Which tenure-track jobs would a new math PhD have a shot at? I will be finishing my PhD in pure math next semester, so I'm applying for jobs. I've noticed that on Mathjobs.org, listings for tenure-track positions do not say that one must have experience beyond completing the PhD. In some cases it will say this is preferred, but I have not seen any listings saying it is required, and most don't even mention it.

According to my adviser, one of the first things done by a hiring committee for a TT job, is to toss out an annoying quantity of under-qualified applications. He said I should not bother applying for most of those jobs. Yet he also said that my teaching qualifications are above average, so that I would actually be considered for some "teaching" tenure-track jobs. I asked him how I identify these jobs, and he said they will be at small colleges and have little research activity. But it can be hard to tell if this is the case just looking online.

Is there some good indicator that a certain position might consider me for a TT position, even though I'll be a new PhD? On the one hand it costs me nothing to submit applications to TT jobs, but on the other hand I don't want to waste people's time. I'll include what I've been going by: if a TT position does not require a publication list, I've been considering it worth applying to.

I also wonder why this state of affairs exists. If hiring committees are in fact burdened with such a quantity of under-qualified applications, why don't they filter some by clearly delineating what they are looking for in the job listing?

You've gotten solid advice from your advisor.  At the math departments at many research universities, it is very rare to seriously consider an applicant straight out of a PhD.  However at most teaching jobs this is not rare at all.

These are rules of thumb, not absolutes.  Eleven years ago in my department (UGA) we hired someone straight of a PhD program.  This was a joint hire with engineering.  Sixteen years ago we seem to have done something like this: we hired someone to be an NSF postdoctoral research fellow and an assistant professor.  Nevertheless I think the chance that we would hire someone straight out of graduate school in 2015/2016 is essentially zero, and when someone decent applies only for an assistant professor position who is still a PhD student, I sometimes write to them to tell them that they should apply for a postdoc instead.

The number of postdoctoral jobs is safely smaller than the number of tenure track jobs at research universities, so we can conclude that some research universities are hiring tenure track faculty straight out of their PhD.  For top 50 departments, this is very rare, but not impossible.  On the other hand, you should feel free to apply to any university without a PhD program straight out of a PhD.

If you are not sure whether you are too junior to be seriously considered, what should you do?  You should apply anyway.  I've been on the "seeing hundreds of applications" side of it, and yes it is slightly annoying to see an application from someone who is too junior to be seriously considered.  But that's ten seconds of annoyance, and it carries no lasting stigma against the applicant.  In fact, often my reaction when reading the application is "Definitely not this year, but..."

I will risk a personal anecdote.  When I was a graduating student, I was so naive about things that I assumed that even departments that didn't advertise postdocs nevertheless had postdocs to offer. (Oops.)  In one case I got a reply, from a professor at an Ivy League school thanking me for my application for a tenure track job but telling me that they would go for someone more senior.  (I will not name names, but suffice it to say that he wrote the book on elliptic curves, then wrote its sequel, and has written several other seminal texts in the years since.)  He was remarkably gracious.  About ten years later he visited my department, and during a group lunch I told this story.  His response: "You never know who the young student will turn out to be in the years to come.  So you might as well be nice." (Which was really a nice thing to say!)  Anyway, clearly I had burned no bridges with my silly application.  You shouldn't worry too much about this.

  I also wonder why this state of affairs exists. If hiring committees are in fact burdened with such a quantity of under-qualified applications, why don't they filter some by clearly delineating what they are looking for in the job listing?

Job postings are heavily scrutinized for EEOC issues.  If what you wrote last year got approved and worked decently enough, it is easiest not to mess with it.  Here is a line from this year's job posting in my department:

  A Ph.D., or equivalent foreign degree, in Mathematics or a closely related field is required.

I have asked in the past what a "closely related field" means and been told "Maybe nothing; we'll know it when we see it." I think I was involved in adding the "equivalent foreign degree" part: I believe that in Russia the degree is not called a PhD...The idea here is that if you list something as a requirement and then hire someone that doesn't meet the requirement, all hell could break loose.  So even if we think that the chance that we'll hire someone without post-PhD training is 0.01%, that's still probably enough not to make that training a requirement.

Added: David Z points out that the possibility of taking multiple postdocs shows that the "we can conclude" above is not a watertight proof.  I think a more protracted analysis of the number of tenure track jobs versus the number of postdocs and the number of postdocs one can take and still be competitive for a tenure track job would lead to the same conclusion.


How to move from experimental to computational research I have been doing wet lab chemistry since my undergraduate and master, and my master is going to be finished soon. As time goes by, I find myself more interested in computational research. I have no prior simulation or modelling experience. I can write simple programs in Python but not fluently.

I would like to ask, based on this situation, is that sufficient to convince people to give me a computational research project (PhD, or maybe as a research assistant first)? If it is not sufficient, what should I do to move from experimental to computational research?

I did a very similar transition, moving from wet lab biology late in my undergraduate career to computational biology, which is what I work in now. It's certainly doable - I made the switch with no programming experience whatsoever.

I don't necessarily know that the desire and knowing some Python is out and out enough to make someone confident of letting you dive head first into their project, but it certainly is enough that I'd ask around. You should be aware that a switch like this will probably cost you some time, but if you're okay with that, see if its possible to do a rotation in someone's computational lab - a semester or two for you to get the feel for what it's really like, pick up some skills, and hopefully either they'll pick you up, or "I did a rotation in Dr. So-and-So's lab..." being enough to make someone take a chance on you.

There are some other things you can do as well - follow your interest in computational work by replicating some classic papers in the field. Doing some side projects - computational representations of your current work, or implementing a commonly used algorithm on your own (say, the Gillespie Direct Method and it's many approximate methods). Things that will build your skills and suggest that you're worth taking a stab at. The other suggestion, if you can't effect a full transition, is to potentially propose one Chapter/Specific Aim/etc. of your dissertation as a computational project, and put someone appropriate on your committee.


Can my advisor ask me to drop a project? I am a 5th year neurobiology phd student at a US institution. The data I have collected for my main project is not very exciting. Although it looks like I will be able to cobble together a paper, it won't be as shiny as it first appeared. A side project (tangentially related) has actually yielded much more interesting data, though I have been told by my PI to focus on my main project and to not further pursue the other project. I have pushed back without success. Since I am using my PI's resources, I feel obliged to discontinue that work, though I am curious if I do have any rights in that regard.

Some background information: My PI is one of the leading researchers in the field. There are rumors that my PI is planning to retire soon, and I have mentioned that I am trying to graduate this year. I have a good relationship with my PI and we check in on a regular basis. The average time to graduate in my program is between 5 and 7 years.

There are three different hats your advisor might be wearing, and the question how strong you should drop that project can be depends on which one it is.

As your advisor: Your PhD advisor's responsibility is to, well, advise you on your PhD. So it is definitely appropriate for them to suggest that you focus on one project and drop another. However, the person ultimately responsible for your PhD research is you. If you disagree with the advice, you are free to pursue the research you want to focus on. [Obviously, you should not readily dismiss the advice of your advisor, and if you or your advisor feel they cannot advise you, the advising relationship might have to end.]

As your manager: In many settings, PhD students are also some sort of employee, and as such have a manager supervising their work. This person will typically be the same as the advisor. However, acting as manager, it is probably within their authority to direct what you work on. As such work contracts are almost universally for fewer hours than a PhD student is actually expected to work, you can use that extra time to pursue your side projects. Be wary of the risk for conflict though if you and your manager have different impressions on how much time you spent on what.

As your lab head: Some research requires resources besides the time of the researcher. If you are given access to such exclusive resources in order to work on some particular research, then using them for a side project would be unethical. In many cases, the resources might be paid for by a grant to do particular research, so it might not even be allowed for your advisor to give you permission to use them for your side project. If this applies to you, you might want to look for small grant schemes you can apply for to get the required resources for the side project.


Are there journals that prevent authors from contacting reviewers? This question stems from a comment to a recent question - "instructions for authors at some journal(s) stating that authors should not contact (potential) reviewers".

I was wondering whether journals do punish authors who reach out to reviewers. Has there has been instances or has anyone heard of punishment or submission rejection when authors approach their reviewers, especially if the reviewers complain or report the interaction to the editor.

There was a 6 month study of 239 authors that found a 11% accuracy of authors guessing the reviewer of their submission.

The journal is asking that those submitting papers do not contact potential reviewers.  That is very different from not asking you to contact the actual reviewers, although there are norms to be followed in that situation.

I can imagine new authors thinking they need permission from the potential reviewers if it is fine to put them on the list.  After all, that is recommended before you put a name down on a resume as a reference to a job application.  Authors should just put down names of possible referees, without checking if they are available for the assignment.  That is the editors job if they decide to use a name from the author's list.

