Invitation to anti-plagiarism service Turnitin I received the following unsolicited email:

Subject: A new account Turnitin has been created for you
Hi NAME SURNAME,
you have been added as a teacher to the account, xxx, by Turnitin xxx Administrator.
as a new teacher, you are joining a global community of training experts. We are pleased to have you with us.
Are you ready to configure your classes?

With a button  lending to a Turnitin signup page, whose address is similar to:
https://www.turnitin.com/password_reset1.asp?utm_source=getting-started-instructor&utm_medium=webpage&utm_campaign=onboarding
However, isn't Turnitin a paid service?
Have you perhaps received this invitation and, if you registered, how you use it?

by Turnitin xxx Administrator.

Ask xxx if they created an account for you. If they have no idea what you are talking about, or xxx is not in your organisation, mark as spam and move on. That Turnitin is a paid service matters little, as many universities pay for it on organisational level.


Is there an entrance exam I can take to get admitted directly into a European PhD program in electrical engineering without a masters? I'm an undergraduate electrical engineer. I have studied up to 80 percent of a masters in electrical engineering program and have two IEEE published papers. Is there such a thing as a PhD entrance exam that I can take to prove my ability to pass advanced electrical courses and get admitted directly into a PhD in a university in Europe?

Admission and funding in European PhD programs depends a lot on the university and the country's regulations. You should search for the programs you are interested in applying to and read their specific requirements.


Etiquette regarding multiple letters of recommendation Several months ago, I was undergoing the process of transferring to another university overseas, and I asked my undergraduate adviser if she could write me a letter of recommendation. However, since she gave the letter of recommendation to me (I was supposed to include it in the mailed transfer application), I've had some money issues, and now I'm not entirely sure that I'll be able to transfer after all. If I don't transfer, I will be applying for various scholarships/internships at my current university, most of which will require letters of recommendation.

I'm pretty close with my adviser and I think that, out of all of my professors, her letters of recommendation would be the most genuine/positive; however, I feel like asking for two/ letters of recommendation over the course of several months gives off a negative impression, especially since I didn't even end up using one. I don't want her to think that I'm unreliable or that I don't appreciate the time/effort that went into the first letter. Taking all of this into consideration, should I ask her for another letter of recommendation? And, if so, would it be possible for her to just modify the first letter she wrote me so I don't waste too much of her time?

Yes, ask her.  Advisors know that they will be asked multiple times.

Yes, she can modify her previous letter.  That's the beauty of word processors and a hierarchical file system!


PhD problem: a new student has the same idea as me I am in second year of my PhD. I have a plan for my second paper, I did a full scale literature review etc. But then I put it on hold to finish my first paper.

A new student started this term and is coincidentally pursuing the idea for my second paper!

I highly doubt we can both have the same paper.

I know that co-authoring is a possibility. But, is there grounds for me to argue that she should find a new topic, instead of me. As it will mean that I wasted a large chunk of my first year on this topic.

We plan to use data for the same country, which means that we will ultimately end up with the same statistical model, because the data available is not the best, so there is not much leeway on what model I use.

From what the student has told me, her statistical plan (is the same as mine), which is also the popular method in the literature field.

You should probably talk to your advisor and possibly arrange a meeting with the other student, her advisor, your advisor and yourself. You need to sit together and discuss how your work and her work are going to differ, because nobody has anything to gain from two competing PhD students undermining each other within the same research group. Once you have fixed boundaries, you will be free to go your own way and collaborate on the common parts, which will benefit both of you.


When to leave a postdoc as foreigner that doesn't have enough courage because of current global situation? so i joined a postdoc in US six months back. Had to move from India. Even after six months have no clue what im working on how to proceed with work. I make suggestions to the PI but he shoots them down. He is making me work but nothing productive which can translate into research paper in the next year. He is always early in the lab and leaves in the evening and expects us to be there during the time he is in the lab. Should i leave or stick it out?

Though I empathise with your situation, I don't gather from your description what you have been actively doing to make the situation better. You said you don't have the courage to move, so I understand that you might also not have been speaking up.
Do not do that. Do speak up, while being polite, and do try to improve your situation. Have you, for instance, had a conversation yet with your boss? Does he allow you to change research direction if you would think that would be helpful? Can you bring up your own ideas that you would be more excited about?
Though I don't think that one should stay endlessly in a position which does not offer a perspective and there are certainly places worth leaving, be aware that you will encounter issues during every postdoc. You do have to be able to develop the tools to cope with these and carve out your own path successfully.
Do not worry too much about others opinions when deciding to leave, it happens and people know that. Be smart about it, however, and do not talk negatively about this situation to a potential future lab.


SOP: Talking about the university I am writing my statement of purpose for a PhD in mathematics for various universities. I know that it is a good thing to motivate why you want to go to that university in particular, but I was wondering at what point one should do this.

What I have for the moment is a paragraph in the end where I explain my reasons for applying, and talk about why I think that university in particular should be fitting for me. Is that enough? Or should there be mentions of the university in the whole statement?

There’s no single right way to do this. The important point is that you show you’ve “done your homework,” so to speak. If you prefer to do that in one paragraph as you talk about your future studies, that’s probably fine. If you want to make an initial reference early on, that’s fine, too. So is mixing the references throughout the essay. But don’t overdo it, and don’t come across as pandering.

Finally, make sure to save your work carefully, and be thorough in your edits. The last thing you want to do is send school X an SOP that has references to school Y!


Reasons a paper may be open for revision after the majority of reviewers recommended rejection Two out of three reviewers rejected the paper I had submitted saying that it is not of high scientific content. But the third reviewer suggested "publish after minor revision."

The paper is open for revisions. Does my paper stand a chance of acceptance after revision?

Why is it open for revisions when majority 2/3 of the reviewers had rejected it?

Does my paper stand a chance of acceptance after revision?

Yes. If it didn't, it would have been rejected. Now how good of a chance it has is another question entirely.

  Why is it open for revisions when majority 2/3 of the reviewers had rejected it?

Because peer review is not voting. Perhaps the editor disagrees with the other reviewers. Or found the third reviewer's arguments particularly compelling. Or is in a generous mood today, and wants to leave the paper open for a "Hail Mary" revision that dramatically improves the paper.


What to do about accidental, easily corrected errors in a conference paper you already submitted? I am an engineering MS student (maybe going for PhD).  I submitted a conference paper on some research I was working on last week.  Before I submitted a conference paper, I regenerated all the plots (for a better consistent format).  I realized today that I used an inaccurate, older code to regenerate a few plots in one section.  This means that some of the plots are based on a code that had a theoretical error.  Not good.

Questions:

What do you recommend I do?  Is it ok to send the accurate plots a week later?  Have I damaged my reputation with this forum?  Are there ethical issues here - technically I sent innacurate plots but it was a small technical mistake?

If I understand correctly, the paper has only been submitted for peer review, and this is thus not yet the camera-ready final version that will be archived and widely disseminated.  As such, you have an opportunity to fix the error before it enters the literature.

The key question, then, is whether your error will mislead the peer reviewers into having a different judgement of the paper than they would otherwise (whether better or worse).  The first question I would thus ask is this: how different are the wrong plots from the right plots?

If the results are essentially identical (just unsupported because of the error), then I would let it go and just make sure you fix it in subsequent revision.
If there is a major difference, then you need to update the paper, because otherwise you will be misleading the reviewers.

Updating the paper may be easy or may be difficult depending on the conference and its submission and review timeline.  Since it's quite soon after the submission deadline, there's a fairly high chance that no reviewers will yet have actually reviewed your paper, and so updating isn't likely to cause problems.

As for how to actually do it: occasionally conferences will allow you to continue updating a submission (whether intentionally or by misconfiguring their review system); for most, though, you will need to email the program chairs who are running the review process.  If they are feeling generous, they will allow you to update; if they are not and the error is a major problem, then you may need to withdraw your paper and instead submit more carefully to the next good opportunity.

There are a lot of ways to salvage this situation, though, so hopefully you'll have no difficulty in correcting your paper, whether now or at the camera-ready stage.


Should I use an out-of-order version of my name for academic publications? I have a common US first AND last name, but a unique middle name. Think John Aardvark Smith.
I am nearing my first publication and want to decide on my name for academic/scientific publications now so that it can remain consistent.
I like to be called John and would like to be Dr. Smith when that time comes, however there are a million JA Smiths, including in my field.
I'm considering being JS Aardvark for publications instead, a completely unique name.
My questions are:
Would I HAVE to then be John Smith Aardvark for all intents and purposes? If you click my JS Aardvark link on Google Scholar, would it make any sense to link to a person called John Aardvark Smith? Would I have to accept that people will call me Dr. Aardvark? What should me email address and sign-off then be?
I may be missing other potential pitfalls as well. I'd be glad for any feedback on this, positive or negative, personal anecdotes, etc.

