Is it OK to re-use data from a previously publication in a new publication? In a previously-published paper we have one chart with about 6 traces — a pair of controls, and four test subjects.  We are now preparing a follow-up paper in which one of the test subjects now acts as a control, with another half-dozen new traces compared to it.  Assume that each of the experiments is technically valid (i.e. presenting either figure alone would be fine in terms of replicates, stats, setup, etc.) Is it OK to re-use the data for the shared trace in both papers?  We would prefer not to repeat the whole experiment — aside from cost, there's an ethical issue (animals are involved and we want to minimize suffering). We are tentatively thinking that we can re-use the data along with an explanatory note ("Trace X in Figure 3 is re-used from reference Y") but I'd appreciate other thoughts.

Looking for guidance in journal instructions, I find that at least one journal-running society says

  In the event that the authors' previously published figures and/or data are included in a submitted manuscript, it is incumbent upon the corresponding author to (i) identify the duplicated material and acknowledge the source on the submission form, (ii) obtain permission from the original publisher (i.e., copyright owner), (iii) acknowledge the duplication in the figure legend, and (iv) cite the original article.

That makes it clear that some data re-use is acceptable so long as it's clearly indicated as such.  The journal also says

  It is incumbent upon the author to acknowledge any prior publication, including his/her own articles, of the data contained in a manuscript submitted to an ASM journal. A copy of the relevant work should be submitted with the paper as supplemental material not for publication. Whether the material constitutes the substance of a paper and therefore renders the manuscript unacceptable for publication is an editorial decision.

which makes it clear that it's not a blanket okay, and the editor will use their judgement as to how much is acceptable.


Any help on the roadmap towards my PhD I am a pharmacist with MSc in Public Health. I like to write. My style of writing is philosophical mostly. I like to explore concepts. My aim is always to clarify and provide better understanding in a practical way using illustrations from nature. I am currently living in Seychelles. I have two main challenges on the road to my PhD. Firstly, owing to the nature of my work I cannot travel out of my duty post for a PhD so the way forward is online. Secondly, as a volunteer in my career path, I don't have the funds for PhD. My area of PhD interest is the interlink between Health and Religion. In general, I like to explore how religion serves as a determinant of various situations that happens in life such as the health of a nation. Can you please help me with an advice on the way forward? Thank you

Firstly, a tip: as currently written, your question is not a good match for the format of the site and is likely to be closed. You need to ask a question that can be answered in an objective (or at least good-subjective) way.

That said, I will try to answer the question as it stands.

Firstly, be sure that you actually want to do a doctorate. It is long, hard work and you need to be fully committed. Honestly, your plans sound too vague at the moment. The whole point of a doctorate is to show that you have initiative and can work independently.
Next, you need to clarify your subject. At a bare minimum you need to identify a particular group, region and/or period of interest and justify why this is a particularly important focus.
Next, you need to do some research online and identify one or more potential supervisors with a track record and interests in this or a very closely related field, at an institution which would be happy with you doing a part-time distance learning doctorate. This will be difficult. There is an interdisciplinary science and religion doctoral programme at Boston but it doesn't sound to me like they would accept part-time or distance learners.
Next, you now need to contact them to find out if they are potentially interested in taking you on to do a project in the area you have identified.
Finally, you need a source of funding. You need to pay university fees (depending on which instiution you end up at) and potentially living costs (if you are planning to reduce your working hours to allow time for study; if you are planning to continue working full-time you are probably underestimating the amount of work a doctorate takes). A supportive supervisor might be able to help identify some charities, scholarships, bursaries etc that could help with this, or some students self-fund using savings. This is inevitably much more expensive than you think and most of the students I know of who go down this route end up in financial difficulties at some point. If you're lucky (I don't know the situation in the Seychelles) your government may offer funding for study.


Best strategy to learn programing for graduate research data analysis in biology I'm actually asking this question on behalf of a sibling who's pursuing a PhD in Biology. While I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and am "computer-savvy" and experienced in learning programming languages from technical textbooks and internet forums, she is very inexperienced in programming in any form.

What textbooks would you recommend for the self-teaching of MATLAB and/or Excel for the purpose of data analysis? If she wanted a technical book, I could find one in five minutes. I'm looking for a book that can explain MATLAB to an inexperienced user with no programming background.

Also, if you learned MATLAB or a similar program with great success, what tips would you give for self teaching? Thanks!

The best tool to learn depends on the actual job. For very basic data analysis, Excel has the lowest entry barrier, but the learning curve gets steep soon. Learning a full language will take some months, but will greatly expand the things she is capable of doing. Also, knowing programming in a field where everybody uses Excel can be a great advantage and unique feature for employment.

One important factor deciding which language is the environment she is in. Having people used to the tools and perks of a language can be very useful when learning from scratch. On the other hand, I'd only count "modern" options (some old professors are very fond of FORTRAN77 and IDL, but learning these is like learning to train dinosaurs).

She should consider not only her lab, but also ask at the Bioinformatics department, and take a look at other labs in the branch she is in. In my experience, for the most informatics side of the field, people use mostly Python, C++, and Java for some machine learning. I have encountered some MATLAB, but definitely not much.

One last note: I think in learning your first language you want the cleanest and less quirky possible. MATLAB in this respect is a mess of a language, with a crappy syntax and bad scalability. My personal choice would be Python, so here are some introductory materials:

Summer school on scientific programming and introduction to Python. All materials are posted.
The official tutorial. There is a lot of things that are not for useful for scientists, but it is very good introduction to the language.
Khan academy. They have everything. Very nice.
Coursera has a full assortment of courses. She will surely find something of interest there.


How to improve graduate student recruitment at a small, good, but non-elite department? I am a mathematics professor in a small, good but non-elite department in the US. Several of my colleagues and I would like to work to improve our recruitment of strong prospective Ph.D. students.

We do not really know how to go about this most effectively. Obviously it is difficult, but -- what are some good ways to do this, in addition to

maintaining a useful and informative departmental webpage,
serving our present Ph.D. students as well as we can, making sure they are happy, and (hopefully!) helping them to land good jobs,
maintaining our own research programs, and
continuing to network and maintain professional connections with colleagues at other universities?

Edit: I see this question is related, although in my case recruiting is handled on a departmental rather than individual basis.

All of the ideas that you've written down so far seem quite useful and reasonable, but I think that there is something important missing.  In particular, all of these are aimed at recruiting "generic" students rather than individual students.

Ph.D. recruitment is different than undergraduate recruitment because people choose their undergraduate institutions for so many random reasons, while they tend to be much more focused and "status-conscious" when looking for a doctoral program.  As such, rank matters a lot more for students... when they have no personal relationship.

As such, if you want top students to come to your department, you don't want them to be thinking, "I wonder if Nice University's grad program would be good for me," you want them thinking, "I really hope that I can do my graduate work with Professor Neato!"

There are at least two really good sources that I can think of for recruiting such students:

Your undergraduates: Because of the high variance in how people make their undergraduate choices, at least some really top students are likely to end up at pretty much any decent school.  If you can get those students involved in research as undergraduates, then they will know you and your research personally, and may well be inclined to continue with a cool program that they are already invested in rather than taking a blind leap into a big and possibly unfriendly place far away.
Close colleagues at other schools: Reaching beyond your own pool of students, your colleagues elsewhere are likely to have bright students that they may be looking for a good place for.  If they've got a top student who's just interested in generic stuff, then packing them off to an elite institution and hoping they'll find their way may be the right thing.  But if they think the person might be a good fit for your work on Frabjous Tulip Fractals, then they can refer them directly to you, and again a student may be much more interested in working with a specific professor who they can get to know and meet, particularly where that can improve their chances of admission.

I know of folks who are pursuing both these strategies with significant success.  Other approaches may work as well, such as international exchange programs.  The common theme, however, is to compete on the basis of your individual personal relationships, rather than as a generic institution.


Do language skills impair students' ability to assess their skill in other subjects? I'm sure many of you have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect which basically states that people with low skills in a given area tend to overestimate their skill level relative to the general population. My question is how this capacity to assess one's own skills may be affected by language skills.

I am a TA at a German university in a first-year engineering course and I have a few students whose native language is not German. The class is entirely in German and relies on technical vocabulary more than e.g. math or physics. So obviously these students will have a harder time in the class [citation needed], and I'm not concerned about their skill level per se (that issue is covered in another question), but about their ability to judge how well they are doing in that class compared to other students, and also compared to what we expect of them.

Answering with your own personal experience and advice is of course welcome, but pointers to research on the subject would be greatly appreciated. It might support our department in helping these students better in the future.

PS: Feel free to suggest another stackexchange site if you consider this question unfit for academia.sx

I've taught esl  for international students trying to get into graduate school. One thing that I noticed is that the students did not know there is a difference between conversational English and academic English. They were totally convinced that since they could tell me their name and where the bathroom is that they were ready to begin graduate school. Literal ideas are easy to share in a second language but abstract ideas require real mastery.

