Can I publish a research paper without notifying my supervisor (the corresponding author)? My professor doesn’t want to publish and he keeps delaying it. I had an intense argument with him and I feel that if he will publish, he will not include me. He is quite rude to me recently, although I worked so hard on two projects under his supervision. It has been about two years and he didn't publish my work.

Do Journals contact the corresponding authors when a research paper is submitted? What happened if (for example) I published an article without notifying a corresponding author and he found out? What could happen?

No, you absolutely may not do this.  Every author must consent to the publication of an article.

If he finds out, he could have the journal withdraw the article.  They would typically publish a notice about this, which would effectively inform the whole world that you had done something unethical.  That is a potential career killer.  Additionally, a serious breach of academic ethics like this could cause you to be expelled from the university where you study.

Many journals do directly contact every listed author, to prevent this sort of situation.  (For instance, in many cases every author has to sign a copyright form.)  Others will ask the submitting author to certify that they have the consent of all other authors.


Asking to see a manuscript in preparation Is it considered bad etiquette to ask to read a manuscript in preparation that appears in the citations of a paper? (It was cited in a paper from 2001 - I am not sure it has been published; I cannot find it - although the title may have changed...?)

No, it's not bad etiquette.  Most people will be happy to know that someone wants to read their work.  Of course, you should take the time to try to find it yourself first.  It may have been published under another title or in a hard-to-find place (like some conference proceedings).

From the comments, it seems that you're worried about hurting the author's feelings by reminding them of a paper rejection.  I don't think you should feel that way.  Rejected papers are part of a normal academic career, and in any case you don't know whether that paper was rejected.

If you ask me for a copy of a paper that happens to have been rejected, I'll send it to you.


How to react to your work being cited incorrectly or in a misleading way? This morning when I opened my email I was very excited to find a Google Scholar update telling me of two new citations from two different sets of authors each to a different paper of mine. As usual, I immediately checked the papers to find out if the authors were praising or criticising my work (or perhaps they found a mistake in one of my papers!). To my surprise, in one case the authors wrote a misleading statement which resulted from stretching quite a lot some of my conclusions. In the other case, the authors simply made an incorrect claim (details below for the curious). It's not the first time this happens to me - I even got one citation completely out of context once. How to react to this kind of situation?

Details for the curious:

In the first case, the authors cite a paper of mine where I compare two different methods to calculate elastic properties of materials. My main conclusion is that one of the methods converges much faster than the other one with the size of the basis set - in other words, it's computationally much cheaper. For calculations with usual basis sets the first method is much more accurate than the second one, with disagreements between the two in the order of 10% or even 20%. They claim that I show that both methods agree within a 1% of each other, which is misleading at best, because for the second method to agree within 1% of the first one one needs to do a very expensive calculation. That is one of the main points of the paper and it got completely overlooked by the authors.
In the second case, the citation is plainly wrong. The authors cite my paper as an experimental work on InGaN semiconductors while it actually is purely computational.

It is no different from finding any other mistake in a paper that you read --- just write e-mails to the authors politely explaining the errors. It is in their interest to fix them.


Is there a "place" to deposit and, or publish reports produced in grad school? I am looking for some kind of repository where I can "publish" my reports from grad school.

I'd like to do this because it would be great if I could link those works with my ORCID and make them available to the public and to (hopefully) improve my online appearance.

It makes sense to share your work online as long as you make sure to do some quality check. Students can benefit from availability of this type of material and it can indeed improve the online presence of the author.

Quality check

Check for English correction as best as you can. I would strongly suggest languagetool.org as an excellent tool for this.
Do not copy direct parts from other authors, make sure not to plagiarize. This is something that takes time and is often overlooked. Clearly point out where you are quoting and where words are your own. Always give author's name, date and page where the information was obtained. Here is an excellent source in the subject: Melbourne University Student Skill manual
Conform to one citation standard and check correctness of the citations (provide a doi whenever possible).
Use an open science tool, so to permit transparency of the contents. This is particularly important if your report includes statistics. Have a look in the Knitr R package or my own Mighty_Make.

You can list any material you want in your ORCID page. However, do that clarifying which material was peer-reviewed, and which was not. Graduation level reviews goes in the group of non-peer-reviewed scientific contributions.

Where to publish?

This is the easy part, a very effective tool is zenodo.org. Once you feel your document is ready for submission, you can upload it there, and you will have a doi for your material so it can be cited and tracked.


PhD in Cryptography after Master's in Pure Mathematics I have done my Master's in Pure Mathematics.However as we had learnt Cryptography in our Master's Course ,I have developed an inclination towards it.

I have started liking coding theory in Cryptography. I like to write programs.
But I have seen that most  people in Cryptography are from Computer Science background.Should I do PhD in this subject as I am liking it now?

However I am unable to understand is there any prospect of that subject specially since I am a student of Pure Mathematics background.

Will I be able to get a job if I don't remain in Pure Mathematics anymore and start writing codes which are more inclined towards Computer Science.

I am puzzled.Please help me if there is any future of my liking.

