Graduating from a terrible department in an ok University vs. a fantastic department in an obscure university I'm a PhD student in a terrible department in my field, in an overall ok university, and have just applied to another program (also PhD) in a very new but fantastic department (research-wise at least -- they just had a load of new world-class hires most of whom know me and my work; expected ranking in the field is top 5 in the world, by the next year) but in a very obscure university. I'm wondering if I should go if I get admitted, at least considering the future job market prospects. Would the obscurity of the university make so much difference even if the department is going to be highly valued?
Any help would be appreciated!

Generally speaking, for your future academic career, prestige of University as a whole is less important than prestige of department, and that is less important than prestige of advisor. And all of that is tempered by the strenth of reference letters you will obtain, and by the directly observable quality of your work. (By the latter, I mean how good your dissertation / publications are, the specifics of this highly dependent on your field).
Also worth saying, however, is that if you leave academia, the rank order of those factors for getting a good nonacademic job is generally reversed. (Ph.D. students generally don't like seriously thinking about nonacademic career prospects since their goal is an academic career, but in many disciplines the proportion who will go on to nonacademic careers is shockingly high, so you should at least contemplate this.)
In your instance, I would add 2 factors to consideration.

It's clear you aren't happy where you are now, and feel you would be happy somewhere else. Life is too short to deliberately choose an unhappy road to a (good) Ph.D. if a happier one is or becomes available to you.

"The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." Don't overindex on the negatives of what you are experiencing now, and compare that with only expected positives of what your potential alternative is. In particular, look hard in the mirror: what have you learnt to do differently if you go to a new place, and do you have a tendency in life to frequently hit the restart button -- especially multiple times in a row? (Bluntness alert!) Everyone in academia develops pattern recognition for smart people who somehow serially fail to deploy, and are always restarting, but the restart only leads to another restart later on. We don't know you, so don't treat this as an implied accusation that this applies to you  -- but do look in the mirror to consider whether this is the case, and if so, what you need to do differently to not have to restart again.

With all that, best wishes, and do what (with self-reflection) feels right!


Have sponsor, need supervisor for PhD application: how to get email response? I have a sponsor to do my PhD but the problem with supervisors. I keep sending emails to them and no one replies to my email.

Could you let me know how can I encourage them to look at my email? for example what title is appropriate for my email in this case? and what should I include in my email?

Professors/faculty receive many emails asking for internships, PhD student positions, etc. I even receive such requests as a postdoc -- I am not even able to offer such positions!

Almost all of these emails are low-quality. Namely, they are not specific to the professor's research and have the appearance of being mass emails sent to hundreds of recipients without much thought. Replying to them is a waste of time.

As a result, professors are accustomed to ignoring such emails. It is quite possible that your email was treated as spam.

Here are a few suggestions to avoid your email being ignored:

Ensure that your email is relevant to the recipient. If you are asking them to be your PhD supervisor, explain why. What about their research interests you? (At the very very least, get their name right!)
Have a professor you know introduce you. The email will be more credible if it comes from someone the recipient has heard of. In essence, this serves as a recommendation.
Make sure your email includes enough information about you. Briefly introduce yourself (i.e. your qualifications) and you could even attach a CV or link to a website with more information about yourself.
Get to the point. Academics get so much email they may not read past the subject line before ignoring your email. Keep it short and make sure the subject and first sentence/paragraph of your email are clear, concise, and to the point. If you have a sponsor already, don't leave that until halfway through your long email.


A specific term was first coined in a preprint but publication took many years. What to cite? In my literature research for a paper I am writing I want to state that a specific term was first coined in a preprint from let's say 2000, but the paper was not published until 2005.

Unfortunately other papers I want to cite that were published in the years between used this term since it was known by then from the preprint. It would be strange if I mentioned both, the preprint from 2000 and the published version from 2005, but saying the term was first coined in the 2005 paper would not be correct.
Any ideas on how to handle that issue?

Thanks a lot in advance :)

I would try this:

  Miller et al. (2000, p. 13) coined the term "underwater spaghetti knitting" (see also  Miller at al. 2005, p. 8).

Or this:

  This phenomenon became known as "underwater spaghetti knitting" (Miller et al. 2000, p. 13; Miller at al. 2005, p. 8).

Here, Miller et al. 2000 is the preprint and Miller et al. 2005 the final publication.


Can a postdoc apply for a standard NSF grant as a PI? I have been searching for an answer, to no avail. I would like to apply for a grant for preconference funding. I know NSF has awarded such grants in the past, but I don't know if they will award a grant to a postdoc. My advisor would not be involved in this application, but other faculty at other institutions would be involved. So another option would be to write the grant myself and have someone who is faculty be the PI and I would be the co-I. But I want to know if that's necessary. Yet another option could be to have a faculty as the co-I and me as the PI, which may be more strategic than me doing it alone, but again, not sure if this is even possible.I have tried to reach out to the program officer but she has been unresponsive. I know they are busy but I wrote a very concise message with an informative subject line and she seemed to just assume I was looking for postdoc funding and sent a link for that. :(

I work in theoretical mathematics.  I have known several postdocs who have received individual NSF research grants.  In fact, I am co-PI on a NSF Research Training Grant which has supported several postdocs, and we have required these postdocs to apply for individual grant support in every year of the job.

Having said that: all NSF grants are of course (i) a lot of work to apply for and (ii) quite competitive to receive, so before taking the time to apply for one I would want to get additional reassurance that not only is it legal for postdocs to apply for your particular kind of NSF grant (as it almost certainly is) but moreover that those who are reviewing the grants view it as reasonable that a postdoc might get such a grant, or -- better -- that some postdocs in your field have actually gotten such grants.

My advice for this is twofold:

  Do some research on this yourself.

Who gets what NSF grant is public information.  Whether the grantholder is a postdoc is something you will probably have to do further web research to find out, but it should be doable.  Try it!

  Ask followup questions to your program officer.

As you describe it, you sent one message to your program officer and got a response, but the response was based on a bit of misunderstanding of your situation.  Okay, then try again.  In your second (and third..., if necessary) try, you can ask additional questions based on what I wrote above: i.e., not just whether it's legal, but how does it work out in practice?  By the way, it is (a big part of) the job of NSF program officers to answer such questions.  As long as you are polite and respectful, you can ask her as many questions as you have...and I encourage you to do so.


What will replace math exams in 2020/21 given covid-19? A lot of universities are expecting not to be able to run in-person exams for at least part of the 2020/21 academic year.  I believe, for example, that no UK universities is currently planning to hold in-person exams this coming January.  I can see how other forms of assessment might be possible for some subjects. But I can't see how this can work for math.

  For those universities which will not run math exams in-person for this
  coming year, what are the plans for how to replace them?

Here are some examples of how it is done at the University of Copenhagen for the two courses that I have exams in next week.

One course has a written exam: We are given a problem sheet that we write up a solution to and submit to an online portal after a time limit of four hours. We are allowed to use the internet and any other aids we wish, except that we are not allowed to communicate with other people.

Another course has a verbal exam: A verbal exam is performed using Zoom. There is no preparation time.

Both courses were intended to be verbal exams pre-covid-19.


Article Authorship Conflict I'm an undergrad student and I got together with 2 people to write a research article (lit review) for publication. We divided the project in 3 sections and each did our part. When it was time to submit it, I noticed they completely edited my sections and removed/added new things to it. They said what i wrote wasn't good and my writing had plagiarism, therefore I am not considered a first author (along with them) anymore. They didn't even tell me they were not satisfied with my writing before they edited it.

After days of arguing, the journal we were planning to submit it to emailed us and told us that if we don't come to an agreement soon, they won't even publish our paper. My "teammates" agreed to have me as first author, but without including any of my edits.

My question is, is it unethical for me to accept first authorship now that a lot of my original content is deleted from the paper?

Letting aside the messy aspect of the question as highlighted in the comments, let me address your main concern.

Since all three of you agreed from the beginning that you are all going to be first authors (not sure how this works in practice), and you gave your best effort and time in good faith during the preparation of the manuscript, there is no ethical issue in you being first author.

In one of my papers, it has happened to me that the section I was mostly involved in writing turned out to be removed in the final version. Nobody, including me, considered removing my name from the paper.

Now, I don't see why you should be so concerned about how your colleagues acted (apart from the issue of removing "first author status", which I understand is not an issue anymore). They did not like what you've written and they decided to rewrite it. This is good proactivity of their part. If you think something important has been left out, you should try to convince them, with sound arguments, why you think this things are important.

Note that the main concern should be the final quality of the paper, not who wrote what and why. In fact, you should also review what they have written and provide feedback (rewrite what you don't like, and so on).

But bear in mind that in the end, all three of you must agree on the final version. Just know when it is relevant to disagree, and when it is best to let it go.


How to supervise an undergraduate reading a paper for the first time? I am helping supervise a senior student who is reading a scientific research paper for the first time. The goal is to understand a portion of this paper and write an essay presenting the background, and filling in the details.

