentary that they cannot have any confidence that the referee checked the results for correctness in any serious sense.  (Note to academics in other fields: I said "referee," not "referees."  In pure mathematics the most common number of referees for a paper is one.)

Whenever your work uses others' results, you have to perform some process of evaluating those results.  Ideally that would include a careful checking of the proof, but to be honest that is not always practical or possible.  (Sometimes you need a result whose proof uses ideas and techniques that would take you months or years of work to understand.)  To be honest, the evaluation process is often cultural as well as intellectual, and this is why it can indeed be a little better to rely on a published work: whether someone read the proof carefully or not, at least it is likely that expert eyes evaluated the work for plausibility.

There are ways to evaluate an arxiv preprint for plausibility without reading it line by line:

Look up the authors.  Have they published similar results before?  Have their prior results been used by others?
Does the paper look professional?  Is it clearly written?
Is it reasonable that one could attain the given results with the given techniques?
Do the results used appear to be a major breakthrough?  In that case, you should probably talk to others about the preprint quickly: if it's correct, then likely many other mathematicians are making use of it, possibly the same way you are, and by waiting for publication you could be losing everything.  But also it's more likely to to be wrong.  (Sorry to say: all other things being equal, the better result is more likely to be wrong.)  You don't want to waste your time building on a foundation that evaporates later.

Finally, yes it is possible that if you submit your paper for publication, the referee could say "Well, I don't know about this arxiv preprint, and I don't care to referee it too.  You'll have to wait until the preprint is published."  Well, referees say the darnedest things.  It is still better to have tried.


Referee wants me to add a plot – because the paper has none Referee comments for my paper have just arrived:  while one makes some circumstantial and useful observations, the other asks me to add a plot:

  The paper still does not contain a single plot. I encourage the author to present some of their results in graphical form, which will greatly enhance the impact of this paper.

My paper regards some study of the flux of gravitational waves emitted in binary systems and is full of mathematical formulas.

While there may be a way to add a very cool and colorful plot to my paper, I don’t think it is necessary; it would be complicated to read and so I should add more text to explain how to read it.

I don’t want to add a plot. How should I respond to the referee?

While there may be a way to add a very cool and colorful plot to my paper, I don't think it is necessary, it would be complicated to read and so I should add more text to explain how to read it.

It doesn't seem to me that you have really considered the reviewer's request seriously. You seem to think they should just be able to follow the formulas without any visual, thus putting the onus on the readers to do the work of understanding your paper. The onus should be, instead, on you to explain your ideas in the clearest way possible -- and this will greatly improve the impact of your work, as the reviewer says.

I find it hard to believe that there isn't anything visual you can add that would be helpful, no charts, figures, or pictoral examples. When I read technical papers, I have found that visuals that go through an example in detail are almost always invaluable for understanding, regardless of the type of research (very applied or very theoretical, etc.) Are you sure that there is nothing you can add?

  The paper still does not contain a single plot. I encourage the author to present some of their results in graphical form, which will greatly enhance the impact of this paper.

You seem to have taken some offense that this was not a useful suggestion, but I find it very unlikely that this suggestion is not useful.


How to review a software-tool paper? I often get asked to review papers on new software tools. This always makes me wonder how one should review such a paper, or even whether software papers should undergo a typical review process at all?

My private checklist typically consists of:

Is it available for download for others?
Does it run?
Did the authors provide benchmark problems? Do they give expected results?
Is documentation sufficient?
Go through numerical methods used in the software (briefly, no meticulous code analysis)

If everything runs fine and produces expected results, I honestly have nothing else to “demand” from the authors. My referee reports are positive and (embarrassingly) brief in those cases. I’m of the opinion that the user community should “do the rest”; evaluate the software and decide whether it’s useful in their workflows.

One perspective is from the Journal of Open Source Software, which explicitly establishes reviewer guidelines that cover these questions (http://joss.theoj.org/about#reviewer_guidelines).

A (slightly edited) quote of the demands:

  Software license
  There should be an OSI approved license included in the repository.[...]

  Documentation
  There should be sufficient documentation for you, the reviewer to understand the core functionality of the software under review.

  A statement of need
  The authors should clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is.

  Installation instructions
  There should be a clearly-stated list of dependencies. Ideally these should be  handled with an automated package management solution.

  Good: A package management file such as a Gemfile or package.json or > equivalent
     OK: A list of dependencies to install
     Bad (not acceptable): Reliance on other software not listed by the authors

  Example usage
  The authors should include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).

  API documentation
  Reviewers should check that the software API is documented to a suitable level. This decision is left largely to the discretion of the reviewer and their experience of evaluating the software. [...]

  Tests
  Authors are strongly encouraged to include an automated test suite covering the core functionality of their software.

     Good: An automated test suite hooked up to an external service such as Travis-CI or similar
     OK: Documented manual steps that can be followed to check the expected functionality of the software (e.g. a sample input file to assert behaviour)
     Bad (not acceptable): No way for you the reviewer to check whether the software works

  Community guidelines
  There should be clear guidelines for third-parties wishing to: Contribute to the software, report issues or problems with the software, or seek support

This is a valuable way of thinking about reviewing software, and I think we should move closer to this. But it is not yet accepted! In my field, most "methods" papers don't even include software - and those that do would almost certainly fail these tests. (I'd never heard of continuous integration until recently, for instance.)


How to ask for a research project fee to an external investigator? I'm currently a postdoc, and someone from another institution (a colleague of a colleague; I didn't know them before) contacted me to invite me to collaborate on their project.

While the project seems interesting, I would need to invest my own time outside my normal working hours, so I'm not willing to take it without proper compensation.

Basically, I would like to ask for a fee. The person who contacted me said something a bit ambiguous "we have no money, but we could probably get some". Do you have any advice on how to politely ask for a fee?

Pick up the conversation from that 'lead' s/he gave you and work forward from there:

  Hi [Name],

  When we last talked you mentioned the funding situation. You said there isn't currently any funding specific to the project. So - can you let me know what funds you guys right now as you work on it?

So you would already be insinuating that people working on the project need to be funded, without explicitly saying INSERT COIN. Then depending on his/her answer I would suggest that they/you all apply for that project-specific funding, without actually agreeing to start work - implicitly assuming (or proposing the assumption, if you will), and thus insinuating, that such funding is a prerequisite for you to start working.

If the message doesn't come across increase the strength of the hinting while giving some (but not too much) way preparing for the actual collaboration.