How does a graduate student judge if one is slacking off? As a third year graduate student (theoretical physics) I need to find out methods to understand if I am doing well or not, am I making progress or not, am I putting in enough effort or not?

How do I judge/measure my performance?

Of course a primary skew in my situation is that I found an advisor only towards the end of my second year of PhD. (..before that I was working in other groups on topics which I didn't like at all..)

It's a good question, and one that's rather difficult to answer. I'll say a few things though.

being able to judge your own level of progress and evaluate yourself honestly but fairly is a crucial part of your development. After all, you won't have an advisor for very long, but you'll be a researcher for a long time. So it's good that you're asking this question
Research has many phases, and to evaluate your progress it's important to recognize which phase you're in.

in an exploratory phase where you're looking at different topics to see what might be worth pursuing, you should be reading a lot. A plausible metric here could be whether you're reading something every day, and if you're getting a sense of familiarity with the literature (you know citations without having to look up the bibliography, you keep encountering papers you've read before, and so on)
when you are working on a particular problem, do you have an idea that you're trying ? If not, what are you doing to search for the next idea ? do you have concrete tests of whether the idea is going to fail or not ? If you're thinking concretely and constructively, then you'll automatically make progress (notice that I'm not talking about how long it takes, but rather whether you see paths to progress)
when you're writing up work, are you methodically identifying things that need to be edited/cleaned/removed, and are you spending enough time each day working on these. When there's a lot of grunt work to do, time spent is a good measure of productivity.

Conversely, students (and researchers!) often become unproductive when:

they don't know what to do next, and don't know to ask, or how to find something to do next
they have things to do next, but are overwhelmed/fearful, and avoid doing them, or fritter away time in busy work (getting the exact right font for the title, for example)

The trick is not to get caught up in doing things at a certain rate, or worry about the large-scale,  but rather ensure that you always have something to do next. If you don't, that's when you go talk to your advisor.


When translating an article into English, how do I quote the author’s quotations of translated versions of English works? The article which I am translating into English quotes extensively from translated versions of works by English authors (e.g. a Spanish translated version of Philip Pettit’s ‘Republicanism’). As the translator, do I translate these quotations into English myself, or do I need to find Pettit’s original English words? I’m not sure, because the latter would mean quoting from a text (the original, English version of ‘Republicanism’) which the author of the article I am translating did not read... In which case do I simply do the former but make very clear in the in-text references that I am quoting from a translation?

In my research I need to cite a work by a Russian author, Gnedenko, say, who, for reasons unknown to me, published in French, in an American journal. There being no published translations of the original French (if he really did write in French, which I doubt), I have translated the French into English. When I need to quote I will use my words followed by  "(Gnedenko [reference] - my translation)".

In practice, in my subject, statistics, Gnedenko's exact words matter much less than his ideas, and if I wished to cite another author who studied Gnedenko in translation it would not matter much which language that author had read the paper in.

If in your subject it really matters what language other writers have read a paper in, then you have no alternative but to quote those words, in whatever language was used. You may provide your own translation, identified as such.

The point is that you must leave no doubt in your readers' minds as to where the words you cite came from.


Declining an offer to present a poster instead of a paper I have submitted a paper to a conference which defined several submission categories: papers, posters, etc. I submitted my abstract in the paper category, but was asked to present a poster instead.

I would do it if it was practical in my situation. But the conference is in another country, and the travel expenses are somewhat consequent. I'm not sure my research lab would accept to cover the expenses, because we're already on a tight budget. Even so, I don't want to be stuck later on if my paper gets accepted somewhere else and I can't go there because I already spent too much of the lab's money on this poster. I'm not even certain I could present the exact same research in another setting without it being perceived as a duplicate.

I hence want to decline the offer (hoping this isn't a mistake!). Do the arguments I gave above sound reasonable, from the point of view of a conference committee? Is there something I could add or remove to make this better?

I don't think  you actually need a reason to decline. Saving the work for submission elsewhere is perfectly reasonable in any case. All you need to reply is "No, thank you".

Posters are good for preliminary work and for students wanting some exposure and an opportunity to meet other researchers, of course.

But the work is  yours and you don't need to explain why you prefer to withhold it at this time.


Is it a good idea to include "research interests" section in CV for PhD admissions? If so, what to include in it? I plan to apply for a PhD position in Engineering. I am working on the CV and while going through google looking for examples I found references to a section Research Interests. I was wondering if it would be a good idea to include it or leave it altogether.

If included, it is pretty obvious to tailor it to the PhD position one is applying to. But the question then would be to whether keep it limited to the position in question or include your other interests. Given that, nowadays, having multidisciplinary research interests is a desirable trait, I tend to think the latter. However, I need opinions from other people. Before answering the second part, please state as to why including Research Interest is a good idea in the first place.

The section on research interests should help to identify these quickly. In principle one could deduce your interests from your publications, talks, thesis and so on, but an exposed lists makes life easier.

However, you can not just tailor your list of research interests arbitrarily to the position as they should be in line with the rest of the CV. If you state that something is one of your top interests but this topic does not appear anywhere else in your CV this looks suspicious. My advice is, to be totally honest here. Do not include anything which is not truly your research interest, and if you include something that does not show up in your CV, have some explanation for this somewhere else (e.g. in a research statement or cover letter). Don't write one of these applications where everything looks like a perfect fit for the position, but nothing is backed up with evidence.


Is it possible to make a decision upon a manuscript just within a month? I am the author of a 12-page double-column manuscript submitted to IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics. Here is the record of the updates within the journal online system, corresponding to the aforementioned manuscript:

Submission Finalization: 7th Aug. 2015
Under Review: 11th Aug. 2015
Awaiting EIC Decision: 16th Sep. 2015

The journal has declared that the authors might expect the result between 8 up to 10 weeks after the submission. But how is it possible to review a 12-page manuscript with a 6-page supplementary material just within one month?

With a full sense of anxiety, I might think that it would be a sinister sign for the early rejection of the manuscript.

Does anybody have any experience with this journal or similar transaction ones, with such very short review-to-result time interval, to evaluate my situation?

I cannot make any statement about this journal and this may depend somewhat on the field, but so far I never spent more than a day’s work on any review. The main problem why reviews take so long is not that the review itself actually takes that long, but that reviewers need to find time for the review given their numerous other duties.

Therefore it’s entirely possible that a referee reviews a paper within a day – maybe somewhat more, depending on the field – if they have time at hand. This needs not have to do anything with the review being sloppy or the paper being bad; it’s just a question of luck. I know of one example where a paper for Physical Review Letters (a high-level physics journal) went from submission to publication in something around ten days. Also, one of my papers once received a positive review within four days.

If the journal expects the review process to take eight to ten weeks, then a month sounds entirely plausible. It’s not even outstandingly short.


Undergraduate European Computer Science Schools and their application process? I'm a U.S. sophomore (junior in the fall) studying Computer Science looking to transfer. I have three questions:

What schools in Europe should I look into for Computer Science? To clarify what I'm looking for out of this question, I'm not asking for schools tailored to what I'm seeking (ie, will this school be good specifically for me), but rather the shared consensus of which schools are considered respectable for Computer Science. For example, even in the states I think everyone would say Oxford and Cambridge are well respected, but beyond that most (including myself) are not aware of other schools not in the U.S.
What is the timeframe for applying to these schools? In the U.S. most schools allow you to transfer into the spring or fall semesters, with the application being due approximately 6 months in advance (for example, due in March for fall semester that starts in September) and the application process starting 9 months in advance.
Ballpark, how much does it cost for international students to study at these schools? I've heard that University tuition is much lower in Europe. I have tried transferring to schools in the U.S., but for both schools I got accepted into the financial strain of ~30k in loans per year made it impossible to transfer. I don't want to waste my time applying to schools across seas if the same will happen.

If you believe in university rankings here is the one from QS. According to it, the following nine European universities belong to the world top 50 in Computer Science: Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), ETH Zurich (CH), Imperial College London (UK), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH), École Normale Supérieure, Paris (FR), University of Basel (CH), University of Amsterdam (NL), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (UK). Basically, I would say that all universities in the world top 200 list are good.

Moreover, depending on what are in Computer Science you prefer, it might be a good decision a university outside of this top 50/200 if they are specialised in the area you like.


When do offer letters usually arrive? I contacted a professor about working on research with him. I met with him in person and he let me know he wanted to work with me, that he would be my research advisor, and if I applied to the department he would get funding for me. I applied to the university, got accepted into the program then filled out a TA application.

I was informed by my research advisor that I was selected as a TA and that I would receive my offer letter soon in the mail. It has been several months since I was told that and he checked on the delay and said that the TA offer letters were being held up in the provost's office for some reason. Classes start in August and I still haven't received my offer letter. Is this sort of thing common, or should I start to worry? My research advisor has guaranteed me I will be funded and I have nothing to worry about.

You are in a tough position because 'offers' cannot be guaranteed until you have an official letter in hand.  And, when letters are sent is really specific to a department and university.  For example, when I was accepted to graduate school, the acceptance letter and funding were part of the same letter.