The student has not brought anything concrete the past few meetings. I can see that they are struggling with the setup, and I am not sure how much do I let them struggle without spoonfeeding them the details. They also overestimate how much they really know and or understand, and clearly show that they feel bad about themselves when I point that out.

We are not pressed to produce something substantial. My own goal is for them to develop skills that are going to make their life easier later on. I have no experience how to manage this human part of the project.

I would ask the student for a written summary of the paper as they understand it along with a list of questions they have about the parts they don't understand. This can give you an idea of whether they are on the right track or not.

Make sure that they understand that it is just a summary (main points) not just a restatement of the whole paper, which might be able to be done with little real understanding. What is important about the paper.

The questions are also helpful for your guidance. But you don't necessarily need to answer the questions. If the student is diligent, then you can help them by pointing to how they can answer the questions themselves: a book or some computation, whatever.

A couple of cycles of this and they might even have an outline of their final report.

There is another benefit to the student, actually. They not only get to practice writing, but they get to plan what they say and the questions they ask. This is probably more comfortable to many students than facing a professor who asks them questions that they need to quickly come up with a response for. Some students will freeze up and seem to know less than they really do.


Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV? I was thinking about submitting one of my papers in arXiv or www.optimization-online.org and hence I was just wondering if mentioning the same in my CV would be appropriate. Is it done usually? If yes, how should I actually mention something like this in my CV? Kindly guide me (I have no previous experience in publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student).

Putting non-peer reviewed publications on your CV is perfectly fine, but you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications.  I have seen CVs that separately list peer-reviewed works and non-peer reviewed works, and sometimes the non-peer reviewed works are simply listed as "technical reports."

If you believe that the papers you write are worthy of being mentioned on your CV, then list them.  But don't think that by putting a bunch of low-quality non-peer reviewed works will do you any favors when looking for work or when applying for academic positions (whether graduate school or employment).  Obviously, you should avoid putting them on your CV if you are doing so simply to demonstrate that you can write a paper.


What determines the copyright year for a publication? I wonder what determines the copyright year for a publication. I thought that the copyright year would be the same as the publication year, but seeing in (1)

put me in doubt (publication year: 2011; copyright year: 2012).

(1) Sutton, Charles, and Andrew McCallum. "An introduction to conditional random fields." Machine Learning 4.4 (2011): 267-373.

You are not showing the location of publication, however in the U.S., while Copyright is established the moment the work is created, the only effective way to claim infringement is to have registered the work with the U.S. Government's Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov). The date shown is more than likely the date that they received confirmation of the copyright registration from the office.

Subsequent editions will also refile copyright, so you can have various dates or a range of dates shown. On Molecular Biology of The Cell by Alberts, et.al, the copyright page has the 2015 copyright for the sixth edition but also lists the 2008 date for the preceding fifth edition.

I have generally seen date ranged copyrights on software, so if you select About This Mac on an Apple Mac computer, the splash screen shows (c) 1983 - 2015.

UPDATE

Even though copyright exists from the moment of creation of the work, an important reason for official registration has to do with the damages that you can seek for infringement. The following is from the Copyright Office's FAQ

  Why should I register my work if copyright protection is automatic?

  Registration is recommended for a number of reasons. Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within five years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration” and Circular 38b, Highlights of Copyright Amendments Contained in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), on non-U.S. works.


Are there any guidelines for labeling axes in plots/graphs when the "unit" is "number of people"? I have read the question Are there any guidelines for labeling axes in plots/graphs? and related answers and they cover the case where the unit is from the International System of Units (SI), but what about when the graph shows information about people?

I am interested in medicine or in psychology where a lot of graph are related to number of people, is there any wide adopted guideline?

What is the right word to use?
People?
Person?
Individual?

For example if person were a unit of measurement I should write 10 person and not 10 persons because for SI units we do not use plural forms.

In the same way, in a axis label I should write person and not number of persons because we usually write meter (if not abbreviated) and not number of meters.

And then, what is the short form for person? I see sometimes pax but as a short form for passenger of an aircraft.

You always have to distinguish between the quantity and the unit.

All the quantities referring to a number of entities have unit 1, so you don't need to put any unit after the number.

About how to call such kind of quantities, you're actually relatively free to decide, depending on the specifics of the case at hand. You can certainly call a quantity that counts certain elementary entities X as number of X. But, in case, don't use amount of X because that has a specific meaning in chemistry.

Examples of quantities called number of X can be found e.g. in the IUPAC Green book:

  N is the number of identical (periodic) events during the time t. (p. 13)
  bi gives the number of electrons which occupy a given orbital energy level εi (p. 19)

Even better, if that number is a recurring quantity in your paper, label it with a symbol and use that symbol to label the axes: "Let nr be the number of people who always wear red trousers [...]".


How do I best present my skills when switching fields from electrical engineering to earth sciences? I am currently doing my PhD in the US. I am studying electrical engineering with a focus on magnetic sensors and signal processing. I am doing theoretical work (developing a model) and also developing software (mostly MATLAB and LABVIEW) and building hardware for my measurement system. I am also conducting measurements to validate my model. I find the research to be relatively interdisciplinary. I have a few papers (5) in applied physics and engineering journals. I should be graduating soon, within a year hopefully.

I have lately been looking for postdoctoral positions, and I find myself getting more and more interested in earth/atmospheric sciences, particularly analysis of remote sensing data, and also building sensors for remote sensing.

I feel like I need a change of field, as I like to broaden my horizons. I need a fresh perspective.

My question is: how do I present my skills in a way that increases my chances of getting a postdoc in that field? Wouldn't a candidate with a PhD in earth sciences be preferred over me?

One problem you will need to think about is if you aim for a research job within earth Sciences of a more technical job. The latter may be easier because your knowledge is certainly in demand. The former will be more difficult since you lack an Earth Science background. Note that I do not say impossible.

Will you compete. The answer is definitely not an easy no. But, the position you will be looking for will need to be heavy on, for example, signal processing to make you of interest. Usually working on data is followed by interpretations of the data in terms of Earth Science applications. You will of course have a definite disadvantage there. Having some documented understanding of Earth Sciences will be beneficial.

I would encourage you to find a meeting where you could meet specialists and discuss opportunities and also just see what is done out there. If you are in the US then attending the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting in San Francisco (December) would be a good option. In Europe the EGU (European Geophysical Union) meeting in Vienna (April) will be good. There are also more specialized meeting on Remote Sensing. A good way in could be to strike up collaborations where your expertise adds to the mix.

Building sensors. The remote sensing sensors are built by electronics experts such as yourself and not by earth Scientists within the earth Science community (departments). Earth Scientists will provide input to what specs a sensor would need but that is usually the dividing line. So the answer to the possibilities lies outside Earth Science, you most likely would be looking at space agencies or physics departments.

On the whole, I would say that your expertise is valued in Earth Science but the total lack of documented knowledge in the subject(s) will make the opportunities smaller. I need to add that Earth Science, in its widest sense is a very broad and covers many different departments/subjects which is why trying to find some persons with research profiles that attract you a good venture.


Citing multiple authors that do not have all statements in their publication Let´s say I wrote the following statement in my thesis:

"A substantial shift to cycling can reduce health risks, noise and air pollution and space and energy consumption."

After that, I am citing the name of the authors that I am referring to (each of them has published a different paper), let´s say Author A, Author B and Author C. However, while Author A and B include  all benefits, Author C did only state in his paper, that cycling can reduce health risks.

Is it okay to use all authors at the end of the statement?

"A substantial shift to cycling can reduce health risks, noise and air pollution and space and energy consumption (Author A, Author B, Author C)."

or should I put the authors' names right after the corresponding words:

"A substantial shift to cycling can reduce health risks (Author C), noise and air pollution and space and energy consumption (Author A, Author B)."

Assuming these papers actually provide convincing evidence for the claims and aren't just "stating" things (i.e. they're good sources for the claims), I would prefer a third option:

"A substantial shift to cycling can reduce health risks (Author A, Author B, Author C), noise and air pollution and space and energy consumption (Author A, Author B)."

That way the citations are as specific and as close to the claims as possible. As for your two options, they have some implications for readers. Keep in mind that the "Golden Rule" of technical writing is to always consider the audience.

  "A substantial shift to cycling can reduce health risks, noise and air pollution and space and energy consumption (Author A, Author B, Author C)."

This option has less specific citations, and is thus somewhat less helpful to your readers. For example, if a reader wants to find out more about the noise claim, which paper do they pick first? Maybe it is the one by Author C because it happens to be the only one not behind a paywall... That's some time wasted right there. Note that this option also maximizes the distance between the health risk claim and the citation to Author C, which is generally the opposite of what you should strive for.

  "A substantial shift to cycling can reduce health risks (Author C), noise and air pollution and space and energy consumption (Author A, Author B)."