The study you cite refers to the second situation.  If you have an idea who was the referee on the paper, you can still interact with that person as if they were not the referee.  If you aggressively ask that person if they were the referee, you may regret that action. Recall that revenge is a dish best served cold. That person you angered  might referee another one of your papers in the future.

There is little need for a formal punishment mechanism at a journal, although some journals must surely have one.  Your editor today might be tomorrow the person who is allocating travel funds at an upcoming conference.  The person at the conference asking you to not go overtime today might tomorrow be on the hiring committee where one of your students is trying to get a postdoc.  I doubt you will find many instances of a formal censure.


How to improve writing skills when writing a manuscript for the first time? After a year of researching for my Masters project, I am writing a manuscript for publication. I have spent nearly 3 months writing it now. My advisor has read my drafts, but after nearly 4 drafts that I thought were successively better, he says that I am in still the pre-draft stage and that I don't know how to write a manuscript properly. Of course, he gives me adequate guidance and is very helpful, but I am demoralized by my own shortcomings.

I have a hard deadline of 3 weeks to submit my edits to my advisor, after which he has said he will finish editing for me.

I understand this sort of thing happens to all new writers, especially in technical writing, and I could hear tons of personal stories about how difficult his/her experience was - but in the end, pain is very personal.

Anyways, the purpose of this post is not just to get motivated or feel better - it is to ask for concrete advice on where and how to begin, especially given that I don't have that much time?

Concrete advice on where and how to begin, especially given that I
  don't have that much time

I work in biomedical science so my advices may not fully apply to you, feel free to take whatever that is useful.

Don't write too much: Most students I work with who are trying to turn their paper into a journal article tend to write too much. It's usually described as a painful process because it would feel like chopping off a lot of work from their thesis (which was done with much blood and sweat.) But the trimming and refinement need to happen because thesis format is not suitable for journal.

Concretely, these newbie articles tend to

Have an introduction that is overly long
Contain abundance of details in the methods section, documenting the conception of the idea to every little details, with meticulous follow up of citations
Justify every single decision, some of which trivial
Cover too many hypotheses or fail to boil down the structure to bite-size, thinking everything in the chapter has to go into the paper
Elaborate lengthily in Discussion, failing to highlight the most important aspect

But also don't write too little: And yet, most students tend to overlook these components:

The paper goes into technical way too abruptly, doesn't account for the fact that some non-specialist may be reading this. And this is really an art, you'll need to see your target journal and get a sense of who are the readers, and then decide how broad to start with
Fail to explain the "so-whats" in the Discussion
Did not address the strengths and the weaknesses of the study. Or quoting weaknesses that actually can be alleviated but were not. For instance, I have a lot of students stating weaknesses like "this is a cross-sectional study so causal inference is not feasible," which I tend to agree; but some may say "in this analysis we did not adjust for income levels" while the income level variable is actually in the data set. In those case I'd request a re-analysis. In short, if you can have done something about it, don't list it as weakness.

General style mismatches: Sometimes the articles have nothing really wrong about it but the style just make it clunky as a journal article. For instance:

Overly sensationalizing or flooded with emotional adjectives. E.g. "the obesity epidemic is indeed a human tragedy," "our results are surprisingly encouraging."
Mixing up facts and arguments, ending up with a lot of statements that are not backed up or statements that are accompanied with a tsunami of facts without a trace of synthesis.
The objectives and the conclusion do not match. And this is very common in theses because we set off with a plan and things may fail to work in the middle and we have changed direction. In journal article, the objective statement and the conclusion need to resonate so that they read nearly like Q&A.
Trying too hard to make the whole paper self-contained and complete. Common signs are including too many details that can be included in the form of citations.
Calling the same concepts or things with many different names. In English composition we are often encourage to diversify our word selection but this is a big no-no in scientific writing. If the variable is "occupational stress," call it so throughout. Do not use variants such as work-induced stress or even worse: work-related mental problems or job-site related depression, etc.
Drafting, writing, and editing at the same time. Most of the students lost steam because they want to churn out perfect sentence from the get go. This causes the process extremely slow and painful. It's easier to do a brain dump and then come back to edit the work. On a good day you may save 50-60% of the dump, on a bad day maybe 10%, but I found it worth it because I can be more focused in either laying out ideas or perfecting the wording, separately.

So, how to start? Before writing, read a bit. Download the "guideline to the authors" from the target journal and use a highlighter to indicate all stylistic requirements. Follow them to the t.

Then, download about 3-5 articles related to your fields from that journal, and read for word-uses and syntax. Generally, when reading each paragraph, ask yourself "Why did the authors put this information here?"

Now, when it comes to writing/drafting. I find it easiest to do in this sequence:

Identify 1-3 main analysis outcomes (table, graph, regression model, etc.) Paste them on a wall or a board and they will be the staple of this article.
For each of these output, write about 2-4 main points or interpretations people should take away with. Imagine you're at a conference manning a poster. What would you tell the audience to focus on in each table or each graph? If one of them has overwhelming amount of talking points, you are trying to pack too much. Consider breaking the analysis output down, and trim, trim, trim. In this stage, do not throw away unused outputs, put them aside in a folder or a box in case you have a second thought.
For each of these output, write out the methods. Remember to only contain enough information to allow readers to replicate, not too much so that the readers have to endure the whole story. For instance, reason for picking a certain concentration or threshold can be explained with a citation rather than writing it out.
Now combine your selected output into the Results section. Write it in the driest style you can think of. No interpretation, grievance, celebration, defense whatsoever, just plain, hard, cold data.
Break Discussion into segments A, B, C, D, and E. In A, use one paragraph to summarize what you found. In B, incorporate the talking points you generated for each of the output, so that the first paragraph makes sense. In C, compare and contrast your work with other literature and discuss the potential differences. In D, delineate the strengths and weaknesses of your study. For each weakness, discuss what you had tried to make it less a matter, or what else could have been done in future work. Finally, in part E, go slightly wider and wilder: elaborate what these results mean to your target audience and their field. You can quickly see that this section can get overwhelming if you have too many objectives. For starters, one main objective with a sub objective will be a good challenge.
Write the Introduction. Focus on some "what's known" to bring your audience to the same page so that they can understand your work. Then, discuss what is not known or what challenges the field is facing. After that, explain how your work may help, and lastly, lay out your objectives clearly.
Cut and paste the objective at the end of the paper (or use split screen so that you can see the objective section), and start writing the Conclusion. Introduce no more new information there, simply answer the objectives point by point. Make sure the objective part and the conclusion part resonate. When you feel it's good enough, you can then take out the reference objective you just pasted there (or close the split screen function.)
Go back to write the abstract.

Other nitty-gritty

Don't feel bad that people are not happy with what you write. A lot of the time they do not even concretely know what's wrong with the piece. Ask for actionable suggestions and then thanks for their comments; take whatever applies to you.

Your supervisor may not appreciate your writing quality, but will definitely appreciate your attention to details. So, make his/her life easier by following the journal's guideline tightly when it comes to formatting.

Check if all the figures and tables are correctly indexed.

Check if all the pronouns connect well and leave no room for misunderstanding.

Use subtitle to introduce another layer of structure if you feel too overwhelmed.

It's true that some papers can take years to write. But you have been working on it for more than 3 months and it is more than probable to write a decent article in 3 months. Some other users may say a paper can take years, but remember the duration is also a factor of i) how much time the person is putting in every day, ii) how much the work is being held up by co-authors, and iii) personal writing style. I myself have papers that were done in the span of 2 months to 6 years; there is pretty much no rule when it comes to time.


Why would a potential supervisor emphasize kind of doctoral degree? I was talking to a potential PhD supervisor about doing a "PhD" in his institution (in Germany). In several occasions he mentioned in an "emphasizing manner" that they award "Dr. rer. nat." in contrast to other doctoral degrees (like "Dr. phil." / PhD).
In my environment/institution (also Germany), many have a PhD from universities outside Germany and he is aware of that.

Why would he emphasize that? Are differenct "kinds" of doctoral degrees considered harder to get or more prestigious or something like that?

Note: I had the impression that he was saying "be aware of what you´re getting into, "Dr. rer. nat." is serious business" to exaggerate a little...

The field is CS/maths if that is relevant.

I'm guessing that he has had a number of candidates who were unclear on that from the outset and that he's simply clarifying to make sure there's no confusion prior to your joining the lab. I don't know whether this is likely to affect your long-term career, hopefully someone who knows more about German academics can clarify in the comments.


On balance, is it more valuable to review for a journal you haven't yet reviewed a paper for? I'm a grad student, and over the weekend, received two review requests from very good journals in my field, one of which I have already reviewed for.

I declined one because it was out of my area, but it made me wonder if, all else being equal I should prioritize reviewing for a journal I haven't yet, or if it doesn't matter.