Does one page LOR hurt my chance of getting to graduate school I recently asked from the professor whom I have done research with him and I also did great in his class for LOR. He agreed to write a positive letter of recommendation for me however when I talked to him further he said his letter is going to be one page double spaced. I am thinking this is really short letter according to some pages in the internet and also a post in this page

How long should letters of recommendation for students be?

Do you think this will hurt my chance of getting into top graduate school in US?

One page double-space sounds like your professor is willing to say good things, but doesn't have all that much to say.  That's not going to be a particularly strong letter of recommendation, but it's better than not having a letter.


How to prepare enough material for my class? I have recently been admitted to teach some TOEFL courses in an institute and the course I lecture is reading and writing. According to the institute policy, each teacher is free to have his/her own material of teaching.
I am spending a lot of time observing classes and I prepare powerpoints to present in my class which takes a long time to prepare them every session. The students have been pleased so far but in one of the classes another instructor has given the students 7 gigabyte of additional material and also sends them about 10 sample writings each session and all in all has a wealth of teaching stuff to give to the students. They  have about 3 years experience teaching TOEFL.

I am new but I know I am doing my best. However, I feel bad for my students to be deprived of the material that other students have the privilege to have just because their teacher is someone else.

The other instructor does not share his material with anyone and it is of no use to ask him. I would appreciate if someone let me know how I can compensate for my students and if you know any good sources of TOEFL writing samples please let me know.

It is a common misconception among beginning teachers (including me when I first started) and some experienced teachers that it is good to include more materials in your teaching.  However, since students have a limited ability to learn, it is better to keep the quantity of material within that limit.  Pick the most important stuff, and make it really good.  Then review as much as possible to help students remember.

When designing your teaching methods, start with objectives (e.g. improving students' TOEFL score), then pick your assessment (the TOEFL), then design the content (practicing things that are likely to be on the TOEFL).

When I teach, my challenge is getting rid of unimportant material so it does not distract students from the important information.


Government Shutdown - application deadlines for fellowships and grants Will application deadlines for federally-funded fellowships and grants be extended, due to the ongoing government shutdown here in the States?  Is there even anyone to contact (and get a response from) at this time, regarding application deadlines?

For the National Science Foundation (NSF)

If your grant or fellowship is funded by the NSF, then the deadline remains the same.

From the NSF page, https://www.nsf.gov/shutdown/grantees.jsp, Information About the Government Shutdown for NSF Proposers and Grantees:

  Impact on Existing Deadlines

  During a lapse in appropriations, NSF will continue to accept proposal
  submissions pursuant to existing deadlines.

You should read this as "they will accept your proposal, will not process it, and the dead-line remains unchanged" during the shutdown.

You will not get any answer to your email during the shutdown.
Quoting the same page:

  Responses to any inquiries received regarding upcoming deadlines, including proposal preparation, will be deferred until normal operations resume.

Update

https://www.nsf.gov/ says:

  With the enactment of continuing appropriations through February 15, 2019, NSF is working to resume operations. Employees should report to work on their next scheduled work day.  For most staff, that will be Monday, January 28, 2019. NSF headquarters will be open to all staff starting at 6:00 a.m. Monday, January 28, 2019.


How to Deny A Project? I had a colleague who inquired if I would be willing to do some data analysis on a project of his. I thought, sure, why not and had the disclaimer that if the project is viable I'm on.

He's a sweet fellow when the conversation is about the weather, sports, or the work schedule at a cocktail. As a person he can be kind of caustic and says stuff off the record that makes me cringe and want to wash my hands. He wants me to do a quantitative analyses of research output over a specific topic and categorize authors. He is trying to look for factors that he thinks contributes to "high quality research output and citations". He wants to group authors by race and the way he is assessing race is conjecture off of name, which I find honestly kind of stupid and a little horrific for this to be in academia. For example, we have a colleague of African descent, and on paper you could not tell him apart based on name alone from someone of European descent due to his combination of first and last name. He also specifically wants to compare the United States against countries from a specific region of the world he has had an off the record vendetta against, which he has made insensitive jokes about in the past. This is an individual that has been reprimanded once by the way by our institution but it was more of a slap on the wrist for name calling in an e-mail.

I don't want to put my hands on this project, because hypothesis and everything aside, I don't believe in it. I also am not interested in this kind of work anyway as I thought he was going to have data about an experiment in our field, not about researchers in our field. How do I tell him no after I opened the door at the beginning to be willing to collaborate? He e-mailed me data files, etc. CC'd on e-mails.

I thought, sure, why not and had the disclaimer that if the project is viable I'm on.

It sounds like there may be some methodological issues with his proposed work, but setting that aside, it is not incumbent on you to work on a project that is not of interest to you, a fortiori if you think that his work will be driven by biases relating to the topic.  From your description, it appears that you have already told him that your participation is contingent on this project being viable.  In view of that, I think you at least owe him an explanation if you pull out, and an apology if this comes from some reason other than the viability of the project.  I see two broad options for pulling out:

(1) Tell him that you think his project has some methodological problems (e.g., tenuousness of inferring race from name, etc.) and that you therefore don't think it is viable research.  In this case your choice is consistent with your previous representations to him, so you do not owe him any apology.
(2) Tell him that you have changed your mind, and you have decided that --regardless of its viability-- the project is not something of interest to you.  Be up-front about this and apologise for changing your mind - acknowledge that you previously said you'd participate, but let him know that you have changed your mind.

Either way, the best thing in these cases is to raise this as early as you can, be up-front in your position, and acknowledge any previous representations you made to him.  If you wish him luck with his research then this is likely to smooth over any discomfort.


How do I deal with feelings of guilt and shame related to how long my PhD has taken? I am physically disabled. I have spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. I am wheelchair-bound and am nearly quadriplegic. This is not to complain, but rather to provide context.
My Ph.D. thesis defense is scheduled for less than two months from now. It has been a long road. I am tired.
It has also been literally a long time. It has been 10 years since I got my bachelor's degree and started the Ph.D. program. I only made it this far with the tireless support of my extraordinary advisor and a wonderful department. They never gave up on me.
I am currently struggling with guilt, or shame, that it has taken me so long to get to the defense. My advisor, my department, and my family have not made me feel this way. But I still feel bad that it has taken me so long. How do I deal with feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy?
I believe that all people have value, regardless of their success or failure or their intellectual ability. But somehow I guess I don't believe this applies to me.
I am looking for help, support, or anecdotes related to feelings of guilt/shame/inadequacy in academia in particular (especially Ph.D. programs), and not necessarily about life in general.

Talk to a counselor about your feelings. They can help.
But you aren't alone in taking a long time. Your disabilities are part of it, but success in research can't really be scheduled. Depending on the research questions you've been asking your extra three years (say) can be perfectly normal. Insight comes when it comes. And, I suspect you've had necessary timeouts for medical reasons.
But you are probably feeling a bit of both burn out and possibly imposter syndrome. Both are common at the end of a doctoral program, even if it doesn't take longer than (whatever it means to be) normal.
Congratulations on finishing. Thank everyone who has supported you.


Conference organizer pushes to Journal instead of Conference Proceedings Recently  a paper was submitted to ICIMP 2018(will be held at Imperial College London - South Kensington Campus,  London, UK during  Jan. 12-14, 2018 .).
Organizer  told that the  paper is accepted for publication in JOIG and ' Welcome to participate in ICIMP2018'.

But it is written on the webpage of ICIMP 2018 that-

  All the accepted papers of ICIMP 2018 will be included into Conference
  Proceedings which will be published by IEEE. And they will be archived
  into IEEE Xplore and be indexed by EI Compendex and Scopus.

If the paper is accepted for the conference then why it will not be published in
Conference Proceedings which will be published by IEEE? Why do they push it to a journal ? Is there a convention like what I stated above? Is it ok/legal to switch like that?

PS: The incident didn't happen to me, I was informed the incident by a forum member, I suspected/suspect, the paper author is lying about the acceptance, it is highly unlikely that such thing can happen.

Publishing peer-reviewed conference proceedings in an associated journal is a trend gaining traction in CS lately. Many universities are pushing quantitative evaluation of researcher output and punishing conference-as-publication fields, so this is to help researchers make the case for their productivity to the layers of administration that aren't familiar with the venues of a given field.

But your case sounds odd, especially since you weren't told beforehand, and the journal doesn't seem to be affiliated with IEEE at all. Definitely contact the organizers and make sure this isn't some scammer pretending to be them to snipe the paper out from under them...

If they really have chosen to change the publication venue, you don't have to accept it: you can always decide to withdraw your paper instead and submit it elsewhere.


Asking for an invitation letter before applying to the Fullbright Scholarship? So I'm currently applying for the Fullbright Masters Scholarship. I want to do Masters in Computer Graphics and there are very few universities in the US that deeply explore that area namely, Utah, Cornell, Stanford etc. The problem with Fullbright Scholarship is that they are responsible for placing you and there is no guarantee you get the University you want.