This option only uses Author C to support the health claim, and Authors A,B would likely be understood as providing support only for the following claims. Depending on the works in question, that may or may not be what you want to communicate.


Is there a list of the largest academic journal publishers, ordered by the number of journals they publish? One can manually browse through scholarly publishers' websites and see the number of journals they publish, such as:

Elsevier: ca. 4.330 journals
SAGE: ca. 1.200 journals
Inderscience: ca. 430 journals
Cambridge University Press: ca. 380 journals
Emerald: ca. 350 journals
Hindawi: ca. 230 journals
MDPI: ca. 200 journals

However, a manual search risks leaving out certain publishers, is prone to mistakes, and is quite time-consuming.
I would thus like to know: Is there already a comprehensive list of large academic journal publishers ordered by the number of journals they publish?
EDIT: I am not intending to crowdsource a full list here; such an approach would be flawed as well. The background for my question is that I would need precise data about academic journal publishers for a specific analysis, and before I go on to design a time-consuming data-collection method, I wanted to ask this question here.

There are a large number of predatory publishers who publish 300+ journals of no real value. So there is no way to include all publishers.
However, if you would be satisfied with scopus indexed journals, then you can download the excel file, sort it based on publisher and filter it. Thus, you will get a list of publishers with the number of journals. Of course, the list will be confined to scopus indexed journals (around 40000 journals by 4000 publishers).


use of "carrier" for affected individuals I'm the process of paper drafting and stumbled upon the question, what's the appropriate name for individuals, who are affected by a disease, which is likely due to a mutation.

I was using the term "carriers" until now (like in: group one constists out of mutational carriers, group two is a control group).

Now I've read that the word "carrier" is just short for hereditary carrier (Wikipedia: has inherited a recessive allele for a genetic trait or mutation but does not display that trait)

So how do I refer to patients that are affected by the mutation. I've thought about "patients", but the control group consists out of patients, too.

Is there a correct word for this?

Look at the previous research on this disease, and check what those papers are using to designate these people. If there's a conventional way to refer to them, you'll want to conform to that; if they use different words you'll have some options to choose one you like from.


What is the difference between "introduction" and "motivation" sections I am working on a paper about a web data extractor (an application, I developed based on a unique approach). In the introduction I had a short review on the history of such applications (from hard-code to graphical user interface) and said my application belong to this latest group. However, I didn't say much about the approach I adopted in the application. I left it to be discussed in the motivation section.

In motivation section I counted the features of existing approaches and described the features of the approach I followed.

Now I think maybe I should merge these two sections into one section, as I read the introduction I can't get what is the difference of my application with existing. Should such information be put in the introduction?

In general, what is the scope of 'Introduction' and 'Motivation' sections?

Introduction: WHAT
The introduction of a scientific publication is where you explain the background of your research. What are you building on? What does the reader need to know to properly understand your presented work? What is your hypothesis (if this sort of thing is relevant to your field)?
Motivation: WHY
The motivation section explains the importance behind your research. Why should the reader care? Why is your research the most groundbreaking piece of scientific knowledge since sliced bread (or CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing)?
Some people do combine the introduction and the motivation, it really depends on the research and the researcher. There is generally a fair amount of overlap between introducing related work, and then saying that your work goes above and beyond this previous research. Remember that these are just two of the big questions you need to answer with your paper. Others include:
Methods: HOW
Results: WHAT HAPPENED
Discussion: SO?


How to get professors to reply to my email of inquiry for research opportunities / Co-Advising I am now in a thesis-track Master's program and will be applying to PhD next year. Now I want to do some research projects with some of the professors who have areas of interest that I am also interested in. There are only 2 (or 3 if you count in another one who only publish 2 papers in this area in the past 10 years) of them listed under my program right now as other people retired or moved. I already sent 3 emails (including follow-up emails) to these two professors respectively, and they don't seem to be replying at all. I don't know if I should continue to send more follow-up emails - I want to but I am worried that this might be annoying. I am sure that they are not on sabbatical nor stopped doing researches at the moment, so is there anything that I can do at this moment if not finding advisors in another area? Would attending the same conference with them, pretending that I bumped into them help, and then starting a dialogue be a good idea at all?
Also, how does co-advising really work? Is this some request that students actively make with two professors, or is this some request that professors make for students?

EDIT: I did not see "3 emails" when I originally answered the question.  I thought we were talking about 1.
In light of that, it seems probable that they are not interested or don't have an opening. There is a chance they are just busy, but seems unlikely.  You could wait a month or so and e-mail again, but unlikely to get a different result.
You should either look for different professors, or start looking around for other schools that have good programs and email them.


When applying to graduate school, is it a good idea to email professors to express interest in joining their research labs? I live in US and I am applying to graduate school.I wonder if it is a good idea to send an email to graduate school professors and mention that you like their research and would like to join their research labs?

While you live in the US, you didn't specify whether you are applying to schools only in the US. And the answer depends.

Outside the US, especially Europe, quite frequently PhD positions are funded by individual professors. In these cases the hiring/admission decisions are made almost entirely by the professor in charge of the "group", and so the answer to your question is an "Of course!" There simply is no way to get your foot in the door otherwise.

In the US, or in countries where a US-style system is the norm, the admission of graduate students are made in committee, and it is not necessary to contact specific professors in the application process. This, however, is not to say that establishing a faculty contact won't help: sometimes it will at least earn your application a more detailed look, and sometimes you will find a person willing to advocate on your behalf during the committee meeting.

In either case, be thoughtful when you craft your e-mail. In the US and elsewhere alike, professors often get e-mails exploring the possibility of doing a PhD. So make sure to do your homework! If you write a letter to Professor X asking about studying Subject A with him, and he has in fact left Subject A and had been working on Project B for the past 5 years, at best he would politely decline and at worst you may have created a bad first impression. Same thing goes for a bland letter stating "I like your research". By default academics are suspicious of empty platitudes: make sure to discuss your background (to show that you are making a somewhat informed judgment) and state what it is particularly that you like about her research.

Furthermore, note that in some/many US schools, incoming graduate students for PhD programs do not formally choose an advisor until one or two years into the program. This has to do in part with the belief that the students should be allowed to see all the opportunities available to them, and the professors have some time to assess the students, to mutually make educated decisions about their partnerships. So you should also weigh your own feelings: are they strong enough that you absolutely must work with this one professor? Or do you have broad enough interests that you may want to hold off deciding until you learn more about the subjects?

Lastly, if geography is not a barrier, instead of just an e-mail expressing interest, you can also consider writing and asking to schedule a face-to-face appointment. Even if you end up not working with the professors, more often than not you will learn something and get some very good advice from the discussion.


Sources to cover open-access fees As this question mentions and as I know from my (limited) experience, some journals demand a high fee to make the articles you submit to be available as open-access. For example, a quote from JVSTB Info for contributors:

  There are no page charges required for publishing. Authors have the option during submission to indicate if they would
  like the article to publish as open access. There is a $2200 fee for open access.

I can't imagine every researcher to pay this from his own pocket. I can see some universities are willing to cover these fees. However, I am pretty sure that my own university will not pay for this. What other sources to cover open-access fees I can look for?

Per the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)'s guide to open access income models:

  According to one survey, article processing fees are wholly or partially subsidized, either by a research grant (34%), a foundation grant (5%), or by the author’s host department (8%) or institutional library (27%). The payment of such fees out of an author’s personal funds appears relatively low—about 5% across all open access journals.

The most common sources of funding for open access publication are research grants (that allow open access fees to be charged to the grant) and institutional library funds. PLOS has compiled a list of some institutions and funders from around the world who have Open Access funds or policies to support open access publishing charges. You can check that list to see if any of those are available to you.

If none of these options are available to you, find out if the publisher can offer a fee waiver. According to the SPARC guide:

  Most publishers using the model make allowances for special situations (for example, individuals without a host institution or from less developed countries), assessing lower fees or waiving fees altogether when no institutional subsidy exists. Society publishers often discount article publication fees for members, or waive them entirely.

For example, PLOS waives fees for research from eligible low-income countries and offers fee assistance for authors who have no other source of funding that covers the open access publication charges. Similarly, Elsevier offers fee waivers "in cases of genuine need." Wiley offers an automatic waiver to authors in certain eligible low-income countries, and discount to authors from another group of countries. Springer has a similar automatic waiver, and also allows authors to submit individual waiver requests.


Possibilities of Going to Industry and back to Academia in a Different Field I am a postdoc doing Particle Physics in a university in a small town in US midwest , and I am thinking of moving from academia to industry. But I have been facing a dilemma because I think I like academia in general and is mostly just struggling with my situation.

I was very ambitious when I was young and picked a really "bad" field. Not that I don't like it, but everyone knows that the chance of getting a faculty job in theoretical particle physics is as harsh as one can imagine. Obviously, it's a very hard subject, and I didn't get to publish much in grad school (just one first author paper). I was fortunate to get this job, but it's not a very popular school, and my current research is also going nowhere, so I think my chance of getting any faculty job is close to zero.