I have often seen CVs in my field list journals reviewed for, as well as a number of reviews, so it is information that is out there and valued

Multiple reviews for a journal indicates that you are a trustworthy
reviewer.
Reviews for various journals indicates that you are known across your
discipline.

Thus, both seem to be positive signals (for different traits). No need to prioritize one aspect over the other.

(By the way, you can have such peer review activities verified at Publons, which may be better than just listing them on your CV.)


Will UK/US universities understand that in my country, it is common to deliberately fail and retake classes? I wanna apply for Master’s programs at LSE and Oxbridge starting next year. I’m currently on completing my undergraduate studies, have the equivalent of a first-class honours will most likely graduate with distinction and Top 5% of my class.

So far so good.

However, I have just read here that it can be quite an issue with admission officers if there are bad grades and/or failed classes on the undergrad transcript. It appears that bad grades and/or failing classes are much more troublesome in the UK and USA. I heard that you can’t just resit a class and that such grades may even count toward your final grade (USA).

The thing is, where I’m from, it’s totally normal to (deliberately) fail a class for whatever reason. In fact, it’s pretty simple. If you fail a class it doesn’t count towards your final grade (why should it, if you didn’t pass?) and you can retake it whenever you want. At my university you’re even allowed to retake exams you have already successfully passed, a good thing if you want to optimize grades. Hence, it’s obvious that little attention is given to a fail or whatsoever.

I’m concerned, however, how this could be perceived with graduate admission at the top universities in the UK. On my home university transcript, failed classes doesn’t show up, only passed ones. I only have two classes where I passed with a 3 but I’m gonna retake them next semester and get a first on them. Unfortunately, I did an exchange in the US last semester where I passed two courses (A-, B+) but failed two and q-dropped one. I failed because I knew it was easier at home and I had other things in mind during this time. By now, I have already completed these classes I failed in the US and got excellent grades on them.

In light of these circumstances, is there even the slightest possibility that graduate admission would reject me despite a first-class degree just because there are 2 failed courses on an exchange semester transcript? Given that in my country the culture of failing classes for whatever reasons is commonly practiced. Does graduate admission generally understand those critical differences between UK vs non-UK universiy life?

Let me try and give an answer from the perspective of someone who is involved with, but not responsible for, PhD admissions in my discipline (mathematics) at a UK university. I know that you are asking about a Master's place, but I will try to make points which also apply to some extent in that setting.

Standard disclaimers apply: while I hope what I say is not inaccurate, it does not represent the official opinion of my department, my employers, etc.

I'll confine myself to the final parts of your post/question:

  In light of these circumstances, is there even the slightest possibility that graduate admission would reject me despite a first-class degree just because there are 2 failed courses on an exchange semester transcript? Given that in my country the culture of failing classes for whatever reasons is commonly practiced.

Rejection or success has to be understood against the context of who else is applying for a  limited number of places. So I would say that there is a slight possibility, in the sense that when it comes to ranking candidates and making offers, the two fails might be noted and interpreted as a sign of some deficiencies, as compared with some other applicant who has the same overall GPA or degree mark but doesn't have those fails. However, there may be people on the relevant departmental committee who know that different countries have different systems, and who could then counter that interpretation with context such as the explanation that you give in your question.

Put another way: I don't think a 1st class degree with 2 failed courses on an exchange semester would be ranked below someone with an upper 2nd and no fails; but when compared with someone who has a 1st class degree and no fails, you might find yourself unlucky.

That said: my impression is that provided all other marks are good, a couple of low marks are not regarded as so significant, provided that the good marks are not in subjects/courses regarded as "easy" and the low marks are not in subjects/courses regarded as "hard".

  Does graduate admission generally understand those critical differences between UK vs non-UK university life?

As I've mentioned above, there may be people who do understand, but this is very hard to predict. For instance, I have a colleague who did his PhD in Rome, and so he is able to give very informed opinions on how we should interpret transcripts from applicants who did their undergraduate degrees in Italy. I have worked in Canada, so if I see a transcript from someone from that system I have some idea how to interpret the transcript and the likely content of courses. Other departments in other universities may have similar random connections.

If you are very concerned that these marks on the transcript could jeopardise your chances, then I think the best thing to do is to ask one of your reference-writers to make some brief comment about how the system where you did your exchange visit differs from the one where you did your main degree, and how (in their view) those fails do not represent your true potential.

To finish: you should nevertheless reflect on the fact that if you do want to do a Master's in the UK then the mode and culture of assessment will be different from what you previously experienced and are used to. Lecturers are unlikely to make allowances for a student who seems, from their point of view, to give up at a certain point because they wish to take the hit of a bad grade at an early stage with the hope of then ratcheting it up. They are not going to set assessments which cater to that way of thinking. I mention this not to claim that the UK approach is better, or that the UK courses are harder (they might actually be easier!) but because you need to know what you are getting into.


Can someone with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a Masters of Business Administration teach undergraduate courses in Political Science? I've read that it's quite common among students to take a graduate program which is different from the bachelor's degree. I was wondering if it is possible for someone with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Master of Business Administration to teach Political Science subjects.

Highly unlikely.  Even at the community college level, to teach in a field one must typically have at least some postgraduate degree in that field or in a closely related field.  So you someone probably teach in a polisci department with a degree in economics, because they use many of the same methods and consider some of the same areas.  Ditto philosophy.  Not a professional business degree.

(PhD political scientist here)


Is a pre-doctoral licentiate degree worth anything? There exists a degree title called the licentiate in Finland and Sweden which is a graduate title beneath a full PhD title; I've heard it called, among other things, a "half PhD", a "PhD lite" or a "PhD for those already working". However, what formal or practical benefits can/does such a title actually confer, especially since being awarded a licentiate degree entails having a postgraduate degree anyway (a Master's degree, which very much could have entailed doing research itself)?

Can the formal qualification and/or work done for it contribute towards a proper PhD at another institution, either immediately after or after some interim period?
Is it accepted as proof of any kind of practical research experience in larger institutions outside of Finland and Sweden? From what I've gathered, it seems that research-oriented jobs are very strictly categorized as either "jobs for people with PhDs" or "jobs for everyone else", which suggests that a "not-quite-PhD" degree wouldn't actually open any doors and maybe even close some (due to e.g. being perceived as overqualified, as having "quit" a PhD program or as being "not able" to secure a proper PhD candidate position).

Here is some experience from Sweden:

First of all, the licentiate isn't really a degree that you can study towards per se, at least not in our institution. Much more, it is an optional, but highly recommended, midterm step in doing a PhD. I guess there has to be some theoretical way of formally studying only towards a licentiate, but I do not know any such case and I would not really see a reason why you would want to do it.

  Is it accepted as proof of any kind of practical research experience in larger institutions outside of Finland and Sweden?

Presumably not. Even in Sweden the concept isn't well-known at all outside of academic circles. In practice there are more advantages to having a licentiate within academia than outside - for instance, post-lic PhD students in my department get a little higher salary and some small additional rights, such as being able to act as official primary supervisors for master students. However, mainly the licentiate is considered to be a semi-formal "half-time" exam for the PhD, and used as a test drive for the actual thesis defense.

One small additional thing:

  being awarded a licentiate degree entails having a postgraduate degree anyway (a Master's degree, which very much could have entailed doing research itself)?

In Sweden, and more generally in most of Europe, a master's degree isn't generally considered a "postgraduate" degree in the same sense as it is in the US. Our master programmes are primarily by-coursework with a one-semester thesis project at the end, and while the master programme should get students in touch with research, I don't think most people would consider the average master graduate to be a researcher in any definition of the word. Also, many (most?) of our bachelor graduates continue on into one of our master programmes. This is very different to the licentiate / PhD track, that only a small minority of students chooses.


Would a high stack exchange rep make a difference in a job interview? So, quick background information. I am a PhD student in mathematics going into graph theory. I hope to either do a post-doc or (hopefully!) get a tenure-track position at a research-oriented university after graduation. I don't have a super high mathSE reputation, but it has been steadily increasing from answering questions.(I have only asked a few, but I answer a lot.)

While I don't think it would be a good idea to put my mathSE reputation on a CV(or am I wrong?) I could potentially see myself mentioning SE at an interview. While I know answering questions on MathSE isn't anything like publishing original research, I think it shows a dedication to mathematics and teaching.

What I want to know(hopefully from people who do interviews, but all answers are welcome) is if something like that would ever make a difference?(especially if it would be frowned upon similar to having trivial papers on your CV.)

Note: answering questions on MathSE is something I do in my leisure time or times when I cannot work on my course work/research such as while I am on my daily bus ride to campus, so I don't need to see answers that say "spending the time studying/researching would be a better use of your time"

Edit: my main concern is in an interview setting. Only if you have reason to believe that it would be good to put on a CV am I interested in that as I already had a feeling that it would not be well suited for a CV.