My advice would be to find a way of getting some research experience associated with cryptography before committing to the idea of doing a Ph.D. in it. Several advantages to this:

a) you'll know that you'll like working on open problems in cryptography, as opposed to just liking learning about the field in the classroom;

b) it'll give you a sense of the types of research you might want to pursue, which would pave the way for a well-developed statement of purpose in your grad school applications;

c) it could help you make additional useful connections. A Ph.D. application supported by letters from cryptography professors attesting to your research potential in the field would make a lot of sense if you do indeed end up wanting to aim to do a Ph.D. in it.


How to pitch a research idea to a professor as an undergraduate? I have an idea which I'd like to work on with a professor at my university. In my initial email would it be arrogant to ask if he's interested in working with me on this particular topic (he's published some papers on closely related topics), or should I just say that I'm interested in generally doing research with him? I really do want to work on this particular idea but also don't want to come across as trying to tell him what to do.

A small point about language: in the U.S., in mathematics, it might be more tactful and less presumptious (also) to not ask about "work with me", but "advise me on" [the project you propose]. At least to my perception (=old guy) this leaves many more options for the precise relationship. E.g., experienced people can often and easily give helpful advice without really actively participating. At the same time, depending..., they might find interest in doing so. Or, at the same time, they might see that it's better to let you do it yourself... etc.


How to contact a PI when I have been out of the system for a while? I want to do a biology/biotech related PhD in Germany, I have an MSc in the field and some good ideas about what I'd like to research (biofilms and/or synthetic biology, those really excite me) but in short I'm out of the academic environment from quite some time, I'm in my late 30s as matter of fact. For some reasons I couldn't follow my aspiration back in time but I want to follow it now and at my age you just leave all if you aren't motivated and don't really like what you're going to to, especially with a family.

My question is therefore: how to approach a German group/PI in my situation? Especially considering that I don't really know how the German system works and I couldn't obtain letters of recommendation as often the Graduate School there ask for.

I would like to enroll in a Graduate School(or the equivalent) mainly because I'm coming from outside but what I really need is someone who take care to bootstrap me to the thing and give me the opportunity to pursue some interdisciplinar approaches.

The german system is rather diverse; every PI can do their own thing.

For structured PhD programs (i.e. international Max Planck Research Schools; IMPRS) you will need: one or more publications; and good letters from two or more of your formers PIs. Max Planck is very competitive.

For individual PIs you'll be better off with a personal recommendation by your former supervisor.

Your age will factor in as the time between your last contact with academia and now, not as ``age'' in itself. To be honest, this will make things complicated, especially without strong support from a Prof. on your side.


How can I ask a teacher to follow the textbook more closely? This term I'm taking a (graduate) course which is crucial for my degree. The teacher's plan for the course is quite ambitious and all along he's been following the structure of a given text, but he doesn't follow it completely and quite often omits (what I consider) key results from it, e.g. results which motivate or deepen the understanding of definitions or other results. To put it bluntly, he leaves a lot of gaps that the book covers nicely.

It's been a frustrating process and we're soon going to start with a very important topic and I've been wondering how to approach him about this. My idea at the moment is to ask him to follow the textbook more closely, even if by doing so we sacrifice how much we cover, but I'm looking for suggestions.

Final edit (concluding remarks): I've chosen the answer which I think gave me the best course of action and I think summarizes some of the most important points in comments and other answers. Anyone reading this thread in the future should definitely check all of them anyway. They all provided valuable feedback for me.

I'd also like to point out that Shane's comments in chat are spot on. I believe said comments capture the exterior root of my problems, which I was unable to see at the time when the question was written. On my end I also learned a couple of important things on how to deal with these kind of situations.

You may certainly ask -- politely! -- but you should expect to be told "no", and you should accept that answer if it is given.  In most graduate courses, it is the privilege of the instructor to decide what are the important points and how to organize them.

If the course is preparation for a qualifying exam (for instance), then there may be a more rigid syllabus that needs to be adhered to.  In such a case, if the instructor were deviating strongly from the expected objectives it would make sense to complain.

As an aside: since the book presents things so well (from your perspective), you can learn the material from it and consider the lectures as supplementary.  It then seems to me that having lectures that approach things from a different perspective than that of the text is a benefit.  An instructor who parrots the text would be redundant.


Career advice for a Physics PhD Student? I am currently in the first year of my physics Ph.D. program at The University of Notre Dame focused on condensed matter physics. While in undergrad, I specialized in optics which I also enjoyed. I just joined a research group focused on experimentally researching the nature of superconductors, specifically through skyrmions and magnetic vortices (mostly using small-angle neutron scattering).
I want to transition into the industry sector after graduating and know I want to apply my condensed matter physics knowledge even if it isn't directly related to my group's research emphasis. However, I am not opposed to using the math, physics, and experimental research skills I have been developing in a less directly related career path. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for potential career paths, career path resources, or just any general advice on future careers?

Internships. An internship or two will give you a taste of what a nonacademic career might entail and give your employers insight into you as a potential candidate. It's not uncommon for employers to view internships as a sort of extended interview. I have no doubt you'll learn things and see things you hadn't anticipated, perhaps interesting paths to follow. Best of luck!