I do know someone who signs their email as "John Aardvark S.," and authors their papers as "John Aardvark." In their case, the "S." is a married name, so I would guess they added it after their first publication (but don't know for sure).
Putting them out of order makes me think that your name would constantly be getting rearranged (people thinking you filled out your name wrong, especially if your middle name is typically a first name, and your last name is typically a last name). And think of nametag confusion! In other words, being known as "Dr. John Smith" but publishing as "Dr. John Aardvark" isn't a common fix, so people won't know how to interpret it.
Another option would be to make "Aardvark Smith" your last name (hyphenated or not), I definitely know people who go by only one name of a double-barreled name. Or to just accept that sometimes your name will be abbreviated to "JA Smith." I suppose it depends on the usual citation format in your field. Most of time time, my field uses initials only when the author uses them, so that wouldn't be a big deal to me.


Famous professor at relatively unknown university for post-doc I am about to finish my Ph.D. soon. It was in the field of computational sciences and was done from a well-known European research lab. In my own assessment, it has been a mediocre Ph.D. for me (2 paper in top tier conference, 2 in average ones, no journal yet).

I am looking for post-doc as the next step. I already have a couple of offers for post-doc, and one of them is from a famous professor in my field. However, he happens to have setup his lab at a relatively unknown university in a small city in central Europe.

I was obviously aware of this while applying, and I honestly thought this wouldn't bother me at all. However, now that things have moved forward and the time has come to finalize a decision, I do find myself a bit bothered with the stature of the university. I have tried to seek advice on this matter from my current Ph.D. adviser. However, she knows my prospective post-doc supervisor in person and has been offering highly diplomatic suggestions about the matter.

So I thought it might be a good idea to ask this question over here. Please share your opinion on this. How much does the stature of the university matter in a post-doctoral position, given that the particular lab I am going to be associated with is headed by a famous name and the job description seems to suit my research interests quite well? I have other post-doc offers from relatively younger/less-famous professors from better universities. Given that the area of research is more or less similar in all the cases, what is more advisable for a career in research?

Just opinion, of course, but I would suggest that a great professor at a small school, no matter its reputation, would be a huge asset. You will have a chance to work closely with a mentor that you wouldn't get to do as well at a larger place. I realize of course that size and reputation aren't necessarily the same.

But it is the letters you get from the professor if they are well known that can set you off on your career and, if you do get the chance to work closely, that association can pay dividends for a long time.

While a degree from a prestigious place has value, I think a postdoc with a leader of the field is a great asset.

And, of course, "relatively unknown in central Europe" is itself relative. Lots of people don't know about, for example Charles, and such, depending on where they are from.


Citing into the future on ArXiv – good or bad idea? I have coauthored two papers, which are strongly related. The younger paper is thus citing the first and the older paper is annoucing the second along the lines of “a study of aspect X will be published elsewhere“. As ArXiv enables you to update your papers, it would be possible to include a citation to the new paper in the old paper after the aforementioned sentence. This might save a reader of the old paper some time with finding the new paper.

However, this breaks some paradigms that were inherently fulfilled by any pre-internet citation, i.e., that you could not cite future work¹ and that there are no loops in citation graphs (i.e., there can be no papers A₁, …, such that A₁ cites A₂, which cites A₃, which cites …, which cites A₁). Thus I find it conceivable that such a citation into the future may cause some problems, for example some weird software behavior (ignoring for the example’s sake that this would arguably be the software’s fault).

Is there any such issue, which would make the aforementioned citation into the future a problem?

¹ Of course, will be published elswhere existed before, but it could not be accompanied by a regular citation.

Occasionally two related articles are published simultaneously and cite each other, so loops in the citation graph are OK. See for example this article in The Scientist which describes two papers which do so. I was able to verify that they both cite each other through my university's library.


Can authors from certain origins really not know about the gravity of plagiarism? With respect to some cultures, in particular Asian ones, one often hears statements such as the following:

  In this country, copying is regarded as flattery and thus people do not know the evils of plagiarism.

or (taken from here):

  In some traditional cultures in Asia and the Middle East, for example, college students are expected to quote or paraphrase the best known political or religious authorities without attribution because readers, especially professors, are expected to know what texts are being circulated. Indeed, it might be a serious insult to the teacher if the student writer formally cites the text being borrowed.

Such statements may nourish prejudices or lead to it being considered an extenuating circumstance that a plagiarist comes from a such a country (see, e.g., this answer or this case).
I wonder whether this phenomenon really has the extents that would justify the latter, more specifically: Is it conceivable that somebody makes it to the point where they author a paper or a PhD thesis without knowing that they must not plagiarise? Or: Can authors really commit plagiarism out of inexperience on this level?

Note:

I am primarily interested in anything going beyond personal experience (there are individual statements in this article). A scientific study would be ideal, but is probably not the only possible way to fulfill this criterion.
This is not directly about how the respective academic cultures nourish plagiarism and what aspect of the culture is behind this.

As all the answers so far have ignored this: I am not asking whether cultures differ in their attitude towards plagiarism – they clearly do. I am asking whether these differences reach a certain level.

I am not here to create or perpetuate stereotypes. I just want to make an attempt to explain it.

Yes, in my personal experience, in Asian countries, scholars fail to understand the basic concept of plagiarism. Let me give a background of myself, I finished my undergraduate in India and currently a graduate student in USA.

In almost every American University, there are clear rules imposed on assignments and laboratories. There are certain honor codes and honor committees which oversee the description and prevention of plagiarism. Plagiarism check software are utilized too.

However, in India, howsoever unbelievable it is, there is no concept of weekly assignments in most (just a qualifier) of the Indian universities. At most, students are required to complete one (or two) assignment in a semester. The assignments also happens to be most boring ones. For example, "write report on recent trends in "Biomedical Instrumentation"". Unfortunately, even in those assignments, the grading patterns are usually (again, just a qualifier) binary, i.e. you get full credit if you submit the assignment and zero credits if you fail to do so. Thus, there is no mechanism to evaluate the thought process, the research skills and plagiarism related issues.

However, the concern is, when even most of the professors fail to adhere to plagiarism rules. The reason being the professor evaluation schemes utilized in most (you know, it is a qualifier) of the universities. You are supposed to come up with these many conference papers and these many journal papers for doing fairly well in yearly evaluation. No emphasis on the quality of publications is established. To take advantages of such a sad situation, several conferences pop up from nowhere giving professors opportunity to meet the evaluation requirements. Some of these conferences are pathetic. How pathetic? You can submit a single page paper, for starter; You can submit paper as late as just a week before the conference. And what else is incredible, the conferences bear tags like "IEEE International Conference on _______ _______ and ______". Really? Yes, I know it's sad, but it's true.

These are what I believe the main reasons of why Indian scholars are so much at risk of plagiarism.


How do I go about negotiating an academic job offer? There are many questions on this site that deal with what can be negotiated once one has received an academic job offer. However, I cannot find anything addressing the mechanics of when and how to conduct the negotiations.

The typical timeline from the university side is:

Advertise a job
Interview candidates
Informal offer by phone/email
Formal offer in writing
Acceptance

At what point in this process does one typically start negotiating? Do you do it at the informal offer stage ("Gee, I'm flattered that you like me but there's no way I'll be coming at that salary...") or do you wait for the formal offer in writing? Do you submit a laundry list of all conceivable requests and see which ones they accept? Or do you simply tell them that you don't regard their current offer as sufficient, and see what they can do? I'm particularly interested in hearing first-hand accounts, from either side of the table.

To answer your question, according to some, the best time to negotiate is after an offer has been given by the potential employer. For one thing, they have already ruled out other candidates and they have now essentially decided on giving the position to you. The hiring process is arduous from their perspective as well and the last thing they want to do is to decline someone they have already decided upon because that person negotiated their salary with a reasonable increase.

You would need to know as much as possible about the expected salary before you could negotiate. The key to negotiation is always having sufficient knowledge. If you know that the offer that they gave you is not on par with other similar positions at that university/field, then you have something to point to. You can find salary information from sites like Glassdoor but more importantly, sometimes these are published by the universities themselves. For a lot of public universities, you can easily get his information by simply contacting the central finance department to get averages. In some cases, the universities themselves publish this information on their websites. A good tip to find salary figures is to search Google for:

site:theuniversity'swebsite "salary" "write the position here"
This will give you hits for all of the pages that mention a salary figure along with the position that you are interested in. Here is an example of that using Heriot Watt
site:hw.ac.uk "salary" "professor"

That query gives a couple of results with actual salary figures.