Additionally, my partner (whom I was in the same graduate program with but later moved to Silicon Valley) was doing quite well in industry, and the long-distance relationship is really taking a toll on us. I would like to move closer to her since in my current city there is not much she can do for her job, and there are a lot of industry opportunities in the Bay Area.

But I have been feeling very conflicted about it, because I am still very excited about research and teaching especially in physical sciences and not so much of data science jobs etc. etc. . So I just wonder if there is a way that I can switch field somehow- as I heard from friends, it's fairly easier to get a faculty job in computer science or statistics since a big number of the students just go to industry without looking back. So maybe I can apply for a job in a national lab or those big companies that have research scientist positions that allow you to publish in machine learning related subjects, and if I get good publications I can apply for faculty jobs in computer science/statistics? Is that too idealistic? Anyone on this forum has had that experience?

Or maybe I should just admit my academia career is done and just stop thinking about any academia jobs?

Another question would be, has anyone had experience applying for another PhD program when they already have a PhD under his/her belt? I know it's not a top option given the financial setbacks but I think given that I have extensive coding experience and strong math background I could probably finish a statistics/computer science PhD in a shorter amount of time, then go on to find a faculty job in that area.

Let me know of anything that would be helpful.

To get things out there:

Applying for another PhD after your first PhD is possible and I know a few excellent researchers who are now professors who have two PhDs. It does depend on the field you are moving into of course, but coming from Physics I think your options are good. Basically anything that you can fill in while you work will be relevant.
Where do you feel most comfortable? I have debated this myself (academy vs. industry), but it's not always a matter of deciding. If working in the industry doesn't suit you, then there's no point considering it while you are choosing what you want. If you can't choose what you want, maybe it is an option. Try to imagine what a day's work looks like there, and then a year, and then a career. Will you be satisfied with your work? It's a tough question, I can't figure it out myself.
Check all the options! Have your possibilities set out on the table so you can decide knowing that you considered everything. Check PhD programmes, check companies which do basic research along with commercial projects, relevant startup positions, and check all the various living arrangements. It takes time but I think the worst mistake is deciding without the full picture. Remember that industry has as many, if not more different settings than academia, and you could find a suitable niche in either system.

You have loads of options. The end of a post-doc is really a cliff-edge, and I think it is mainly like this because we don't get exposed to alternatives, and something in our head tells us that not continuing to a tenured position in the same field constitutes some kind of failure. That's just one option out of many.


Does tier 1 or tier 2 depend on hardness of problem? I have seen that many researchers from application side of computer science publish in ICALP (tier 1 conference ), where as only very few people in theory side publish in a top tier conference. For an example to me it appears that there are many researcher's works in theory like complexity theory publish their papers in tier 2 and tier 3 and only a few ( stars ) publish in a tier 1.

Question : Is it true that publishing anything in theory in tier 2 ( let's say ) is equivalent to publishing something in tier 1 in application side?

For an reference I have used this website : http://www.conferenceranks.com/#data

Is it true that publishing anything in theory in tier 2 ( let's say ) is equivalent to publishing something in tier 1 in application side?

Answer: No. It is not true.

I assume that you mean to say "Theory" means "Theoretical Computer Science" that includes areas such as Automata Theory, Algoriths, Computational Complexity, Learning Theory. And, "application side" meaning to "some areas that uses concepts" such as Machine Learning, Computer Vision etc.

Such a comparison is not possible. And, as far as I know, there is no venue or organization that compare two people from two different research fields compare on the aspect of their publishing venue. That would be highly ambiguous.

These conferences are meant for their own fields. For example, application side of Computer Science such as Machine Learning or Neural Processing have their Tier-1 conferences such as ICML, NIPS etc. For Theoretical Computer Science, we have ICALP, SODA, MFCS.


How is the applicant's bringing attention to his/her own application viewed if you know nothing about him/her? Let us assume that a postdoc is applying for a tenure-track faculty position in computer science in an English- or German-speaking country. After submitting the application, the postdoc contacted certain faculty members of the target institution and gave them a heads-up about the application. Now, you are one of the contacted members. You work in the same field, but know nothing about the candidate; you have not cited his/her papers or vice versa, you've never chatted with him/her, and no senior person has spoken in his/her favor or against him/her. What is your usual approach towards the candidate's request for attention? Here are some possibilities:

That's spam. You don't know the sender and don't have time to care; you move the letter to the trash bin and stay neutral.
The applicant seems to be too weak, arrogant, or in despair so that he/she has to speak for himself (instead of his advisor); you decide to vote against him/her.
The applicant's area is near to yours; you decide to take a look at his/her application to find out whether a future collaboration is deemed possible.
You copy-and-paste a boilerplate standard answer. (E.g. "Your research and teaching statements as well as your CV are very impressive! Unfortunately, I'm only very marginally involved into the hiring process. If the hiring committee asks me, I'll bring their attention to your application.") You really don't wish to be influenced but get kudos in case the candidate gets the job.
... (your experience goes here) ...

(An aside: this question is different from How is the applicant's bringing attention to his/her own application viewed if you know little about him/her? : there, you know something, though little, about the candidate.)

If you want to send such an email, you could contact someone in the department with whom you have some special affinity, and personalize the note.  Aim to interest this person in not just you, but the specific sub-field you and that person share an interest in.  Make it a friendly letter.  After you draft it, read it over, imagining receiving it ten years from now.  In this letter, you can mention names of people you and that person both know.  To do this well, you will have to spend some time looking over the faculty and postdocs at the target department to choose a person with shared interests, and then looking over the chosen person's CV to get a feel for their research interests, how yours would complement and reinforce theirs, what people you might know in common.  That last one makes it easier for that person to contact a common acquaintance for their impressions of you.  Once you understand what the person's research program has been and what direction this person is going in now, you'll be in a better position to let him or her know what strikes you as exciting about what they're doing.  You can send a reprint or a preprint if you have something that relates.

I'm not exactly answering your question, I'm suggesting a way of doing what you have in mind, that would maximize its effectiveness.

But this type of networking can also be done over time, at conferences and in response to your reading, prior to the application process.

At the application stage, the best use of your time might be to contact the people you have networked with over time, to let them know where you're applying, so they can put in a good word for you if they know someone at one of those departments.


How to find grant proposal samples? Compared to writing a research paper, I found writing a grant proposal to be much more intimidating, because there aren't any finished products that I can compare to. I am wondering if there are any good samples out there so that I can see what good proposals are like, especially for social sciences. Thanks!

Related question: maybe I am naive, why don't NSF and other funding agencies publish the full proposal of the ones that were accepted, say 5, 10 years after the funding ends? It seems to me that these older projects should have wrapped up already and there are probably minimal risk of being scooped.

Your best bet is probably to ask your colleagues if they would have you let a look at their (successful) grant proposals. That way you can also ask questions.


GRE score advice: Should I retake it? I am going to apply to several US universities(for 2017 session),mostly ranked within top 25 places,and I will apply for PhD positions in Pure Mathematics(Representation theory,to be precise).I took GRE with a week's preparation and scored 326(verbal 161,quant 165)-top 88 percentile,although I sucked at AWA-with a meager 3(out of 6) on board.I haven't yet taken up my TOEFL and math-gre,but I am confident to score over 110 in Toefl and a high(>90) percentile in math-gre.I hope to obtain decent recommendation letters,and a GPA above 9 in my masters from a reputed research institution of India.Should I therefore retake the gre?I should add that if I reappear,then I have a good chance at increasing the score by 5 points,and not to mention definitely scoring >4 in AWA. But does this high score worth that much at all??

I would not worry about your verbal and AWA scores at all. They are quite decent and frankly, most math departments do not care too much about them, as long as they show that you are sufficiently proficient (which your scores do). Indeed, given how tightly constrained your schedule will be in the next couple months, I think it would be a waste of time to attempt studying more for these sections.

Getting a 170 in Quant is the only reason I would retake the GRE. However, even then I do not really think it's worth it in your case. Since you expect to get the GRE-math subject test with such a high percentile, this will clearly demonstrate your quantitative abilities. In other words, because of your subject test score (plus your transcripts/letters of recommendation), it will be obvious that the 5 points you missed were due to a lack of concentration or because of anxiety during the GRE, rather than lack of quantitative understanding.

Also note that for many departments, GRE scores simply serve as pre-filters; i.e. some universities might not consider your application if your scores are below some threshold, but otherwise the scores won't make too much of a difference.

In summary: There are more important parts to your application, and I think it would be a waste of time and money to retake the GRE.


Mention a potential adviser in Statement of Purpose who is in another department I am very interested in the work of a professor who works for department X. His work is interdisciplinary and I am interested in the engineering aspects of his work. I contacted him and he agreed to be my primary mentor as long as I had a secondary mentor through engineering school since I am not going to apply in his department. He mentioned a specific name in the engineering school who shares the same research interests. Is it a good idea to mention his name along with the name of the professor in the engineering school in my Statement of Purpose (SOP)? For instance, that I would like to join the engineering lab and conduct a collaboration with the other lab? Is it a good idea to show an interest in a lab who is not in the department but still related to engineering?