Since I've a couple of personal research projects already on my Github, I was hoping to email a professor asking for an invitation letter from his university if I appear promising. However since, this is a Masters, I certainly don't want to get bound and give my Master's thesis under the same professor as I haven't even explored all the sub-areas and haven't developed my interests fully. I was thinking that an invitation letter from the university I wish to join will certainly bolster my chances of getting placed there.

So is it appropriate to ask for an invitation letter under these circumstances and if so, should I explicitly mention that I've not made up my mind regarding a specific research area? Any tips or advices are helpful as this is my first time.

I want to do Masters in Computer Graphics and there are very few universities in the US that deeply explore that area namely, Utah, Cornell, Stanford etc.

Are you sure there are very few? This website is a very good resource for seeing which programs are active in an area: CSRankings -- Computer Graphics. It lists many universities with faculty who are actively publishing, including in order: Stanford, MIT, UCSD, CMU, NYU, Cornell, Texas A&M, etc. (Utah is only #19 in this ranking, which is based on number of publications at the top venues).

  Since I've a couple of personal research projects already on my Github, I was hoping to email a professor asking for an invitation letter from his university if I appear promising.

This is perfectly appropriate, but it does sound like the kind of email many professors are likely to ignore, especially since you are looking into Masters programs and not PhD. So I would be careful to keep it brief, to the point, and state your qualifications / accomplishments early (and/or link to your CV or webpage which states those things).

  However since, this is a Masters, I certainly don't want to get bound
  and give my Master's thesis under the same professor as I haven't even
  explored all the sub-areas and haven't developed my interests fully.

You would ideally email professors who you would broadly be interested in working for; to not do so is misleading, as you are essentially emailing to open up a connection of mutual interest between you.

However, you should not be worried about being formally bound at this stage. Sending an email is not a formal binding, and as long as you are honest, there should be no hard feelings if your plans change after you join the program or after you are admitted. Research interests inherently change over time, and many people switch to entirely different areas (let alone sub-areas). You can also check with the program to see if students are formally bound to advisors on admission, or later.

  should I explicitly mention that I've not made up my mind regarding a specific research area?

I would briefly mention this, yes -- it's along the lines of being honest and not giving a bad impression. Be as specific as you can without being dishonest -- "broadly interested in computer graphics" is fine if that's all you are sure about, but if you know some sub-areas you are interested in (that might align with the professor's), that can help as well.


Can I update the search of a systematic review at revision? I have recently received peer review on a systematic review after six months, with revisions requested. This is on a dynamic subject with significant literature published since. I re-screened the papers and was able to include a further 5 from those published in the past 6 months.
Is it acceptable to update the review at revision with this additional data, as it will be undergoing peer review again regardless? I think it improves the review substantially to include more data, which is more recent, but I'm not sure if this is acceptable?
Thank you in advance!

Since it is undergoing peer review again, in general, you should be able to include the new papers.  If you do this, though, highlight both the new papers and the changes to your conclusions in your author response / revision note, so that the reviewers know to pay particular attention to them and give them proper review - if you don't, they might not notice, and skip over important things because they think they already reviewed it.
It's common for reviewers to ask for new analyses or even experiments in revision, so this seems like a relatively normal kind of update in a revision cycle.
If in doubt, e-mail the managing editor.  One way to do that productively is to make a specific proposal - e.g. include the new papers and highlight in the author response letter - and ask if that is an appropriate way to handle the situation for their journal.
A note that doesn't seem applicable to your specific situation, but may help others finding this answer: the exception to this is when you get what many journals call a "Minor Revision" decision, where only the editor will see the revisions - it won't go back out to reviewers. In such a situation, I would contact the managing editor and notify them of the situation.  They may be able to handle the revision as a "Major Revision" and get reviews for it.


Is it acceptable to add a result to a paper when a journal asks for revisions? A while back, I submitted a paper to a mathematics journal. Since then, I have managed to prove an additional result that I think would improve the paper. If the paper gets rejected, I plan to incorporate the result into the paper and submit again elsewhere. If the journal accepts the paper and asks for revisions, my question is whether it would be acceptable to add the new result when I submit a revised version. The other option is to write up the new result as a separate paper, which may or may not be significant enough for publication.

The reason I ask is that I want to avoid wasting time now. It would be a shame to spend time and effort on incorporating the result into the paper now if I need to remove those changes in the case the paper is accepted. On the other hand, if I can include the result in the current paper, then I don't want to spend time now writing an entirely new paper for this one result.

You can make whatever changes you like in revision.  The key point is that the paper is being refereed again. (Maybe the referee isn't paying so much global attention to your paper the second time around.  But by the way, maybe the referee wasn't paying so much attention the first time around!  There are never any guarantees of that, but you have done your due diligence.)

It is quite common for revised papers to contain many small to moderate changes, including those that were not called for by the referee.  If you think about it, it is probably better not just to make precisely the changes asked for -- you are also responsible for your paper as a holistic document, and localized technical changes may necessitate other changes for the sake of unity, coherence and so forth.  However, as a referee it is a bit disconcerting to get a paper that has too many changes I have not asked for: at a certain point it begins to feel that I have to referee two papers when I have agreed to referee one.  For instance I recall getting a revised paper that was almost 10 pages longer, and I didn't like that much (but I did recommend it for acceptance).

As an author I can think of several cases where I have added significant material to the paper in revision, so it certainly does happen, and at the moment I cannot recall a situation where adding the material seemed to adversely affect the status of the paper.  If there is one extra result that you want to put in the paper and its proof takes only a couple of pages, I think you should probably go ahead.

Although I think you'll get away with it fine, whether it is really better to put more theorems into a math paper in revision is a different question that I am a bit too daunted to fully address here.  It depends on so many other factors, many of which are cultural.  E.g. another answer writes:

  I would lean towards publishing a followup paper instead. Does more for you on pub count.

In most parts of pure mathematics having "more papers than theorems" or "more papers than ideas" is looked down upon.  If in a certain paper you prove four cognate theorems and then later you try to write up a paper on a fifth cognate theorem, there is a good chance that the journal in which you can publish that little paper is so much worse than the first journal that it doesn't specifically help your career to do so.  Whereas if you just appended the fifth theorem in the first paper, you probably wouldn't get any more credit for that either...but at least the fifth theorem would appear in print with little additional trouble on your behalf.  I can definitely think of theorems that I have added to papers in this way (not necessarily literally in revision; sometimes just as offshoots of the main project): I proved them so I want to publish them, but I do not always want to play the "How good is this?" game if I don't have to.


How to stop weird labmate from staring at me doing experiments without damaging work relationship (too much)? A few months ago my lab had a new member. Shortly after he joined I started hearing from students in other labs that he was being very weird, hinting that they were somewhat bothered. For instance he would roam around near other people's benches, stand really close to a student doing their work, or even follow them when they move to another machine.

We are in an open-lab environment so a lot of labs share the same area. Maybe it was confusing to him and he thought it was fine to do what he did. Still,  I talked to my PI and he had the situation dealt with. However, when I am working he still likes to stand on the side staring at me. Apparently my PI forgot to tell him don't do that to your colleagues either. I know he's just being curious and wants to learn. I could probably use this as a precious opportunity to train myself to focus and ignore distractions. And I have learned over the years to tolerate some social behaviors in scientists which are not accepted by the general public. But his behaviors can be REALLY disturbing sometimes.

How should I talk to him about this without making the whole thing too awkward? I am afraid if I tolerate him any longer one day I would just blow up and yell at him... I don't want things to turn out ugly.

It's more of a comment, but I just want to voice that in my teaching career, I did encounter a couple people with these traits and they do have what we called Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I am not diagnosing OP's colleague, but I'd like to suggest this possibility, and we should be mindful that it may not be fair to assume the person of question can fully function socially.

After talking to faculty and doing some homework searching for resources, what I found useful was i) talk to the person privately about your expectation, and ii) be direct, don't use social hints. In many ways it's not that different from what other users suggested you to do, but I'd just like to add another point that sometimes some people can appear to be rude because they don't know it's rude, not because they are rude.


How does one define a non-biased, citation-worthy study? On Skeptics Stack Exchange I recently asked a question where I specifically asked for a study backed by a university, and someone edited it, changing it to the phrase "peer reviewed study." If I say "peer reviewed study" does that describe a study that is accurate, reliable, unbiased, etc? Is there any better description for the type of study I'm looking for?

Determining whether a study is accurate, reliable, unbiased, etc. can actually be quite difficult, particularly for tricky and difficult to measure phenomena.  This is what scientists argue about amongst themselves, and the consensus that emerges is best interpreted as the current best understanding of a subject.

Peer-reviewed publications are a good starting point, because the peer-review process strives to ensure that they are in fact accurate, reliable, unbiased, etc.  The publications are written and reviewed by humans, however, who are not very good at those things, and as such some bad articles get published and some good ones don't.  Likewise, there are many different levels of quality in peer-reviewed journals.  Still, for all its flaws, peer review is a lot better than not-peer-reviewed at filtering out things are are inaccurate, unreliable, badly biased, etc, and thus "peer-reviewed publication" is typically a good heuristic for "probably worth considering as a reasonable source of information."