Perhaps in your situation the students have the same misunderstanding in regards to conversational and academic German. When you lack expertise in any subject everything tends to look the same.

Another potential concern could be language ego which essentially means that nobody wants to look dumb using another language. This may also cause students to inflate their language ability in order to fake competence they lack. Toning down the complex German and explaining everything in the simplest way possible with the simplest words will encourage them to indicate when they don't get it.


Diversifying the academic institutions one attends I am planning on doing research mathematics at a university or similar institution as a career. I have heard that it is important to diversify your studies (not attend the same school for undergrad, masters, and PhD). Is this true? What if I am already going to a good school, with the potential to work with people in the forefront of my field?

I am currently doing my undergrad degree, but when it comes time to do my masters, is it important to find a different school, or will staying in the same place hurt my job prospects? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

While this is generally true, it depends heavily on the field and subfield. Pure math is a little unique compared to many other disciplines, and in my experience has a much higher rate of students staying with the same university/department/advisor from undergrad through PhD--perhaps because if you find a professor working on a given topic you'd like to study, there's a decent chance he or she is the only (or one of very few) person in the country doing it. I know a decent number of people in pure math who did this, and at least two of them are now tenured math professors at research universities--so I don't think it's guaranteed to hurt your job prospects.

I would talk to the professor(s) you're interested in working with and ask for suggestions specific to studying analytic number theory.


Is it normal to feel that your career comes to a halt when you achieve tenure? My question pretty much self explains what I've been feeling since four years, when I achieved tenure. As I moved up in the academic hierarchy, from undergrad to post-doc, then tenure-track Professor and finally tenured Professor, I realized that the burden of responsibility was always incremental, but I was prepared and after a short period of adjustment, found my way to dwell in the system and balance my obligations. I felt I was constantly learning, keeping up with administrative obligations, and contributing new ideas to my research field. However, I feel that after achieving tenure the administrative load broke that balance and four years later I'm seeing the consequences. The most unsettling sensation is perceiving that I stopped being up to date in my field. Now, I spend so much time writing grant proposal, dealing with committees and doing administration that I struggle to find time to read and stay abreast with the literature in my field, propose new experiments and “do science”.  Sometimes I even feel I am starting to forget concepts and abilities that were natural to me and that are at the core of my field.

Don't get me wrong, there are many things I enjoy from my position. I like teaching, tutoring the students in my research group, every now and then I'm able to put together an interesting project with a colleague and get it running. Also, considering that I'm still relatively young and have fuel for a couple more of decades, I'm concerned that eventually I won't be able to fulfill my duties and enjoy the things I mentioned out of sheer burn out.

Is it normal to feel this way? What are the causes? Does this feeling recedes with time? Could this be an indication that I should start considering a Plan B before I get to old and moving in something else becomes harder?

I want to note that I am not in an exceptional situation: I work at a good university, salary and benefits are above average, the head of the department has never complained about my job, my student are very intelligent and independent and I already sought professional counseling (no diagnostic or conclusion.)

Tip 1: Sabbatical.

This is a great way to get up to date and to drive in your research again.

Tip 2: Leverage the abilities of your students/postdocs to help you stay up to date. If you find a paper that you would like to read, try to find a student for which the paper would also be useful, let them read it and explain to you. If you find a new book/topic you would like to know more about, try to give a lecture or a seminar about that topic.

Tip 3: Say no to more administrative positions, if ever appropriate. You've got tenure and you do your service as you should do you may say no. Some people may not like it, but this is ok - they will get over it.

There was a recent question here that was similar with some great answers, but I can't find it right now…


What are some useful workflows for keeping track of interesting but not immediatly relevant books/articles? I read lots of academic literature to stay up on my field (law). The articles fall into one of three categories:

immediately relevant;
clearly irrelevant or of low quality; or
very interesting, and may prove useful in some future, as-yet-unimagined research project, but not immediately relevant.

My question is: what is the best way of managing articles in category 3—i.e., taking notes on them, organizing those notes, and then periodically revisiting them? The issue is that I have limited time and so taking detailed notes on all of the interesting articles that I read isn’t an option. However, I want to absorb them in sufficient depth such that, at some point in the future, I can recall that I read them, that they may now be useful to my current research project, and that I should revisit and re-read them.

I’m less interesting in specific software/tools, but rather in an overall workflow/approach. Many thanks.

Here are two approaches that work for me. The first is a way to capture the essence of documents that are "very interesting, and may prove useful in some future, as-yet-imagined research project, but not immediately relevant". The second is a way to quickly capture the details of documents and prioritize how soon you revisit them to read in more detail.

First, you can use tagging in your reference manager to summarize the documents. I use endnote. In the research notes section of endnote I put tags to characterize the reference. For example, I will tag the method (e.g., experiment), theory (e.g., motivation) and so on where relevant. Where possible I will also link the record to a specific paper, for example by tagging it as RP1 (RP1 = research paper 1). I separate tags using semi-colons. When it is a paper that I think I will need to read in the future, I will put VIP, or to read. I might also write a note (which I put in notes section of the reference record) of why it is important to read the paper. All of the above means that I can easily find papers with certain tags in the future, as well as use this meta knowledge to quickly determine which papers are relevant on certain topics - without having to actually reread them to find out.

Second, you can also put it somewhere in a list. I use a prioritised to-do list including an an Eisenhower grid, in evernote.

To do today

1.

2.

3.

To Do Asap:

1.

To think about

1.

In my case I have 7 lists in my evernote document. As shown in figure 1 above 2 of these are at the top of the Eisenhower grid: To do today and To do asap. Four of them are within the box: High importance/High urgency, High importance/low urgency; Low importance/High urgency; Low importance/Low urgency. I have one below the box called: To think about. If I find a useful paper I will add it to one of these list so that I can find it at some point in the future. Of course the list I chose to add it to will be a function of its relevance.


Are there any practical reasons at keeping record of my past university work? After graduating from university is there a practical reason I would want to keep record of my previous assignments? I have a hard-drive full of them. Are there more practical reasons I don't see other than the sentimental value?

Yes.

(1) You might have to prove to people that you took these classes. Transcripts may become unavailable or untrusted.

(2) Perhaps you'll find something of use for your own research or writing in them. Happened to me at least twice in graduate classes. (For example, a lemma I proved in homework turned out to be useful in a proof I wanted to write up elsewhere.) Of course, you probably will not want to reuse them verbatim (I cringe when I read my writing from 10 years ago), but they still can be better than nothing.

(3) You might eventually want to revisit one of the classes you have "casually" taken, for example because its subject is leaking into yours. By looking back on your homework, you'll get a quick impression of where you have left it (although this is only a good thing if you have been learning it reasonably thoroughly; if you were sloppy, then it might be better to start from scratch).

(4) In order to encourage your own students to submit LaTeXed assignments, you will want to provide a usable blank LaTeX template for them. And where do you get such a thing? (Well, there are several places, but one is in your own homework folder.)


How does your area of research affect your chances of getting job in academia? I've heard that the trendiness of your area of work is one of the important factor that has am impact your chances of getting job in academia. How far is this true?

Also, how do I decide what areas are trendy and what areas are not in the field I'm interested that is mathematics?

Trendiness can be factor, but a much more important factor is what needs the hiring department has. If they're chock full of topologists, it doesn't matter how "trendy" your work in topology is: there's a good chance they might be looking to expand in other areas.

OTOH, if they're looking in your area, then being at the cutting edge can't hurt. The danger of course is timing: trends rise and fall quickly, and what might be trendy right now might not be so in a year or two (maybe in mathematics, trends move more slowly).

So I'd argue that trendiness, while one potential factor, is not a universal key factor at all. Every department has their own needs.

As regards your second question, usual measures of "trendiness" include the relative frequency of publication in that subarea. In CS, it's relatively easy to determine this via conference acceptances, but in math I'm not sure how you'd go about measuring this frequency. It also helps to attend big meetings and listen to where the buzz is. An advisor can also be helpful in this regard (especially if they're pre-tenure and need to keep track of trends themselves :))


Can a cousin write a recommendation letter for graduate school? I have a cousin who used to be a research engineer at MIT until recently, and now is the global manager of a company. While at MIT, he suggested that I should apply for graduate school there (I'm an undergrad in Mechanical Engineering in Brazil). He knows me pretty well and is encouraging me to try. I have a good GPA, 3.6/4 as of now, but could be 3.8/4 by the time I graduate. I also have published papers, some of which will be published in top journals.
Since he used to be part of the MIT community, would a recommendation letter from him be an advantage for me? Or, because he's family, the comittee could simply consider it biased?

PS: He was not from the mechanical engineering department.

This is probably not a good idea.  A strong letter of recommendation will make it clear how the recommender knows the applicant.  If it is apparent that the recommender is a family member, then many readers will simply ignore the recommendation.