I think that in general this would be fine, but don't give the impression that working with him or the other lab/prof is, in any way, a condition of your acceptance. You want the department that you are applying to to be interested in you but not to give others the impression that you are inflexible in any way. But stating that you have a well worked out plan and have at least partial buy-in on it from a professor shouldn't hurt you, and might help.

Your first goal is to get accepted, then work out the details. Make it obvious that your background supports your SOP goals.


What are the most important factors evaluated when applying for Phd position? I am sure this question has been posted somewhere in SE forums before. If not here is my contribution, otherwise please show me the pointers to similar well-voted questions.

Here is the actual question: In case someone is interested to apply for a Phd degree, what would be the parameters that head of the research group (i.e. professor) will consider when comparing different candidates?

Some of the factors that come to my mind are the following:

Grades,
Reference letters,
Publications,
Closeness of previous studies to the actual research taking place in that research group, Quality of final thesis (Master/Bachelor), Thesis adviser etc.

How would a professor prioritize these factors. I am sure here in the forums we have some experienced members who might have participated in acceptance committees, which can provide useful insights.

Thanks.

The answer is, as usual, "it depends". JeffE provides a perspective for a top US research university (Research, research, research, recommendation letters, research, baked beans, and research.). In my lab (small-but-good swiss university) PhD admission certainly works a bit differently.

First a bit of context: our lab usually consists of less than ten members, 2 of which are professors and one to two more being postdocs. We select our PhD students ourselves (there is no department or faculty-level hiring). Hence, PhD student selection is not something we do all the time.

Generally, the single most important factor for hiring for us is whether we already know the candidate. Broadly, potential students come in four tiers:

Tier 1: students that we personally know to be good, for instance because they have done courses or their thesis with us. This means that we mostly hire from our own university, but as I only moved recently from a different university, we currently also like to hire from my old institution. Generally, if you know somebody in the lab (even other PhD students) and the other person vouches for your qualities, you are almost certainly in.
Tier 2: students that people that we know know. If we need a position filled but don't have a strong internal candidate at the ready, we reach out to our personal networks. Usually, we don't cast the net particularly wide -- the recommendation of a professor that I met once at a conference likely isn't enough. We mostly contact personal friends and close collaborators here.
Tier 3: students that applied because of a job announcement we put out. We generally only do that (putting out job announcements) if we really  need a position filled and we could not find somebody in our network. In most cases, my lab head is more ready to leave a position unfilled than hire somebody that does not come with a strong recommendation.
Tier 4: students that applied with a cold email. As far as I know, we have literally never hired somebody that applied cold.

Which of those "tiers" you fall in is the single most important factor that leads to whether you will be hired or not. In the rare case that we have multiple students that come with strong personal recommendations, and we cannot hire all, we usually select roughly following these criteria (roughly in order of importance):

Research experience. A master is a prerequisite for PhD studies in my current country. However, most master students don't publish. If you did, it is certainly perceived very positively as long as the paper is at least ok. (publishing in predatory journals or other really bad venues might be perceived negatively actually)
Relevant industrial experience. We do research on software engineering, so if you worked as a software engineer before, this will be perceived positively. However, note the "relevant" here. Standard internships or jobs may not help much (most have done those at some point) -- it needs to be something that we think will clearly give you better insight into our area of research.
Technical skills. We don't expect future students to know how to do research yet, but we expect a strong programming background and fluency in standard tooling.
Perceived compatibility with the team. Finally, we also typically consider whether a student is a good fit for our lab culture.

The last two bullets are typically assessed in interviews. We generally interview candidates via Skype beforehand, and (when we are almost certain we are going to hire a student), we also fly her/him in to give a talk in our group and spend some time with us beforehand. (both things we only do for Tier 2 - 4 candidates)

We don't ask for letters of recommendation (of people we do not know), research statements, statements of motivation, or anything like that. Neither do we look at previous grades (except maybe in a corner case, but to the best of my knowledge it has not happened yet).


How to Correct for a Less-Than-Complete PhD career when wanting to go into academia? I want to have a career as a tenure-track research professor. I have a little over a year left in my PhD in a science/mathematical field, and I don't feel I learned enough during graduate school. I know I can (read: have to) finish my thesis in a year because my adviser is the type to just cobble something together and get you out of here (and there is no funding left)! However, I really love science, I love learning, I love reading, and I love thinking! I just feel due to various reasons (adviser putting me on projects that failed after which I had to switch, etc.), I am grossly underprepared!

I have grown intellectually so much since staring my PhD, but when speaking to professors and postdocs at conferences I feel like I can't hold my own. I know part of this is imposter syndrome that I have always struggled with, and part of it is that people can always "talk about" their research and "sound smart" in the short time we're all discussing, but I want to feel like I really understand these topics and that feels like I need more time!

They say "thats what postdocs are for!" but I get the feeling its the exact opposite! Professors hire postdocs to do something well and fast, not really bolster their education or mature as researchers. How can I convince someone to hire me as a postdoc, and allow/help me to "fill in the gaps"?

Note: this question was also posted on quora, but has so far gone unanswered.

That's great!  That's just how you should feel (1st 2 paragraphs, at least if you're a normal mortal).  It means (i) you're not an arrogant fill-in-your-favorite-anatomical-term-here, and (ii) you're motivated to understand things rather than just get out papers.  This is what a scholar should be.

I felt like there were too many huge gaps in my learning when I was a grad student.  I felt like that when I was a postdoc too.  I felt like that when I was a new tenure track.  I have tenure now, and I still feel that way.  I just learned a lot of basic things over the past year that I can't believe I didn't know 5 years ago.  Part of this is the impostor syndrome, but part of it is just realizing that there there is so much out there to learn.

There is so much out there, and fields are so rich after centuries/millenia of development that you can only learn bits at a time, and you need to find a balance between solving new problems/getting out papers and learning what has already been discovered.  This is true for bigshots as well as littleshots.  Ravi Vakil (an algebraic geometer at Stanford) says the following, quoted from this MSE answer:

  ...mathematics is so rich and infinite that it is impossible to learn it systematically, and if you wait to master one topic before moving on to the next, you'll never get anywhere. Instead, you'll have tendrils of knowledge extending far from your comfort zone. Then you can later backfill from these tendrils, and extend your comfort zone; this is much easier to do than learning "forwards".

I was surprised to hear one of my friends, who is a hotshot and always seemed to know everything, once tell me something like: if we weren't expected to do research, we would spend all of our time just learning the beautiful mathematics that was already discovered.

At least in math, any postdoc mentor will expect you to have gaps (otherwise you wouldn't need a postdoc), and most mentors will want to you learn a lot of new things, though it is true that some mentors focus on being productive while learning as little new as possible.  So, instead I think you should focus on finding a mentor who you think you can learn a lot from.  Here are 2 things to look for:

They work on things at least somewhat different from, or at least from a different perspective than, what you/your advisor do.  Then you will be forced to learn more new things working with them.
The professor themself seems to know a lot, so you'll learn a lot just from regular interactions with the professor and their colleagues.  This also indicates they're less likely to be of the philosophy of publishing without learning.


In biology papers, is it standard to to list names of people who contributed to code tools, but did nothing else towards a paper? A while ago, I spent some time working for a lab doing biology research. While I was there, my main job was to write code to automatically perform specific kinds of analysis on the collected data, because they collected too much data to be analyzed manually. I did that job for a couple months, and then moved on to doing other things.

Now, I'm seeing that it would be quite beneficial to be able to point to a paper that exists with my name on it. Naturally, I'd like it if I could get my name on papers which used that code (because who doesn't want to get more credit for their work). However, I don't know what the standard is for biology papers, and I'd like to know what the common practice is before I have this discussion. Also note that I haven't had any discussions about this topic with the professor who heads that lab or anyone else in the lab, so I don't know what their thoughts are.

Is it standard practice to include on the list of authors of a paper, someone whose only contribution to the lab was the creation of a computer program to automatically analyze the data?

The Council of Science Editors has published a White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications that gives a summary of research on authorship and attribution in scientific journals (see section 2.2 of the report).  I recommend you begin by reading this material, to get an idea of the general principles for authorship and the required contributions.  One of the things that the white paper is designed to address is the practice of "ghost authorship" where a contributor fails to receive authorship credit despite making a substantial contribution to a paper.  It also recommends that if someone contributes to a paper, but not enough to receive authorship, then they should still be listed by name in the "Acknowledgements" section.