That is not, however, the end of the story on whether an article is a good source of information.  A good next step is to see what other scientists say who reference the article in their own publications.  One article does not an established fact make; many in agreement do.


Are GRE Practice Guides Easier Than the Actual Test? So far, I've found the verbal section in most GRE prep. materials to be ridiculously easy, but that worries me since this test is supposed to weed out grad. school applicants. Thus, I'm worried that the prep. books/guides are significantly easier than the actual test and that I won't score as well as I hoped. (I want to score in the top 10th percentile on the verbal section.) Conversely, some of the math problems are more challenging, which probably means I'll do awful on that section. (For reference, I'm in a humanities field which does not involve any math.)

So I wanted to ask if the study guide's material is comparable (in difficulty) to the test material?

Assuming you are referring to the GRE General test: It would depend on what materials you are referring to, but the popular ones, particularly those from ETS, closely match the difficulty level of the actual test. However, note that:

To get a more accurate impression of difficulty, try to mimic test conditions as closely as possible (e.g., practice online tests if you are giving the computer-delivered test). Even if the questions seem easy, time could be an important factor, and familiarity with the interface helps. ETS offers two free online practice tests that use the actual test user interface.
The difficulty level is adaptive based on the section. So, if you perform well in one section, you can expect more difficult questions in the next, and vice-versa. However, the scoring is weighted based on section level difficulty, so ideally this should not adversely affect the final score.


How to cite papers in my statement of purpose? How to cite papers in my statement of purpose? The interview panel has asked me to cite the papers from which I have taken a general idea about my statement of purpose. Kindly guide me through the process?

You can ask them to clarify the citation format (e.g. Wikipedia offers some examples), or you can simply pick one of the listed options of systems or styles available.


Is it appropiate to put a funny funny slide in a Bachelor thesis presentation? I always like to stray in a context related funny slide either at the beginning or at the end of a presentation because I do not like the overall stern atmosphere at presentations.

I also planned a funny slide that is related to the topic of thesis at the end of my Bachelor thesis presentation but I am not sure If I bring myself in jeopardy through this because I assume they have to be strictly just presenting the mere content of my work and nothing else. I am even afraid that my open question to the audience (which includes Professors and Students too) at the beginning of my presentation is regarded as a violation of this strict code.

I'd consider this a classic example of ‘if you have to ask, the answer's no’.

To expand a little on this: I don't think that humour is always forbidden in academic contexts. I've seen it used in both publications and presentations -- only very rarely, but usually successfully. The problem is that ‘appropriateness’ is massively context-dependent. It depends on exactly what kind of humorous content you have planned, exactly how you present it, the culture at your institution and department, who's in the room, what mood they're in, how your audience regard you, what preceded your presentation, what you have to lose if your attempted humour fails, and a hundred other factors. You are far better placed to assess all these factors than anyone else in the world -- especially strangers on the Internet who know absolutely nothing about the details of your situation. So, if you yourself are unsure whether it's appropriate, there's probably nobody here who can give you a more reliable answer -- which means that you should play it safe and leave the humour out.

One thing you might consider is addressing your question to colleagues in your own department, who will be far more familiar with the particular context of your presentation.


Ownership of equipment purchases during Marie-Curie Individual fellowship I know there is a related question Does equipment purchased with grants stay with the PI? but I'm not sure if Individual Marie-Curie Fellowship follow different rules. I am talking about personal equipment like computers, monitors, etc. not lab equipment like pipettes or microscopes. It is true that technically the funding is given to the host institution but the project is self-standing and the Fellow is not a permanent staff, if that makes any difference.

In my experience, this depends on the rules of the host institution. Some institutions will allow researchers to keep the equipment purchased (as well as books etc.), while others want to retain it for themselves after the end of the fellowship. This can be the case even if the equipment in question has lost most of its value over the duration of the fellowship, or the institution already has the books in their library etc.


How to pick the brain of a professor with whom you have no connection I want to learn more about a specific part of a narrow, fledgling field. I want to have a 30 minute conversation with a the burgeoning experts in this area of study -- they are all researchers at universities.

I have completed my undergrad in a related field, but at a different institution, and without formal training in the specialized area I'm investigating. But I have read up enough to be able to ask informed questions.

How can I get these busy people to give me a half an hour (or more) of their life when I don't know anyone in their network and am an outsider? What can I offer them in exchange for their time? What is a good way to make contact and avoid a totally "cold call"?

You are right that it is difficult to make contact with a busy expert when you have no network contacts to draw upon. One of the best ways to make contact is to attend a conference that covers your area of interest; this can be pricey, but in my field the major conference even has "Meet the Experts" lunches for student attendees. At the conference, register for pre-meeting, student, and/or special interest group events that may have a either a career development focus or are likely to have a more specialized attendance and thus more opportunities to approach individuals with whom you'd like to talk.

While some experts may, in fact, respond to a "cold call" (or cold email, as the case may be), the fact is that most are probably putting out fires and dealing with higher-level responsibilities, and may simply be too busy. In that case you may want to try moving down the ladder a bit...a graduate student or postdoc in their lab may be a bit more available to chat, and may actually have good advice for you about the next step in your career, as well as information about the nitty-gritty of the specialized area their lab works on.

My best advice is just go out there and make your best effort to get in touch, provided you convey respect for their time and withdraw gracefully if they aren't able to make time for you. Some investigators may respond very favorably--you might be surprised! Nothing ventured, nothing gained...


Is it a good idea to apply to the same professor again after having been rejected the year before? Is there some kind of academic norm that says "when I reject an applicant, I don't want anything to do with him?"

edit: If a professor is reading this, personal experience from himself and colleagues will be really helpful!

It very much depends on why you were rejected.

For example, a year ago, it's possible the professor couldn't fund a student. Or there were limited spots, and someone else urgently needed a student. Or they were just getting a project going, and didn't want to add another person into their lab.

All of those are circumstances where it might be possible to revisit your application.

If you don't know the reason, you might still try. After all, if you don't apply functionally the answer is "No".


Tool for obtaining a BibTeX entry from a key, without creating it manually I am looking for a tool, where I only need to write something like alessandroni2015bibtex (this very question) to obtain the BibTeX entry, without needing to rewrite it.

I am aware that Google Scholar always offers a BibTeX link and uses AuthorYearFirst_Word as a scheme, but I do not know how to use this key for searching, because Google uses an internal ID for each BibTeX. Thus, when I feed the data of my citation to Google Scholar, sometimes I do not find it. For example, in case of books, I find only new editions (maybe due to a wrong use of the tool).

I doubt it. In all but the most verbose or non-human friendly (e.g., DOI) key style, the problem is a one-to-many mapping in that each BibTeX key maps to many sources even though any single source has just a single BibTex key. Even in relatively small personal bib files, conflicting keys are common and need to be disambiguated (usually with an additional letter or number).  The bigger the database (and Goggle Scholar is a big database) means that there will be lots of collisions.


How to argue with postdoc hired for a project, to work on tasks from another project I have one postdoc hired on a H2020 project for 18 months. Fortunately, she worked rather well and all her tasks are going to finish soon (11th month of the project). I would like to reallocate her to other projects my group is working on now, and which fall a bit outside of the initial H2020 project, but in any case, she has the competence and capabilities to move to the other projects. I briefly talked her about this and she says it would be unethical and illegal to work on something she has not initially hired for. I think that even if these new tasks are not directly related to the H2020 project, if she works on them and gets new publications, it would be a clear benefit for her, and I told her, but she continues to refuse to work on them. How would you argue with her to move to the other tasks when the H2020 tasks are finished?

You can switch her to another project if you have the funding for it. What you cannot do is to have her work paid by one H2020 project to carry out work for some other separate project. If that's what your postdoc says, she is right.
However, even in your existing project, there should be sufficient leeway to do work on good publications, research etc. and improve the work that you have carried out on the core project. Research never stops.
Alternatively, if you have funding for another project, then you can ask for the budgets to be reassigned (Edit: if she agrees) so that she is paid through the budget of the other project. That's perfectly acceptable, albeit you may have to return some of the budget of the original project she was hired for if that is not used in its entirety.
What you cannot do is to have the original project budget pay for work carried out on another project.


How can I point the reader of my report to another source for background information? In my report I introduce a topic that is good background information for my report but not crucial. To try and shorten the length of my report, rather than summarizing another paper I'd like to leave a statement that says "if you'd like to know more, read this paper", like: "For a more in-depth explanation of these strategies, read [paper] by [author] or visit [website]."

Perhaps this is bad practice? The sentence in quotes doesn't look right to me and I'd like to know if there's a better way to do it.

The report is very informal but I can see myself having this question later on with a more formal piece of writing. Bonus: does the answer change if I will be referring someone to a website/online pdf?