You also need to state why you should be given a higher salary. Chances are that they have already budgeted to be able to increase the salary for negotiation purposes. You still need to provide a good argument for why you deserve a higher salary. Does your publication level/quality warrant a higher salary? Do you have documents showing that you've received accolades for your research or teaching? Will your involvement increase the profile of the department due to your research networks? etc


Is it normal to not understand things from undergrad? I graduated from college with a physics degree faster than my peers (because of various reasons: financial constraint and ambitions as well as near-burn-out state). My undergrad is a decent research university, not the best of the best, but many well-known researchers. I did well in most classes but I sometimes think it's because my classes are not rigorous enough. Just saying my thought is not out of thin air because I attempted to take a graduate course at the time and I had to work really really hard for it. I don't think I really understood many things from undergraduate classes, even though I'm really good at solving problems from examples. Now I think many of the basic things I didn't understand before start to haunt me in my graduate program. Just to emphasize, the gaps I'm talking about is not just some details but in some occasions the whole subject. I still have many gaps from my peers at graduate school. Even though I'm finally filling in the gaps starting grad school, I still feel like there are a lot I need to revisit.
Perhaps my state is a result of me graduating early and pushing my schedule to a limit where I can barely sit down with a class and understand it. Perhaps I fooled everyone in grad admission into thinking I'm some sort of smart student. Perhaps it's because my undergrad didn't really have the best structure preparing me for what I'm doing now. Or perhaps I didn't really know how to learn effectively before graduate school. I don't know.
I feel worrisome sometimes about my abilities, but relieved other time when I revisit what I didn't know and finally understand it. I want to ask if other people experience similar things about not understanding many things and eventually filling in the gaps later (I mean a lot of gaps :)? Or is it a debt of a student who didn't properly go through their education?
As a final word, I know about imposter syndrome. I think I have evidence in my lack of qualifications as said rather than only disregarding my achievements. And thank you in advance for reading my long concerns.

I want to ask if other people experience similar things about not understanding many things and eventually filling in the gaps later (I mean a lot of gaps :)? Or is it a debt of a student who didn't properly go through their education?

I do very often feel the same way and asked my advisors their opinion. Here is a batch of answers fused with my commentary on the subject.

There is a big gap between getting an A and actually understanding the subject.

It is normal to not understand something in your first try. It takes few tries for some people.

Those gaps will be filled over time as you work on those subjects further.

You can't really fully understand something before teaching a course on it (verbatim from my advisors).

I personally feel like I really understand 2-3 subjects and have a passing understanding of other 4-5. Unlike your case, I did not graduate early. I personally approach this with solving textbook problems without rereading the text. It really help, at least to me, to figure out what I do or do not understand. Another method is taking more advanced courses which inevitably require, at some point, some of those gaps you are missing. That is a good time to go back and repeat, learn in context.


Uncommon requests during job interview negotiations I'm curious about how common it is to negotiate for requests/demands that are not necessarily directly related to salary, research, or teaching load during the job hiring process in academia.

Some potential examples that come to mind:

Coverage of school athletic facility fees
Parking pass / daily commute costs (e.g., bus fare)
Financial assistance for relocating for job
Specific holidays (e.g., lesser-known religious days)
Keys to restricted areas not pertinent to job (e.g., access to music rooms for the professor that used to be an active musician)
Coverage for continued learning in unrelated field (e.g., philosophy or theology courses offered elsewhere in the college).
Others...

Further, is it advantageous to even negotiate for these requests? Has anyone in the SE community had success with similar requests?

There are a lot of perks that come with being an employee of a university, so it may not be necessary to make a lot of the requests for the items you've listed above. For instance, many universities (where possible) subsidize public transportation or parking costs for their employees in an attempt to be environmentally friendly (and reduce the need for on-campus parking). Similarly, there may be programs in place that offer reduced or no tuition for "continuing education." And certainly relocation expenses are not unusual in job negotiations (I'd even argue those are standard for anything above a postdoc, and even for some postdocs, depending on the employer).

However, the more unusual your request—the key access to music practice rooms, for instance—the less likely I'd want to bring it up during job negotiations. It's just too unlikely to get anywhere, and you don't want to get off to a bad start in the process. That said, that doesn't mean you can't inquire about such things after you've accepted the offer.


How to impress a teacher so you can get a PH D despite bad qualifications? how do ask for a teacher to let you do a Ph D thesis despite your qualifications are bad ?

a) invent a new formula (even a useless one)

b) to solve an unsolved hypothesis : this is the hardest option

are there any other options ? i would like to do a thesis i have a master degree (FISYMAT) and a degree on physics but my qualifications are 'bad'  1.45 of 4

what can i do ? i have had some ideas and formulae that could be interesting :http://vixra.org/author/jose_javier_garcia_moreta

but they are not groundbreaking :( so what should i do ?

Science isn't about groundbreaking discovery, those are sci-fi movies.

Real science is about boring consistency. You don't need to solve the Riemann hypothesis, you need to demonstrate you can churn out a few good enough papers a year with minimal supervision. Include some funding proposals in there, bam MVP :)

Unfortunately for you, grades are a reasonable proxy measure for boring consistency.  The reasoning being: good grades imply that you can understand new content and have the discipline to put the hours to get a decent grade doing boring work unrelated to your interests. So you would need to demonstrate with papers, which is significantly harder (and takes a while), and this idea will backfire if the papers aren't good enough...


Is it a good idea to get involved with journals as an associate editor prior to getting tenure? Is it a good idea to get involved with a relatively good journal (yes subjective -lets assume an impact factor +2 and good editors) as an associate editor prior to getting tenure?

Does it have a net positive effect on one's trajectory given the time lost due to extra work (administrative and else)? Or should one stick to minimum administrative work in faculty and outside and not think about these luxuries prior to getting the tenure. I have been given broad advise as to minimise my luxurious endeavours prior to tenure. I also remember reading similar advice in regards to writing books in technical fields (only do it after tenure, just stick to good publications before and try to minimise administrative work).

I think my first recommendation would be, do not see editorship primarily as a career move/booster (if it ever is). Become an editor if you enjoy that side of the publishing and you think you have something to contribute. I had some opportunities with editing conference proceedings and thematic issues which gave me the insight that I really enjoyed working on that side of publishing (along with my research, admin, students etc,).

Signing up to be an editor is a longer term commitment. You need to check with the journal if they have a "from now on" or fixed periods for editors. You should probably expect to be involved for, say, three years under most circumstances. You should also check the expected work load in terms of, say, papers per year (but expect the workload to vary significantly over shorter time periods).

Being an editor can be very fruitful since it may give you new impulses on scientific writing and thinking and other similar aspects that can help your own development. As an editor, you will perhaps also gain some reputation, your name will be seen in amongst hopefully respectable peers (the other editors). Not that this may be of direct importance in terms of tenure or so but it may develop your network of contacts. There are many positives that follow from serving as editor, in my opinion, and it will be up to you to take the opportunity to serve as a fair and sound editor. There are no doubt tricky issues concerning ethics that will pass your desk but solving such issues together with other editors is a good and useful learning experience.

So in the end, become an editor because you want to, the chore will take time from your other duties and you need to be prepared to provide that time on top of everything else over a longer period. As you become seasoned, the time you need to spend on each paper diminishes somewhat so initially, you may find the time consumption larger than expected.

EDIT: I guess my point is that the editorial work takes time and effort but is also rewarding on a personal level (how, is personal). How this spills over into your situation in terms of meriting is for you to assess. Does your workplace appreciate such efforts? If you really want to do it, will the opportunity arise again any time soon? Are you willing you sacrifice some spare time if need be, and over some longer term? Clearly it should not reduce your other activities that are meriting for your career (research, publishing, teaching supervising etc.) so you need to balance between your own interest and what you need to do. That is why assessing how much time will be required(on average) is a good starting point.

My personal view throughout my early career was to jump at opportunities that I felt strongly about and where I could see something good coming out at the other end. By good I mean both for myself or for my career. I figured, the only thing I had to invest was my time and I needed to invest it wisely to help me get a permanent position but also to do things I really liked. So on the whole, quite egotistical, but then I have not been much for spending much effort on stuff I did not like or saw a point in. Of course one cannot jump at everything without the risk of hitting the wall. So, in the end, I think it is your interest and time keeping that decides. What you engage in can be either directly rewarding or indirectly so, and as long as it provides a positive, I think it is worth considering.


Contacting a potential PhD supervisor from reading previous posts it seems customary to directly contact a potential supervisor. Nevertheless, the school I'm applying seems to have a central admission comittee. Still, the professor in question encourages PhD candidates to contact him. Do i have less of a chance if i do not write him prior to the application and does he potentially expect some content other than explained here. Also, isnt it rude to directly address a professor with their first name at first contact?

You question has multiple elements, I will try to answer each of them:

I would advise against using first name. Just use Pr. LastName, which is formal, polite and concise
It is better to write him prior to the application and this can greatly affect your chance. By all means, it is likely that the central admission committee would contact your potential advisor or that your potential advisor could speak in your favor to the committee. You will lose nothing out of asking him beforehand. If I were a professor and I got an applicant that put my name as potential supervisor without asking me first, I would be slightly uncomfortable.
The answer you have quoted gives sufficient information I believe. A concise statement of your research interest, some articles of the professor you have liked to show you have read his work, your grade transcripts and your CV. All this combined should be perfect, just do not write an overly long e-mail and always remain polite and formal.