There is no universally agreed set of rules for the requirements for authorship, but the general view is that a person should be list as an author on a paper if they have made a "substantial contribution" to the paper.  You can also find a set of recommended principles for authorship (in the context of medical journals) published by the ICMJE:

  The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The above principles are written by a well-reputed body of medical journal editors.  I do not have any source material from editors of biology journals, but hopefully there is a reasonable correspondence in approaches.  In any case, whether or not your coding work constitutes a "significant contribution" to the work depends largely on the magnitude of the contribution relative to the overall paper, whether any customisation or innovation was required in the coding, and whether you made a contribution to the actual design of the study you were coding, or just coded a set of methods/procedures that were already determined by others.  On its own, coding the analysis for a study would not usually constitute a "significant contribution", but it would usually constitute enough of a contribution to warrant acknowledgment.  (Although it is for a different kind of contribution, you might find it helpful to read Parker and Berman (1998), which sets out recommendations for authorship credit for statisticians working on applied research.  This is a different situation, but it may have parallels to someone doing coding work on a research project.)

The main problem you will encounter in this case is that you have not negotiated any credit on the paper prior to doing the work.  In future, when you are asked to contribute in some way to an academic paper, it is a good idea to have an initial discussion with the principal author, to make agreement on what your contribution will be, and what acknowledgement (if any) you will receive.  You can certainly try to negotiate this post hoc but you might find this more difficult, depending on the attitude of the main authors of the studies in question.  In any case, if you feel that your contribution warrants a formal acknowledgement in a paper (or even co-authorship), I recommend you contact the principal author of the paper to start a discussion about that.  The best way to do this would be to frame your request in the context of the authorship principles set out in the above documents (or other similar studies), so that you can point to an external objective source to back up your request.  In the absence of some more direct document, the ICMJE principles should be applicable to the world of biology papers.


Can I take on an academic pseudonym while publishing research papers or take initials of my name? Is it possible? I am an graduate student. I want to take on an academic name for publishing papers in journals and would likewise be known by that name in the academic circuit. My surname is bit embarrassing and I fear that it can divert people's attention from my work. Therefore, is it possible that I keep my first name and use initials of my last name while publishing papers. I can mention my full name in websites, Google scholar and university profile. I had considered a legal name change but it is bit too much of a hassle from where I come from. Moreover, I am aware that a name change after getting married to husband's surname will not lead to uniformity in papers and can be hassle for people searching my work or for citation purposes. What can be done in this case? Can I take initials of my surname?

The common way to publish is "Surname, N." (not the unique). So it will be read. How ever you should evaluate all the facts before, and consider why you think it's embarrassing.
There's no trouble about publishing with a nickname, in fact, many people has done it, but there's no guarantee that it won't bring you other problems:

accessing conferences. Many conferences wil ask for your passport to receive your access ID.
having to answer for two surnames
having accounts with different surnames
The most difficult: demonstrate that you are your nickname. There's no legal entity which does that.

However, at the Q3, Q2, Q1 conferences are not a high school. You'll find people from around the world, with high education, whose companies, universities or themselves have payed from $500-$5000 and will be looking for the contents of your article, not your Surname.
Decades ago, Chinese authors used nicknames and they had this kind of problems. They changed Peng/Yang/Ming/Wung, for Atkinson/Eastwood/Anderson/Banks. But, fortunately, nowadays you can find thousands of articles with asian surnames and shared without shame. The Academic community will look at your contents first. If it has quality contents, then look at the authors to remember it.


Non-consensual authorship order change after paper submission? After submitting a paper to a conference, my advisor told me that he was going to change the authorship order (putting him as first author, me as last) because he contributed more to the final manuscript, even though I conducted all the experiments. He proceeded to change the order without my consent.

Is this common in academia? I'm a new master's student and I'm not sure if I should just get used to it or change advisors.

You agreed on something, worked together and he then changed the conditions without your consent. That is not ok in all, neither in academia nor in any business.
However, both in academia and everywhere else, it happens. The question now is: What can you do? Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself. To help you with that, here are some ideas:

He might actually be right that you contributed less than anticipated. Still, changing the order in the last second without giving you the chance to earn first author is not a nice move.
You can simply accept it and be happy to have a (maybe even the first?) publication, even if not at first author. On the other hand, this might mean that he will try the same thing next time.
You can confront your advisor about it. Depending on how he answers, you might decide how to proceed.
You can contact and notify the conference about it. This might mean that you loose the publication and get on your advisors bad side, though.
You can ask others at the institute what they think about it. Maybe they already know the tricks your advisor plays? This might also backfire if you badmouth him to much.

As you see, all options also have drawbacks. Personally, I would try to get a detailed explanation out of him. Don't blame him, rather try to make clear that you want to know your mistakes, want to know how you could have contributed more, to work better on your next paper. If you are lucky, he will point out your weak points, you will agree that you could have done better and everything gets resolved.


How to write something which is already written? Suppose, I need to write something about the "Relationship between literacy and social status".

I arrange my essay as follows:

what is literacy?
what is social status?
How does social status affect literacy?
...

While searching for (1) I found that there are numerous well-written papers that defined "literacy" in detail. So, the problem for me is: I don't have anything to add to the already existing information base.

So, the only option left for me is to paraphrase or rearrange the text/information which is available in the articles.

What should I do now?

How can I write something which is already written?

Do not try to rearrange or paraphrase, but write in your own words.

How do you do it:

Read what you need to read.
Think about it.
Write it down again (without looking at the original source).

It takes more time than paraphrasing/rearranging, but it is worth the effort. You see if you really understood the topic and also you may discover that you have something new to say.


how to find highly cited articles in journals with low impact factor? Journals with high IF get more attention, so might get "better" articles.
However I am interested in finding papers published in minor journals that have a high number of citations, say >100.

I can't seem to do this search on web of science. How is this achieved?

Scopus allows you to do this. Search for the journal name and then sort by number of citations.


Arbitrary units or unitless plot to protect data? My question is about naming semi-arbitrary units in a (conference) paper.

I am writing a paper and, in accordance with advice from my mentor, I need to remove exact data and parameters from most of the paper because some of it is sensitive information. Ideally, I would like to preserve the shape of the plots but make the units arbitrary.

Note that this doesn't in any way interfere with understanding the results. The exact same procedure can be used regardless of the exact parameter value (literally the slope of a line), but we aren't allowed to publish that value.

In one case, I was plotting two curves on the same plot showing the difference in performance between two actuators. I normalized both curves, but then they more or less overlapped, which made the graphic uninteresting and a bit confusing. So, I normalized one plot and then did some relative scaling / biasing of the data to preserve the overall shape somewhat proportionally.

What would I call that? Normalized data? Arbitrary units? Unitless? Should I just make a note that the scale has been adjusted to preserve the shape?

In another case I have two sets of linear fitted data and I am having a similar issue on how to display and label these things, because the units will be rather arbitrary but it won't be quite normalized.

Thank you for your time.

If that paper is submitted to IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (and judging by comments, this journal should be a decent enough fit for the purpose of this discussion), you would have to provide the measurement results. The journal guidelines explicitly ask for it and no arbitrary units or unitless plots will suffice.

Reproducibilty of the research is very important. And obfuscating the data certainly goes against it. If this plot & experiment itself is crucial for the paper – and you are not allowed by any means to disclose the parameters required to reproduce your experiment – you don't have a paper. Which might be sad, but that's not "the science" and "scientific process" fault, but ITAR (if that's the case) and yours, by (un)willingly accepting their terms.

One might judge that this is a conference paper, not a full journal one. But I, personally, prefer to have very similar standards for both conference & journal papers – and a lot of conferences have a similar (if not better) review process.


Having a co-author as an external examiner for doctoral thesis defense I'm a PhD student in Computer Science in the UK. I had co-authored a paper with a Lecturer from another university (not any of my supervisors, just someone's work I'm building upon) in my first year. I have kept him up-to-date with my work and he's very familiar with what I'm doing. Would I be allowed to have him as an examiner for my thesis?

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm referring to an external examiner.

It doesn't matter whether there is a "national or global consensus"; it matters what is the rule at your particular university (consensus means "general agreement"; there may be exceptions).  Given that the concern has been raised, your advisor is exactly right when he says "We'd have to check this."

It sounds like you don't know who to ask and are trying to circumvent this by instead getting a general answer from the larger academic world.  That's not the way to go here.  If you don't know who to ask, begin by telling your advisor that: this is his problem as well as yours.  Then together you ask various university people about the issue until you get an answer.  If there is some faculty member who has a leadership role in the graduate program in your department (e.g. the "director of graduate studies" or possibly just the department head), start there.

(Added: Of course you may be able to find the answer to your question in online regulations for your graduate program, and that is an excellent place to start.  I had assumed that the OP would have tried that first before asking here.  Generally posted regulations do not address every eventuality.)

For what it's worth I would be surprised if this were a problem.  But I said what I meant: the previous sentence is not worth much.  Maybe it's a problem at your university: then I'll be surprised (so what?).  The last thing that you want is not to check this out and find out too late that it's actually a problem.