This is a fairly common kind of citation. Here are some examples, so you can choose one that sounds good to you:

In Baker, Mona. "Corpora in translation studies: An overview and some suggestions for future research." Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 7.2 (1995): 223-243. -

  (For a more detailed overview of text processing operations, see Sinclair 1991a.)

In Sederberg, Thomas W., and Scott R. Parry. "Free-form deformation of solid geometric models." ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics 20.4 (1986): 151-160. -

  This paper assumes that the reader is familiar with Bezier curves and surface patches. Necessary background can be found in [Boehm '84]. Basic understanding of solid modeling is also presumed, such as discussed in [Requicha '82].

In Vese, Luminita A., and Tony F. Chan. "A multiphase level set framework for image segmentation using the Mumford and Shah model." International journal of computer vision 50.3 (2002): 271-293. -

  For more recent and general expositions on the level set method and applications, we refer the reader to Sethian (1999), Osher and Fedkiw (2001, to appear).

In Rothlauf, Franz. "Representations for genetic and evolutionary algorithms." Representations for Genetic and Evolutionary Algorithms. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2006. 9-32. -

  For a more detailed overview about different types of representations see Bäck et al. (1997, Sect. C1).

In Abraham, Farid F., et al. "Instability dynamics of fracture: a computer simulation investigation." Physical Review Letters 73.2 (1994): 272. -

  We refer the reader to Allen and Tildesley [10], Hoover [11], or Abraham [12] for a treatment of the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation technique, including the many procedures for implementing it.

In Kak, Avinash C., and Malcolm Slaney. Principles of computerized tomographic imaging. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2001. -

  Interested readers should also consult the paper by Crawford and King [Cra90] and the special issue of Transactions on Medical Imaging [Wan00] for an overview of current approaches.

It can even be a brief parenthetical. See for example Brown, Judy, and Michael Fraser. "Approaches and perspectives in social and environmental accounting: an overview of the conceptual landscape." Business Strategy and the Environment 15.2 (2006): 103-117. -

  Indeed, legitimacy theory is one of the most widely used frameworks in explaining why organizations voluntarily engage in SEA (see Deegan, 2002, for an overview of this literature).

Note that in all of these examples, the reference is treated as a normal citation, using the same citation style as all the others in the paper and referring to a source that is included in the list of references.


What is the difference between publications and pure publications? I saw there are two sectors named 'publications' and 'pure publications' in some lab home pages. What is the difference?

If this is related to the Max Planck Institutes, it might be this: https://www.biochem.mpg.de/878470/pubman

PuRe is a repository. In that case, "PuRe Publication" is just a special form of publication. Your capitalization in the question doesn't give much of a hint, however.


How to introduce terminology in an academic paper? I am writing an academic paper where I give colloquial or otherwise general words a specific meaning in regards to my research. I have been introducing these terms so far by using quote marks for the first introduction, and then I don’t use quotes for later references, such as:

  We convert these subsets into “tokens”, which capture only high-level features. Tokens can have a variety of properties...

This method seems almost amateurish. Is there a better way to do this?

In my perception and fields, quotation marks are reserved for lack-of-a-better-word descriptions and the rare verbatim quotation. Newly defined terms are italicised instead, e.g.:

  We convert these subsets into tokens, which capture only high-level features. Tokens can have a variety of properties...

Before blindly applying this, you should check other publications to see what is common and the guidelines of your publication venue as to whether they address this.

Even when italicising it is important to phrase defining sentences in such a way that facilitate recognising them as such, which does not necessarily require an explicit definition. To decide whether your example sentence meets this requirement, I would have to know more about the context (and probably your field).

That being said, there is nothing wrong with explicit definitions and there exist dozens of short phrases and similar that can be used for this, for example:

  We convert these subsets into entities called tokens that capture only high-level features.

  We convert these subsets into entities that capture only high-level features, which we denote as tokens in the following.

  We convert these subsets into entities that capture only high-level features. These tokens can have a variety of properties … [not really explicit]

(Replace entities with whatever is appropriate from the context.)


One more undergraduate year for grad school? Would spending one more year as an undergraduate adversely affect my chances of getting into a graduate program?

I wasn't really thinking about economics PhD until recently so my GPA is not too impressive and I lack in math courses so I've decided to spend one more year to boost my GPA taking upper level courses and get a math minor.  However, could the very fact of spending one more year to finish college be a disadvantage of getting into a graduate program?

Generally speaking, no one cares all that much how long it took you to finish your undergraduate degree.  An extra semester or even an extra year will make almost no difference to anyone.  They will care what your GPA was.

One of my service assignments as faculty at UMich in our CS department is undergraduate advising.  I am constantly having to remind students that it does them no good to take a heavy load, hoping to graduate early, if the result is that they crater their GPA.  Much better to take a manageable load they can do well.  Twelve units of straight A's always beats 17 units with a couple of C's, especially for anyone hoping to go on to graduate school where ballpark minimum GPAs for entry to our master's and PhD programs are about 3.6 and 3.8, respectively.


How to include industrial research experience legally? I am planning to apply for Ph.D. after spending the last couple of years in Industry.

Problem is, the project I was working on (in this company) though completed, may not have my name as author. As per company policy, as I am leaving before it is getting published.

So, is there any way (or is it legal) I can include the project, in my CV without giving many details?

So, is there any way (or is it legal) I can include the project, in my CV without giving many details?

If supplying this information is prohibited by a nondisclosure agreement you signed with your employer, then there's nothing you can do.  It won't help your case at all to say "I did something really interesting, but I can't tell you anything about it, so you'll just have to believe me."

Assuming your employer doesn't object to providing this information, you can say anything you like in your CV, as long as it's true.

  Problem is, the project I was working on (in this company) though completed, may not have my name as author. As per company policy, as I am leaving before it is getting published.

This is indeed the problem.  By academic standards, leaving the company before a completed project is published should have no impact whatsoever on authorship.  If you won't be an author, then either you are being treated unfairly/unethically, or you never deserved to be an author in the first place.  That's a tricky situation that readers won't be able to sort out without more information.

So although you can include such a project on your CV, just listing it there probably won't help you much because nobody will know what to make of it.  If the project really matters for your application, then you'll need to explain in much more detail in your statement of purpose.


How can I protect my unpublished work that I've sent to others? I am a masters student from India applying for a PhD in the US.

I emailed a potential adviser at Harvard University an unpublished paper I have been working on for some time.

The application in the end did not work out but the adviser was enthusiastic about the paper and said I wasn't admitted due to funding issues.

Now I am a bit worried he may publish part of my work without mentioning me, since the paper is not published.

How likely is this? What actions I can take to protect my work?

How likely is this? Have you ever heard a Professor of this caliber doing something like that?

This depends on the field -- in some fields people are more worried about being "scooped". It could be anywhere from "unlikely but possible" to "extremely unlikely". Overall it is not a serious concern that you should worry about, but it is a remote possibility that you could consider taking steps to prevent.

In response to some comments, let me add that blatant plagiarism (where they publish your writing as it is) is much less likely because that is academic misconduct that could get a professor in real trouble when you present the proof.

On the other hand, scooping is where you get the idea from the paper, and do it yourself. It is still academic misconduct, but more difficult to prove and it may go unpunished.

  What actions I can take to protect my work, assuming I need about 6
  months to have it ready for publication?

The best solution is to publish the draft online. This is common in many fields and becoming common in others. If you publish online, everyone will see that this is your work and you did it first; you have documented proof on the internet.

It could also help to document it in other ways: send the draft to others, and put together some proof that you wrote it, just in case.


Paper excluded from conference proceedings Last year I submitted a paper to a IEEE conference that was going to be held in the US. I got funding from my university and registered to attend the conference. Unfortunately, my visa was rejected, which was unexpected for me because I had been in the US before for another conference.
Since conference presentation was mandatory for publication of my paper in the proceedings, I contacted the organizers to let them know about this issue and if there was something I could do like sending a video presentation. I didn't get any response and assumed that they were going to publish it anyways. However, a couple of months later I found that they didn't do so.
I tried to contact the organizers again to see if I could get a refund, but was ignored again.
Is this common? Is there something I could do to get the money back?

Is this common?

Not getting a visa to enter the country where a conference is held, is quite common. It is not common for someone to ask for their money back months after a conference though: while people do occasionally get delayed in asking for their money back, usually this is done immediately after finding out that you won't be able to attend the conference. Not months after the conference is over.
I've highlighted two words in what you wrote:

Since conference presentation was mandatory for publication of my paper in the proceedings, I contacted the organizers to let them know about this issue and if there was something I could do like sending a video presentation. I didn't get any response and assumed that they were going to publish it anyways.

If doing X is "mandatory" to get Y, I would recommend not to "assume" you will get Y without doing X. If this happens again in the future, I would perhaps send a polite reminder about my inquiry for presenting the work through video conference (not just one email and then "assume" that the paper will be published even though they never replied to your email), and perhaps make it clear that you would like your money back if there is no way to get the paper published. You might also consider getting a colleague or friend to present the work for you, if you know anyone else going to the conference who you trust with that type of thing (I have had people present my work for me at conferences before, and I've even seen invited speakers gets their post-docs to present their talk for them if they are too busy to attend).