I have seen Math.SE and MathOverflow activities mentioned by both grad students and faculty in connection with various applications and promotion-related materials. I don't see this as anything to scoff at; personally I find it intriguing and consider looking up someone's SE profile(s) a great way to get some insight into their mathematical personality (note that there can be a potential downside if said personality turns out to be uninteresting or unimpressive). With that said, I think this is only worth mentioning on your CV if it represents a major activity, say if you have been active for at least 1-2 years and have dozens of answers including a good number of highly voted ones. I wouldn't specify the reputation points as that seems like a silly thing to (admit to :-) ) be concerned about. And there can be a better place to mention it, e.g., in a research/teaching/personal statement.

As for mentioning this in an interview, like many other things this can be a good idea if done tactfully (in a no-big-deal, casual sort of way that shows a sense of proportion), or a horrible idea if done untactfully (saying it and expecting fireworks or a round of applause).

Finally, I wanted to mention that I noticed from questions such as this one that there is a common belief in the Grand Principle that for academic (and specifically math) jobs one should hide any information about oneself that attests to one being interested in anything other than doing math research all day, every day, and that any decision about what to put on one's CV or what to mention in an interview/personal statement should be considered in the light of this Grand Principle. I can't say if this is true or false as a general rule, but it's categorically false for me: personally I'm delighted if a job candidate tells me they are interested in archery, or chess, or surfing, or playing piano, or whiling away their time answering elementary questions on Mathematics StackExchange. Think about it this way: given that I already know the level of research they do (which presumably must be pretty good if I'm interviewing them), any evidence that they have other unusual skills or abilities outside of math research can only raise them in my estimation. Besides, when you hire someone you get a complete package, mathematician/academic+human being, and personally I rather like being surrounded by interesting human beings and not just paper-writing robots. But maybe I'm weird and it's just me who thinks this way, so handle this advice with proper caution.


Including proofs of known theorems in master's thesis I am currently writing my master's thesis in computer science. In my topic, I had a lot of papers to read and my main result relies also heavily on some theorems from especially one paper.

In the common literature there are some standard theorems for which the proofs are usually omitted bescause it is common knowledge or radically shortened as in "an easy application of the KKT theorem" and the authors do not want to waste any space for that.

In a master's thesis, however, I would assume that it is good practice to write down those proofs more extensively, since it also shows that you really understand your topic in-depth.

My question is: Would you agree on that and would a citation as in

Proposition 3.14 (see [5]). A nice theorem.
Proof. My extended proof.

be sufficient?

I checked out When should one include the proof of known results in a mathematical PhD thesis? already where the answers suggest that my intuition is right here (for a PhD thesis). My thesis advisor also agrees (which is probably most important), however, I am unsure to what degree this is appropriate.

It would be a good idea to make it slightly more conspicuous that the theorem (and proof) are not original, e.g.:

  The following theorem is due to [5]; for the clarity of our exposition we give a more detailed version of the succinct proof in [5].

This leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that the work is not original, and also explains why you chose to include the proof.


Is it possible to negotiate the position rank in an UK academic job offer? I received a job offer from a UK university. The post was for a senior lecturer/reader position. When the Head of School called me, he hinted that they would offer me a reader position. But two days later when I received the written offer, they actually give me a senior lecturer position with the highest point. I was a bit disappointed as I expected it was a reader position. I have no experience in UK academic system (I am currently working in the US), but I heard there is little room to negotiate in the UK system. I am wondering if I can negotiate for a higher rank (reader) without insulting them. Besides I am going to interview for a reader position with another school. If I get the 2nd offer, can I ask the 1st to match (based on the UK academic culture)? Thanks for your input in advance.

Yes, you can always ask about salary and position for any job you are applying to. They won't stop considering you because you asked for more money.

While we are researchers, and love what we do [citation needed], in our society we need money and work for money*, thus bringing money to the negotiations is (or should be) an obvious part of the "finding a job" process.

They can say "yes", "let's negotiate" or "no". Just be prepared for all, and make the decision as you see fit.

*you wouldn't work for free, would you?


Portal for sharing a research manuscript with supervisors/advisors I was wondering if there was a website or portal for confidentially sharing research manuscript with supervisors/collaborators whilst its being drafted. I tend to just e-mail the manuscript to my supervisors after an update which practically means multiple e-mails. I'm aware that drop box is nice for sharing files, etc and I'm also aware of mendeley. Is anybody else aware of a better way of doing this? It'll be nice to have a portal where I could just update my manuscript and supervisors/advisors could just log in and see the updated version and maybe add their comments, etc.

If your use case is really only about sharing a document, then it does not get much easier than Dropbox. If you are actually collaborating (more than one person is writing stuff at the same time), I would not recommend Dropbox, as it is much to easy to overwrite changes of other people. For such collaborations, I would recommend a collaborative writing platform (Overleaf if you use Latex, Windows Live if you use Microsoft Word), or a private version control repository such as Github if you feel confident using Git.


Can open-source software be peer-reviewed and published? My colleague and I have developed a software tool and intend to release it open-source.

This tool is specifically for tasks in my field but we think it would be helpful for the wider community. Our institution will permit us to release it provided we get appropriate credit.

Thus, we wish to publish it in peer-review. Is peer-review publication of domain-specific software available? If so, what is required to publish it?

In this case we intend to publish the method and tool on it's own merits without supporting data or an application.

Yes, Open Source software can be published. What's required varies depending on the venue.

There are general journals that focus on the software process. The idea is to encourage better software development gets the credit it deserves. Examples of journals with this approach are the Journal of Open Research Software and the Journal of Open Source Software.

Then there are domain specific journals that have specific software paper policies. An example would be the AAS Journals which state

  AAS Journals welcome articles which describe the design and function of software of relevance to research in astronomy and astrophysics. Such articles should contain a description of the software, its novel features and its intended use. Such articles need not include research results produced using the software, although including examples of applications can be helpful.

(Emphasis mine to link to a point in the original question)


Is there any point in handing back exams ordered by grade? Back in France I had a few teachers handing back exams in order from the highest grade to the lowest grade, and I recall there was some tense suspense, especially for for the people at the bottom of the stack. Is there any point in handing back exams ordered by grade? Assume there is no online platform to release grades.

No good reasons, only tradition (this is how we've always done it) and sadism (the poorer scoring students should be shamed into doing better). In the US, these days, at the college level at least, it also might now also be considered bordering on a FERPA violation by some. If you announced that the grades were returned in score order, but didn't reveal an actual number, you might get a pass, but I bet you'd get a lot of complaints. If you announced the scores as you did it, you'd definitely be in violation.


If a student graduates with a Bachelor majoring in IT, is it ok to continue with a Master and a PhD? I am designing a bachelor's major in IT (Information Technology), and my director asked me to attract students who want to continue their academic track, with a Master and possibly a Doctorate.
Can you give some insights in this regards? Is IT mostly a type of study to get quickly in the job market?
What are the types of academic careers for an IT graduate?

It depends, for example if we follow the ACM standard of what is an IT career you will find that it is oriented, mostly, to the technical part and not so much on the theoretical part of technology. In case, that you would want to attract students for pursuing higher academic careers in the IT field, you will have to include theoretical courses considering the computing curricula of ACM in the field of Computer Science.
The part that you mentioned that an IT graduate is to get quickly into the job market is true. They do not need to know the caveats of the theoretical foundations of CS, but they do have to know which TI tools are "hot" in the market and how they have changed from previous version.

In some parts of the world the IT term refers to any career related to technology, so that it could comprise also fields such as CS or SE, so it the students have followed these foundations they can go to higher degrees.

Personally, I have some colleagues that came from pure IT careers and then pursue a MSc in CS and for being honest; they passed thru very hard times, because they lack the knowledge of specific parts needed for their masters such as Algorithms, Advanced Data Structures, etc; also they needed to show proficiency in at least one programming language, but they lack that also.

Hope you find this information useful.


Is it possible to accrue vacation hours during graduate study as a research assistant (GRA)? I currently work full-time for the Department of Defense.  I usually get three-weeks worth of paid time off every year.  This has been helpful because I like to go back home to visit family for about two weeks or take a long weekend and visit friends around the country.

I will be starting my master's degree program this coming fall and I have managed to obtain a part-time graduate research assistantship (GRA).  In reading the student handbook, I noticed that GRAs are required to work year-round and only allowed to observe certain holidays.  There is a provision that you can work more hours over several weeks in order to get some consecutive days off.

My question is, in the graduate student lifestyle, is my dream of maintaining 2-3 vacation weeks a year completely thrown out the window?  Will I be expected to stay on campus and work every single possible day?  Do GRAs grant vacation hours that you can accrue?