What could my postdoctoral advisor do, now that he knows that I started looking for positions in industry? I'm a non-EU postdoctoral researcher in Europe who recently started looking for company jobs. I just informed my advisor that. He asked me where, and I said the name of the same city we are in, because that's my most preferred choice. Now, my postdoc is till the end of the year (if not renewed), and I know that I've the right to leave at any time I like with probably a one month's notice.

I initially intended to tell him only after getting an offer, but I felt he should know it in any case, because if I leave abruptly in a month, that'd be a sudden blow on him.

He didn't say much, except asking when I'm looking to join. I said I didn't get any offer yet, and plan to finish what I started, if the company allows that. My only fear is: can my postdoctoral advisor try to sack me because of this? Did I just make a mistake? Our relation is okay (not superb), and I report regularly to him.

What would you do if you were a postdoctoral advisor in this situation? Thanks a lot!

EDIT: Okay he had a small chat with me just now. He told me that if I find a job soon, he's okay if I start immediately, he'd not have anything against it. The reason being that he thinks the project might take longer than a year, and he himself isn't sure about the funding status for the next year yet.

So it seems not to be a bad sign yet.

My feeling is that most supervisors/PIs are aware of the realities of being a postdoc, having been one themselves at one point. I suspect that he valued your honesty, and understands that most people would like a well paid job with stability.

Unless he's shown some signs of being an awful person, I would assume he was asking you out of personal interest, and so that he organise his grants and find a replacement if possible.


Is it common practice to have a separate "Further Discussion" after the conclusion in an academic article? I received reviews of my manuscript for IEEE Transactions.

One question from a reviewer, about a common misconception regarding the technology, is interesting but is not relevant anywhere else in the paper. So, my supervisor suggested that I add a new section after the conclusions titled "Further Discussion."

I was just wondering if it is common practice to have such a section.

Virtually all papers I've seen end with the conclusions section (otherwise, it wouldn't be the conclusions!).

The best way to incorporate such changes would be to include it at the end of the current discussion section. Perhaps you can subtitle it "A brief note on X," where X is the topic of the comment. Alternatively, you could include it as an appendix if it requires a more extensive and extended discussion.


How much does one have to contribute to be considered a co-author (and therefore listed as such)? I am currently doing undergraduate computer science (machine learning) research, and I'm wondering how much one has to contribute to be considered a co-author (and therefore listed as such)? I've found that, during my research, questions often arise – questions for which I don't know where to look, or what I'm even looking at, but suspect that specific professors would (such as mathematics professors). If I occasionally email various professors and ask them questions (for instance, if what I've come across looks like it might be an optimization problem, then I'll email a professor who is doing research on optimization), then would this be considered sufficient contribution to be listed as a co-author?

This differs widely by field. The general principle is (or should be) that co-authors contribute to the intellectual content of the paper. The actual ideas that make it worth publishing.
But there are fields, such as high energy physics where nothing can get done without the participation of a lot (lot) of technicians. They sometimes get listed as "authors". But people in that field understand the intent. The first few authors came up with the ideas and framework. The rest actualized it in some sense. There are a few papers in which the list of authors is longer than the paper itself.
If you are asking general mathematical questions of experts to help you understand, then it is unlikely that they would warrant authorship. This remains true even if the questions are quite deep. If you ask them to help you prove the theorems or come up with important applications that you will include, then they probably do.


Does Web of Sciences indexation implies a JCR impact factor for a journal? Does an indexation of a journal to the Web of Sciences means that it must have a JCR impact factor?

JCR = Journal Citation Report

Not just a mere Web of Science indexing. Within Web of Science, there are subgroups and it should be under SSCI or SCI or SCIE, inorder to have an Impact factor score.

For example, journals indexed in Web of Science, but under ESCI group, do not have an impact factor score.


Removing some citations between initial and final submission of paper Is it considered bad practice or unethical to remove some references/citations between the initial paper submission and the final one? I submitted an 8-page conference paper, it got peer-reviewed, it got accepted, and now I have to submit the final 6-page version. In order to cut down on length, I'm thinking of removing some less important/relevant references that I included in the initial submission.

Are there any general "rules" against that? It's an IEEE paper btw.

You are of course entitled to add or remove parts of your paper to adhere to length and content guidelines of a conference or journal. If such changes lead to a change in the references being cited, then that is reasonable. Of course, it is also reasonable for the journal or conference to determine if the changes that you've made affect the overall quality of the paper. So it cuts both ways.


How to get a second Bachelor's degree in an unrelated field? I was studying journalism in my country, but I realised it's not for me at all. I kind of had to apply there because there aren't really any good schools in things I was interested in. I was thinking of applying to a Physics school in the USA or UK, but all the universities I looked up say I won't be eligible because I already hold a Bachelor's degree, so what do I do? Has anyone of you done that before? Which schools allow this, since top schools won't?

And please, don't suggest I go and get a master's in journalism instead, that is not happening.
And yes, I can do physics and am really good at maths so none of that "are you sure you want it, physics is hard..."
No, money is not an issue for me if I won't be eligible for any type of scholarship.