Like I said, you can only gain from writing the potential adviser beforehand.


Is it difficult to get admission to a phd in stem cell biology in Europe? I am looking for a phd position in stem cell biology and have been trying very hard for the last 6 months in Germany or any European country. I have  tried to contact many professors via mail but have nothing by way of a good response.
I have a good academic record and score.

Can anyone please help me out how to best proceed or where I may be lacking in my method so far?

As aid before, the process is very different from country to country. I personally have experience in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

More and more institutions move to PhD programs. Sometimes it is the only way to do a PhD, and Professors are discouraged to hire students without them going through the initial assessment of the PhD program committee. Usually, these programs are easily to find on the web. See e.g. here http://www.vbcphdprogramme.at, or here http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/education/phd/overview/
Look for job advertisements at dedicated portals like ResearchGate (http://www.researchgate.net) or http://www.eth-gethired.ch in Switzerland.
Contacting Professors out of the blue might work in some cases/disciplines. In fields or countries were industry pays much, much more than academia, Professors have problems in recruiting talented PhD students, e.g. computer science or generally in Switzerland. They are glad if they can finally put a qualified person who does the work on the grant they already got month ago.


Negotiating a retention offer What are the best strategies for faculty negotiating a retention offer when they have an external job offer? Are there any nonobvious pitfalls to avoid?

Details: tenured, public R1 institution in the US, STEM discipline, moderately happy but could be moreso (personally and professionally). External offer has pros and cons relative to the status quo, so it's a tough decision.

1) Make a list of what is most important to you: Is it the reputation of the university, the quality of the students, the cultural environment, the outdoors? Those things you cannot really negotiate, but they may drive your decision. Or is it research support, salary, title, teaching load, etc? All of these things you can negotiate. If you want to bring these up, prioritize. Don't just list everything, simply because you have heard that other people have negotiated these aspects of their position.

2) Be positive, be open, and be straightforward. People get annoyed with you if they think you are wasting their time, or if they think your just a habitually disgruntled academic. When you ask for X explain how this will improve your productivity, and help the department/college/university succeed.

3) It's totally o.k. to talk salary, but try to be informed. What is the salary structure in your current/new department (this is public information in public universities, and not exactly a secret in private institutions)? Where do you reasonably fit in, in terms of age/accomplishment/etc? Ask for a little more than your looking for, but not something ridiculous.

4) If there is an issue that dominates all others, say so (standard example: spousal hires). But if you do make one issue central, you have to be prepared to walk away. And again, be positive ("I love this place, but if university X makes an offer to my spouse, I will take the job.")


Grant proposal: How to answer question about Promotion of equality and non-discrimination I am working on a grant proposal. The topic of the proposal is in a technical study and do not have any direct social interaction. And the grant only provide salary for the applicant and project costs; therefore, there won't be any other recruitment.

One of the question in the grant application is to describe how the project will promote  equality and non-discrimination? I understand this question is very common in most grant applications but I am not sure how can I promote equality and non-discrimination in a pure technical project.

should I include additional social engagement plan?

This is obviously not very relevant for your grant, but to be safe I would add something along the lines of, if and when the possibility of employing someone arose in the project in general (not just under this grant), you would consider candidates based on their technical suitability, and try to have an even representation of gender/etc in the candidate list.


Is there a way to finding an author's H-index on Google Scholar if they have not created a profile? There are quite a few professors at my school that do not have a Google Scholar profile at all. I may search them in Google Scholar's search engine and hope their most recent papers come up, but I am not able to access their h-index or any of the other metrics supplied by Google Scholar. If I search a paper by them, I can see it listed, but the author's name is not underlined and it doesn't seem as though they have a profile.
Microsoft Academic seems to create "profiles" for people and then allow them to claim it, letting others at least view data about the person in question even if they have not created an account. Is there any way to do this with Google Scholar?

No, finding the H-index from Google Scholar of someone else who does not have a profile does not seem to be possible. While I could not find a source that confirms this, there is no mention of such an option in the help pages of Google Scholar, and the wording strongly suggests that seeing those metrics at an individual author level are one of the benefits of creating a profile.
From this page (emphasis mine):

Google Scholar Citations provide a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name, e.g., richard feynman.

However, a few relevant notes:

A profile may exist and be public, but may not be searchable. A profile, even if public, needs to have a verified institutional email address added in order to appear in the search results. To account for such a scenario, you could check if you can find a link from elsewhere, such as the researcher's web page, or from the "Co-authors" list in the profile of one of their co-authors.

To just search by author, you can filter your results better by using the author: operator or using Advanced search.


How to foster ideological pluralism in teaching? It is common in Economics to have introductory courses based on one-sided ideological textbooks (e.g. the most famous being this one, ToC here). The problem of course is not the particular ideological orientation they have, but that most of these textbooks explicitly omit alternative ideological readings or understandings of the science. For example, the aforementioned book covers mainly neoclassical economics, and a bit of Keynesianism, amid a wide range of alternative schools of thought. The lack of acknowledgement of this wider picture nudge students to think that the science itself is defined on what the textbook presents. "This is Economics and nothing else".

Naturally, that is a deeply misleading view of a very diverse field, and particularly damaging (in my view) for those just starting to learn the subject.

Given this context, which are the best methods to foster pluralism in teaching, particularly introductory courses?

How refreshing to see someone who recognizes a spectrum of ideas and wants to teach it!

Science in general and economics in particular could be said to revolve around observation of phenomena, theorizing about causes, and research to verify or falsify the theory.

Try addressing topics in this framework: Here's the phenomenon, here are some of the theories to explain it, and here is some research on it which supports / refutes particular theories.  This will provide a model for your students to learn the subject without descending into rote recitation of the professor's favorite dogma.


How to send your transcript directly from your US university to grad schools without the transcript office knowing which schools I know it sounds weird, but I don't want the transcript office of my US alma mater keeping records of where my transcripts were sent.
The reason is I don't want people I know to call the transcript office pretending to be me and get the names of schools I applied to.

If you're in the US, talk to your registrar about what we call a "Privacy Lock." It is pretty much a set of measures to apply should the students wish to remain private. Things as extreme as taking you off the online directory, conceal all your names and e-mails, etc. can be done. Each school may do it slightly differently so you'd need to talk to them and get a sense of what is covered.

As for the transcript recipient, you can actually try asking them to put a flag in your personal profile. Most school registrars will probably open up your online record should someone call and ask about you, and if they see the flag they will know how to act accordingly. You can discuss with the registrar on what kind of privacy measures are in place by default and see if additional flags is appropriate, such as "do not disclose information unless in a face-to-face meeting with official proof of ID," etc.

And lastly, you may have to learn about the same security measures in your next school as well, perhaps as soon as you're enrolled. A lot of information is put online and I personally think it's exhausting to make sure that your name will not be featured anywhere. For instance, what if you applied for a scholarship and got it, and the funding agency wants to make a press release? What if you wanted to publish a paper and the journal needs to know your name and affiliation, and will print them if your work is accepted? Somewhere somehow they may still be able to find you so you'll need to be prepared.

And whatever that is driving you guys apart, I wish you'll find resolution and peace soon.


Professor Ignoring Emails RE disagreement over grading I recently had a concussion. I got everything on paper signed by a doctor, and emailed my teachers immediately. During my medical absence, I missed a quiz. I emailed my teacher regarding making the quiz up, and he said “that’s what the quiz drop is for." However, I had already my quiz drop due to the flu.

I told him I don’t think it’s fair that I have to get a zero for one of the quizzes when both instances were out my control, but he just stopped responding to me. I have followed up twice. What should I do?

Your professor has probably decided that make-up quizzes are time consuming and not worth it -- students need to learn that sometimes missing an appointment has consequences etc.

I'd recommend checking if the professor is willing to drop 2 quizzes instead of just 1 for the whole class or for anyone who has a doctor's note.

That way you are working with your professor's plan rather than negating it.


My current LOR is "good but not great". Should I switch to a LOR whose doesn't know me well, but certainly thinks I'm a top student? I'm applying for graduate school in a hard science this year, and most things on my application are pretty good so far. Two of my letters should be strong, but regarding the third one, the professor told me in the interest of full disclosure, that his letter will be a positive one, but certainly not the best he's written. This particular researcher is well known in his subfield, which isn't the field I'm applying to, but it's not very far away either. I've taken many of his graduate courses, and also did an independent reading course with him. The graduate courses went pretty well, but the reading course didn't unfortunately, (mostly due to a difference in style) and as a result of all this interaction, he knows me well, and he thinks I'm a good but not great student. Now I'm really hoping I can get into at least one of the better schools on my list, and it's insanely competitive, particularly in my subfield.

Another option of mine is asking another professor who doesn't know me that well and is in mathematics instead than the hard science I'm applying to, but he certainly thinks I'm a top student, since he was responsible for many of the math awards I got and I did really well in the one class that I did take with him.