Workflow for long-distance collaboration with a dyslexic researcher? I often work with graduate students at a particular university in Europe (I am in the US), in a kind of supervisory role.

In the past, I've used a shared wiki for this kind of collaboration. The students take informal but very detailed notes on the wiki as they work. I regularly check on the latest contributions, and comment on the wiki directly if I have something to add. This is analogous to the way I can "drop in" on local students and check in/help out whenever I find myself with some free time on my hands (which is much more frequent than my availability for "real" scheduled meetings.)

It is especially useful because the difference in timezones makes it hard to schedule "face to face" meetings over Skype.

A student I am currently working with has informed me that he has dyslexia. His writing speed is slow, so keeping copious notes on a wiki is just not practical. (Even instant messaging is difficult.)

Any suggestions regarding how to facilitate this collaboration?

There are interesting aspects raised by this question, not the least at which end of a distant interaction does the adjustment take place. Should the dyslexic collaborator make adjustments or should the other party make accommodations? The issue of the influence any legislation is also interesting.

If the collaboration arrangement is a formalised one, does any anti-discrimination laws apply at the US end which would require the US party to make adjustments? Not knowing details of local laws I cannot say, but local advice might need to be obtained. Even if it is not a requirement to do anything there may be other imperatives such as the protection of university reputation that could be affected by not being able to enable effective collaborations with disabled students.

At the European end the location would indicate if their university should be providing resources to enable adjustments. If it was the UK (I know it is not) the the student's university would already have an obligation to support adjustments to enable the participation in the collaboration on equal terms.

Having discussed who might have to make adjustments, lets looks at possible means of adjustment. The most obvious mechanism is speech to text software, but even the best software has trouble with non-native (and some native) accents as well as the technical material often contained in Phd research discussions. Many regular uses of text-to-speech use a special "talking-to-the robot" form of speech to ensure accurate transcription.

This leaves two other approaches. The move to a reduced text content or human transcription.

Many dyslexic people find lengthy textual prose difficult. Often diagrams or speech are better. A tools that is often recommended are idea capture using brain-ware mapping. An example of such a Tool is Inspiration. The research ideas can be captured in diagram form and pasted into a discussion wiki. Using a diagram the dyslexic and non-dyslexic collaborators can communicate on equal terms.

If speech transcription seems to have a rôle then, perhaps, junior researchers, such as undergraduate volunteers could be used to transcribe. This could happen at either end depending on availability of labour or funding.

For a dyslexic student where funding is available there are software solutions that are very helpful in preparing text. Some tools assist in the conversion of non-linear expression into structured text (such as Inspiration as already mentioned), but there are also writing tools. I find Texthelp gold can be very useful, but others are available.

I final thought; It is often said we are two nations divided by a common language and as such there can be linguistic difficulties between the most erudite writers on different continents. Just think how much harder it can be when dyslexia is introduced into the mix. As with both issues dialect or dyslexia, a little tolerance goes a long way.


Cover letter for journal submission I'm submitting to a journal. There is a drop down menu to choose your area, and each area has a specified editor with his name readily found on the journal instructions. So the assigned editor is known. Should I refer the cover letter to the editor in chief or the editor.

I wouldn't refer to the specific editor, just because if there was a change in the role before your paper is seen (uncommon, but happens), it wouldn't be nice. The editor-in-chief is a safer choice.


How to deal with a guilty feeling after graduating with very high grades as MA student? The question seems quite clear, but here is my situation:

Recently, I have graduated with a MA degree in humanities with the highest academic distinction in my country (Northwest Europe). In fact, as my supervisor told me, the last time that a student in our department reached such a level was a decade ago.

Nevertheless my satisfaction, I feel already that I don't deserve such a distinction because:

I studied for a semester abroad and took 4 courses in a country where A's and A+'s are traditionally "easier" to earn than in my country. I, thus, think that I was in a better position to get this distinction than my classmates who stayed at home.
More importantly, I feel guilty because I once "recycled" a paper from my undergrad years for one of those MA courses abroad, while I only vaguely referred to my previous work. Note that I did certainly not use somebody else's work, but I feel that I could have avoided such an act of self-plagiarism during my MA by referring more clearly and directly. The professor of the MA course did not seem to be bothered with my practice, even when I told him twice that I was planning to recycle an old paper.

Good to know:

1° My supervisor told me already not to bother with the first issue because I received even better grades for my thesis and for some courses at my home university during the second semester.

2° I would like to start a PhD program in the near future, but I feel that someone will call me out for my current issues or, even worse, I can lose the current distinction/get my degree revoked.

3° Regarding the paper, I used some major parts of the undergrad paper, rewrote the introduction (adding a literature review) and conclusion. I was also able to publish the paper in a low-tier journal for graduate students (and corrected my mistake by that time.)

How should I deal with my situation? Should I contact the professors in questions and explain the situation? Is this normal to feel like this (aka impostor syndrome) or are these serious issues?

Any advice is helpful!

It is not inherently unethical to "recycle" previous coursework.  It is only unethical to do so without the current professor's knowledge.

Professors may determine, based on their own teaching philosophy and the circumstances of the course, whether or not it is acceptable to reuse work completed for previous courses.  In this case, you told the professor and he consented, so obviously he decided that reusing your previous paper still met the academic standards he set.  Someone else who learned about the matter might have a different opinion, but they would respect the decision he made.

Your actions in this case were completely ethical.  There is no way they would lead to future academic dishonesty charges, let alone a revoked degree.

As for the semester abroad, your transcript will clearly show that those classes were taken at a different institution.  You'll provide those records as part of applying for a PhD, and the professor or committee considering your application will be able to consider them in context, taking into account their own opinion of the standards at that institution.  Again, everyone has complete information, and there is no deceit or unethical behavior.

As for the academic distinction, it seems pretty clear to me: your institution had criteria for awarding the distinction and you met them.  In setting those criteria, they certainly would have taken into account how to consider coursework completed at other institutions.  So again, no deceit.

Anyway, I am not sure about Europe, but in my experience, such honors are pretty meaningless in practical terms.  It will look nice on your diploma, but someone evaluating you for a PhD is not going to look at what distinctions you may or may not have received; they're going to look at what you actually did.  So it's fairly pointless to worry about whether or not you "deserved" something that, in reality, doesn't convey any practical benefit.


Can tenured professors do more about injustice in universities? This question pertains only to tenured professors, because untenured staff may fear and risk loss of employment if they protest or campaign against the university.

How much can tenured professors do, to combat and protest injustice and misconduct by the university (eg: exorbitant accommodation or food prices or libary fines, horrible teaching, low faculty-student ratio, scant attention and support to undergraduates, etc.)?

Please correct any errors in this conjecture, but it seems that if many famous tenured professors (eg: Nobel laureates, Fields Medallists, etc...) unite against an injustice, and perchance even threaten to leave the university because they can easily gain tenure elsewhere with their excellences, then certainly the university would address it?

There are a lot of things you're asking that are going to fall under opinions, vagaries of the university you're talking about, etc. But here are some concrete things they might be capable of doing:

If there is a faculty union, it is almost certain tenured faculty will have a voice on it. They can use that voice to advocate for any number of causes, including things like better treatment of adjunct faculty, etc. It is, of course, possible for this voice to be ignored.
Similarly, a faculty senate may have some voice in deciding university policy, weighing in on possible candidates for president of the university, etc., and may use this voice to prioritize certain causes.
Tenured faculty will likely sit on faculty hiring and admissions committees. This can allow them to exercise some power in who they hire, and how they are evaluated - for example, are women and minority candidates being given a fair shake? Are we admitting a realistic number of graduate students given the job market?
Similarly, they may serve on tenure promotion committees, curriculum steering committees, etc. and may advocate for teaching performance being a stronger criteria for promotion and tenure, shuffling some classes to better teachers or reclaiming a class from another department that is blowing off their students, etc.

That being said, there is a limited amount any group in the university system can do. For example, fees might be set by the state legislature in the case of a state school, class size is likely more a function of budget than anything else (tenured faculty can't conjure up new FTE positions), and some of these things, to be frank, may not rise to the level of "Something worth protesting over". Additionally, while more protected, the experience of any number of tenured faculty shows that they can be retaliated against.


What are the key features of a short (15 min) conference presentation? I am preparing to give a conference presentation from scratch.

What is an effective ratio of introduction / methods / results / conclusion slides?

How can I balance the details of research without loosing the audience on key points?

In my experience, 90% of conference talks are dull and there may be one or two at any given conference that are really inspiring. What makes a "great" talk?

How can I balance the details of research without losing the audience on key points?

From my perspective, the key to giving a 15 minute talk is to omit all of the details.  Many audience members don't care, the few who do can read your paper, and in any case it's impossible to convey any serious details clearly and correctly in such a short time.  If you try, then much of the audience will stop paying attention; you'll end up wasting their time and missing a great opportunity to present your work.  Instead, your goal should be to ensure that everyone leaves with some understanding of what you've done, and that some of them are inspired to learn more.