Thank you for your time.

The answer is: it depends.

The biggest factor is where you're a graduate student. For instance, graduate students in Germany receive up to six weeks of vacation per year, while graduate students in the US may only get two weeks' vacation per year, if even that much.

However, I think that in the US, where policies are a bit less generous, the real deciding factor is your graduate advisor. I think that reasonable graduate advisors will permit students to take off a few weeks per year (especially since most of them might do so themselves!), provided that you make sure it doesn't conflict with any major deadlines or events in your group. For instance, asking to take substantial vacation time just before your first big conference is probably inadvisable. But time during the holidays or during a relatively "quiet" time in your group (whenever that happens to be) would probably be OK.


Do I have any obligations to my PhD supervisor's requests after I have graduated? I graduated with a biology PhD last year. My supervisor named X was pretty hands-off (which was great) and most of my project, from conceptualization to data analysis, was done by me generally without much input from X partly because it wasn't X's area of expertise. I now have a full-time job doing math. X insists I meet with X to discuss how to turn a manuscript (rejected last year as I was writing my thesis because it required significant revisions and additional experiments) into publishable form for resubmission for grant money purposes, and then work on that on my own time.

So I was just wondering whether I have any obligation, professional/moral/official/other, to comply with X's request (other than my personal responsibility to publish stuff I've done and not waste time/resources I've used), because X is not going to be paying me to spend my free time working on this manuscript and this manuscript isn't going to help me with my career.

Approximate time to get this into publishable form is: 2-3 months working weekends by me to do additional analysis from existing data, and 6-12 months for additional experiments done by a person in X's lab who will require training from me.

To clarify,

My new job is not in academia, but I do regularly write academic math/stats papers as a part of my job.
I am thoroughly disillusioned with academia and never intend to return.
The intent is to publish a paper that X can cite in grant proposals to show productivity etc.

I think it's reasonable for X to ask, but you have no obligation to say "yes". In particular, 2-3 months of weekends is a lot of time to work for free. I think that if you choose, it would be reasonable for you to politely say that this is too much, and that he needs to get somebody else to do that analysis. If this is work that you have already done a lot of, you should still be an author on the resulting paper.

If your new job is with a university, then it is worth asking your new supervisor if you can spend some time on it. They may be happy that they can get a paper with their affiliation for only a couple of weeks of work. If your new job is a commercial one, this is much less likely to help.


How to remove gender bias from an academic job search? I overheard some professors discussing the next round of hiring at my university and several were concerned about gender bias possibly playing an issue in the hiring process.  An initial thought is to just go through CV's and black out an applicant's name.  However, an academic job search makes it much more difficult to do this.  Not only do applicants have CV's, but there are also typically 3 letters of recommendations as well as publication lists (which might reveal the identity of an individual if the paper is known by some of the hiring panel).

Some suggestions that were thrown out involve trying to find a way to scan through 2-300 applicant materials and black out/replace gender pronouns and names.  From browsing StackOverflow, there is apparently quite a bit of difficulty with this from a programming perspective.  Still, it seems the most efficient way to remove as much gender bias as possible in the process but doesn't seem to be widely used.

  What are some of the best ways a hiring panel can remove gender bias from the application process?

This question could also potentially extend to ways to generally remove other forms of bias, such as ethnic bias.

Bias exists at many points of the hiring process. You suggested blinding the search committee to applicant gender but, as you point out, this is extremely difficult to do perfectly and completely broken by even small failures. For obvious reasons, blinding will also not be particularly relevant after you start interviewing candidates. I like the other suggestions to provide training to sensitize the committee to issues of gender bias.

Beyond that — and if your university policies allow it — you might also decide now (i.e., before the search) to interview at least one male and at least one female candidate. This way, you will give the best male and female candidates a full chance to convince you that they are right for your department. This ensures that at the top person of each gender makes it through the earlier stages of the process where gender bias may very well play its biggest role. At the interview stage, blinding would not have worked anyway.

This kind of policy is unusual but not unheard of. The most famous example I know if is the Rooney Rule in the US National Football League which requires that all teams interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. Although this is sometimes cited as an example of affirmative action, it does not mandate any preference or quota to candidates within the pool of those being interviewed. If you're doing it right, it does mean that the very best candidates from under-represented groups will always have an opportunity to show their stuff at the final round.

If you found out that  best person from the under-represented groups is really not as good as the best person from the over-represented group, at least you'll know that you gave the best member from each group a full hearing.

Update: I will point out that this answer basically assumes that all of your candidates will present as either male or female. As a result, is it very limited in the case of non-gender conforming candidates. These candidates may also be subject to even greater discrimination and this approach will not solve (and could even aggravate) those problems.


Quitting a PhD program from one university to different university due to change in research interest with the current advisor I started working with the current advisor 2 years ago in my master's program and after a year he asked if I would like to convert to the PhD programme. I am a chemical engineer while my advisor is a mechanical engineer (he is an adjunct faculty in my department) so I believed he would provide me with enough guidance to pursue interdisciplinary research. I said yes and started working with him on a research project. The current research project was a challenging one to develop a novel detection technology and I decided to take up to project to expand my expertise. But one year into the program I realized that the technique I am working to improve is absolutely not reproducible. Moreover, the researcher whose fundamental work the idea is based on has encountered 4 paper retractions. In addition to all this, I never get any acknowledgement or guidance for any new idea I am trying to work on. I also have realised that this has lowered my motivation and my relations with him are heading south. For eg: during our individual meetings I have noticed when I bringing an idea or results pertaining to that idea he mostly sleeps or dozes off. I really do not think that the project I am working has any scope and all the ideas or talks I have with my advisor are extremely superficial and derivative from different papers. Like, let us see who our industrial competition are instead of working on the basic science level or suggesting ideas such as I recently read a paper on something why don't you make that as a part of your research. All these issues aside, my professor also sometimes insults me and regards me as lethargic despite spending nights in the lab. I am extremely interested in the nanobiotechnology area of research and I wish to apply to a different university for a PhD program.

My question is: Should I quit or continue under those circumstances? In case, I decided to quit, shall I be accepted by another program and in that case, how I can reformulate my decision to quit to the prospective program. Is this kind of behavior is what should be expected in academia? Should I also consider quitting PhD altogether if this is the way advisor push or motivate students?

Definitely move on.  I would talk with both chemE and mechE department heads at your current university (they may have an option for you without having to move on to another place).  In parallel or series, you can apply elsewhere.  I wouldn't even dwell on the flareup with the other professor but maybe try to make it a positive that you have some previous research.

Finally, be careful what problem you pick.  Make it tractable and likely to succeed. Not building a supercollider, not waiting for a Shuttle experiment, and not relying on questionable previous work.  Oh...and pick an older, established advisor who does not have an aggressive personality.

At this point, you really should just find something and get the union card done.  Don't worry about discovering gravity.  Some research problems can really be done in a very short amount of time (I know Ph.D.s who wasted years on a flawed problem and then did something else for a year and wrote it up and got the sheepskin.)  Time is ticking for you personally so you need to look out for yourself and do something that works and quickly.


Withdrawal of Accepted Paper So, I think that I'm in quite a mess here.
I recently submitted a paper to an IEEE conference and got my paper accepted. I submitted the camera-ready paper and the copyright form but weeks later, after the submission, I found out that all the authors including me were assigned the job of conducting exams for undergraduate students and as of such we were not allowed to decline. So I sent a withdrawal request to the conference organisers and got a reply today saying that our paper was removed from their 'list'. We had already registered the paper in the conference as well.

Now, since we had already submitted the copyright form but the work was yet to be presented in the conference and published in IEEE Xplore , is it possible for us to submit the same paper in another conference knowing that the paper has been removed from the list?

I would write in to the conference, explaining your situation and that this is - as you far as you are concerned - a case of force majeure.

First, you could ask for the registration payment back if they still decide not to publish it (not many chances you'll get it, but if you ask in a professional and nonagressive way, who knows).

Second, you confirm with them (in writing) that your understanding is that this means the paper is now free and can be resubmitted elsewhere (i.e. a confirmation that the copyright transfer is void under the given circumstances).

They cannot get the money,  remove the paper from the proceedings and also expect you not to submit it somewhere else.


How can my students learn to value the rules of academia? I teach a course in academic writing covering the writing aspects, the very basics of research skills, such as referencing works, plus related college skills. At this point in the term, quite a number of foreign students have begun to express frustration:

Some wish they can organize their papers in more “creative” ways.
Some want to share their feelings and personal experiences.
Some see the style guide rules as overly pedantic or finicky.

They don't like the many “restrictions” dictating how they should gather information and organize and present their ideas.

I compiled a short list explaining why such strict conventions are necessary:

Predictably-organized writing helps readers to access information quickly.
The various research procedures generally raises the quality of the work, so others can benefit from the ideas presented.