Furthermore, a strong letter of recommendation will describe specific situations in which the applicant did something well.  In this case, your recommender may not know you except through your family connection and probably doesn't know enough about your academic or research background to provide such examples.


What questions to ask a famous mathematician A famous professor mathematician is coming to my city next week and will be doing a lecture with a Q&A session afterwords. I’d like to ask a couple of questions afterwords but I’ve no idea what to say and don’t want to look silly in front of everyone else.
Do I ask them about things they researched? I’m really not sure.

What advice would you give to a youngster interested in math? To a college student?
What do you do to overcome frustration when the going gets hard?
What sort of problems interest you now?
Where should I look for interesting problems?
What was your first interesting encounter with math?

other things like that.

Of course, the talk might cover some of this but might also suggest other questions.

Of course, if the talk is being given to specialists, rather than the public, then questions specific to the talk would be appropriate, but possibly difficult to prepare in advance.


Academic position salaries in the UK In job ads in the UK, a range is often mentioned as a salary, e.g. from 30k to 35k pounds per year. What exactly does this mean?

Is the salary negotiable?
Does the salary remain the same throughout the contract/employment?
Is it increasing progressively?
When and how does one reach the upper bound? In permanent positions, what happens after the upper bound has been reached?

Also, is there a difference in the calculations between fixed-term and permanent positions?

There is typically a fixed pay scale (see the UCU page, for example), but where on that scale someone starts may be subject to negotiation.

Within each job "band" (lecturer, senior lecturer) there is progression up the scale on a regular basis (usually, and usually one point per year). Typically people are promoted from one band to the next before reaching the top of the scale, but in principle you would just stop. Different institutions may place the boundaries of the job "band" in different places, but the number quoted in the advert usually corresponds to those edges.

On being promoted to full professor different rules apply, which seem to vary by institution.

There is no difference between fixed term and permanent positions.

Often a probation period will apply - there may be different rules in that time.

The salary scales are not accurate for all institutions - for example, London salaries are increased to account for the increased cost of living.


Postdoc salaries/taxes in California (Caltech) for foreigner I have seen some confusing information online. I am looking into postdoc positions at Caltech (Pasadena, CA). From my understanding, the annual salaries are somewhere in the 55k - 60 k range. What kind of taxes apply, though? I've seen conflicting information, and am quite confused.
Here it seems that some of Caltech are exempt from federal tax, but I am not sure if this applies to postdoc researchers.
Also, how does one being a foreigner (with a work VISA) affect taxation?

The National Postdoc Association has an Overview of Tax Issues for Postdocs that may be a good starting point.

Here it seems that some of Caltech are exempt from federal tax, but I am not sure if this applies to postdoc researchers.

This just means that Caltech itself is exempt from paying income tax. By default (that is, unless there's a tax treaty), a postdoc receiving money to cover living expenses will pay tax on their income. In California there would be both federal and state income tax.

Also, how does one being a foreigner (with a work VISA) affect taxation?

This can depend on whether there is a relevant tax treaty or not, and how long they've been present inside US borders. See e.g. International Postdoc Survival Guide - Beginner's Guide to Income Taxes for International Postdocs for resources.


What is the principal investigator’s responsibility regarding data authenticity? Every now and then, you hear stories of data being fabricated by a graduate student (or post-doc) who felt the pressure to publish groundbreaking results was too much. This unethical behavior makes me wonder: What can a PhD advisor (or group leader, or project principal investigator) actually do to avoid that in her own group? What are her ethical duties in ensuring that all published data is genuine?

Please note: I'm not singling out graduate students or post-docs because I think they are statistically responsible for more ethical misconducts than others… only because it gives a good case of when the PI would have only indirect access to the data (meaning: she didn't actually do the experiments herself, but was only presented the data by others in her group).

We've talked about this at the institute where I'm doing my PhD, and the best solution seemed the following:

First, make a central database for all raw data, that can be accessed per request. Upload/copy data to it as soon as it's collected, including noisy data that might not enter the final analysis. This ensures that any excluded data has to be properly justified.

Second, let everybody know that every so often a random dataset will be pulled out and some basic checks run on it.

Third, run those basic checks. For this you need someone with knowledge of statistics who can tell you what is appropriate for your type of data. A lot of basic aspects of normal data are difficult to simulate without a lot of knowledge on statistics. To give an example, if you take data that have a normal distribution, split it into quintiles, then plot the mean against the variance in each quintile, they should roughly fall on an inverted U-shaped curve. I know of a case where this relationship was perfectly linear, which raised alarm bells. In any case, these checks should be simple and easy to run.

Fourth, decide who will do these checks, because it takes time and effort.

Fifth, make sure you have some idea of what types of mistakes are honest mistakes, and what constitutes actual fraud. Make sure you discuss mechanisms of dealing with these mistakes (and fraud) beforehand, i.e. don't leave this decision in the hands of the supervisor at the moment it happens.

Edit: I guess the main question was what's the PI's responsibility. My reply reflects my opinion that the responsibility should be more institutionalized, and not left just to the PI. On the other hand, the PI could run some of these steps internally if needed / if there is no other help available. But then it might be too elaborate, so perhaps you will get some better answers from other people.


What is the point in publishing a paper in a journal rather than arXiv? I'm undergraduate student in Physics, I wonder what is the point in publishing a paper in a journal rather than arXiv ?

As far as I know, there is a fee which must be paid for publishing in a journal (It may not be valid for all journal or fields, I guess).I'm asking because If I do some publishable work on my undergrad research, what option would be more logical and advantageous ? How would they affect my future Phd admissions ?

Or if I ask my second question more generally, How would these options affect one's carrier in academia ?

Papers published in (reputable) journals are reviewed by other scientists (peer review), which usually makes it considerably more difficult to publish a paper there. By contrast papers on the ArXiv only receive a brief inspection to keep out utter crap. Thus, most academic evaluations consider only peer-reviewed publications or value them considerably higher.

Moreover, often only peer-reviewed papers are considered citable, in particular for purposes of backing up your claims. This may extend to papers that are considered certain to be eventually peer-reviewed¹, but this is unlikely to apply to your paper. As being cited (by peer-reviewed papers) is another important academic evaluation metric, this is another advantageous aspect of journal publications.

As a sidenote: There are a lot of physics journals where you can publish without a fee.

¹ in particular in fast-moving fields or fields with long peer review such as parts of mathematics


What factors determine acceptance to top graduate program in Engineering? Question that is really bothering me is what are the important factors for admission to top five engineering graduate school? I searched in different forums and saw people got accepted to  PhD program at prestigious school with GPA 3.40 GRE Quantitative of 165 and no publication. However I also saw people could not get in to even master program with 4.0 GPA ,good GRE score.
I am starting to think that GPA ,GRE and even research experience are not determining factor. Can anyone please clarify this for me?

To get into a top graduate program, you typically need:

No red flags that will cause your application to be discarded.
Something that causes you to stand out from the vast crowd of good applicants with no red flags.

A lot of people seem to think that having an extremely high GPA, GRE, class rank, etc. will help, but it does not.  The problem is that such standardized evaluations address only category #1.  There are a lot of good students out there, and graduate programs aren't really interested in whether you are the best student.  Instead, they are interested in whether you have problems as a student that would prevent you from succeeding in graduate school.

The honest truth is that there is a huge amount of unpredictability in satisfying criteria #2. and you can only do so much to control it.  There are many useful things you can do to help make yourself stand out, like participating in research projects, but ultimately there are no guarantees, because you never know how many other excellent candidates might also be applying to that program in that year, and what exactly it is that will make one person's application resonate with the particular faculty member who reads it.


I am curious about applying my coursework from Masters program towards Doctoral in Economics in the US I earned a Master's degree in Analytics (one of the newer and popular graduate school majors) and am considering going back to school for Ph.D. in Economics. I am curious if Universities in the US with doctoral programs in Economics accept coursework from Master's degree to be applied towards Ph.D. program? It probably varies by universities as they set their own policies, so if anyone with experience can share specific cases that would be helpful.

I am planning on applying to the top tier as well other schools with Econ program in the United States and maybe Oxford or LSE in the U.K.

There's some overlap with the courses, especially the stats courses and time series, econometrics which is the focus that I intend to pursue my Ph.D.

There is no uniform policy in the US. You must check with each program you are interested in.

Graduate departments are generally give broad latitude in accepting coursework from other schools. Some may choose to give either credit or merely placement; some may offer both or neither. Some may require what they consider “core” courses to be retaken but allow electives to count. Other schools may have a limit on the number of transfer credits they will accept. There are simply too many variations, so direct questions to the graduate admissions officer or director of graduate studies (or the equivalent( is your best option.

As @Dawn has suggested in the comments below, it is indeed worth noting that one should likely not ignore the possibility of taking the core classes required to pass the department's qualification examinations, and most advisors will encourage you to do exactly that.


Cover letter for a publication I am submitting a publication to IEEE.  In the course of the process, they've asked for a cover letter.  Is this request typical of journals and other publications?  What is expected to be on such a letter?