There are many schools that do not have odd requirements that they only teach those whose virtue has not been smeared by another degree.

Apply to programs that accept candidates regardless of what degrees they currently posses.


Should I talk about myself while writing a letter of recommendation for a student? First time writing a letter of recomendation. Never saw one about me. In this case I'm writing a letter for a PhD fellowship for an applicant who has not been my student.

I know this student personally, but we worked together only while writing the proposal.

As the title says, in this particular circumstance (if it matters), should the letter focus entirely on the student, or should I also talk about my research interests and how the student fits within them?

Only write about yourself if it clarifies why your opinion would be specifically relevant to judge the student.

The reference is about the student, not yourself. Where more information about yourself is required to understand what you wish to say about the student, provide it. Otherwise, leave it out. The recipient will have to make up their mind as to whether you are (for them) a suitable referee or not.


Keeping credit for my work I joined a new lab a while ago, and am having an issue with keeping the credit for my work. Two instances so far:

I co-authored a series of papers with the professor and a senior graduate student. I was always the first author, and it'd be fair to say that I contributed 95% of the research work and 70% of the writing. Somehow the other student was invited to give several talks on our work at various department seminars. I hadn't known until recently when I accidentally discovered his slides in our shared repository. The problem is that, in his slides, he only put his name, and there was no mention of my name/no credit given to me.
Before joining the lab, I developed a research software, which was quite successful and widely used. When I joined the lab, I transferred the development to the lab, and a graduate student helped me to extend the software a bit. When programming, I always sign my code with my name: (C) 2010-2013 by My Name (Email). Just today, when I looked at the code (publicly shared on github), I discovered that the student had deleted my name from all the files and replaced with his name: (C) 2010-2013 by His Name (Email). He even hadn't joined the development until 2012. If people just look at the code, they would think he were the sole author.

Of course I want to keep the credit for my work. But I don't know what I should do. I feel that there is a culture in the lab that people just don't respect the credit for shared work. I don't want to cause heat in the lab. Both those students have been in the lab for longer than me.

Talks with one name only

Here I think that customs vary between having a long list of authors and a long list of collaborators* and only the speaker spelled out on the title, possibly including a long list of authors on the abstract.

* e.g. a slide listing the contributions of all the collaborators.

I'd recommend having a look how other people in the department handle this, and then maybe expressing astonishment (semi)publicly because where you came from it was handled differently. I think it is preferable to have a public discussion and the customs/style of the lab developing in some way than to offend everyone just because your previous lab put authors and not the speaker on the front slide.

Related issue: I like to know who tells what about my work. But OTOH, I think it is quite usual that you don't recognize your own work when a collaborator presents it... There are also drawbacks to being spelled out on the first page of a talk.

Only student's name in code

I think this is much clearer. And, as you say the code is in a git repo, it is still easy to sort out things now.

As a first step, talk to the student privately and request that he rolls back these changes and adds "Contributions by " (ideally a contributions line for each logical step in the development with date and name - but the git messages can do that as well) only where he actually contributed code. Of course, if he is the sole author of new files, those stay "his".

I'm in a field where software isn't (yet) really a category of publication in the mind of most researchers. However, the usual result of not thinking about that is that there is no statement of authorship nor of a license. In contrast to that, deleting author lines is an active step.
As a second step, I'd explain that deleting the authorship lines from source code is as serious as taking a colleague's manuscript and submitting it under his own name without even mentioning the collaborator.

As a next level of pressure, you could explain to him that you talk to him privately as you do not want to unneccessarily endanger his graduation: from a legal point of view this is a clear violation of your author's moral rights (not necessarily copyright - although also the terms of the license could have been violated). Violation of author's moral rights is an offense that is extremely relevant for academia and thus may put him onto the fast lane to being thrown out of his programme without graduation.
Which you also should keep in mind if you need to go to your boss with the problem: be careful not to destroy more than absolutely necessary here.

(Always assuming of course that the copyright is actually yours as opposed to your previous employer's. But, if you find out that you just have author's (moral) rights, but not the copyright that is a point that makes it necessary right now to "heal" the legal issues by putting the proper copyright and authorship lines into the code ;-) )


Are there online resources for finding information on M.S. programs that fit my criteria, without having to go through every school's website? I'm looking for an M.S. in Computer Science and I found it difficult to properly navigate all the available degrees. I'm interested in a particular focus (computer graphics, not modelling and that kind of stuff but how to do use algorithms in order to create graphics). I also have some constraints on language: I currently speak both Dutch and English, so no German or French master's for me.

There are other questions on this site about finding graduate programs and their curriculums, but I'm mainly looking for quick preselection (like a top 30 of options I have). I'm looking for a overview of courses as it enables quick elimination which if I have to wait for each uni to answer will take quite a long time

Is there any website or other online resource that will allow me to filter all M.S. programs by my requirements (language or country, research focus) and then find out information (such as the list of courses that comprise the degree) about the programs that meet my criteria, all in one place?

The most useful I found (which also helped me finding one for me) is Find a masters.

It does let you select a country of your choice, provides a summary of program where courses list, research focus and other things important are mentioned.