Q: Would having two great and one good letter hurt me at the top places? My impression is that students who get admitted to top places have their professors say that they're the best student they've seen in many years, and not having such a letter could result in rejection. Which recommendation should I go for? Is it advisable that I even do both and send in four letters?

I think professor "you're good but not great" is doing you a great service by letting you know in advance that his letter will not be one that you want in your application.  If you are applying to an insanely competitive program, then indeed such a letter would jeopardize your application.  I've done graduate admissions at the 50th best math department in the US, and we can do better than "good but not great".

A letter from someone in an adjacent field is definitely not as good as a letter from someone in your field, but getting a letter from someone who was responsible for "many of the awards" you got is certainly strong.  The sentiment that you have award-winning mathematical skills should be a positive one on an application to graduate school in the sciences.

I would definitely switch the letters.  Also remember that the first professor really helped you out.  It is not the sort of help that is worth an effusive thank-you on your part, but it is worth keeping in mind and perhaps remembering to do for someone else someday.


A Not Very Approachable Professor I am in a math PhD program, and I feel that my long interest in a particular area of mathematics is discouraged here.

I have an interest in an area of mathematics, but the leading person doing the research at the institution which I am going for PhD is not very approachable. I went to office hours for one of the classes I am taking and this person (to me) seemed very stand-offish and was ready to let me go out the door for a simple question regarding the class material. The professor was also very critical of my background and where I got my previous degrees/experiences at after a brief conversation. Thus, the experiences with said individual lead me to feel discouraged and potentially lead me away from my interest in said specialization within math, as they are the leading faculty in this institution doing the type of research I am interested in.

What should I do in this case? Should I just accept things how they are and try a different approach, or is it even worthwhile to try to transfer somewhere else?

Another late answer.

In undergrad, there is a maxim that you should "choose your professors as carefully as your classes." I think in hindsight, most graduates agree with this -- we've all had random classes taught by great professors that were meaningful, while great subjects taught by lousy professors were worthless.

How much more crucial, then, is the choice of your PhD advisor! An advisor in the right area but with the wrong personality is a terrible choice. An advisor in a merely acceptable subfield but the right personality is a much better choice.

Ideally, you will (a) find someone at your current school who will make a good advisor even if their research area isn't obviously aligned with your current interests, or (b) find that the professor in question is actually reasonable once you get to know him/her. But, I think transferring out would be preferable to working for an unreasonable person -- I've known multiple people who stayed in grad school for 10+ years, and the common problem was an unreasonable advisor.


What is the best repository for Engineering research work in pre-print format? I'm a civil engineer myself and found no options for depositing engineering related pre-print papers in any online repositories. Is there any easy solution to this? For example, academia.edu lets one upload their papers but other people must have account to download the paper which is kinda turn off.

In short, I want a repository like ArXiv from where people can download anonymously and also with easy submission procedure.

EDIT: This is about already published articles in journal or conferences, so that people can download the pre-print anonymously.

Update 2020: There is still no widely used preprint server for engineering articles.

There are (now?) a few engineering categories on arxiv, e.g. electrical and computer engineering. Everything that has anything to do with machine learning or data analysis is a good fit, anyway. I have uploaded a few biomedical signal processing papers on arxiv as well. See https://arxiv.org/ for the list of categories.
Very recently, IEEE introduced its own preprint server, "a preprint server for the global technology community": https://www.techrxiv.org/. I could imagine that with the backing of IEEE, this could become reasonably popular in some time.
Of the three preprint servers I mentioned below in 2016, https://engrxiv.org appears to be the only one that's still reasonably active.
https://www.preprints.org/subject/browse/engineering also appears to be reasonably active.

It appears that there is currently no widely used preprint server for engineering articles. Interestingly, there appears to be a bunch of platforms that have all been launched very recently, and which all target (among others) engineering preprints:

Launched in July 2016, there is now (currently only in a preliminary version) engrXiv, which is a dedicated preprint server for the engineering sciences. It is supported / advocated by the center for open science.
There is the Self-Journal of Science which provides an innovative, open peer review process and also allows for publication of preprints.
Finally, there is The Winnower which also provides a platform for an open peer review process.

Unfortunately, in all of these, activity is currently rather low, probably due to the novelty of these platforms. Time will show whether one of these will become really popular.


Should "extra credit" questions allow students to get more than 100% of the marks? This semester I am teaching a course.
Due to the fact that the students differ in their abilities,
I decided to create a few "extra credit" questions
for some of the assignments
to stretch the thinking of the more capable students.
However, at the same time,
I don't want to stress the less capable students
and make them feel that they need to solve problems that are difficult,
but not so essential to getting an adequate mastery of the material.

Unfortunately, I am not sure how to compute the scores
for assignments with extra credit.
Suppose the assignment has 100 marks, with 10 marks extra credit.
Suppose a student completes all of the regular questions
as well as the extra credit questions correctly.

Do I give this student 110 marks for the assignment?
Or do I cap the max score of the student at 100 marks?

My experience with American grading systems has been that the extra credit typically means an effective higher percentage is possible, i.e., 100% + 10% extra credit = 110% max on the assignment.  And if a student gets 110%, then that's what they get on the assignment, and great for them!

Most students will balance extra credit with mistakes elsewhere, meaning that extra credit effectively ends up acting as "forgiveness" for mistakes.  Usually, however, the students getting a lot of extra credit don't need as much forgiveness as the ones who don't, so I actually don't think that extra credit shouldn't be thought about as really being about grades.

Instead, I think it is important to view extra credit questions as places where the instructor encourages engaged students to additional exploration of the course material. The extra marks are then just a means of acknowledging that exploration within the formal incentive system of the course.

Given this, and the fact that some unusually excellent students could end up with more than a 100% overall, I would only recommend that all the rest of the students still be graded as though 100% were the maximum in the class. That way, a student going above and beyond gets acknowledgement, but other students are not affected negatively by that fact.


Patent agent work from the research career perspective Recently I ran across a number of patent agent positions, which seem to require significant scientific research or academic skills and experience, up to a Ph.D. level. After reading some patents, it is pretty clear to me that such role is anything but an easy job. Nevertheless, I am somewhat attracted to it due to the fact that it combines scientific research and innovation with intellectual property and entrepreneurship areas. I am curious about the following two aspects:

How the time, spent in a role of patent agent, is considered by the academic community from the overall academic/research career perspective? While we cannot talk about pure research productivity in that case, since inventions are made by other people, I am wondering about whether helping those people to formulate their ideas in a clear and defensible manner can be counted as an informal co-authorship of some kind. In other words, is there some ethical authorship credit that would be attached — again, informally — to patent agents' research portfolio and enable them to further return back to mainstream academia at some point?
Considering the above-mentioned point and, perhaps, other aspects, how difficult would be for a Ph.D. graduate without significant research portfolio (at the moment) to return to academia (as postdoc, then faculty) after having worked as a patent agent for some time?

I am wondering about whether helping those people to formulate their ideas in a clear and defensible manner can be counted as an informal co-authorship of some kind.

My impression (based on my own experience as well as what I've heard from others) is that patent attorneys or agents typically make no contribution at all to helping their clients formulate ideas in a clear and intellectually defensible manner.  Instead, the contribution is entirely on the legal side: formulating things in a way that is likely to pass the review by the patent examiner and any subsequent legal challenges, while at the same time claiming as much intellectual property as possible.  This is a very valuable contribution, but not the sort of value that most of academia rewards (it's simply orthogonal to the intellectual contributions).  It's possible that a law school or business school might specifically hire someone because of this experience, but for most departments experience as a patent agent would not count as anything remotely like research.

You could try to make a special argument for your case (maybe your activities would differ from those of the average patent agent), but you would face a lot of skepticism.

  In other words, is there some ethical authorship credit that would be attached — again, informally — to patent agents' research portfolio and enable them to further return back to mainstream academia at some point?

This is no such convention, and you would have to be very careful if you made any suggestions in this direction (since it could easily come across as trying to take unfair credit for other people's work).

I don't have any statistics, but I believe returning to academia after spending time as a patent agent is rare.  I've known several people with Ph.D.s who became patent agents, and I've known of others, but I've never heard of anyone returning to academia afterwards.  (I wouldn't be surprised if it has happened, though.)

  Considering the above-mentioned point and, perhaps, other aspects, how difficult would be for a Ph.D. graduate without significant research portfolio (at the moment) to return to academia (as postdoc, then faculty) after having worked as a patent agent for some time?

It depends on what sort of academia.  Let's assume you wouldn't be teaching law or business, so those aspects of your experience would not be relevant.  You could still make a case that your time as a patent agent gave you an unusually broad perspective on how your field is applied, and this could be attractive to departments.  However, under ordinary circumstances it could not make up for a lack of recent research publications.  If you keep publishing or apply to jobs without a strong research component, then you may be OK, but if you stop publishing, then it will be difficult to return to a research university, even as a postdoc.