The practice of cover letters predates the now common online submission systems by centuries: Before online submission, papers were submitted by sending a hard copy via postal mail to the editor-in-chief (in person, not via a journal). Now it's mostly a formality, but since scholars are a traditional bunch, old habits die hard.
(EDIT: Even so, if the journal demands a cover letter, you must provide one, or risk having your submission rejected for not following the guidelines.)

In principle, any information contained in a cover letter should also be put somewhere into the submission form, so those can be of some guidance. Things usually appearing in the letter include

the title of the work;
the type of manuscript (if the journal not only publishes standard papers but also short notes, literature review etc.);
the name of the journal you are submitting to (since the editor might manage several journals);
a brief summary (one or two sentences) to give the editor some idea
whether the manuscript is within the scope, and which associate
editor to forward it to;
a clear statement that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere;
the full contact details of the corresponding author (presumably the one signing the cover letter);
a list of preferred or excluded referees and/or associate editors, if applicable.

Here's what I usually write (addressed to the editor-in-chief at his department address):

  Dear Professor X,

  please find attached our manuscript "A Note on Piffles", which we
  would like to submit for publication as an original research article
  in your journal Wuffle Review. Our main result is that all universal
  Piffles are strictly ascending, which proves a conjecture of Smith et
  al. This work has not been submitted elsewhere.

  The corresponding author is

  [...]

  We are looking forward to hearing from you.

  Sincerely,

  Y


How to read papers without falling into a rabbit hole? Often while reading a paper, I will see a citation that that seems more relevant than my current one. I'll switch to the new paper, only to experience a similar feeling. Or maybe I need to look something up on Wikipedia. An hour later, I'll still feel as if I didn't really digest anything. I will have skimmed 2-4 papers' introductions and conclusions, scratched some notes on the side, and generally feel overwhelmed.

Is this a bad habit? An abnormal feeling? How have others dealt with this to become more productive readers?

I'm fairly new to research, if that matters.

Your problem is quite common among researchers. Actually it's not really a problem, being overwhelmed like this is just natural. Me and all my friends and colleagues face it.

How I overcame this issue: I try to focus on one paper at a time. Try starting reading the latest research paper on a particular subject and go back chronologically. Print the research paper in hard copy, leave your computer and cell phone (if possible) behind and start reading the paper. The point here is to avoid internet access. No matter what question you have, do not search it right away. Write it on the side notes and keep reading. Most of the time the answer will be in the later sections of the same article. Even if you do not get the answers, once you finish reading the paper, you can go online and find all the answers. That's how I read literature without falling in a rabbit hole.

Also, reading the Abstract first, then the conclusion, and then the rest of the paper is also effective.

For me, changing place of study also helps to focus and good instrumental music is always a plus.


Do instructors have the right to know how many students test positive for COVID-19? My university tests every student.
So they have the data.
I can understand that for privacy,
the names of the students who tested positive are not released to the public or the instructors.
But do instructors have right to know how many or if any student in his/her class tested positive?

In the university I work for that would make no difference: everybody physically present is tested negative, as those who are tested positive are not allowed to enter the building, and this is checked.
The bigger problem I see with giving this information to lecturers is with smaller courses. It would be very likely that anonymity can no longer be guaranteed. Moreover, there is no clear cutoff point that distinguishes between small and big courses. So I understand the universities that do not give that information.


Non-confidential student suppport letter for a teaching award My home faculty announced a call of nominations for a teaching award. I am confident that my teaching contributions has been substantial and wish to be recognized. So I contacted the selection committee and ask them if I, as a nominee, can contact my (staff and faculty) colleagues and students to solicit their letters of support.

And the answer is that I can do this to prepare the nomination package myself for submission, as long as nominators are given the option to send their letters to the committee directly if they wish to keep them confidential.

So far, many of my students who responded took the option of sending their letters directly to me. I wonder if their letters, compared with those sent confidentially, will be in any way treated with less weight/value (given that I did get a green light by the selection committee)?

I can't see into the minds of the judges responsible for the award, but such letters might well be discounted. The problem is the possibility that the students were actually writing to solicit favors from you in the future - trying to "get on your good side". Actually, it is the perception that they might be trying to get some future favor.

You might suggest to the writers that they send letters directly.

In any case, the direct answer to whether confidential letters might hold more weight is yes, they might.

But if there are a combination of letters sent confidentially and not and they are consistent, then I doubt it would be a problem.

But IANAMR (I am nor a mind reader).


Emailing supervisor after applying for phd to discuss about research problem and funding I had contacted a potential supervisor regarding phd position in his lab. He was interested in my profile and advised me to apply for the program. I have applied for the program and informed him about the same. Earlier, We had not discussed about funding and exact research problem. I am curious to know about funding as well as my research problem. I need your opinion on the following

What is the appropriate time to discuss about project? Should i wait till I get an offer from admission team to discuss this or while my application is being evaluated can i discuss with my potential supervisor
Can i get some help in what should i write in my email when i ask about project and funding?

I thank users in advance for helping me in this regard

Hope you are well.
Okay so since you have already applied to the program as per your supervisor - You can reach out to him through email to let him know that you have applied to the program and you will be keeping him in the loop in case of any updates. Along with this you can then ask regarding the research question and its specifics - Make sure the email is not too long though.
Also, and you may find different people with different opinions on this - I would advise not to bring up the funding question in the first email - if he replies to your email you will be sending after admission submission - only after that you can go for the funding question.
Saying this because certain times supervisors do not have funding readily available and are always looking for students that are self-funding because that is in their favor ofcourse.
Hope it helps - Let me know if you need help with something.
Thanks.


Asking math PhD admissions for a decision sooner, given that I have received an offer from a good school Can I ask other math PhD programs that I've applied to whether they could give me a decision sooner than later, as I've gotten an offer from a good program?  If so, should I name this program for them in my email or keep it private?

You can ask, but the most likely answer is that no information can be given. Decisions may not be finalized until near the deadline. There may be regulations that prohibit giving out information to individuals prior to agreed-on dates.

Mentioning the other problem does you no good and might possibly do harm. The admissions committee isn't going to disrupt its procedures because of such information.

I'd suggest that you just make a decision.

Another possibility, of course, is to ask the program that accepted you to let you delay your acceptance for a bit - a short period. They may be willing or not, but if you are a really good candidate the chances for success here are a bit better than for the other option. (My opinion, only)


How to deal with important but lazy collaborators? I'm part of a research project, initiated by another collaborator. The collaborator did the bare minimum of work to get the project started, but then completely stopped contributing, while I did about 90% of my part in the project.

Now the collaborator wants to publish the work done, but without completing their part, by refocusing the paper and emphasizing my part as the main focus of the paper. The resulting paper is high on content (that I've written), but low on applicability/impact (due to the collaborator's negligence). It is also not worth the time I have put into it, since the collaborator's part was supposed to be crucial.

Despite their lack of input in this paper, the collaborator still insists on being the leading author (since they initiated the project), but the result is mostly my work. I may have to collaborate with them again in the future, so I do not want to alienate them by forcing my hand in this, but I feel like some kind of bait-and-switch has been done here.

Is there a way to proceed without seeming unethical? I can't leave this entire project without wasting all my work. But if I don't leave, then the collaborator gets credit for the work I've done.

Is there a way to stop this from happening again? Is this common in academic collaboration, and is there is a way to work with collaborators without this happening?

Honestly, this is a fairly common problem.  You see it  a lot at even the basic office group level where one person ends up doing a majority of the work.  If you've put in a lot of work and this is the only way forward then accept it and move on.  If you can't live with that outcome then pull your contribution and move on.

In the future...well now you know what you look out for!

Either way, don't let this consume you.  There will be many more battles to fight in your academic career.


Does the candidate usually get notified when a request for a reference letter is made? I applied for a university position and gave the named three persons as a reference: A, B, and C. I am not very much in touch with A, B, C, but I already have permission to use their name as reference.

Would the university I applied to let me know that they sent a request to those persons – and whether they answered or not? For example, would they state that they contacted A and C and only A has sent us the reference letter?

Normally no, the university contacts any or all of a, b or c as they see fit.

They do not have to tell you who or when they contacted them.

They may contact a in the first round and b or c in the second - if you get that far...


Plagarism by a co-author in my paper I recently submitted a manuscript for review to a journal. The manuscript was a result of an independent study and therefore, had 8 authors (students, advisors and a few other relevant collaborators). I am the first author and am also a student.

One of the student co-authors wrote a paragraph that stood out as irrelevant to me and had some unique wording so I edited it out. Yesterday I was doing some literature review for a different project and reread a paper that was cited in the recently submitted manuscript and found that the paragraph I edited out was copied word for word from this paper. I remembered the paragraph due to the unique wording.

I am very glad that I edited it out and avoided plagiarism accusations. Should I report the plagiarism to this student's advisor (she was the second author on the paper and I work very closely with her, though she is not my advisor)?