Most of these students, however, have no intention of ever becoming “academics”, and maybe they don't care so much benefiting readers. They just want to get a degree and get a good job.

Can I help them to see some personal benefit to learning all of these conventions?

The points you list are key, and a good starting point. I am not sure you need to add to that list but rather expand on the points to set them in a wider perspective.

There are several misconceptions that needs discussing. There is the idea that academic (scientific) writing is complicated and uses difficult language. Well, it does not have to be, and really should not be. With the huge onslaught of information, we must all learn how to express ourselves concisely and clearly. This is an art that requires training, not only in science but also in writing. Regardless of which sort of work we have, assuming communication is part of it, we need to be able to get our points across. Hence it is key to impress on students the importance of learning to write well. So point at the goals: being able to present information in a way that it can be understood by the intended recipients. You then need to be able to take complicated issues and express them clearly and in language that can be understood. Understanding terminology and concepts is the basis for being able to explain them and making necessary simplifications. Badly written reports will not serve the author, the company (equivalent) the author works for, or the recipients who need the information. I therefore think it is important to make these wider perspectives clear to students.

Companies usually have very strict rules for how reports should be written and formatted. Getting used to following such instructions may seem like a limitation, but understanding the necessity is a good preparation for the work place. With commercial reports come legal aspects that puts much restriction on how to express oneself. Learning about such rules and restrictions is therefore a key to become a successful contributor in the future, inside and outside of academia.

The fact that most (if not all) employers look for people who are good at presenting information, written as well as in speech should be emphasized (often included in social skills). These skills require much training and a solid foundation to build on. Courses in scientific writing and presentation as well as term papers and other reports (including a final thesis) are all parts of this education.

So, in the end, I am totally convinced that skills such as these will make a difference when applying for jobs. We just need to point out the fact. Getting feedback from employers about the necessity for these skills to share with the students is very valuable. Some students have better basic skills than others but none are good at writing concisely and clearly without the training we can provide. It is also important to make students understand that in the longer term they will have to develop their own skills, not just take whatever is served and think it is enough. It is a life-long learning experience which requires solid a foundation. and that is what we can offer.


How to know which journal is open access? How to know which journal is open access?

I have searched many journals homepage which give an option "Supports Open Access"

But I know open access journals after accepting papers charge huge amount of money from authors which I wont be able to give.

So can someone please help me to understand how to be sure that I dont fall into such traps and I submit in those journals which charge money after accepting my paper?

The following link is of Discrete Maths which is a top-journal.
Still it states open access.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/discrete-mathematics/articles-in-press

If someone helps me to know how to understand it,I will be really very grateful.

You can tell whether a journal is open access from their website. "Supports open access" doesn't immediately say if the journal is completely open access, but it does mean that you will be able to publish open access in it. In other words, it's possible the journal practices the hybrid model where it is subscription, but offers open access to whoever wants it.

For Discrete Mathematics itself, you linked a ScienceDirect webpage. ScienceDirect is not the journal's publisher - it's just a database. What you really want is the journal's webpage itself. Clicking on the "Supports open access" tab on the left leads to this page, which tells you everything you want to know. This is a hybrid journal alright, and if you want open access the article processing charge is USD 1500 excluding taxes (potentially lower if you are funded by the Wellcome trust and Research Councils UK).

If you are unable to find whether the journal is open access on its webpage, assume it isn't. If the journal claims to be open access but does not list its article processing charges, do not publish there, since one of the key criterion to calling a journal/publisher predatory is whether its APCs are clearly listed.


University club executive committee As a Mathematics student or a student in general wishing to go into research in the future, does being a member of the executive committee for the relevant club matter that much in terms of gaining positions in the future in research?

I have generalised anxiety disorder, and as a result I find it extremely difficult to join such clubs, and some of my fellow students who are on my level are gaining these positions with ease. Will this give them a large edge over me in the future?

Personal reaction: It matters -- it's a chance to develop and demonstrate leadership skills -- but it's a low-level effect. Election is something of a crapshoot anyway; not all good candidates get elected. It's more important as worthwhile experience than anything else. If you can't or don't, that's OK; if you can it may be good for you.


What version is published online under "ahead of print" for an accepted paper? Some journals publish the article online much before the publication, under the "ahead of print" section. My question is, will they send the proofs (to the author) before putting it in "ahead of print" itself, or only right before publication in print. What version will be published online under "ahead of print"?

Depends on journal policies. The one I'm most familiar with, the "ahead of print" articles are complete in every way except they've not been assigned to a volume & issue. If this is the case for you then of course they will send proofs to the author before putting it there.

Alternatively they can put the accepted manuscript there. If this is the case it will look very unpolished; it might not be in the journal's style, the figures might be on separate pages, and so on.

A glance at the articles already in the "ahead of print" section should reveal which is the case for you.


Is it normal that what I studied in my bachelor's and master's is rarely useful to my PhD? Short version: Do you expect your knowledge in previous degrees to play a big part in your PhD?

Just to give you a bit of my background, I studied maths in my previous degrees and I am also doing maths in my PhD (trying to solve some kind of discrete optimisation problem). All in the UK, by the way.

Now some of you probably know that it's usually hard (NP-hard, if you like) to solve discrete optimisation problems. I got to learn some of them in my previous degrees and found them really fun and enjoyable, probably because I could understand how to solve them and why such and such methods work. (Well I guess it's obvious that they would only teach me "easy" problems at that stage.)

I know that I am expected to learn new things during a PhD, but since I started my PhD, I have been feeling that I rarely get to use what I studied before to tackle my research. It's like I started from zero again. Anything I learned before doesn't seem to be useful and I had to learn new techniques from scratch. All this made me wonder that I probably chose a wrong topic because I have almost zero knowledge to do this topic.

Have you ever had a similar feeling? Is it just another normal PhD life? I'm just no longer sure if I made the right decision to do this particular topic (or even to do a PhD).

Edit: I tried to think about this again and realised that I shouldn't have asked "how normal is it?", but rather "has anyone else experienced this and how did you deal with it?"

It's quite normal for your bachelor's and master's studies to have little, if any, influence on your PhD research, particularly in the sciences and engineering. I think this is especially true in engineering, as the contents of engineering curricula tend to be more "conservative" than the research ongoing in most departments.

Moreover, though, one of the skills you need to learn to survive as a research professional is the ability to learn a brand new topic to which you have not previously been exposed. This is because it's quite likely that you'll move into another research area multiple times during your professional career, and the only way to figure out what makes for good research in the field is to become an expert in it. So studying something brand new in your PhD is not only not a problem, it represents a great opportunity for your future career.


How to accurately digitize plot data from figures available as vector graphics? Measurement data in publications is often provided only within figures, while the original data is not available. There are some very useful tools around to digitize such data, such as the web application WebPlotDigitizer, the app Engauge Digitizer or within the software Origin, but to my knowledge they only support raster images.
Since publications are usually available in digital form and figures therein are often embedded as vector graphics, a more accurate digitization would be desirable. Are there tools around which allow to directly digitize vector paths from figures (similar to the aforementioned methods)?
This question goes beyond precision (see further remarks below) and also addresses an efficient and semi-automated workflow.

Remarks

The achievable accuracy of course depends on the quality of the figure, or more specifically on (i) how the figure was originally produced, and (ii) how it was processed during the publication process. Since often high-quality plotting tools are used (e.g. guaranteeing proper resampling) and journals don't always mess up, figures in appropriate quality should now and then be available.

The problem goes beyond precision in terms of reading out values (which could be resolved by rastering figures in high resolution and using the aforementioned tools). In complex figures graphs could (i) cover each other up, (ii) overlap themself due to scatter and line thickness, and (iii) have varying sampling rate. Hence, rastering involves misinterpretation of data. Using a vector graphics editor for preparation before rastering (e.g. hiding individual graphs) would help, but is time-consuming and does only solve some of the problems.

At first, it should of course be checked if the original numeric data are available, as required by some journals (unfortunately not in many fields). Also, the corresponding author could be contacted, which often won't lead to success for many reasons such as unavailability (of data or author, after some time) or unwillingness.

Thanks to Martin and Massimo Ortolano, whose contributions inspired some of the remarks.

This is an amusing programming/hacking challenge, but my guess is that in 90% of cases the best solution lies in the realm of human affairs, and that’s simply
to email the authors and ask for the data.
Why? Two reasons:

When it works (and I expect it would most of the time), you’ll know with certainty that the data you have is exactly what the authors were working with rather than some approximation recovered by trying to reverse engineer an unknown sequence of human and algorithmic processes to convert the raw data into a figure. (Vector graphics may offer the illusion of lossless encoding, but that’s assuming no lossy steps were applied by the human or software at any step along the way — a dangerous assumption to make in practice.)