Is it ethical to refuse a postdoc offer after lab visit I am a Ph.D. student, close to finishing up. I am looking for a post doc position and have been in talks with multiple professors in various universities. However, most of them want me to visit their lab for a talk or a presentation, without having directly confirmed anything. Although they sound positive about me, there is no confirmation yet. Moreover, this being a relatively early stage of my post-doc job hunt, I haven't truly made up my mind yet.

I would like to know if it is unethical to accept reimbursement for travel and stay to these labs and subsequently refuse the offer, since obviously I can't accept all of them (if they happen to confirm me). Please share your opinion on this.

There are no ethical considerations here. They are willing to spend the money to get a look at you as well as let you look at them. Just be honest with them so that you don't seem to be leading them on.

Thinking of it any other way would imply that a small expenditure from them would lock you in. That would be unethical.

Good luck.


What should you do if you find a few sentences of verbatim plagiarism in the literature review of published PhD thesis? I am a Ph.D. candidate. Here I have a question, and I really want to hear what you would suggest.

Recently I did some literature studies, and I read a researcher's Ph.D. dissertation. She is kinda a pioneer in my research area, therefore I read her dissertation really carefully. However, I found that in the literature review chapter of her dissertation, there are parts of verbatim plagiarism. They are not blatant paragraph-to-paragraph copy and paste. They are just around four or five sentences, which are directly copied from other journals.

Her dissertation is around 300 pages with 8 chapters. I would say this dissertation is a high-quality dissertation. Besides these two tiny parts that are susceptible to plagiarism, it is really perfect.

I just wonder: what would you guys do? From my side, I don't want to report this to anybody at all, because I believe this might just an innocent mistake or something like that. Honestly, these two parts of verbatim plagiarism may account even less than 0.0001% of that dissertation.

A few sentences copied out of the papers reviewed in the literature overview before the main text of the thesis? I'd be rather surprised if that doesn't happen all the time.


Training potential vs not knowledgeable in fellowship grant writing I have always wondered about the differences between one having "training potential" versus him/her not with enough professional knowledge.

For the F31 fellowship and many other PhD/Post-doc grants, NIH seems to care a lot about whether or not the applicants have training potential. I understand that, but if I say I would need this grant support so that I can learn C++ in the near future, wouldn't the reviewers can naturally argue: if you don't know some C++, how can you manage this project like you proposed to?

In another word, how should I phrase my training potential to make it not misleading please? Thank you.

I don't know about the specific grants, but in general many of these early career fellowships are intended for the applications to develop the necessary skills to become independent researchers. Grant writing is always a balancing act: on the one hand, you want to have interesting and challenging research questions (indeed, if you already have all the answers, why should they give you the money). On the other hand, as you rightly note, reviewers should be confident that the applicant has the skills (or potential) to complete the project succesfully.

In my view, this also applies to the "training" part of the grant. More specifically, I believe that they want to see which skills you hope to acquire, and how they will help you in your research project and future career. You should also be able to convince the reviewers that your plan is feasible. For example, for your example of learning how to program in C++, you could outline previous programming experience. Or perhaps your supervisor has succesfully used it in various projects, and will be able to help you learning C++. Or the university might offer training programs addressing this.

In short, it is expected that you may not yet have all the skills for the project, but you should be able to convince the reviewers that you have a well thought out (and realistic) plan to acquire them and bring your research project to a successful conclusion.


List of accepted papers: Why do notifications take 10 more days? I submitted a paper to an engineering / CS related conference. After several weeks of reviews, a list of accepted papers was published today. However, the notification will be sent out 10 days later, according to their website.
I saw that my paper was accepted since it is included in the aforementioned list. I was not explicitly notified, just the list was put online. I have not received any reviews, yet.
There are several conferences that publish their list of accepted papers before notifications are sent out.
What is the reason for this? The decision must already be fixed, otherwise there would not be a list of accepted papers. But why are the reviews not sent out, yet?
Is the list commonly subjected to change?
I would be happy if someone (program committee, chairs, etc.)  could shed some light onto this, since I am quite interested in the background of this accepted-paper-list.
EDIT: More details regarding this conference.
ACM/IEEE DAC accepted papers:
https://dac.com/2018/accepted-papers
They give a short explanation under "What is the DAC research manuscript timeline?":
https://dac.com/submission-categories/research-manuscript#questions

The second week in February: A list of accepted manuscripts will be posted on the DAC website.
February 20: Accept/reject notices and confirmation forms will be emailed to authors.

Thus, this seems to be intentional and no notification email got lost.
The same was done by the IEEE HOST this year, the accepted paper list was online many days before the notifications were sent out.
EDIT2: I just received the notification. The list of accepted papers was not updated as far as I see.

Most likely, the program committee needs some additional time to edit reviews and provide a summary of the PC's discussion of the paper.  Reviews may require editing to remove bugs (for example, if a reviewer misinterpreted a result, but the misunderstanding was cleared up in discussion), or to professionalize the language (a reviewer might have described an author as a jerk or worse), or to remove references to other submissions under review need to be purged.


How to handle reviewer who is unhappy their recommendation wasn't followed? Inspired by this incident.

The story is a long one, and it’s a bit complicated. The peer reviewer, based at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, had served as a peer-reviewer for a poorly-handled review process earlier in 2015. He peer reviewed a manuscript and recommended that the paper be resubmitted after it was improved.
The paper went through two rounds of review and re-submit, but each time the paper’s scientific flaws were not addressed.
Next, the peer reviewer recommended that the paper be rejected. Following this, he received no communication from the journal or editor. Later, he discovered that [journal] had published the paper, in its original form, with the flaws unaddressed.
The peer reviewer asked to communicate with the other peer reviewers and the associate editor who accepted the paper for the journal, but [publisher] has so far refused to let him read the other reviews or provide contact information for the others.

(I obscured the name of the journal/publisher since it's irrelevant to the question)
In situations such as this one, should the journal:

Show the reviewer the other reviewers' reviews?
Reveal the identity of the other reviewers and/or associate editor to the reviewer and let them talk? (problem is the other people might not be very interested, since it is drama)
Serve as an intermediary between the reviewer and the other reviewers and/or associate editor while keeping the other people anonymous? (same problem as above)
Do nothing and suck up the reputational damage?

In this specific case, the reviewer has written (same source as above):

I regret that the authors of [paper] (some of who I do know not superficially) lost their reputation in (not only) my eyes subsequently. As to the lead author of [paper], Mr. [name], I cannot call him a scientist, as he betrays fundamental principles of Science.

Which makes me instinctively wary of dragging more people into the argument, but I don't see any other way to satisfy the reviewer.
Related: Why do editors sometimes accept a paper even if a reviewer recommends rejection?

In general, any self-respecting journal would not allow a paper to get published if one of the reviewers has significant concerns about its scientific validity, assuming that reviewer’s competence is not in question.
In the situation you are describing, the journal would have to completely re-examine the decision to accept the paper. This would likely mean appointing a new editor to oversee it and sending it out to additional reviewers, and maybe holding an investigation into the earlier decision-making that led to the decision to accept the paper. If the decision turned out to be erroneous, the journal would issue a retraction.
Of course, if the journal really had those kinds of high standards and leve of integrity that I’m imagining would lead it to act in such a way, this unusual situation would almost certainly not have arisen in the first place. So I think asking “what should the journal do” is a bit moot, since a good journal would not need this sort of advice to begin with, and a bad/predatory journal would not be likely to heed it even if it were offered.


Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal? If I publish a pre-print paper on arXiv, how can I guarantee exclusive rights to the publisher afterwards? Am I unable to publish on non-open access journals after I publish a pre-print on arXiv ?

You are generally allowed to publish even in a non-open access journal even if a pre-print is on the arXiv.  Most journal copyright agreements explicitly allow the authors to post the article online.  Here's an example of a fairly generous one:

  The ASL hereby grants to the Author the non-exclusive right to reproduce the Article, to create
  derivative works based upon the Article, and to distribute and display the Article and any such derivative
  work by any means and in any media, provided the provisions of clause (3) below are met. The Author may
  sub-license any publisher or other third party to exercise those rights.

and a less generous one which still allows the author to post a copy online:

  I understand that I retain or am hereby granted (without the need to obtain further permission) rights to use certain versions of the Article for certain
  scholarly purposes, as described and defined below (“Retained Rights”), and that no rights in patents, trademarks or other intellectual property rights
  are transferred to the journal.

  The Retained Rights include the right to use the Pre-print or  Accepted Authors Manuscript for Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and for
  Scholarly Posting; and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.

I've seen examples where the journal actually did some genuine copyediting beyond what the referee did where the author wasn't allowed to post the version that benefited from the copyediting, but could still post the earlier version.

So, for most journals, the answer is that you're allowed to post the article online because it's specifically allowed by the document they ask you to sign.  But it is possible that posting on the arxiv will rule out particular journals that have more restrictive policies.