Is there something I could do to get the money back?

You can ask again politely and include a summary of the timeline of events, perhaps with copies underneath of your old email inquiries which were ignored, but I do not recommend to have very high expectations here.
A friend of mine has this motto: "Low expectations, High hopes"


Why do some publications mention the phone of the corresponding author? Some publications mention the phone of the corresponding author, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocw168

Why do some publications mention the phone of the corresponding author? Do readers sometimes directly call the author?

So you can call them?

I've been reached out to by readers before via telephone, particularly reporters trying to get a story together, on one of my more media-friendly papers.

It's rare, and phone numbers are hardly stable things (though neither are email addresses), but it's also a pretty close to no-cost addition.


How much time before (possible) effect of US sequester is felt on grant funding? When a US institution that manages grant programs (such as NSF) suddenly sees its funding cut, as will be the case after the US sequester takes effect in March, how long does it take for that cut to trickle down onto grant programs and grants?

Namely: Can grants already started get cut (like, they tell you you'll lose 20% funding for the last year)? What about grant programs where the selection was already announced, can they make changes to that? Or will it “merely” impact the number of grants they can fund from now on?

(I know that the government will move, and though the situation is stupid, it's not as much of a dead-end as it is pictured… this question assumes that the sequester goes in effect, and not deal is made to lessen its impact.)

This question was spurred by today's PhD Comics:

See the NIH answer below on what's happening to grant budgets, at least for their agencies. It sounds like there is some budget trimming for the amount awarded for new grants, but they're trying to mitigate that somewhat. Where I think there's going to be a much greater impact is with new awards - with less money, and not wanting to hamstring grants with further cuts, they're simply likely to make less awards.

As for how much time before the possible effect of the sequester hits? It already has. Several people I've spoken to who do program planning, grants work, etc. for the Federal government have expressed the feeling that, because of the level of uncertainty about what money they'll have in the future, funding agencies are being very conservative about what they commit to spending. We could see this in the last budget cycle and the near shut-down - funding slowed to a crawl for a bit, and then when the continuing resolution got passed, there was a small "bump" as agencies spent out money they hadn't yet promised "just in case".

So if the sequester goes through, what that will really do is make those conservative, "We better not spend $$$ until we know we'll have it" plans a reality, followed by more severe paylines etc. in the next grant cycle.

So worst case: It's already here, we're just not committed to it yet.
Best case:  The next funding cycle.

Edit: The actual answer has come from the NIH:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-13-043.html

  The NIH continues to operate under a Continuing Resolution as
  described in NOT-OD-13-002, and therefore all non-competing
  continuation awards are currently being funded at a level below that
  indicated on the most recent Notice of Award (generally up to 90% of
  the previously committed level).  Final levels of FY 2013 funding may
  be reduced by a sequestration.  Despite the potential for reduced
  funding, the NIH remains committed to our mission to seek fundamental
  knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the
  application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and
  reduce the burdens of illness and disability.

  Should a sequestration occur, NIH likely will reduce the final FY 2013
  funding levels of non-competing continuation grants and expects to
  make fewer competing awards to  allow the agency to meet the available
  budget allocation. Although each NIH Institute and Center (IC) will
  assess allocations within their portfolio to maximize the scientific
  impact, non-competing continuation awards that have already been made
  may be restored above the current level as described in NOT-OD-13-002
  but likely will not reach the full FY 2013 commitment level described
  in the Notice of Award. Finally, in the event of a sequestration, NIH
  ICs will announce their respective approaches to meeting the new
  budget level.


Why do some reviewers mention their decision explicitly? Recently, some of the reviews I received mentioned their decision at the end of the review (i.e. 'I recommend acceptance of the paper'), while others do not have such statements.

What is the point of adding the decision statement while the overall evaluation (i.e. on EasyChair system) explicitly says it? Is it just the reviewer's habit?

Typically I include an explicit recommendation in the report to be shared with the authors when I have a strong opinion, but not necessarily otherwise.  In the former case, the editor can still decide either way (referees make recommendations, not decisions), but if they disagree with me at least the authors will know for sure what the referee thought.

  what is the point of adding the decision statement while the overall evaluation (i.e. on EasyChair system) explicitly says it? is it just the reviewer habit?

It may be habit, and it may reflect uncertainty about what information from the web form will be available to the authors.


Best way to find references for statements in the thesis I am struggling finding proper references for the known facts that are mentioned in my thesis.

For example: foundation of Cartesian coordinate system introduced the grid system for data visualization techniques.

How can I possibly find a reference to support that claim?

What is your best method for finding references?

Although the question is a bit vague, I try to give you an answer from my experience. There are often statements that you heard somewhere or which are "obviously" true, but you need a reference.

My best bet is to search google scholar for a variety of different combinations of the terms or suspected authors. If you find some source stating the claim (or something similar) you can often go back through the chain of citations to find a more accurate and reliable source.

Depending on the subject, searching google books is also helpful.


What if research does not fetch good results A friend of mine is pursuing a Masters course containing a research dissertation as part of the curriculum. He has done a lot of work on his topic (both studying of existing literature as well as tried out some new methods) but none of them have given interesting results. So, what should his thesis describe? Or does he need to succeed in order to pass?

This depends on the program, the committee, the advisor, and the student. To give some anecdotes in both directions:

I have a friend who was a graduate student for a young professor who was just setting up his lab. My friend never performed any novel research, published few peer-reviewed articles, and for the most part did much more work setting up the lab environment than should have happened. Towards the end of his 5th year, he took his publications, white papers, and other documents, stapeled them together, and called it a thesis. He graduated no problem.

A different friend of mine was diligentily working on a single research problem for a few years and didn't find any results. Push came to shove, his committee wanted to see progress on one particular area, and six months later, when he didn't produce, he left with a masters.

Two separate stories, two separate universities, two very different programs. Long story short, if you think you're heading towards a situation like this, talk to your advisor and committee members and see what you can do. Do note that in these situations you can often take a minor finding which does not directly address your central theme and present it as your major contribution to the field, as this can serve to demonstrate your proficiency in research.


COVID-19 - how do I navigate this situation with my advisor? I am a Master's student in epidemiology. It's an insane time in our field right now. Of course, I find what's going on fascinating (that's why I am in this field), but extremely stressful as well.

I have 2 advisors. My primary advisor is not working on COVID-19 related stuff. So, although she's really busy trying to re-plan all of her classes to be remote and just reorganize everything, she is not responding directly to the outbreak. My co-advisor, however, is on the response team for the outbreak in my country. Basically, she is working with the government to create models to predict the trajectory of the disease. I had a meeting with her 1.5 weeks ago and she said basically all she has on her mind is COVID-19. That was before the world went into quarantine so I imagine things have become even busier for her.

My primary advisor sent me an email today talking about how to move forward and in the email she mentioned that it does depend on how busy my co-advisor is (but also assured me we would figure this all out).

Unfortunately, the project I am working on now is a modelling project and my primary advisor isn't a modeller, so it's my co-advisor that needs to move the project forward. I still have other things to do for my thesis, but I am almost done those other things and I am just in the editing stages. I have a lot more to do on my modelling project, but my co-advisor is extremely busy right now. I am finished what she asked me to do a couple of weeks ago and want to send it to her.

Sorry for the long post explaining my situation. My question is, should I send her the things the I have finished or would that be a bit tone-deaf? What should I even say in the email? I don't want to come off as not caring about the biggest health crisis in at least a decade while asking her to review something that's not even related to COVID-19. How should I even frame the email or should I hold off from sending her things for a few weeks?

If it makes a difference, although I do have an office, I can do 100% of my work remotely (and do usually work from home at least 3 days a week).

As someone who's been out of academia for a while, I would like to offer a different perspective. Yes, occupying your co-advisor's attention when the roof is on fire is tone-deaf. However: you have acquired skills that are obviously in high demand these days, and are thrown into a (hopefully) once-in-a lifetime situation to apply these skills. Especially since you're not on a strict deadline with your thesis, there are now more important things than finishing the thesis at the scheduled time. See this as an opportunity, not an obstacle.

Check if this is okay with your primary advisor, then send a mail to your co-advisor saying that you would be glad to put your thesis on ice and help her with her COVID work if she has anything you could be of help with. If you are a capable student, she probably will.

Then, when things have calmed down, reevaluate the situation, see what you have learned in the meantime, and continue from there.


Should a senior Program Committee attend the conference? I would like to know whether a senior Program Committee should attend the conference or not. I mean that physically being there.

Thanks in advance.

"Should" is a judgement call that I won't make. If you are the person and if you are new at this, I'd recommend that you go.

However, a large and important conference (in CS) might have, say, 30 people on the various committees. At the conference you will likely find about 3/4 of them in attendance. Not everyone, but most. Some will actually be presenters or session chairs.

But the Capo di tutti capi would nearly always be there.