This means you should focus on the big picture.  What did you do, how and why did you do it, and what have we learned from it?  In mathematics, I'd focus on context, motivation, definitions, theorem statements, examples, and intuition.  It's OK to give a brief proof outline or sketch, but nothing detailed or complicated.  If you can't summarize it in a few sentences, it's too complicated.

There are various ways short talks can go wrong.  For example, some of them try to compress 30 minutes of content into 15 minutes by talking fast and barely explaining anything, while others simply omit the background and context needed to understand the presentation.  However, there's a common difficulty behind many bad talks: they focus on the speaker's desires and goals rather than the audience's.  Ultimately, you need to design your presentation to fit the background and interests of the audience and the time available, rather than what you wish you could tell them.


How do you self-teach yourself about a field you don't know about, specifically for STEM? When I was in an undergrad, I joined a DNA nanotechnology lab and the assistant professor who was member of the lab gave me bunch of papers to read to get acquainted with the field. When I joined a computational physics lab, it was the same and the professor gave me a paper to read. I do understand that, in labs, you don't have textbooks but bunch of papers to teach yourself.

I am curious about how people in academia self-teach themselves about a field they don't know about. Would they read a review from major peer-reviewed journals, such as Science or Nature, and then dig deeper from there? How would they get teach themselves techniques, and knowledge? When I was in a lab, I didn't have to worry about those things since professors gave me things I needed to read. But, if there was no person like that, how would the researcher get acquainted with the field?

Would they read a review from major peer-reviewed journals, such as Science or Nature, and then dig deeper from there?

Yes.

  How would they get teach themselves techniques, and knowledge?

Techniques can also be learned from journal articles, but it's also typical to defer to or collaborate with other researchers who are more familiar with those techniques, or to travel and visit labs. In my personal experience, several times contacts at conferences etc led to communication between labs. The lab I worked in during grad school a few times hosted grad students from other labs both inside and outside our institution that spent a few days or hours here to see how we did a particular thing, and similarly people from our lab would travel around.

When academics travel to give talks at other universities, one of the key parts of their visit is to tour other labs, which can include observing techniques used by those labs.

I'd add that this doesn't just apply to new or unfamiliar techniques, either: it's part of the normal art of improving research methodology.

More broadly, though, mid- and later-career academics don't tend to move from field to field arbitrarily (whereas it's not uncommon to make a big jump between undergrad and grad school: you simply aren't that committed to a field at that point): they usually have some adjacent knowledge that's taking them into that area, so they aren't starting completely from scratch.


Academic job in country B, family in country A. Impact on work/life balance I am applying for a job in academia in a different country than the one I live in with my family.

The job is in a very good institution, well paid compared to what I earn now. I am close to mid-career, and looking for a boost in opportunity and salary that I could not find close to here now.

We (spouse + 2 kids ~ 10yo) live in a country roughly 2-3 hours away (by plane) from the new job location. Their life is where we live now, the schools are good, etc etc, so they won't be moving with me if I take the job. I would have to commute every week or so.

S.O. and I discussed it and we think we can make it as a couple. The boost in responsibilities and salary are significant, but of course we have no experience of this (S.O. is not in academia).

What would be the impact of this change on our life as a family? How does it turn out most of the time?

What a massive decision you have to face and I don't envy the decision you have to make.

I don't think there is any magic formula for this and comparing the situations of other couples is a moot point; it's comparing apples and oranges. If you both believe its the best thing for you to take this job then there's no reason why you can't make this work, in the short term.

Have you discussed what the plan is further down the road? Would there be any suggestion of your family moving to country B when the children get to the end of their primary education and are starting secondary school? At roughly 10 years old, they're still very much young enough to make the move without worrying about them making new friends and learning the language (if that's an issue), kids are very adaptable in these situations.

Beyond just your family, what about you? You'll be alone in a new country with your family over a thousand miles away? Skype and regular messaging may seem like it'll help but at the end of the day, and I don't mean to bum you out, you will be on your own the majority of the time.

I hope it works out for you regardless of your decision!


What exactly is "campus security"? I read this question where a teaching assistant asks how to deal with an aggressive student.

In her answer, the user Nicole Hamilton gives advice to call campus security. Now, in my naive foreign thinking, whenever the word "campus security" came up, I imagined this to be similar to a discotheque's security people: a single strong person (or a team) who would be in the university building during its opening hours, helping de-escalate conflicts and throwing out aggressive people.

However, the user "apparente001" advises the OP to "do not hesitate to call campus security for an escort while leaving your building at night" (in a comment). This suggests that campus security is more: A university employee apparently may call these security people at any time to any (reasonable?) place to escort them (I assume, provided that some incident happened like the one described by OP). From the Wikipedia article, I understand campus police (is this the same as campus security?) to be police officers who only serve in university.

However (at least in my country), I could not simply call the police to escort me at night when something "vague" like the incident described in the question happened. (I do not want to say the the incident is not serious - however, I doubt a police officer would escort me at night if I told them that very incident).

So I take it that campus security/campus police must be something different: an organisation any university employee can call at any time. Can you tell me more about this concept?

In particular, the question which interest me are:

Is campus police/campus security the same concept?
What exactly does campus police/campus security for university employees? When can they be called and for what purpose?
Can university students (if they are not at the university building) also call them? If yes, to what extend do they help them?

While the original question specifies no country, I have the feeling that the OP and the user "apparente001" are talking about US or Canada. (I may be wrong, through.) Therefore, I also would be (mainly) interested in information about these countries.

Many universities (both public and private) in the US have campus police.  These are actual police officers who can carry guns and have the power to arrest someone or write a citation.  On a large campus with tens of thousands of students, this can be a quite sizable police force.  The campus police typically have jurisdiction limited to the university campus, but in some cases, they share jurisdiction with local police in the area near campus.

Other universities have campus security.  These are security guards who operate much like the security guards you might find at a sporting event or concert.  They don't have full police powers, but they can certainly remove someone from campus who is misbehaving.  When an incident becomes serious, they'll call in the local police force.

"Security" is often used as a generic name for these forces, whether or not they have actual police powers.  On many campuses, there is a mixture of police (more highly trained and paid more) and security guards (less trained and less expensive) that are assigned to deal with different kinds of situations.

So,

Not exactly.  Campus police have full police powers (to arrest, use
deadly force, etc.)  Campus security typically has less authority.
Campus police or security are typically the first responders for criminal activity (robbery, assault, etc.)  They enforce campus rules that may not carry criminal penalties.  Campus security can call in the local police for more serious incidents.   Anyone on campus (students, faculty, or staff) can call in the campus police or security, although making a frivolous complaint could get you in trouble.
Unless there's some jurisdiction agreement between campus police and the regular local police force, it wouldn't be appropriate to call the campus police to respond to an incident off campus- the campus police would transfer your call to the appropriate police department.  Note that "campus" might include all university-owned buildings, even if they're physically distant from the main campus.  In particular, university-owned housing is typically "on campus."

At another level, most campuses in the US have their own set of rules for student conduct and an administrative process for judging students who are charged with violating the rules.  This is separate from the legal system.  It gives some leeway to university administrators to deal with infractions that might be crimes if they were handled by the regular legal system.  This can be controversial, particularly when it extends to more serious offenses such as sexual assault.

P.S.

Some large campuses in the US also have their own staff to provide firefighting and emergency medical assistance.  When there are science and engineering labs, it's particularly important that firefighters be trained in how to deal with emergencies involving hazardous materials.

Many campuses in urban areas have free escort services- a student (or even a staff or faculty member) calls up security to request an escort to walk with them (or give a ride in a car) from one part of campus to another. You can't expect instant service, but a typical wait time might be 20 minutes.   The escort might be provided by a campus police officer who is already out on patrol, but it's more common for there to be a group of non-police employees and vehicles dedicated to this. These services are mostly used late at night- if you've been working in your lab until 1 am, you might want an escort back to your dormitory or the parking garage.

In the US, the Clery Act requires colleges and universities to prepare an annual report with statistics on crimes and other incidents (such as fires) that occur on and near campus.  Potential students often read these reports to determine whether a campus is "safe."   This has made campus safety an important concern to administrators.


How helpful is a Latin honors designation (cum laude, magna cum laude) for admission to PhD programs? I have the option of graduating from my university (U.S.) a semester early, and if I do so, I would receive the lowest honors designation of cum laude. However, if I do not graduate early, I will be able to receive the highest honors designation of summa cum laude. How important is this designation for graduate school admissions, and is there a major difference between these two? My GPA would remain unchanged, the only difference is completion of other honors program requirements.

The honor designations carry essentially no weight. The additional honor program requirements, however, could carry substantial weight. If for example, one of the extra requirements was an independent research project, this would be very valuable for graduate school admissions. If the requirement was the completion of a university breadth requirement (e.g., basket weaving), then it has no extra value for admissions.