In the infrequent occasion when it doesn’t work because the authors refuse to share the data, you’ll still learn something useful about how trustworthy their data can be assumed to be (i.e., not at all). You can still try to revert to a technological solution, but in most cases I’d just assume the data is invalid and not worth relying on.


Should a speaker attend a conference where he/she is required to pay their own registration fee? I have been accepted to present a paper at a conference in a recognised university.

There is no doubt about the 'legitimacy' or public standing of this university as it is recognised worldwide. In addition, it is the management department within the university that is organising the conference. The keynote speakers are recognised and leaders in their fields.

The conference has two streams: peer review and non-peer review. The non-peer review is more like practical / application of theories in practice.

I am located in the non-peer review section and was asked to pay my own registration of $500. There is no assistance for travel etc.

Is this normal for an international conference? (I always thought at least the speaker's registration was stand expense that was borne by the conference organisers).

What are the pros and cons of attending and presenting at such conferences?

Most international conferences are paid for by the registration fees of the attendees.  The higher the ratio of attendees to speakers, the more registrations the conference can afford to comp (give for free).  When a large fraction of the attendees are also speakers, as is the case with a lot of peer-review-centric conferences, then it's often the case that only the keynote speakers have compensated registration and/or travel.  If the conference is close on its budget, even the organizers are expected to pay their own way and their own registration fees.  The smaller the conference, the more likely this is to be the case, but even very big ones often expect everybody but the keynote speakers to pay their own way.

In short: yes, this isn't unusual at all.


Why is plagiarising words such a big deal? Plagiarising the ideas of others is obviously a big deal. You are stealing the hard work of others and misleading your peers by pretending it is your original work.

But why is plagiarising words and paragraphs considered a big deal? I mean, isn't the point of academic effort to transmit ideas and knowledge? Who cares what specific words were used to transmit it? It's not like we are writing poems here: the words themselves don't matter, the underlying ideas do.

For example, say you are writing an article, and you need to add a short section on some background information. Your original source for this information is some book by a guy called Juntao, in which he writes

  It is well-known that the K-Group is hyperdifferentiable and pseudo-geometric. It can further be shown, given certain assumptions on the continuity of the underlying complex manifolds, that the associated Einstein-curves are super-composites and universally dense in the field of measurable spaces. Indeed, this was shown by Hilbert and Plato in their seminal work on uncountable and analytically algebraic left-Sylvester Deligne graphs.

Say you need to provide this information in your paper. What’s the problem if you just copy it verbatim? I mean, I could write it in my own words, easily. But why should I be forced to waste time on that? Why is it a problem if I just use the above formulation?

As long as you refer to the original material, such as by ending the section with

  For more information on this material and proofs of the stated theorems, we refer to the works of Hilbert and Plato [1840]. A complete summary of the material can be found in Juntao [1998].

then everything ought to be fine, isn’t it? And yet, there are question like this, where somebody wanted to "seek justice" just because somebody else stole a few sentences of his.

Per your example, you are not, in fact,  "forced to waste time" finding another way to express the idea that another author had. You can just copy the passage down verbatim, but to do so without putting it in quotes and citing it is plagiarism. If you write a publication that has no quotes in it, you are essentially claiming that you wrote the entire thing yourself. If you have copied text verbatim, that is false. You are taking credit for someone else's work, which is rather frowned upon in academia.

Authors should be deliberate and unambiguous in their language, so finding the right words to express an idea isn't always a trivial task. A lot of work can go into a sentence that is succinct, precise, and understandable. Your choices are to either find different words to express that idea, or give someone else credit for having done the work already.


How much freedom do mathematics ph.d. students usually have in choosing a topic for their thesis in the U.S? I'm in a bit of a conundrum at the moment, since my real research interests (constructive type theory, proof theory, categorical logic) are only actively studied at a handful of places in the U.S, and for the most part those tend to be top schools.

Thus, I'm wondering if I don't get into one of said schools, would it still be possible for me to write my thesis in one of my areas of interest even if it is not directly related to any of the faculty's research interests? How much leeway do you have there?

For example, if I get into a school that has a good logic group, even if the research interests of the professors there is, say, more in set theory, would I still likely be able to do my thesis on type theory? What about at a school that doesn't even have a solid logic program?

There's a good deal of variation.  Sometimes students are assigned a very specific problem ("try to prove this conjecture"), sometimes given a slightly less concrete direction in a narrow range of a field, and some students do pick topics basically on their own.

Some of the variation is based on the individual professor, and some on the student - many, maybe most advisors are willing to give a fair amount of leeway to an exceptionally strong student, and will push more structure on a student who seems slightly weaker (weaker being quite relative).  (For example, I did my thesis in proof theory on a series of problems suggested by my advisor directly extending some of his previous work; my academic twin did a much more independent thesis in model theory on a topic my advisor had never directly worked in.)

So the answer is that you definitely can't count on a set theorist, or especially a non-logician, being willing to supervise a thesis in type theory unless you've communicated about that in advance, but it is sometimes done.  Also, people do occasionally have informal advisors, or even official advisors or co-advisors at other institutions; the logic community is small, so it is conceivable that if you get into a school with a good logic program and are really interested in a different area of logic you could nonetheless be at least partially supervised by someone at a different institution.  But, again, it's risky to count on this happening.


Postdoc positions: turning down alternative offers safely and timely I have a situation that is probably quite standard, but I don't know the right way to act.

For several months I was looking for a postdoc job in computational neuroscience (probably exact field is not that important for the question but just in case) worldwide.

A couple of months ago a quite famous professor from a distant country (Japan) after a Skype interview told me that he is interested in me but he won't take the final decision until I give a job talk at his institution A. However he was busy for some time after our interview, so his institution bought me a airtickets (quite expensive ones) for a date after about two months. I have promised to inform him if I have other job offers.

Later I have actually received two other job offers from institutions B and C (both from USA), and I like one of them. So I said "yes" to the offer from B and they started to do the paperwork although they told me it should take a week or two for them to prepare an official appointment letter.

Here comes the problem: I was told by my colleagues that I should not turn down the job talk invitation from A and another offer from C, before I get the paperwork with B finished. However it is likely to be finished after I have to go the interview to that distant institution A. I have told the distant professor that I got an offer from B and that I put it on hold (at that time I did not finish making a decision yet). Later I realized that even if A professor makes an offer for me, I the offer from B is better, but I did not tell it to A yet. Professor from C also wants me to answer as soon as possible and wants me to discuss future projects.

So if I tell "no" to A and C now, there is a possibility that the paperwork process with B hangs for some reason (for example suddenly they may receive a better application from somebody else during these weeks) and I will be in an awkward situation. If I keep waiting for the paperwork in B to be finished, I would have to lie to A and C, and I would waste A's money on my ticket (though I would be happy to come to A and give the talk in any case, on my side), which is probably a not very scientifically moral thing to do.

Maybe I am wrong in being suspicious towards institution B, but I got an impression that postdoc position market in the US is very tough and everything might potentially happen and I do consider that it is a big luck for me to have an offer from B, as it is a quite famous place and I think there should be people with stronger CV's than mine, who might be interested in this position, announced publicly.

Could you please advise me, what would be the more academically correct way for me to act?

Here are some important points to consider:

Are you a bad person to take strategy x rather than y: no. You are fighting for your life here, while other institutions are fighting over having a nice person to talk to and some very minor travel allowance. Your needs take priority. Maximize your utility and don't think of anything else.
Will people or institutions remember any action or inaction on your part and hold a grudge forever? yes. people do that. it's a game theory thing that was set through natural selection. So, whatever you do is ok, but others may still get mad, to the point of even acting against their own interest just to hurt you. So even though you are morally allowed to do anything you want, acting in a way that will get people mad is not in your interest (and that's why we have the mechanism discussed above, to make other scared of making us mad).
Is the offer from institution B a sure thing: NO. Stuff does happen sometimes. You should not assume it will be ok.

So what can you do? First, you should let B know that you have other offers. You can also ask them if getting an offer from them is a sure thing or if instead you should pursue other possibilities for the time being. If nothing else, it will make them want you more.. If they say it's a sure thing and that you can stop looking elsewhere, and they respected people from a respectable institution, it's probably ok. But just to be sure, once you get such a response make sure to announce it to the world. Write on your homepage that you were promised an offer from them, put a copy of the letter on Facebook, do whatever you need to make sure that if they back out their image will suffer. Of course, in that case you should tell prof. A about your offer, explain that you would still be happy to visit and collaborate, and all the other yada yada.