I would suggest you try education first. Point the other student to the paper you found and remind them that copying without citation is plagiarism. Perhaps they just aren't yet aware of the academic rules if they are new at this. But, say that had it gotten into the paper it would reflect badly on everyone.

If you get pushback, rather than an apology, then you can think about reporting it to your own advisor. Let them take if further if needed.

My answer would probably be different if there were an advisor-advisee relationship between you. But for people not your supervisor you can try a low-key approach first.


How should I inform my advisor about struggles with Aspergers syndrome? Although similar questions have been asked before, I hope this is not a duplicate as I'm not asking about whether I should inform my advisor (that's already decided), but how and when to do it.

My situation is a little different than most in that I'm a biology major, and hoping to study autistic spectrum disorders for grad school. Aspergers almost became my "special interest" in a way, and so I'm trying to incorporate that into my work. Under these circumstances, I would expect my advisor to be a little more sympathetic to my condition. However, because I'm not officially her grad student yet (doing a summer project before lab rotations in her lab, with the possibility to become a permanent student made clear), I'm not sure exactly when to tell her. Specifically, should I do it before or after officially joining the lab? I'm leaning towards before since if any problems arise because of this, I'd like to know beforehand and seek out other advisors. But I'm wondering if this could also create an awkward situation since she can't legally discriminate me?

Also, how much should I disclose about my struggles? Should I be matter of fact and just state that I have this disorder (assuming she understands the implications), or actually outline some of my challenges.

Most scientific places (at least in the STEM) are nerdy, or at least, nerd-tolerant. I have yet to see a physics or mathematics department where mind-reading or maintaining eye contact are required.

The contact with your (potential) advisor is always a tricky thing, so it depends much more on your common ground than your individual personality (for some advisors you may be better than a neurotypical). I wouldn't be afraid that she rejects you only because you say that you have Asperger syndrome.

But, to be honest, most people do not distinguish lack of social skills from rudeness, insensitivity, ignorance or showing off - even if they are told beforehand.

If you want to tell your advisor that you have Asperger syndrome (or to be precise, high-functioning autism), be sure to explain how does it impact your needs (and in which other you can cope well). Letting her guess won't do any good (either she will ignore it (~= not telling at all) or take wrong cues (especially as the spectrum is quite broad, and coping skills vary a lot)).

The sound-sensitivity thing may be the hardest part - it depends a lot on the place (both in term of the building and culture). But even there you might get some adjustments (e.g. being put in a room with reasonably quiet lab members).

Before getting admitted, I would ask about adjustments you need (e.g. it is possible that there is no quiet enough place for you). I wouldn't bother telling about any personal struggles (unless she is your friend or she asks and you want to tell).

How to start? It depends on her. But since her topic is autism, it should be always on topic, so you may start with "As you may have noticed, I do exhibit autistic traits. (Actually, I am diagnosed with ...). [the content ]". Use any moment she is not busy.

Source: I am into the topic (see links and collected research papers). I did my undergraduate course in a nerdy place, and my PhD in a nerd-tolerant place.

If you want to read a success story, I really recommend The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius  by Graham Farmelo (see a nice review/summary).


Can I use text from my dissertation in a manuscript? There has been general discussion of whether one can use a published work in their dissertation, with the consensus being 'of course'! The first two chapters of my thesis will be published works. I'm interested in the reverse now; I intend to write the third chapter of my thesis as a draft of sorts for a publication. Now I'm wondering whether including text and figures from my dissertation in a [future] manuscript constitutes 'self-plagarism'.

A fellow graduate student advised me that it's only 'self-plagarism' if I formally copyright my thesis, however, I'm skeptical of that being the important distinction.

In general this is OK or, in some fields, even recommended. It does not make any difference if the dissertation comes first and then the publication or vice versa.

However, I would reference the thesis/paper(something along the line: this paper was part of my dissertation ... or this chapter was published as ...) and you should talk to someone (your supervisor? the postgrad coordinator?) in your department about that. There might be some rules regarding that practice (I never heard of anything like that but just to be on the safe side).

Btw: Self-plagarism has nothing to do with copyright violations.


what to do when someone has same name as yours and in IEEE search they show both peoples paper? I recently published a paper on IEEE transactions journal. in my paper link, when I click on authors tab and then my name,  another pages is opened and shows many papers but they are not mine. it seems, someone else has same name as me. Is this case common? what should I do?

Yes, this is a very common problem.

You should publish with the most complete version of your name possible (e.g. use your middle name.)  Think very carefully before changing your name (e.g. if you get married.)
You should establish profiles with services that keep track of publications by author (including Google Scholar, Thompson's MyResearcherID, and ORCID)  and then "claim" your publications using these ID's.


Can you sign more than 1 Master Promissory Note Concurrently? I am in the process of choosing a Master's program.  I have been approved for one program, but I'm still waiting to hear back from two other schools.  The school that approved me said that they need me to fill out my Master Promissory Note as soon as possible so my financial aid can be ready for my summer courses next month.  My only concern is that I may choose a different school if I get accepted into it.  If I'm not accepted into the other programs, however, I would like to have my financial aid taken care of so I can attend summer courses without any problems.

Can I sign the Promissory Note for my currently accepted program and then sign another Promissory Note for a different school if I am accepted?

Thank you and have a good day.

As far as I know, the way this is done normally goes something like this:

You apply to as many schools as you want.
You hear back from them in a couple of months.
You are told that you have until a specific date to accept the offer,
which may be slightly different for all the schools you got accepted to.

This gives people a chance to evaluate (ideally) all their options before they agree to commit to a particular school. These deadlines are usually included in the acceptance documents you get in the mail, if they aren't listed online already in their admission timelines.

Best of luck!


Is autism more prevalent amongst students in well-ranked universities? I read on
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview (mirror):

  And if we were able to eliminate autism and make everyone neuro-normal, I bet a whole slew of MIT kids would not be the way they are.

Is autism more prevalent amongst students in well-ranked universities (vs. all universities)?

There is research to suggest that the general belief (or stereotype) is accurate relative to subject area - specifically, some (but not all) areas of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) have a greater amount of autism prevalence than would be expected by pure chance. There is no research I can find that considers rank of University comparatively, but there is research that compares the prevalence of autism spectrum signs/symptoms/behaviors/classifications between various fields.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Participation Among College Students with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

  Findings suggest that students with an ASD had the highest STEM
  participation rates although their college enrollment rate was the
  third lowest among 11 disability categories and students in the
  general population. Disproportionate postsecondary enrollment and STEM
  participation by gender, family income, and mental functioning skills
  were found for young adults with an ASD.

Selected quotes:

  Young adults with an ASD had a higher proportion of majoring in STEM
  related fields (34.31 %) than any other disability groups. The
  difference was significant for seven out of the 10 pair-wise
  comparisons. When we broke down the STEM related fields into computer
  science, engineering, math, and science, we found that the high STEM
  participation rates among young adults with an ASD was mainly driven
  by a high concentration in science or computer science majors. Young
  adults with an ASD were significantly more likely to major in science
  (12.12 %) than their peers with LD (4.72 %), SLI (4.71 %), ID (5.40
  %), HI (4.80 %), OI (1.45 %), OHI (4.55 %), TBI, or MD.1 These young
  adults with an ASD were also significantly more likely to major in
  computer science (16.22 %) than those with LD (4.06 %), SLI (5.90 %),
  or OHI (5.19 %). However, the high prevalence in STEM majors for young
  adults with an ASD was not found in non-STEM majors, such as health
  science (7.64 %) or social sciences (9.52 %)...

  When focusing on STEM majors, the odds of STEM majoring were 13 times
  higher among males with an ASD than females...

  These results provide the first national picture of postsecondary
  enrollment and STEM participation for young adults with an ASD as well
  as their peers in 10 other disability categories. Our analyses suggest
  that young adults with an ASD who attend college are most likely to
  pursue STEM majors. However, they also have one of the lowest overall
  college enrollment rates...

  Despite a previous lack of national evidence, the idea that people
  with autism might be predisposed to choosing and succeeding in
  STEM-related majors and jobs has gained a footing in popular press
  stories and among advocacy groups (Moore 2006; Morton 2001; Ross 2006;
  Safer 2012). Our findings confirm that individuals with an ASD are
  more likely than the general population and other disabilities groups
  to gravitate toward STEM. The STEM major rate (34.31 %) for young
  adults with an ASD was not only higher than their peers in all 10
  other disability categories, but also higher than the 22.80 % of
  students in the general population that declared a major in
  STEM-related fields in postsecondary education (Chen and Weko 2009).
  In addition, this study found that young adults with an ASD in STEM
  fields were more likely than the general population to concentrate in
  science [12.12 vs. 8.3 % (Chen and Weko 2009)] and computer science
  [16.22 vs. 6.6 % (Chen and Weko 2009)].

Note that this indicates that people on the autism spectrum are more likely to choose certain fields, such as computer science and engineering, than is the general population - but people on the autism spectrum are also less likely to enter college at all compared to the general population.