How does one do PhD? I'm currently a PhD Candidate in Theoretical Physics.

After getting into the program, I realized that studying and being able to teach Physics is one thing and doing research is another. My adviser is giving me problems and I'm working on them.

how does he know that such a work doesn't already exist?
how does he know the problem in the first place?
how do you search for problems to work in so that I may do the same thinking as him?
When I am working on a theoretical question/problem, I catch myself wondering, is this work really going to help others? If not, which is generally the case, what am I doing?
When do I know, if the paper I'm working on is worth publishing?

Simply put, the answer for most of your questions is: experience.
Advisors are usually people that are working on a specific field/domain for a while. They know the other people who work on this field as well (from conferences), and their work (from doing bibliographical reviews for each written paper).

In my experience, while it is indeed interesting to work on stuff that have a direct world application, that is not strictly necessary. Pure science is still science and you never know what people will be able to do with your research in the future.


Is it useful to do an MBA after PhD? I have heard of people who have gone on to pursue an MBA after their doctorates. What are the advantages/downsides of this?

Wouldn't the companies recruiting them after MBA value their doctorate experience less compared to the experience gained at an MNC? Is there a risk of them being valued as "failed" doctorates?

There are several cases where PhDs do an MBA. Some of them are:

Bored of research as a whole.
Irritation with academia and poor scope in Industry.
Want to earn money.
For furthering responsibilities at the university where one is a professor. If you do some looking around, a high amount of Deans to have an MBA along with a PhD.


Is there any research done on ideal proctoring algorithms? I am a grad student TA and I proctor exams. I want to know, what is the best way to proctor? As in, paths to take while walking, when to stand, when to walk, etc.

Is there any rigorous studies on what catches the most cheating? How does the algorithm change for larger or smaller classrooms?

I am interested in scientific studies, not anecdotes. Are there any rigorous studies for this?

I believe that you can formulate the problem mathematically in a way which can lead to some well-known optimisation problem.

However, I think the mathematical model you described is very restricted and the solution is not likely to work very well in practice, even if you find it. Your model only includes moving and observing a certain part of a room - plain and simple. However, in practice, cheating is prevented not only by someone who "polices" the situation. It is a more complex process, which includes some aspects of ethics, culture, community values, etc. Creating a proper culture within your School / University is much better way of preventing cheating, than walking around students following a super-optimal path prescribed by a supercomputer.

Also, the efficiency of a proctor depends not only on their path through the room, but on a lot of psychological  factors, e.g. how this person is perceived by students. A lazily walking person will not be very efficient in preventing cheating whatever the path is. A really "scary" proctor (with heavy looks, etc) can prevent all cheating sitting on their chair in a corner of the room. There is much more factors to this problem than trajectory only, and that's why I don't think the model you suggest is very useful for this problem.


How to respond/reply to a reviewer who doesn't seem to "get" the paper I've receiced double-blind reviews of a paper I submitted a while ago. However, it seems that only one reviewer actually seemed to "get" the point of the paper: They showed flaws in my work but also appreciated some parts and the review was in general very helpful to me.

The others, however, complained about many things which seem nonsensical to me. For example, they complain that paper is "difficult to read" but simultaneously complain about me corroborating my empirical results with seminal studies from 20 years ago: They seem to either be  ignorant of these works and their significance or just don't understand this kind of analysis even though it's in a big section with lots of graphs (i.e. a lot of time was devoted to it)... or they just don't care enough to try to understand.

From their tone and the fact that these reviewers missed main contributions even though they were enumerated in the submission metadata, I fear that the last possibility is probably the main factor: not caring or not taking interest in the paper.

How do I address these reviews which are negative of my work but are in fact not very "good" reviews in themselves due to a lack of expertise and/or caring? The paper has not yet been either officially accepted or rejected but has very poor evaluations from all but one reviewer; There is a very short response period in which I can address the reviewers' points in writing to the reviewers themselves (I think it's to them, at least), but I'm unsure of what exactly to write to them.

If the referees -- especially more than one -- are not "getting" the paper, then there are just a few possible reasons why this can happen.  In order of least like to most likely:

The reviewers are not expert enough
The author is submitting to the wrong journal
The author is not telling the story well enough

The first is rare, but not rare enough.  The third is very common.

The proper response to the first two, but for different reasons, is to resubmit elsewhere.  For the first, you'd be looking for a journal with a better referee pool.  For the second, you're looking for a more appropriate audience.

The proper response to the the third, bluntly, is for the author to write better.


Awaiting recommendation will take how long time? I submitted a paper to some journal. Within less than two months it came for minor revision. Then I submitted the revised manuscript in 10 days. After two and half months the status got changed from awaiting reviewer scores to awaiting recommendation. Now it is almost 3 weeks. Still the status is same. How long I should wait for the final verdict?
Thanking you.

Check if there are any major holidays in the editor's country. If not, three weeks should be enough to make a decision. However, it can be that the editor invited another reviewer to have a look at the paper (possibly after receiving the 2nd round of reviews), which will cause a few weeks delay.

If you don't want to wait longer send a short, friendly email to the editorial office. They should be able to tell you if the paper is still in the pipeline or whether it got stuck somewhere, and maybe when you can expect an answer.

Maybe the editor is just on holidays...


Vacations during my one year postdoc I am a researcher in South America and this year I will do postdoc in Paris for a period of one year. After this period, I will return to my country. However, I have an elderly aunt for whom I am responsible. She can not go with me and I would like to take a vacation to visit her. My question is: since I will only be in Paris for one year, can I have vacations? Could anyone explain how this happens in France?

Thank you,

Anywhere in Europe, you are entitled to paid vacation. How much vacation you get depends on the country and job, but if online resources are to be trusted employers in France should be fairly generous with about 5 weeks of paid vacation per year (note that this is not outrageously high - most countries in central Europe give you between 4 and 5, sometimes up to 6 weeks of paid vacation).

That you are there "only one year" does not matter. Even if you were employed only for three months you would be entitled to paid vacation time pro rata (e.g., about 1.25 weeks of paid time off for a 3-month internship), although for such short employments it is common to not take all vacation and instead get monetary compensation.

One thing to consider is that there is no general right to take all of this vacation in one piece, or at any time that is convenient to you. That is, you should still plan that your mentor may request you to take your vacation primarily during the summer or winter holidays.


How to explore/identify similar works in one's own field? I bet most of the users here had one of the following bad experiences: your idea and someone's idea happen to be very similar, manuscript topics got scooped, etc. Among these bad experiences, the worst is perhaps finding out a very similar paper was already published after the experimentation, simulation, writing, or even submission was done. This is very time consuming and stressful.

I realize that this question is very general and field-dependent. However, I would love to learn from your experience on how to efficiently look for related works in one's own field. For instance:

Where (websites, publishers, pre-prints... )
When should we find or update these related works, and
What kind of tricks have you used to perform such searches efficiently.

To help you orient, my background is electrical and computer engineering, communication and image/video processing.

Scholar.Google.com, IEEE, and ACM
After every major conference in your field.
See 1, find a paper, then follow its references and the papers that cite it. Repeat.


Is it possible to change something on a research paper between the period of acceptance and publishing? My paper was accepted in peer reviewed journal last week and is about to be publishing. Last night I thought the solution makes better sense if I change the definition of one of the variables. This is a minimal change which doesn't change any of the other equations or any of the conclusions or results.

Is this possible and how can I ask If I could change this variable?

Also, if they accept does that mean that the paper has to to be reviewed again?

My advice is to contact the editor of the journal and ask about your desired change. The editor may send it to one of the reviewers, or may accept the change without further review. But communication with the editor is what you need.


Using equipment from research grant funding for both resaerch and personal use I recently received a grant (JSPS Kakenhi) to support research funds. For personal equipment, I will be listing a computer and camera. The computer is for computational parts of my research and the camera is to document fieldwork for professional-level photos that can be used in press releases, presentations, and publications.
I plan to ask the funding source (JSPS Kakenhi) directly. However, I am curious to know, in general, how funding agencies view individuals using equipment for personal projects (in addition to their intended research uses).
Is it in general appropriate or inappropriate (ethical or unethical) to use the camera as well for personal use in a manner that would not render it less useful for its research use? What should become of the camera after the two-year research support concludes? Is it only appropriate/ethical to use the camera for personal uses after the research funding end date?
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge.

Generally, the rules will say that the equipment is only to be used for research purposes. In practice, no one is going to mind if you watch a bit of netflix, or send some personal emails on your work laptop. No one will even check. I routinely use my work laptop (purchased on a grant) to edit holiday photos, and even have a couple of games installed. Similarly, no one is going to mind if you use your research camera for a few snaps of the research group's social lunch, but I wouldn't use if for your weekend side hussle of paid wedding photography. Its about being reasonable.
One important consideration is that these piece of equipment are often portable. This means that they can be lost/stolen, and no one is going to be very happy if your research camera is stolen while you are on a bar trip.
In both the last two places I have worked there have been schemes to purchase personal items of equipment like this when you leave the university. The  price is often only nominal because the university writes off the value of small consumer electronics after 3 years.