If you don't get a firm commitment from B, then you should act accordingly. You can let Prof. A know that you have information from B that they may make you an offer (make him want you more..), but don't let him know that you will definitely go there once an offer is finalized. If he has any decency he will not ask: travel money is small change and he is making a new connection, this is beneficial for all parties anyway. If he does ask, simply say that you have not made a final decision and you prefer to only decide once you have a firm offer in your hand. If you then get an offer from B before the trip to A you can let A know that you got the offer and it fits you for oh so many reasons that you doubt that you would eventually choose A. But you would of course be happy to collaborate in the future, or visit to give a talk, and yada yada.


Can I apply to other postdocs after accepting an unofficial postdoc offer? I am a PhD student in Applied mathematics. I submitted my PhD thesis (not yet defended) and am applying for postdocs. Until now I have gotten two unofficial postdoc offers: the PIs unofficially informed me about the offers mentioning the salary and duration. I accepted one offer by emailing the PI. However, I have not signed any contract yet. Till I get an official letter can I also apply to other places?

Any help/suggestions will be useful. Thanks in advance.

Till I get any official letter can I apply to other places also ?

Depending on the laws in your country, it is likely that you are allowed to do so without breaking any law. However you should be very careful about damaging your reputation in case you end up committing to several positions.

In my experience, in academia an unofficial commitment can be trusted and official paperwork can take some time to be issued. This depends on many things obviously, in particular how much you trust the PI who offers the job.

Since you mention that your main concern is about having a backup plan, I would recommend inquiring with the future PI (or the administration of the future institution) about their administrative procedure. Why not also mention to the PI that you are considering other offers? This could motivate them to speed up the process. And in case you feel that they are stalling, then you have a good reason to look elsewhere.


Paper or doctorate thesis? I have completed some work that I believe could well be worth a Ph.D. I have been working completely in private, with no affiliation with any academic institution.

I would like to use this work to start a career in academia. What should I do with it next? (In case it's relevant in any way, I am a mature professional in business and IT and 53 years old).

In particular I'm wondering about the following options:

Attempt to publish it as a paper (a fairly long one, around 50 pages).
Use it as my thesis for acquiring a doctorate degree.

My questions are:

Can I do both? If not why not?
If not, which of the two is preferable and what are the pros and cons?
Are there alternatives from the above two that I could pursue to achieve my goal?

A thesis is only one part of a doctoral program.  Generally, there are also classes, qualifying examinations (to make sure you have sufficient breadth and depth), and general apprenticeship as a researcher.  The goal of all of this is to prepare you for a scientific career (whether in traditional academia or elsewhere), which requires more than just the ability to produce a single project once.  In my experience and observation, life as a practicing researcher typically involves producing another Ph.D. worth of work every year or two---a Ph.D. thesis is just the capstone demonstration that you have been educated enough to be capable of doing it at least once.

As such, I think that it is unlikely that any good institution will allow you to skip straight ahead to using a completed project as a thesis, no matter how good the material.  If you want to use the work as an entry-point into academia, I would instead recommend publishing it as a paper paper and simultaneously using the work as a springboard for admission into a good Ph.D. program.  If your field supports use of preprint archives, this is a good way to put your paper formally out there even while it is going through peer review.

If this is truly the direction you want to go, don't worry about rushing to the end-point.  As other questions on this site indicate, age need not be a bar to an academic career.  Instead, I would recommend that you take the time of graduate school as an opportunity---if your independent experiences give you a head start, so much the better for being able to do even more awesome work during graduate school, and also better positioning yourself for what comes after.


My significant other is a member of a research project that I coordinate. How to allocate funding? I'm responsible for a large research project, with many members and some substantial funding for traveling to conferences. However, I'm now in a relationship with one of its members. How should I proceed regarding allocating funds to my significant other? I'm worried that I may be accused of being unethical if I allocate whichever amount to them. What should I do? Namely, I would like to declare a conflict of interest, but there does not seem to be a way to deal with this conflict without some drastic consequences.

I served for a couple of years on the Conflict of Interest Committee of my institution. During that time I learned many useful and sometimes counterintuitive things about the subject. The principles that should guide you in thinking about what to do to avoid exposing yourself to any accusations of policy or ethics violations are:

You should avoid putting yourself in a conflict of interest with respect to the grant and your significant other, if at all possible.

The point of the “if” qualifier is that, as you seem to believe, it may not in fact be possible to avoid without taking unreasonably drastic measures such as you or your SO resigning your roles.
You should avoid creating the appearance of an unmanaged conflict of interest, period. No exceptions.

The point of “appearance” is that it’s not just the conflict that needs to be avoided but also the appearance of one. You may be the most ethical person on the planet, or you may even know certain facts that not everyone knows that explain away the conflict and make you confident what you are doing is fine, but the appearance of a conflict can invite consequences that are just as bad, and possibly worse (e.g. a headline in the New York Times followed by calls for your resignation, a public lynching or whatnot), than the conflict itself.

The point of “unmanaged” is that if you can’t avoid a conflict - and one of the surprising things I learned is that conflicts can not always be avoided, nor is avoiding all conflicts at any cost even a desirable goal to have - then the next best thing is to find a way to manage the conflict. For example, at many institutions one can set up a conflict management plan, which may involve additional levels of oversight (for example a department chair or dean signing off on your funding allocation decisions pertaining to your significant other, and maybe additional reporting requirements such as you filing a letter of explanation justifying any such decision).
This goes without saying, but you should find out all applicable rules and policies that govern your situation.

The bottom line is, you should ask for guidance from your institution and your funding agency on how to address the situation. Have in writing documents, written (or at least reviewed and approved) by people in authority, which specify how you are expected to handle the situation. Then follow what these documents say.


Posting what I learn and notes from my classes moral dilemma So basically, I have my own personal site where I write about what I learn and study. I use it to write notes and details on what I am working on.

I specifically try to avoid posting anything directly copied from class and anything that included what rightfully belongs to the professor i.e. the professor's lecture notes and etc.

The only things I share are my notes taken from the textbook and what I write for the class after it's been graded. Also, the site is hidden from search engines, but can be still found if people have the link (which only 5 people know of and none are classmates).

That being said, is it still immoral to post what I learn and so forth? I do my best to make sure to give rightful credit, but I still doubt the right to share.

I think in general that what you are doing is without moral implications. You are certainly free to post your own thoughts or your interpretations of what a professor has said in class.

However, it would also be good to talk to your professor and get his/her advice. If you post problems or exam questions you might be, inadvertently, helping others to cheat, which would be unfortunate. The professor might request that you not do that.

Whether you cross over into copyright infringement or not depends on a lot of things. I will guess, but you should verify, that even the professor's notes would be permitted by some, even though they are copyrighted.

But for your own thoughts and words, you are certainly on solid ethical/moral ground. Even if other students find them, it isn't infringing for them to use your thoughts to help mold their own.

As a professor, I put a lot of things online for students to use. I also had mailing lists to which students could share their thoughts and help one another, with few limitations. Making it public/open to all makes it useful and avoids some ethical concerns that might occur (if rarely).

Nor is it unethical for you to simply help fellow students learn through conversations, etc. as long as you don't abet actual cheating. But I see no issues of that in what you describe.


Maximum number of recommendation letters for assistant professor position I am applying for faculty positions as assistant professor. I have two questions regarding recommendation letters.

(1) Is there is a limit for the number of references? For me, I have many research collaborators who I can ask them to write me a reference letter. Most of faculty positions ask for three reference. Is it a good indicator when more than 3 references sent their letters to the research committee?

(2) Is it okay to add one reference who is currently assistant professor and was my lab mate for two years? We also co-authored many papers together.

When reading references committee members evaluate them based on different evaluation criteria. Some place a lot of weight on the worst opinion voiced. In that respect, having more references than needed is a risky prospect. Another point to note is that you’re never 100% sure that all your referees write the most enthusiastic letter possible. For example, they have a student on the job market at the same time.

In my experience, additional letters carry little benefit and potentially expose you to a lot of risk.

While this varies widely by discipline (and by department I’d imagine), reference letters (in math/CS at least, but again YMMV) carry more weight when they’re from big shots. In that respect, a letter from a junior collaborator is not going to have as much impact, especially since this is a close collaborator who will most likely say only good things about you.


Is it possible to apply for a second masters degree in a different field of study? (different department) Specifically, is it possible to apply for a second masters degree in MS&E (management science and engineering) or statistics (MS in statistics) after a masters degree in computer science?

How will my application be treated compared to other applicants? (with a bachelors degree)

It's always possible to apply, whether you will be accepted is a different matter. The best thing to do is to speak to the academic who is the programme director (or similar title), explain that you are interested in applying for the course and see what they say. They will know what the general rules are as well as being able to provide specific guidance. The fact that your current masters degree is in a related subject (different department, but probably the same faculty) means it should be considered relevant.

I applied for a MA in Classics & Ancient History after getting a BSc in Computer Science, and then went back to do an MPhil in Computer Science, so it is possible to move subjects.