This study links to many related studies, but only notes one other similar study in a single United Kingdom university that showed a correlation between autism and mathematical skill. All studies in total still make it impossible to compare higher and lower ranked institutions.

Finally, note that the mention of MIT is notable not simply because it's high ranked and famous - but because it is famous for a specific set of technological developments, related to AI (the topic of much of the interview in the OP), as well as engineering and computer science generally.

You can go about this in a rather sideways manner, however, from this one note from the above study:

  Young adults with an ASD were less likely to enroll in a 2-year
  community college (27.66 %) or a 4-year college (14.95 %) than all
  other disability groups except intellectual disabilities (ID) or
  multiple disabilities (MD) (Table 3).

This shows that autism is less prevalent at unranked/low-ranked institutions period, so you could roughly infer that those with ASD who choose to go to college at all do so primarily at institutions which are more likely to be ranked (or ranked relatively highly). This is a rather weak argument, but it's about all we seem to have to go on.


Unacceptable quality of writing in a letter of recommendation I have received a letter of recommendation which clearly has been written by my referee's assistant, rather than himself. That in itself wouldn't be a problem if it didn't contain phrases such as what's more... and like event study etc.

What should I do about this? Do I just forget about the reference? Do I very carefully suggest to the assistant to make some minor changes (this letter is based on a previous draft I was asked to submit)?

It may also be worth noting that the referee is the first supervisor for my thesis and I do not want to seem ungrateful by requesting changes to my letter of recommendation.

It seems to me that the use of the phrase what's more in a letter of recommendation is per se unacceptable, but my native language is German, so any comments by native speakers of English in this regard is appreciated.

I would certainly request a corrected version. Like you said, in a careful measure, I would keep the tone of the message somewhere along the lines "some minor mistakes, happens to all of us, but these little changes go a long way in credibility of the letter". In other words, don't criticize, put together a list of things you want corrected and send them to the referee. I deduce from your question that the letter was proxy-written, i.e. you haven't been told that it was the assistant who wrote it. That's why I'm recommending to contact the referee and not the assistant. However, if that is not the case, include both of them.

I can't see why someone other than an extreme ego-maniac would choose not to correct their own grammar mistakes. Even it they for whatever reason do, it's still better than just to "forget about the reference".


Should I have a fourth recommender in PhD Application Due to some technical issues, it took me a couple of weeks to hear back from one of my potential recommendation writers for my Business PhD application.  I reached out to other reviewers in the interim and have filled all of my required slots.  I just heard back from the first person, and I am wondering if I should add a fourth letter for a few schools.  I think this professor can add some unique perspective since I traveled with her for a two week immersion elective and the experience informed the topics I would like to research.  Will the additional  perspective be helpful?  Or will a fourth letter just indicate that I didn't pay attention to the requirements or was worried about the strength about my other letters?

Provide the number of letters of recommendation requested.

Some systems will not allow you to add additional ones. Even if they do, I agree with the assessment that adding further letters won't reflect well. Either you didn't follow the rules, or you didn't figure out who'd be your best recommenders.


Is it okay to ask a senior academic a question that my advisor is unable to answer? For the past few weeks, I have been struggling to understand something and answer a very specific research question. I asked my advisor the same question and he couldn't give me a satisfactory answer.

Is it socially acceptable to bypass my advisor and ask a senior academic the same question?
Does it reflect negatively on my advisor if I bother other academics with my research?

I am an Asian international student studying in the United States and not sure what is the most prudent way to do this. In my country, bypassing ones advisor to ask a senior academic reflects poorly on the advisor and group in general and is implicitly frowned upon.

At the heart of this is a interpersonal social question. When a student comes to me with a question I don't know the answer to, I rarely just say sorry I don't know. As an advisor, our goal is to help students learn what they need. When I don't know something, I try and point my students in a direction (textbook, articles, person) where they might be able to find the answer. While I would not be upset if a student "bypassed" me to talk to someone after finding out I did not know the answer, I can imagine some advisors would be.

I suggest you identify the researcher(s) who might know the answer and tell your advisor that you were thinking of contacting this individual. Your advisor might have some valuable insight and tell you not to contact Dr Jones, but instead contact Dr Smith. Your advisor might also give you an introduction or want to be included in any email correspondence so they can learn the answer too. Your advisor might simply say sounds good and leave you to it.


Is participating in professional forums good or bad for my career? I enjoy being a part of several different academic and social groups online that are of interest to my field.  As a Ph.D. student, I am now wondering if I should distance myself from online forums such as these.

My field is Psychology, which can be very controversial and heated with lots of options about what is the right way to approach situations and solutions.  I have been involved in some lengthy, spirited discussions on these sites in the past.

Questions:

Could participating in online professional forums related to my field become a hindrance in the future for both my Ph.D. and future work?
Should I "scrub" my presence in these groups (especially the one that are more social than academic and accredited)?

I work in a much less controversial field (I mean, in an uncontroversial field), but I've been participating to various online communities for more than 10 years, first during the newsgroup era, then in forums and now mostly with SE. So, let me share a few ideas.

  Could participating in online professional forums related to my field become a hindrance in the future for both my Ph.D. and future work?

I don't have any hard data: in theory, it could; in practice, unless you do something egregious, I doubt. And many forums are actually virtually unknown to the wider audience (see e.g. this meta question of mine about Academia).

  Should I "scrub" my presence in these groups (especially the one that are more social than academic and accredited)?

I don't think that dropping your participation is warranted, but consider the following points:

Check if your university has any policy setting boundaries around the participation of employees or students to social sites (e.g. public shaming of your university can lead to expulsion).
Beware that as a professional in your field you might have a different perception of certain topics with respect to untrained people or people working in a different field. Things that can be obvious to you might be difficult to understand from another field's point of view. And this can lead to controversy. A curious (non-serious) instance is the following: I've been criticized on the only answer of mine on this site related to my profession.
Disengage early from lengthy pointless discussions when you see that they are draining your time and energy. As a young researcher, you should now be focused on building your background knowledge and producing your first valuable works.


How do you judge the quality of a journal? A colleague and I recently submitted a paper to a journal with an impressive-sounding name, the "International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Research". According to their website,

  IJAICR is a referred [sic] journal in the field of computer science, artificial intelligence and soft computing methods.

It was accepted two days after we submitted it. That's too fast. We were suspicious. Although the journal said that all papers are peer-reviewed, we could not see how that was done in two days. Plus, we received no comments from the reviewers. Also, the submission guidelines didn't ask for a "blind" copy (without our names or any references to who we were).

But wait, there's more.

The acceptance letter asked us to send them US$300 to publish it. We did not. We've withdrawn our submission and will submit a new version of the paper to a more reputable journal in the coming months.

How might we make a better choice of respectable journals before we submit next time?

The way I usually choose journals is by looking at where people I trust/follow publish, and where previous work was published. It is usually not too hard to compare the quality your work to the quality of the work you are citing, and chose a target based on that. Unless your field is highly mutli-disciplinary, you will see the same journals/conferences popping up again and again in your references; submit to one of those.

Before submitting, however, it is always important to look at a few articles from previous issues. This will give you a second gauge of quality for the journal and also let you pick up on any formatting and presentations quirks that might be present in the publication.


What's the reasoning behind phrase "dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements"? Phrase "dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements" seems strange. Can one submit dissertation in full fulfillment of the requirements?

Most doctoral programs have other requirements for completion of the degree, such as  a certain number of course hours and the passing of qualifying exams. Hence, while the dissertation is the culmination of the doctoral program, on its own it does not satisfy all the requirements for graduation.


In a 3-year PhD programme, what are the tasks of the first year? As a supervisor, how should I reasonably set the task timeline for a new (Engineering) PhD student, given there is a candidature confirmation at the 9-month mark?

In other words, how long is reasonable for settling down to a new country, literature review, defining a research topic, data collection, drafting a publication ...etc?

The programme is 3 years, and the student has a scholarship from the university without a defined research project. We agreed on a field of research, though.

Look at what the requirements for the confirmation review are. Ask others in the department who will be assessing the report what it is they look for. Ask to see some examples of previous reports that passed, and ideally, some that didn't.

In our place student must demonstrate:

1) They have defined a project with well articulated aims and at least an idea of how to meet these aims. The student is not just pottering around the area. Nor are they acting as a technician on various things going on in their supervisors lab.

2) They can explain what the importance of their project is and where it fits in to the larger field (that is their project has not just been dictated by their supervisor without them having any idea about its purpose).

3) Have have a working knowlegde of the general background in the field, and of recent literature directly relevant to their project. They know if others have worked on the same question and what they have found.

4) They can demonstrate an understanding of what the key techniques in their project are, how they work, and what are likely to be the bottlenecks.

5) Usually students have SOMETHING in the way of experimental results, but often not very much. They might have a graph or two on optimizing their system, they may have shown that the system works with some positive controls or have reproduced some of the key results from the literature. We don't usually expect concrete progress on new knowledge at this point.