Reference-style in the cover letter for resubmission of a manuscript I'm going to resubmit a 'major revisions'-paper to a journal. In the cover letter I describe changes I've made. Obviously, I mention some other papers in the debate:

"I developed and strengthened my criticism of XYZ(2010) in the following way..." etc.

Which reference-style should I use. (Reference section looks stupid at the end of a letter, doesn't it?) Or should I treat references in the manuscript itself as a reference section for the letter?

In my opinion, what you really need to worry about here is clarity.  Cover letters do not generally have a prescribed style, so you can probably pick whatever style is most clear in place---that will not be a number pointing to a different section or document.

Personally, I'd probably not do any formal citation at all, but instead just reference the work in prose, e.g.,

  I developed and strengthened my criticism of XYZ's 2010 paper in the following way..."


Should I give up on trying to get into a PhD program? I majored in philosophy, Late in my undergrad career, I decided I wanted to get into linguistics instead, so I applied for PhD programs. I had a 3.95 GPA, had taken around 15 graduate-level courses as an undergrad (5 in B and 10 in A), good recommendation letters (I think) and an interesting writing sample. In linguistics, publications don't really matter much in PhD admissions. I was also at a top 10 institution for linguistics as an undergrad. I applied to 8 schools, got rejected by 6 and waitlisted by 2 top 20 programs. By strange luck (they said so in their emails), despite both schools having gone into their waitlists in previous years, they did not do so that year.

I decided to take a year off and do some research in order to write a better writing sample, which I did. Everyone told me that was the main weakness of my application. I figured I should have a better chance then. Strangely, I did even worse (better in one regard, actually): I reapplied around 6 months ago, and I got rejected by 8 and waitlisted by 1, which is ranked 2 in the world in linguistics and literally my dream school. Again, despite them having gone into their waitlists in previous years, they could not accept me because they weren't able to go into their waitlist again. I even got rejected by the university I did my undergrad in, by the professors who wrote me my recommendation letters, even though I was a perfect fit for their program and they knew how I could handle the coursework and do independent research.

I've enrolled at an unfunded (for the first year, apparently I should likely be able to work as a TA during the second year for funding) MA program since I have no other choice. I'm going to have to live on graduate PLUS loans for at least one year. My question is, should I even bother applying for PhD programs again? Maybe I'm just not good enough. Should I just look for a job instead and ditch my masters program? I know for a fact that this is the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life, but if I can't do it then I might as well give up now before going into debt. I can't even imagine doing anything else with my life though.

Based on what you've said, there is little to no evidence that you are "just not good enough" for a PhD in linguistics, so it would be a mistake to not apply again for that reason.  Rather, you should try to become more "genre savvy",
which in this case means learning more about the application process and what PhD programs in your field are looking for.

Here are some mistakes -- or, at least, opportunities for future improvement --
that I can see based on what you've said.

1) The writing sample: To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what this is.  In my field (mathematics), we have a "personal statement", which may or may not be similar to a "writing sample": in fact, it mostly functions as a writing sample, as what is expressed is usually not as important as the clarity of the writing and the reasonableness of the sentiments expressed.  But I don't know what it means to contribute a writing sample "in philosophy" versus "in linguistics", and I really don't know what it would mean to spend a year improving the writing sample.  I hope that academics in these fields can comment and clarify this point. My best guess at the moment is that you are actually supposed to submit a piece of academic writing in the chosen field.  If so -- applying to a linguistics PhD program and submitting a writing sample from philosophy is pretty strange: given that you took five graduate courses in linguistics, you certainly didn't need to do that.  Why did you do that?

I would not take as a given that your writing sample was the main problem -- rather, you should find out; more on that later -- but I would definitely take steps to improve your writing sample the next time around.  You wrote::

"And my professor was supposed to look at my writing sample in linguistics, he didn't end up giving me comments. I got comments from a PhD student who knew his stuff really well so that helped, and he said my sample was good."

You are not getting enough help here.  A professor who looks over something like this and has no comments is not helping you at all: it doesn't mean your writing is good or bad or anything: it just means you need to find a different mentor.  Getting comments from a PhD student is much more helpful than nothing, but a PhD student will have absolutely zero direct experience with PhD admissions, so he cannot directly help you.  You need to find at least one faculty member in linguistics who is willing to give you significant feedback.

2) Programs applied to: In my field of mathematics, most students apply to about 6-12 PhD programs.  You could get away with applying to the lower end of this range if you choose carefully: almost all students should apply to at least three different tiers of programs.  The lowest tier should be such that your faculty mentors say that they expect you to get in there.  In my field, anyone who would get waitlisted at a top program could certainly get admitted to a lesser (still wholly reputable) program.

Then next year you apply again to only 9 programs including the world number two program in your field.  Having had to wait an entire year because you "almost" got into a PhD program, you should have applied to many more programs the second time around and also included a lower tier of programs than you did the first time.  While I won't say it was a mistake to apply to the world number two, it is also not so clear how close you came to being admitted.  The waitlist is still an ordered list.  Unless they said you were at the top of the waitlist, it does not necessarily mean that you were very close to being admitted, especially since they told you that they didn't go to the waitlist at all.  (Also, for PhD programs you should be making a clear distinction between admission-with-funding and mere admission.)

I would suggest that you apply again to PhD programs, to more of them, and with a larger range.  Get a faculty mentor in your current master's program to help you with this.

3) Guidance and feedback: You have not gotten good advice.  It's hard to get good advice, but it can be almost impossible if you don't stick your neck out and try to get it.  I strongly recommend that you write to each of the programs that waitlisted you, carefully (though relatively succinctly) describe your situation, and tell them how helpful it would be to get feedback about improving your application.  What is the one thing you should work most on improving?  In particular, you have a golden opportunity to do this at your own undergraduate institution.  For that, I would suggest an in person visit.  When you talk to your old professors in person, they are really going to have to open up and tell you what happened.  You don't want to be bitter or confrontational about it: rather you should make clear what you are doing, which is getting the feedback you need to improve your application.

In summary, based on what you report about your profile, I myself am surprised that you did not get into a PhD program, given that you applied to 17 of them over two years.  I think you're right that people with worse records than yours are getting admitted.  This means that something in your application is not as it should be.  It is your life, after all, so it is worth devoting some energy to the sleuthing here: really suss out the problem before you apply again.

Good luck.


What is the difference between an explanation and an interpretation? Can someone please clarify for me if there is a difference between an explanation and an interpretation in scientific discourse?

Whenever I am writing up results, I am careful to distinguish observations (which I associate with results) and interpretations (which I associate with discussion), because results are describing your data, where discussion is interpreting the data (which I always thought of as coming up with explanations for the results). However, I got into a discussion today with another scientist about the meaning the word explanation when they asked me add explanations into the results section of our paper (I thought they should go into the discussion).

I am particularly interested in the differences between these terms in the natural sciences (my area), but welcome comparison of the terminology between the fields of math, natural science, and social science in order to help clarify their definitions.

Concisely, here is how I view the terminology:

Observation ≡ Result

Interpretation ≡ Discussion ≡ Explanation

Is this misguided? And if so, can someone please clarify?

I think I understand what your colleague is suggesting, and I think an example might help, so let me try:

I grabbed a (roughly) random article from the most recent copy of Nature by Govero, et al.

A bolded "explanation" in the Results section:

  At day 7, we observed high levels of viral RNA in all male reproductive tract tissues (Extended Data Fig. 4a). At day 13, we observed ZIKV RNA in germ and Sertoli cells in Rag1−/− mice, and this was associated with a decrease in TRA98+ germ cells and Lin28a+ spermatogonia and breakdown of the BTB. However, interstitial Leydig cells remained in ZIKV-infected Rag1−/− mice even though the architecture of the seminiferous tubules was altered (Extended Data Fig. 4c–d). Thus, damage to the testis appears to be mediated both by ZIKV infection and adaptive immune responses.

Versus an "interpretation":

  Our experiments with mouse-adapted ZIKV-Dakar show that infection causes testicular and epididymal damage in mice that can progress to reductions in key sex hormones, destruction of germ and somatic cells in the testis, and loss of mature sperm and fertility. Sertoli cells may be a key target for ZIKV in the testis, resulting in cell dysfunction, detachment from the basement membrane and dissolution of the BTB. Infiltrating inflammatory cells may amplify destruction of the testicular architecture.

So, in some ways there is a bit of overlap, and I don't know if "explanation" vs. "interpretation" are the best words used to differentiate them. I'm also not holding up this article as some optimal way of presenting things: opinions will no doubt vary. My personal opinion is that some contextualization is necessary in the results of all but the most straightforward papers. I think "explanation" is especially needed when you are discussing the control experiments you did, and it's a matter of personal style the order in which you present this, either: "In order to make sure XXXX wasn't a problem, we did YYYY" or "When we tested YYYY, we found ZZZZ, therefore XXXX did not contribute to our previous finding MMMM."