It also lets you filter by program type (Dip, Cert or degree), by study plan (part time, full time etc) and more.

Lastly, it also provides a link to university website so you can go there easily for complete details if you like the description.


As a PhD student, should I give a talk at a conference outside my supervisor's field? I am a PhD student in mathematics. Talking to some colleagues on my department I wrote a paper whose subject lies somewhat beyond the interests of my advisor. I gave a talk on it on a couple of seminars.

Unexpectedly I was invited to give a talk on a conference in another country. I have a feeing that my advisor might be unhappy if I go there, in particular he refused to give me any funds for travel. (It might be he does not have any funds, but I still have a feeling that he does not want me to be involved in activities in other fields.) Nevertheless I am interested to present my results to a broader audience and one of the colleagues on the department I talked to agrees to help me with the travel funds.

  Would it be ok if I will go to the conference? Is it ethical with respect to my supervisor?

As @eykanal stated, the answer is simply to talk to your supervisor.

To specifically answer your questions:

1- Yes, it is more than OK to go to the conference. Being invited to an international conference is a great achievement that you should be proud of.

2- I don't see how it could be unethical to your supervisor.

I'm not sure from your question if your advisor has already refused the funds. I would suggest to not overthink this. Budget are generally tight. If your supervisor is a normal human being (most are), he's probably proud of your achievement. If for some reasons he doesn't approve, but does not clearly forbid you to go...well that's a strange situation but you can't guess his mind, can't you? If your relation is good, discussing is the only way to know.

Just remember that the goal of the PhD is to create an independent researcher out of you. Not a duplicate of your supervisor.


My advisor asks about my salary? It seems that my advisor keeps pushing me to answer this question, and I am not comfortable answering it.  How should I respond him?

Update: I just recently graduated and landed a tenure-track position.  The salary mentioned above is of this position.  I was wondering if it is normal for the advisor to know your salary?

If you are uncomfortable answering any question from anyone, you can always tell them that.

From my experience in the US, it is common among close colleagues and friends to discuss salary. In fact, some (all?) states release salary information to the public. As a grad student, I have discussed professors' salaries with them on several occasions. But again, if you aren't comfortable with doing so then don't.

It probably isn't a big deal. Your advisor may just be genuinely curious or maybe he is looking out for you to make sure you are getting paid adequately. I can't imagine someone who invested so much into you as a student to do something bad with this knowledge.


I am so stuck in the second year of my PhD. Should I leave? I started my Ph.D. in September 2019 from University-X under the supervision of Prof-A. The sole reason for me to start a Ph.D. under the supervision of this professor was that I was (still am) very excited to work in this research field.
In August 2019, when I had rejected all the other Ph.D. offers, Prof-A told me that he's planning to leave University-X in June 2020. He said he's not sure if he will leave or not, but he's just planning. He said that even if he leaves University-X, we will find a way to work together. I decided to join University-X because I really wanted to work with this professor, and also I thought maybe Prof-A will not leave this university.
In December 2019, Prof-A went to another university on sabbatical. In March (or April) 2020, he told me that there is a good chance that he will not come back to University-X. He gave me three choices,

I find any other supervisor at University-X
I work with him remotely (Skype/Zoom)
I apply for any other Ph.D. position (including to his new university)

Option (1) is a clear no-go zone for me because there is no one else working on something related to my interests. I didn't choose Option (3) because I didn't want to leave this professor given that I had Option (2). I tried to find funding for a Ph.D. position at his new university but we couldn't find any appropriate source. All in all, Prof-A and I talked with another professor (Prof-B) at University-X and told him to take me as his student in official papers, however, my research supervisor will be Prof-A. Now, I am an official student of Prof-B but I do research under the supervision of Prof-A. (Pretty messed up!)
For the one last year, I am working remotely with Prof-A. We used to have one Skype meeting every 2 weeks until December 2020. Then I went on vacation for one month (yearly leave). Since my return in January 2021, I had only two meetings with Prof-A.  The last meeting was on 19 March 2021. My work is completely stopped. I sent him some results but no reply to my emails. I am not able to find any help from any other professor at this university. I feel like I am just wasting my time here.
In my perspective, this guy, Prof-A is a really very nice person but I guess he's just too busy with his own projects and students at his new university. I don't blame him for anything
Now, finally, I am planning to leave this university and this professor, and search for another Ph.D. position. Is it a good plan? If yes, how should I tell everything to Prof-A and Prof-B? Of course, I will need recommendation letters from Prof-A and Prof-B. Also, I will have to give a justification for leaving this Ph.D. to find a new Ph.D. How should I write all this in my motivation letter/SOP for a new Ph.D.? Is it even possible to find a new Ph.D. after leaving one? Is not it a very bad point that the student could not complete what he was offered? I am so much confused.
(I am 27Y old now. My father really wanted me to get my Ph.D. before my 30, but I think now that's not possible.)