What favour is suitable in return for running a costly software? My work relies on using a software that is quite costly. It is painful to pay for a yearly license considering that I use it only a fraction of the time. Using an open-source software is an alternative, but the best available is not quite as good. So I was thinking of asking the favour of researchers in other institutions who have the license, to run the software. But what kind of favour would be suitable in return? A joint publication is an option, but running a software perhaps is not sufficient to warrant authorship. Also, sometimes the nature of the work precludes too deep involvement of other parties.

There are probably two important parameters for this question: (1) how close are you to the other party?, and (2) how long will it take the other party?

If you are good friends with the other party, and it will only take a few minutes - probably no favor is needed, as long as you don't need this service all the time.
If you are good friends with the other party, and it will take hours or days to do - in this case I would consider whether it is possible to set up the project in a way that co-authorship for the other party is legitimate. Yes, just running predefined scripts or doing some analyses that you have clearly laid out may not be enough to warrant co-authorship, but typically it's not a given that this is the only thing they do. Just get in touch with them early on in the project, and collaborate.
If you don't know the other party well or at all - in this case, it seems unlikely that you will be able to convince them to run your software just as a favor, even if it does not objectively take much time. Your best bet is to get to know them better, and see if you can start a collaboration that will include, as part of the collaborative work, that they run the costly software for you.

(of course, all of this assumes that the other party actually already has the software and using it for your purposes will not incur significant additional costs)


Unable to grade student assignment in blackboard I created an assignment for students using blackboard. This assignment is something that is completed externally. When going into the grading center I am unable to assign grades unless the students have submitted something. How can I grade this without requiring them to submit anything? I've already tried setting the column as external the the category to no with worked for a different assignment.

I believe the "Grade Center Assignments" page is only for assignments that students will submit through Blackboard.  For other graded items, go to "Full Grade Center" and click "Create Column".  You can then make a column into which you can type arbitrary grades.


How to deal with a professor skipping his office hours? As a preface, this is a related question but it is from a different perspective.

I am an undergraduate student in physics and have a professor that routinely ignores his own office hours. He has three scheduled office hours/homework help sessions each week (two hours on one day and a third the next).

The professor has (and has had all semester) a known staff conflict during the second hour of the first help session and as such has missed at least one hour every week. He has not and will not reschedule this hour.

He also is routinely late to the first hour on the first day as well. As such, he is only at his office hours for twenty or so minutes for the first session. The second day he holds office hours he also often comes late but is much more consistent in attending. Unfortunately for me, I have a class conflict at that time and can rarely attend.

As a student, I learn best while working on homework problems and in one-on-one (or small group) interactions with the professor. Because of his unavailability, I feel like I am not learning anywhere near as well as I could. This is extremely frustrating to me as a student and overall I would like to know what, if anything, can I do as an undergraduate student to encourage my professor to attend his office hours?

Most faculty members state that they are available during their scheduled office hours or by appointment. If this is the case, then the most effective way for you to handle this situation is to send an email (or in-person) request for a short meeting outside of the regularly scheduled office hours.

If the request is declined, you may want to speak to the person in your department who is responsible for undergraduate education to let them know about the situation, and ask for help in resolving the situation.


How to address a person in a letter? For example, if a person holds not just "Dr." but "Priv.-Doz. Dr." or "Prof. Dr." should we include the full title after "Dear ..."?

Thank you.

P.S.
July 20, 2014 UPDATE: as some repliers correctly guessed I faced the question when I was writing an email to a German person.

When in doubt, use the full title. Err on the side of formality, and let them correct you if they wish.


Are you allowed to copy text from your Master's thesis into your PhD thesis? I wrote a Master's thesis a couple of years ago (which is available to view from my University's online service; so it's out there) and am now doing a PhD. Some passages from my Master's thesis is relevant to my PhD and could be used in my  PhD literature review. If it matters, the masters thesis is not published and I am studying in a UK university.

Am I allowed to copy chunks of text from my masters thesis into my PhD thesis?

No. It's called self-plagiarism. You can of course cite results from your Master's thesis, and even quote it, but only if you clearly indicate the source. That it wasn't published doesn't make a difference.


Publish in ArXiv/Munich Personal RePEc Archive/SSRN I have just finished my paper on case study in quantitative finance, and thinking of publishing my work. Although, I am an undergraduate student and getting published in a decent academic journal requires both funds and many months until the final decision after a potential acceptance. My thought was to share my work in a repository such as ArXiv, Munich Personal RePEc or SSRN Electronic Journal to share the results.

My questions are:

1) whether I am eligible sharing in the aforementioned, since the paper is not a working paper and I am not willing to get into the publishing process.

2) Is my work safe and equivalent in terms of copyrights as a published paper in a peer-review journal?

In the cae of ArXiv:

1) Yes. However, your paper needs to be endorsed by an established academic. See ArXiv's help on the endorsement system: https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

2) You need to give ArXiv a perpetual license to distribute your work. But otherwise you retain the copyright. With a traditional subscription-based journal, you would typically have to give your copyright to the journal.


Trying to switch fields from PhD in computational biology to postdoc in machine learning/stats, how to increase likelihood of success? All of the following takes place in a UK university.

I have a BSc in Physics and an MSc in Computer Science. My thesis was on applying various machine learning/statistical techniques to biological datasets. I wanted to do something similar for my PhD, however my supervisor left the university.

I am now in the first year of my PhD in Computer Science, specifically Computational Biology. My work focuses on comparing different techniques (physical/statistical/machine learning) in single cell simulations. I am finding it hard to incorporate machine learning techniques into my work as there aren't many datasets for the kind of thing my supervisor wants me to do and so the machine learning approach is proving tricky.

I desperately want a job/postdoc in a machine learning/stats environment.

Lots of post docs I know switched field after their PhD e.g. Astro-physics to machine learning, dependable systems to machine learning, Biophysics to compiler design. In my case would anyone in the ML community take me seriously? (I thought my Msc would help me out...)
I have taught myself a fair bit of ML and stats, is there anything else I should do to increase the likelihood of getting an ML/stats postdoc?
Would anyone in a stats department take me seriously as I have no maths degree?
Do people that change career areas have successful careers or is this normally a red flag?

My answer is based more on experience from computational biology, but I think it is relevant for other fields:

Changing fields is very common in academia, especially at the PhD/postdoc transition. In many cases it is actually considered an advantage, since you can import your skills, expertise and a certain thought-process into a field in which many people do not have those skills. For example, many physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians have migrated to biology and have made significant contributions. In fact, there are even postdoctoral fellowships that specifically fund this type of field-change.
Regarding your "will they take me seriously" questions: Since you are aiming mostly at applied ML/stats, I don't think you should be too concerned if the ML/stats theoretical community take you seriously. Many theorists tend to look down on applied science - don't worry about it, you can still have a significant impact without advancing any theory. It sounds like in the future you will either belong to the department in which you want to apply the techniques (e.g. a biology department) or will work very closely with people in those departments. In this case, you will usually be considered the ML/stats expert.
Having said all that, of course it is your job to become an expert. Teaching yourself the theory is important, but if you are going for applied science, especially applied ML/stats, it would be a big advantage to get actual experience in using them. There is a huge difference between learning about these methods and actually implementing and using them. You will see that during your PhD you can often expand your research in directions you are more interested in. It shouldn't be too difficult to use some ML/stats creatively in some sub-projects (which could later be expanded).


How do I stop feeling intimidated by my advisor? Whenever I meet my advisor and interact with him, in class or otherwise, I can't help feeling intimidated. I feel scared of the fact that I may fall below his expectations, and I become tongue-tied and mind frozen even though I know stuff.

How can I avoid this? Is this common at this stage? (I am an undergrad and just beginning research.)

I think this is a typical syndrome for young students, or those students who have massive respect for their Professors or Teachers.

Usually the students consider their Professors to be superior to them; In addition to this the student might have some expectations in the future from that guide, trying to impress him all the time, so he is rewarded later on.

The way to solve this is to have more communication with that person and after all realize that he is a regular human being, who sometimes in the past used to be a student, and most probably was intimidated by his guide.

As you get to talk interact with your guide the Myth that you have in your head about him/her will start to get into the frames of normality, and the intimidation will go away after a while.

Long story short: he is a human being as well


Can I add my current supervisor name in a conference paper if he pay for me the conference fees without taking a consent from my ex-supervisor? I have completed my master‘s degree work one year ago under supervisor A, and now I am doing PhD under supervisor B.
I have presented a part of my master’s degree work and included supervisor B’s name in the abstract since he paid the conference fees.
I have not requested for a consent from supervisor A about that and now supervisor A seems to be very upset and wants to complain.

Please advise me what should I do now?