Essentially, in the results section, they didn't only state what exactly they found (i.e., virus levels and counts of cells), but they also explained what those result means in the context of what they are studying. In the discussion, they go further, interpreting the results in the context of other discoveries in the field and future directions for study.


Is my adviser stalling or am I being plainly lazy? So I am a master's degree student in math at a local university. I am very dissatisfied and surprised with the type of work that my adviser asked me to do. I am unsure if I have bad attitude towards work or what is happening is already inappropriate.

The task I was given is extremely routine; it was mind-numbing. It involves a LOT of symbolic manipulations that follows a few set of rules and I apply them repeatedly. To give you guys an idea of how much computation by hand, I have done; I have used more than 30 pages and I write really small (around 0.5cm height and 0.3cm width) with very few white spaces(less than 0.5cm) so this may take other peoples a 100 pages or even much much more. One can imagine the high likelihood of making a lot of computational error due to sheer size of the number of computations. I have checked my computations a few times already, and I am still finding errors here and there. I have asked my adviser, if we can use software to do this computations and he refused without giving any reason why other than being embarrassed(I did not ask why.). Obviously, we have to make sure my work is a 100% correct so we could conjecture correctly, but I have no idea how we'll manage to do this manually.

Hence, I am really finding it difficult to be not cynical about my adviser. I feel like it's a stalling strategy, but perhaps not?

edit

@Anyon, in response to "Can you at least check your pen and paper results using software or is he against that too?"

I have asked if I could allot time to study and use software on my own and he said we should do it near the end, but that means any errors may, of course, negate results; which I don't think makes any sense because it seems very inefficient. I don't understand how he plans to proceed without any computer checks. He also said that he'll check my computations, although he did not say if he'll do it by hand or by computer. He also mentioned that, he had use software during his dissertation and have now forgotten how to use it which means he can't help me with software.

update
I have succeeded in getting my adviser to reveal his motives. Well, he has no motives. As everyone below who answered have guessed, my adviser, simply, does not want to use software because there are technicalities in the mathematics that he does not know how to implement correctly to the software, neither do I. Wolfgang Bangerth is correct, there was a serious breakdown in communication. I am happy this is settled. Thank you to everyone who've answered.

Since everyone here seems to scratch their heads about what might be going on, my first reaction is that there is a breakdown of communication between you and your adviser. It clearly doesn't make sense to do 100-page long computations on paper if they can be done by a computer. So the reaction of your adviser doesn't seem to make any sense -- but what stands out to me is that you don't seem to talk to your adviser about the situation.

Talk to him about the issue. Have a conversation, understand his motives, discuss why he wants you to do these calculations by hand and why he doesn't seem to trust the software. He may have good reasons, but you'll never find out if you don't talk about it. At this point, it's all speculation when you could have a conversation to actually understand.


Is there such a thing as fraud in mathematics? Can you commit fraud in a mathematics publication? Or is this a privilege of empirical sciences?

If a mathematician jumps from one bit of information to another that does not follow logically, from more basic principles, then, that's not fraud, but a logical fallacy, akin to saying 1+1=3.

If an empirical scientist gets a results of 3.3341, but claims it was 3.7341 that's fraud.

Wikipedia defines fraud as "deliberate deception". A couple of mathematical frauds I could think of:

Passing off someone else's result as one's own; plagiarism.
Using a result in a proof although one knows full well that its preconditions are not met.
Making other claims one knows are false, e.g., "it is easy to see that" or "by a tedious computation we see that".

Fraud is certainly possible in mathematics. It's probably harder to distinguish fraud from bona fide errors in math than in other sciences. Who is going to prove that you knew your "simple but tedious enumeration" would not work? Conversely, reusing graphics ostensibly stemming from very different experiments is very hard to explain as a simple error.


How to assess the quality of a degree? In my academic career, I have found that it is pretty difficult to assess the quality of a degree before enrolling. Usually only during the course of your study do you learn what the actual quality of the degree is, which are the best schools, and what your chances in the job market are going to be like.

Getting in touch with students studying at the university is usually pretty difficult if you're not enrolled, and i don't really trust the responses of the professors (who have a vested interest).

What would be a good way to judge the usefulness of a degree? And how can you reliably assess the chances of getting a job with that degree?

Many universities will publish statistics on how many of their graduates are employed or in further education within X months after graduating. If you're only concerned about getting a job, then that's probably your best source of information.

That said, in the end it depends on you. People get jobs with crappy degrees and fail to get jobs with really good degrees. Whether you'll be able to get a job in your chosen field will depend on what exactly you do for your degree.

A good opportunity for improving your chances of getting a job after you graduate is to do an internship while you're at university. Many universities have job centres or similar that can help you with that.


Is it counter-productive to admit obvious weaknesses when applying for a position? A bit of context before hand. I am a second year PhD student. In the course of my studies, I have slowly shifted from aerospace engineering towards computer science. Now, my research involves developing software applicable for aerospace systems. I am fairly competent in programming and related subjects, even though I sometimes find my lack of background in those subjects to be penalysing.

I found a summer program in which I am highly interested in. However, it was mainly designed for CS students. In my application, I want to make a case that even though I am not an ideal candidate for this program (which in my opinion is quite obvious, even though I have proven capabilities in some of the subjects required) I still think I should get accepted. One of the my main arguments is that everything I have learned so far on programming and related subjects was through self-study (mainly online tutorials), which shows I am highly motivated and can work independently.

So it got me thinking. In general, is it a good idea to admit his own weaknesses when applying for a specific position?

Describe yourself accurately enough to let the program organizers decide if you will benefit from the course. In that sense, yes, you should admit your weaknesses, but it's indeed counterproductive to actually phrase things that way - you are the applicant; it's not your job to decide what is a significant weakness.

You obviously think you are ready for the course and would benefit - let the organizers know what your reasons are, and why you are enthusiastic. If you are applying on the strength of being a good software developer in general, including a link to some public code you've written might help.

(And if you are feeling self-conscious about not having an undergraduate CS degree, go and get something like Cormen et al.'s "Introduction to Algorithms" and go through it cover to cover. You will hit most of the things you would be expected to know cold.)


Have trouble retaining material I learn in grad school. Is this common? I have just began my first year as a math graduate student at a US school. I am having an issue in the fact that

During my undergraduate years, I would only take 2-3 classes a semester, and usually only one or two of them were a math class. This got me used to a particular style of learning; I always had as much time as I wanted to spend on any particular topic; I would read about the topic from different books, read about the history of the topic, etc. I feel like I learned very slowly, but what I did learn, I learned well.

Now I am in grad school, and the atmosphere is completely different. I have 3 math classes which move very fast, and assign a lot of homework. I feel like I do not really have time to learn the material well; I learn the material just barely enough to to do the homework and pass the exams, and then I have to immediately push on to the next topic. I solve the problems and try to understand the theorems/proofs, but then one week later I often retain very little. I always feel like I need 2-3 more passes over the material to learn it well, I never get a chance to do it.

I feel like some of those undergrads who just learn the material to pass the class, not really to use it. But this is terrible to do as a grad student, since math is supposed to be my specialty.

My question is, is this common? I am trying to figure out if this is normal, or if I handicapped myself in undergrad by taking it too easy. It seems to me like there are some students who retain information much better; they study much less than me, and seem to recall information from weeks before, and I can't do that.

If you're putting the time in, successfully doing the homework, and passing the exams, then you're doing fine. The first year of grad school in mathematics should be thought of as a horrible bootcamp to get through rather than a deep learning opportunity. How comfortable someone is during their first year is mostly a function of what their undergrad experience was like. So it might be true that your undergrad program was less strenuous than that of some of your fellow students, but if you're keeping up, you're getting the job done.

Depending on your learning preferences, you might find that things percolate better if you work with others. I would also suggest that you keep good, searchable records for what you want to get back to at a later date. This will be especially helpful when it comes to prepping for written exams.


Is it the denomination of the PhD course very important? I received an unconditional offer for a PhD from two different universities. The first from a famous Department of English. The second from an average Department of Comparative Literature. (I have an MA in Comparative Literature and have studied Russian and English).

My research proposal - for which I received an offer in both departments – has, however, a multi-national and theoretical approach. I was wondering: if I accept the offer at the Department of English, will I still be able, after graduation, to apply for a post-doc position in Comparative Literature? Clearly, I wish to publish papers in Comparative Literature and write my PhD dissertation with a comparative approach.

P.S.: I don't know if this information is necessary, but I am an Italian student and got both my BA and MA in Italy.

No, the name of your degree is not important in most cases. You will be judged based on the quality and area of your work and research and your publication record. If you publish with a comparative approach and want to do a post-doc in a comparative department, you won't be impeded simply because your degree says you have a PhD in English.

It is more important that you have an advisor (and perhaps other mentors as well) around you that can assist you in the approach you wish to take. If no one in this Department of English has any expertise in a comparative approach (I think it would be highly unlikely that no one would, but perhaps no one you were interested in working with), that's a bigger issue than the name of the degree, and something you should actually consider.