I suggest first to ask your Prof-A explicitly for more meetings, particularly also for a time and date for the next one at the end of the previous meeting. Maybe Prof-A doesn't realise that you are in some kind of "crisis". You should also tell them clearly that you feel stuck and that something needs to happen to get you back on track. All else I'd let depend on how that goes.
As a supervisor I'll normally do meetings with students when they ask. If I haven't heard from them for some time I will try to find out what's going on, however professors are usually busy and may not necessarily chase up students who don't care for themselves. Your Prof-A may just believe, somewhat conveniently for them, that all is fine, unless you tell them explicitly otherwise.


Could your adviser make you commit to work on your paper before signing your graduation form? Here is a peculiar situation I face but I don't think it is uncommon in academia.
My adviser asked me in an email to commit to continuing the work to publish a paper from my PhD work before signing my PhD dissertation form
Let's assume the worst case scenario in which I will not be able to work on this paper in the future.
Does my adviser have the power to revoke my PhD if I will commit in an email, but I will not be able to continue the work to publish this paper?
What do you suggest me to do?

I am not a lawyer, but this type of promise strikes me as a good example of a contract that is very likely to be ruled unconscionable, and hence legally unenforceable, if a court of law were ever to consider the matter.

In a more academic context (since academia sometimes obeys unwritten rules that don’t always coincide with the written law), your adviser’s requirement strikes me as unethical and highly problematic. Your adviser’s job is to approve your dissertation if, and only if, they judge that the work that you have done to date meets the requirements for a PhD. A PhD is not indentured servitude and your adviser cannot exert control over your life into the indefinite future, or indeed into any future that extends beyond the moment they sign that piece of paper. I see it as highly improper for your adviser to attempt to impose such a requirement. If I were a colleague of your adviser who heard about their behavior, I would lose a lot of the respect I hold for them, assuming I had such respect to begin with. And if I were a university official hearing a demand from your advisor to revoke your PhD over a breached promise of this type, I would laugh them out of the room. Of course, I cannot guarantee that other academics would have the same reaction.

I can’t advise you how to proceed, but some options that I can think of are:

Make the promise and be true to your word.
Make the promise without planning to satisfy the requirement. The rationale here is that a promise obtained under coercion is ethically void and you are not bound to satisfy it. (Again, that is the notion of unconscionability I was referring to earlier, but in an ethics rather than legal context.)
Do not make the promise. Explain to your adviser that the demand is inappropriate and hope that they will be convinced, or possibly negotiate to get the adviser to relax the unreasonable condition so as to allow for uncertainties about future events.
Complain to relevant authorities at your department and/or university.

Some people might think less of you for choosing option 2. Personally I think each of the choices I outlined above is reasonable and moral, although option 2 is certainly distasteful and I would try to avoid it if I could.

Good luck!


What is generally expected on language exams for humanities students? Graduate students (at least in the US) often have to take foreign language competency exams, particularly if they are in the humanities. In things like classics or Biblical studies, I might expect a higher standard. But what is the standard generally required of students outside of such areas (but still within the humanities) in the US?

Since these are PhD programmes, I would normally expect a high standard (e.g. at least beyond the second year level in a good undergraduate programme). But purely anecdotally, I've reason to doubt this:

I know one person who was a native Japanese speaker and who used Japanese and German (or possibly English, via some exemption for foreign ESL speakers) to meet her language requirements, but who claims that her German isn't very good.
I know of a first-year student in art history who is using Italian and Chinese to meet such requirements. His comments about his Italian revision and experience suggested that he was at a fairly low level,1 and his attempts to write or converse in Chinese were, speaking as a native Chinese speaker, not particularly competent. Apparently he had to take his Italian exam shortly upon entering grad school.

While perhaps I'm just being too presumptuous of other people, this seems to suggest that the idea I have of language competency exams requiring people to comfortably read something like untranslated Foucault easily is wrong.

1. From his comments, it seemed that I know at least as much French as he does Italian, yet I have trouble reading French scholarly texts with confidence.

I'll give a sketch of an answer, from the perspective of someone at a top 10 university in the U.S.

Recently, I had a consultation about potentially doing German coursework. It was also suggested I take a course for learning to read German that was intended for graduate students who needed to meet their reading competency requirements, particularly since I had placed (however accurately) into second-year German. The reading course presumes no initial German knowledge of its students. Moreover, the course only takes up the time of a single term. I would be thus inclined to say that the reading exams cannot be possibly so difficult, but I have a lot of trouble reading samples for the German one without more knowledge.

Since the quality of my French is less suspect, I'll use that as an example. Looking at old reading exams for French at my university, I would probably be able to pass (or at least not fail abysmally), and I probably have at least the knowledge of almost two year's of college-level French. But what really helps is that I have a good chunk of knowledge about grammatical forms (so I can look at a verb and guess its infinitive easily and more experience with vocabulary than I do in German.

So perhaps the language competency exams, at least when based on more humanities-oriented texts, really aren't that difficult, but only in the sense that a student who knows a lot of grammar and has some good experience of vocabulary should be able to survive.


How feasible is it to pursue PhD in mathematics for a computer science undergrad? As a Computer Science undergrad, I've taken Calculus I, II, III, Linear algebra and Differential equations. This exposure to higher mathematics encouraged me to pursue a PhD in mathematics. How feasible will this change be? How will the transition be from computer science to mathematics?