Academia research vs. industry research (computer science) After finishing my PhD in Computer Science (machine learning) and after several years as a university lecturer, I decided to transition from academia to industry. As a result of that, I have been working one year for a company, doing applied research.

In my latest performance review, my supervisor pointed out that my only negative point was that I still had an academic mindset towards research, and that I should be able to get better at what he called "risk analysis". He defined risk analysis as the skill of assessing in advance the potential benefits/drawbacks for the company of a given method/technique/algorithm. The aim of that is to be able to rapidly discard methods that are supposed to not solve the company's problems without having to waste too much time on implementing them.

I was wondering whether any learning resource exists (book, online course/resources) that may help me to acquire such a skill. More generally, any recommended reading about computer science research in industry would be much appreciated.

As a researcher in industry, let me first emphasize to you that "industry" is a much broader set of organizations and varies a lot more than most people realize.  Thus, the answer to your question may depend quite a bit on the specifics of the company that you are at.

That said, however, in most cases a key animating idea for researchers in industry is a notion that often goes by a name like "customer focus": i.e., who will care about the results of this investigation?

Sometimes this is pretty straightforward (e.g., "if widget-making is 5% more efficient, then profit margins on widgets go up), but in other cases the relation is much more abstract or indirect (e.g., some prior work I did on potential programming languages for quantum computers that don't currently exist, but where the funder wanted to see how thinking about this might affect their goals for other research projects).

In all cases, however, you always have to be aware that somebody is paying the funds to support your salary and the salaries of your team, and they are giving you that money because they want some benefit to come from your research. This is true in academia as well, but professors are typically more insulated from it because their salaries are generally mostly supported by teaching---and even graduate students can be supported by TAships. If you're being paid to teach and expected to do research on the side, then it doesn't really matter what you're researching in the short term---but you will have more impact if you work on more important problems.

So, to the heart your question: how do you actually go about doing that?

I recommend starting by trying to be aware that at all times there is a "frontier" of research problems that you could be working on. Whenever you do a piece of work, you are choosing to prioritize one piece of that frontier over others.  Notice this fact and ask yourself questions like:

Why did I choose this problem over those other ones?
How will solving this problem affect the other problems on my frontier?
Who else cares about the solution to this problem?

There can be lots of reasonable answers to these questions, but starting to ask them can be extremely helping in moving to a more conscious evaluation of your research choices and whether they're actually moving you in the direction that you want to go in your career.

For more thoughts and suggestions along these lines, I would recommend the following resources:

"You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming, a long-time industrial researcher at Bell Labs.
My own talk on "Surviving Life as a Researcher"


Is it typical to not list class instructors during undergraduate enrollment? Enrollment for undergraduate students has just started at my university. Perusing the classes for my department though, only a couple of the dozens of classes being offered have an instructor specified. I recall hearing discussion in the past about this, so this isn't new this term.

I want to know if this is a typical thing that universities or individual academic departments do. And if so is there a usual explanation for it?

I studied in the United States (bachelor's and PhD). In my school, it was very common practice to list "TBA" (to be announced) for course professors, especially undergraduate courses. Through my years in the university, including becoming a part-time instructor myself as a PhD student, I got to know that it was pretty much always a logistic issue. Even if the department knew which teachers would be teaching the course, as long as they had not finalized the exact teaching assignment of who taught exactly which section of the course at exactly which times, such unfinalized assignments would be listed as "TBA".

In contrast, with graduate courses, there was usually only one section of a course each semester and so the known instructor could readily be listed as soon as it was confirmed.

In my school, students also complained about it. It is easy for students who would like to avoid a teacher with a bad reputation to suspect that the administration was trying to hide this information in order to make sure that the bad teacher got enough students in their class. But based on experience after several years in the same school, I don't think there is any reason to suspect ulterior motives; simple logistics led to this being a repeated practice whenever there are multiple sections of the same course.

(But since often when there are multiple sections taught by the same set of instructors each year, there will sometimes be a "bad teacher" among them; so, students would self-confirm their suspicions that the administration is deliberately trying to frustrate attempts to not choose a bad teacher.)

This is just a personal example, but I think the dynamics are very similar in many other universities.


Is publishing papers before the evaluation of thesis a good idea? Is publishing papers before the evaluation of thesis is a good idea?
Isn't there a risk of making the idea public?

Four reasons why it's generally a very good idea to publish papers before you submit your thesis:

The earlier you publish, the less likely it is that your idea will be scooped [1], i.e. that someone working in the same area actually publishes the same idea/result before you.
Once ideas are published, they are not stolen: they are used, built upon, with proper attribution (usually in the form of citation). This is not theft.
The goal of an academic is actually to disseminate new knowledge, not to lock it into your desk drawers.
Having papers published (or at least accepted for publication) is very very important for your CV. It may also be a requirement (formal or unspoken) for defending your PhD.
If said publication includes peer review, the peer review is likely to improve your work, both by vetting it thoroughly and giving you new points of view on your arguments. (I edited this in after reading gerrit’s answer; it is an important point.)

In some specific cases, good arguments can be made against publication before thesis submission. Most are actually not specific to the thesis itself, but generally apply to delaying publication of a research:

If research is performed as part of a contract that requires an embargo on publication (say, imposed by one industrial partner). This is a very awkward situation, but it does happen in some fields.
Sometimes, a delay in publication is necessary to protect intellectual property, e.g. in the case of delaying publication until a related patent submission is complete.

Ref. 1:


To cite a publication with two authors in a presentation, should I write "X and Y" or "X et al."? I am preparing to give a presentation after few days. Some papers are authored by two people and some are by three. While referring their work during presentation what should I write for two authors.

Suppose there are two authors only - X and Y. Shall I write X et al. proved that ...... or X and Y proved that....

This was addressed on English.SE, Is "et al." acceptable for citations with exactly two authors?

The answers there indicate that major citation styles (MLA, Harvard) do not use "et al." when there are only two authors.

APA style also does not use "et al." for only two authors.

I'm not going to exhaustively check every citation style, but I'm not personally aware of any where "et al." is acceptable when citing a publication with only two authors.

Also of interest to those who happen to like grammar: the English.SE answer also points out that using "et al." for two authors can be considered incorrect, regardless of style considerations (text in brackets is added by me):

  The Latinate abbreviation "et al." is short for "et alii," which means, "and others," and always refers to people, not objects. So if you had two authors, adding "et al." would indicate that there were [plural] other authors  - and since there are no[t multiple] other authors in this case, it is incorrect to use it.

While "et al." could also technically stand for the singular "et alia" which would be technically correct, that's certainly not a conventional abbreviation.


How to get SCI impact factor from other than Journal site I could see the IF of journal I am looking for in their site. My problem is Thomsor Reuters report lists the journal as indexed in both SCI and SSCI, but kournal home page says its indexed in SSCI only. And it lists impact factor too. How can I confirm whether its really indexed in SCI and find its IF? I couldnt get a proper reply after contacting Journal. Can I get it anywhere in Thomson Reuters site?

To see if the journal is indexed in SCI or SSCI, you can search from Clarivate's master journal list. Checking the Impact Factor probably require subscription to Web of Science. Alternatively you can directly search for the journal titles in BioXBio or find any article for the journal to see Impact Factor in Scinapse.

(edit: I work with Pluto Network developing and servicing Scinapse.)


Do graduate school admissions appreciate individual "free time" study? I am a year away from completing an undergrad degree in Computer Science and I find myself increasingly interested in more advanced subjects from pure mathematics that sometimes lie outside the scope of my major, and I think I would enjoy doing graduate work in pure math. But I feel like the amount of formal education I've had the opportunity to have in my undergrad isn't quite sufficient for graduate work in math.

If I were to go and buy a book or two on some subject I'd like to learn more about that I can't take a course on (say, Abstract Algebra or Number Theory), and spend this summer getting comfortable with it, is it likely that a graduate admission committee take my efforts into account?

My situation is worded specific to a CS --> Pure Math trajectory, but it's part of a more general question. Do graduate school admissions take into account personal study, or do they only care about formal university education?

I have limited knowledge about this and I speak from experience as a graduate student who has gone through a similar situation (from the outside) as well as being the student representative on our graduate admissions committee (on the inside). Obviously, a professor or academic with much more experience than I have can attest to this in better ways.

In general, formal education is given preference. Grades in relevant courses are given more importance than others. Note that there is a lot of competition for slots in a PhD program. Self study is a very fuzzy area and there is little scope for the graduate admissions committee to evaluate it. There exists of course, two mutually non-exclusive ways exceptions to this general norm:

A respected recommender in the area attests to the fact that you did engage in significant amounts of self study and that has contributed to your overall knowledge.
You do self study. Then you do research based on it. Then you publish in a non trivial journal or conference. That automatically attests to your knowledge in certain ways.

Otherwise, ask yourself this, why would graduate admissions committees believe you, especially when there is usually bound to be a few more well qualified applicants with good scores in relevant courses?