If someone has no input whatsoever on the content of a scientific publication, they should not be listed as a coauthor. In some fields, this input may be indirect, but merely paying money never establishes coauthorship. Based on your description, it seems that B should not have been listed as a coauthor at all.
Any submission for publication needs to be done with the consent of all coauthors. Adding a coauthor is a significant step, and should not be done without the agreement of the established coauthors: So if A is established as a coauthor, you should talk to A before adding B as a coauthor.
(Edit, as Nate Eldrige pointed out in the comments): One musn't list someone as a coauthor in a publication without their knowledge and consent! If B consented to being listed as a coauthor, and indeed had no input at all on the project, this is misconduct from his/her part, too.

If B did not know about this: The straight-forward course of action would be to apologize to A and B and then to contact the conference organisers to amend the conference proceedings accordingly.

If B knew about this: In addition to apologizing to A, you should seriously reconsider whether B is a suitable PhD advisor.


Publishing Valuable but Incremental Result I am a Ph.D. student and recently I solved an important problem in my domain. Unfortunately, the paper got rejected stating that the results are interesting but incremental.
I discussed this issue with my peers. They said that they have gone through the similar rejection scenarios.
This thing is worrying me a lot. I picked that particular problem statement thinking that solving it would be a great contribution. And, my supervisor thought the same. However, we were able to solve the problem based on existing techniques and there are about 1-2 novel ideas in our work. It means our solution is simple and elegant.
If somebody would have solved the same problem with a rather complicated set of techniques while overlooking the simpler ones; that paper probably would have got accepted. My question is why the paper is judged based on it being incremental while it still being non-trivial? Why a work is not given more importance based on the value of the result instead of the method of obtaining it? Furthermore, I believe that simpler results should be preferred by the community instead of the complicated ones. And, they should completely omit the term "incremental" in their reviews. It is quite frustrating. Even the Google Scholar's tagline is "Stand on the shoulders of giants" :/

My interpretation is that the reviewer(s) consider that solving the specific problem is not a particularly significant outcome. Assuming that they are right in this judgement (they may not be), the paper must distinguish itself in other ways.
Maybe the problem/solution is shown to have parallels with some other problem/solution. Maybe the solution is radically different. Or maybe, as in your stated case, the solution is simpler than expected. You must identify which of these is most correct and focus on presenting that as the centerpiece of your work. If the simplicity/elegance is what stands out most, find a way to validate and quantify the simplicity, and use that as the central theme.
If, on the other hand, you are convinced that the solving the problem is an important outcome by itself, then stick with the paper and submit it elsewhere. It is very common that reviewer assessments of relevance/novelty vary widely.
Onto the larger point of incremental improvement being generally given less respect; this is the reality with most products, research output being one. The current model of scholarly publication favours work that will get more attention and generate more downloads/citations. This certainly has demerits, but it is the norm and it's best to live with it. This doesn't necessarily mean you should not pursue this line of enquiry, but you should assess what and why it can be more appealing to the readership. (A demonstrably simple, reproducible solution to a problem of my interest would definitely appeal to me).


PHD Part Time vs Full TIme Will it make any difference if you do a PHD full time or part time ?

In my case my diploma/certificate will mention that the PHD was done part-time, how will this affect my career afterwards? will it have any implications on an academic career ?

The reason for which i have to complete my part-time PHD in 3 years is that i am working at the same university, and my job is actually a researcher on the exact same topic of my PHD. I was initially registered as part-time due to the nature of my situation, but apparently i can change that in to full time, however i want to see if it will be worth the struggle.
I find it unfair that i get the PART-TIME on my diploma although i did in 3 years as any other Full time PHD

Also, i would like to mention that in my case, a part time PHD will also have to be completed in 3 years*, same as the full time PHD.

Lets assume money is out of the question in this case

I will give two answers, you are welcome to choose which one to pay attention to ;)

Short answer: If you can change to full time without negative consequences, then I don't see why not. It might look a little 'cleaner' on the diploma and might prevent some biases or questions that part-time doctoral work might arouse in your country (assuming you want to remain in your country, here you are a better judge, since our countries are probably not the same as 3-yr PhDs are definitely not the norm in the U.S.). So if the benefits outweigh the effort, go for it!

Long answer: I realize everyone's circumstances are different and there may be reasons to rush a PhD for the sake of the diploma and a brighter future with higher salary. With this disclaimer, to me, any (part or full time) PhD done in 3 years by design of the program (rather than special case as with some highly talented students) raises suspicion about the quality of the PhD program.  However, from your comment it sounds like it's not that the program is designed to be have 3 year typical duration; it's that you have 3 years of funding on your job contract. That changes the situation, because it means that you are potentially rushing like crazy through a PhD program that is intended for a longer average completion period (e.g. 4-5 years).

This is important because regardless of what your transcript will say, it's what is left in your head that will ultimately determine your worth as a professional in your field.

Students who complete a PhD in 3 years are either highly talented and do so with no detriment to their knowledge - to say it different, they complete the PhD in 3 years because when they are done, their knowledge is at least equivalent to that of typical students who take longer. They are ahead from the start, hence the typical program is too slow for them. That's an OK situation. Different strokes for different folks.

Another situation is that students who complete a PhD in 3 years are in a big rush, the reason being that there are strings attached, and a longer term carries a higher cost either in money, or time (e.g. fellowships that require a student to return for home country for a minimum of 2x the duration of PhD study).

This is problematic for the obvious reason that simply being in a hurry does not make one more qualified by the end of the 3rd year, i.e. more ready to graduate. The reason why this is problematic is the same as the reason why it is problematic if a medical student completes medical school in 2.5 years instead of the typical 5, or an attorney graduates from law school in 1.5 years instead of typical 3. Even if you study really hard, it raises eyebrows. To me personally, a PhD completed in 3 years raises eyebrows in the same way.

I offer this as something to think about because being in a hurry seems to be at least partly the case here. If I am wrong, please correct me. I might also be biased by my own graduate study, which I did not rush. As a result it took longer than average, but I did not see it as a race, and I honestly believe that I have gained more skills, knowledge and experience (and perhaps a little wisdom) than if I had rushed it.

Bottom line: If at all possible, I recommend to reconsider your plans, taking into account factors other than the contract duration of your job. So far it seems that this single factor is the main consideration. The assumption is that once 3 years is up, that's it, life is over, there is no money left in the universe to fund your study. Is that truly the case? Could it be possible to find fellowships, or part-time work with tuition waiver, to fund a continuation of the study for another year or two? Would this make you a better academic, with better skills under your belt? Or would it only make you look lazy and weird compared to all your peers? I hope you use long-term thinking and consider all options. Good luck!


How do I ask a professor to contact another professor he knows to accept me as a Masters student *via email*? I did research with a professor during my senior year (2017/2018) and we published a paper together. He wrote me a letter of reference for my grad school applications.

One of the professors I'm interested in working with at another school is his sister-in-law. I've tried emailing her to no avail. I had a friend suggest I have the professor I know email her instead, since even the fact that they're related aside, a professor is more likely to respond to an email by another prof.

This is identical to this question: How do I politely ask a professor to contact another professor he knows to accept me as PhD student?

However, the answer to the previous question suggests subtlely bringing it up during a conversation. I'm not in school anymore (just graduated) and don't meet this professor in person anymore so I need to do this via email.

I was hoping someone could give some advice about how to compose an email politely requesting him to contact his sister-in-law on my behalf? I feel fairly embarrassed having to do this since I am asking for quite a bit of him, but I figure it's worth a shot. Worst case he says no.

Since you aren't now his student and can't visit in person, I'd send a rather longish mail first requesting that he do you this favor, sending a letter to "Prof X", then giving the background that you've been unsuccessful and finally reminding the prof of the old work you did and any relevant updates.

I think that making the request first will permit him to quit reading at any point so that the length of the mail is less important as normally a short mail is appreciated.

"Longish" implies about a page with about 3 paragraphs, not a monograph.

Somewhere along the way note that you really want to work with his relative and that you know of the relationship. But don't make that the main focus. Letter from Prof A to Prof X.

But I don't think you are asking a lot. Part of his job is to send out such letters. It may be that sending it to a relative will cause him to send a different sort of letter, but perhaps not. The other prof may take a recommendation from a relative as having more weight (honesty) or not. But that is up to them.


For benchmarking purposes, How do I find out who shares the same qualification combination as me in my current location? How do I acquire the stats on how many people in my state/province/country share the same academic qualifications as me? I'm completing a MTech-Marketing and CIMA combination and live in Durban, South Africa. Information on who they are and current positions would also be advantageous.

For benchmarking and job-hunting purposes, the information I'm looking for should read like this- There are 3 people currently working in the Durban area who have a Masters in Marketing + CIMA combination. They are employed by company A, B an C and occupy positions X, Y and Z.

This type of information is not generally systematically tracked, at least not by most current governments or academic organizations.  At a coarse-grained level, you may be able to find out some information from censuses (e.g., these US census tables), but not to a degree of detail necessary for the type of analysis of the competitive landscape that you seem to be looking for.