Any mathematics PhD program will require math coursework in abstract mathematics, which you likely have none of.

You will need enough real analysis to cover all of baby rudin, and a full year-long course in algebra. That's the bare basics for surviving first year graduate level courses for the first year exams.

It is completely feasible if you take another year or two and get a mathematics degree. You might want to consider getting courses in real analysis/algebra/complex analysis/logic and maybe a course in probability and then applying to masters programs for mathematics. There you could take graduate courses, do a math thesis, and then assuming your grades/prestige aren't already tanked, there's nothing in your current history that will prevent you from getting a good Mathematics PhD.


External advisor for graduate students? Some graduate students (MSc and PhD) have a second advisor from outside the university (and even outside the country). In most cases I've seen, the second advisor is a collaborator of the primary supervisor.

Is there any institutional attitude towards having a second advisor from outside the university (and probably internationally)?

What are the terms of working with an external advisor? Does it need an HR contract, or institutional agreement? Who approves the qualifications of the external advisor to meet the university standards/regulations?

I believe this is an institution-dependent issue. Different departments and schools may have very different approaches as to what is formally allowed. In this day and age, however, collaborations, particularly between different departments or institutions, is generally looked on favorably. Whether it rises to an "official" arrangement or not, however, is clearly a different matter.

I don't believe that this is normally done via an employment contract; I think this is handled according to the regulations of the department—so the chair or graduate officer (or whoever normally approves student-advisor matches) would have to sign off on the arrangement. The responsibility for making sure all appropriate procedures are followed, however, lies with the advising team. (In general, this only matters with respect to the thesis committee and matters related to the thesis defense itself.)

The only other situation which might complicate matters is if both advisors are jointly funding the student; then the situation is certainly thornier. However, for such purposes, usually one advisor is the "hosting" advisor who has the primary responsibility for the student, which normally obviates the need for a complicated contract.


Multiple submission of same work for different audiences I have research work that has been conducted and is at the stage where it is worth disseminating to the research community. It is somewhat cross-discipline in nature, and involves some technical contributions and is also of interest to a set of end users who are completely non-technical.

The problem is that, having attempted previous submissions, it has become painfully clear that neither community seems to appreciate quite the same issues as the other. Thus, a single paper aimed at addressing all the issues from both perspectives ends up being perhaps lacklustre, and apparently unappealing from both sides. This is partly due to constraints on paper length, which prevent adequate detail for all aspects of the paper, and also the fact that fundamentally large portions of the paper end up being targeted towards an audience that is not present for the given journal.

Therefore, I was wondering if I could adopt the approach whereby a high-level paper is written targeting the end users of the development and submitted to an appropriate journal, and a second paper which covers the technical aspects in detail without trying to cover the aspects necessary for the end-user audience. Considering that both papers will present the same results, is this an acceptable approach to publication?

This is actually something my group also deals with extensively. A lot of the work we do is focused on improving existing computational methods to improve their efficiency or extend their range. A lot of the time, the actual work done is of very little interest to the end-user audience, but quite significant from a computer science perspective. So a lot of our recent work has been divided in exactly the manner you propose: we present the basics of the method and some end-user applications in papers geared toward the application community, and specialized papers for the methodology that are directed toward the CS community.

The main thing to remember is that the publications should stand independently of one another as much as possible. Some overlap will of course be inevitable here, but you should strive to make the "stories" they tell as distinct as possible.


Is the author obliged to answer all emailed questions regarding his or her paper after it had been published? Is the author obliged to answer all emailed questions regarding the details of his or her paper after it had been published?

From a formal or legal perspective, there is no requirement that an author do anything: you can go full J.D. Salinger and vanish into a hole if you want.

From the perspective of scientific ethics and custom, however, an author is expected to share sufficient information in order to support their colleagues in understanding and building upon their work.  This does not mean they need to answer any and all questions, however, but only those that are a reasonable part of the process of scientific information exchange.

Among questions that a scientist should answer would be help with interpretation, methods, and replication (e.g., "I can't track down the reagents you used: can you please tell me where you got them?").  Just like on StackExchange sites, it is reasonable to expect the asker to show evidence that they have worked to understand on their own before asking.

Among questions that a scientist a not obligated to answer would be:

Requests for pre-publication information (e.g., "Can you please give me your next unpublished dataset so that I can try to scoop you?")
Requests for remedial education on a subject (e.g., "You wrote a paper about protein evolution, so if people evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?")
Requests for personal or otherwise scientifically irrelevant information (e.g., "Do you have a crush on any of your co-authors?")
Straight-up craziness (e.g., "Given your expertise in artificial intelligence, will you please help my trash-can robot learn to irrigate the Sahara Desert from Archie Bunker?" [this one is from personal experience])

Now, many scientists are generous with information and will still help with remedial questions, share pre-publication information with people they trust, etc.  I would consider many of these things a matter of ethics on a broader stage and of good citizenship, but not so much something that colleagues are likely to look down on you for not doing.


What is a reasonable reimbursement time for conference travel from a department? In my job before grad school, I could expense items as soon as I had a receipt and I knew exactly when the money would arrive (typically the following pay cycle). In grad school, it seems to be a mystery when I will receive reimbursement.

I bought tickets and airfare on day 1 of this scenario
I was not allowed to request reimbursement until 6 weeks later, after the conference
The conference ended, I requested reimbursement. 6 weeks later, still nothing!

So for the last 12 weeks, my account is down airfare and tickets, and for the last 6 weeks, I'm down the hotel, transportation, and meal costs. I've sent all the emails I can and have asked around -- the response I get is "The finance department does not give exact days of deposit."

Is this the norm in academic institutions? What is a reasonable reimbursement time for conference travel from a department?

Just my two cents.

Departments pay after they receive the necessary invoice from the student. So, they cannot pay hotels before you return from the conference.
In my department, buying the air tickets is not enough. I also have to provide the boarding passes that I actually used the tickets. That means you can only get the air tickets money AFTER returning from the conference. This makes partly sense, because if you got sick and cancelled the trip they would not have given any money to you in advance, so you would not have to return them back.
In many conferences (for CS), you get the registration invoice at the desk and not when you pay online. Again, this invoice is needed for getting back the money you paid, since most institutions cannot provide funding without invoices.
Logistically you might make a reservation in 2014 and the trip is going to be in 2015. Institutions cannot pay money in 2014 for an invoice issued on 2015. This might also occur for smaller logistic periods (every 3 or 6 months) as well, depending on the country's tax laws.

Bottom line. You should start counting time AFTER coming back from the conference. Expecting to be paid in advance without providing the proper invoices is simply not possible. After that, it depends on each department's bureaucracy on how soon you will get the money. And believe me six weeks does not seem that far fetched too.


Is it reasonable to ask update on recommendations letter twice? It is important to know that I have requested about 7/8 letters per professors ( 3 total ). I have told them that I was conscious that it was a lot of letters to write so I was content with a general letter for most of the schools I wanted to get in and maybe one letter that was a bit more personalized for the school they felt I would have the highest chances of admission.

The nearest deadline is 10 days away. I have asked about this in late January and I haven't gotten anything yet.

I asked for an update in early March and the profs were either working on it or were being bottlenecked by the administration. But since then I got nothing.

The deadlines are approaching quickly and I hope you understand how stressed I feel about this. Would it be too petty to ask for a second update?

I need at least 3 letters, and I have only asked to 4 professors, one of which didn't answer so I think he doesn't want to write me one (for a reason I ignore). I may have made a mistake and should've asked more professors, that's on me. The point is I don't want to upset because if at least one of them decides that I am too annoying I can already cross half of the schools I wanted off the list.

You can stop worrying.

It is not unusual for professors to wait until the last minute to write letters.  Although busy, they are experienced at meeting deadlines and will get it done.  It only really takes an hour or two to write a recommendation letter, and submitting it to 7-8 places is no big deal at all.  What you've asked of them is completely reasonable.

It is certainly fine to contact them, though I don't think I would phrase it as "asking for an update".  I would write an email like:

  Dear Professor X,

  Thanks again for agreeing to write me a recommendation letter.  I just wanted to send a friendly reminder that the first deadline is April 1 (for University Y).  The remaining schools and dates are in the list I sent you previously.

  Please let me know if you find that there is anything else you need.

  Sincerely,

  truvaking

Also, if you have recently made any significant accomplishments that you think they might want to mention in the letter, you can communicate this in your email as well.

I really don't think you will upset anyone by doing this.  It would be incredibly petty and unprofessional for a professor to go back on a promise to write a recommendation letter, solely because the student sent some reminder emails.  Likewise, I think it is still fine to re-contact the fourth professor if you think their letter would be helpful.  They may have simply overlooked your original request (professors get a lot of email).


Research partner switching authorship before publishing to Arxiv? We’re currently publishing a preview of a paper we’ve just gotten accepted to a conference and of the five of us, one member started an Arxiv submission application first. This means that the rest of us were not able to submit an application in lieu of his, even though he did not have the final version of the paper. In submitting the work to Arxiv, he actually switched the originally alphabetical authorship so that his name went first.

How can you force someone to remove their submission? We keep texting him, but he is ignoring us, and if this continues, this falsely authored version will be what is published and out there, but different from the legitimate version of the paper.

Make sure this is actually malicious.  If so Contact arXiv.

For co-authored papers every author should be an owner of the paper. Usually, the person who submitted the paper gives the other authors the password. It sounds like that will be problematic in this case, but you can claim ownership of your paper without the password through the arXiv system.  (This will require manual intervention from someone at arXiv.)

On the contact form there you should probably explain exactly the situation.  They are going to be the only ones who can properly address and sort through what is going on.

Needless to say, you should make absolutely sure that this rogue coauthor is intending to do this and it is not some sort of mistake.  It seems like extremely odd behavior since the paper is already submitted with the correct authorship, so it's quite easy to prove he has changed the order.  Also, once you bring this to the arXiv's attention it could have consequences for this coauthor, such as getting banned from submitting papers, etc, so make sure the act really is malicious before doing this.


How to deal with if you found someone is using your research proposal? I had submitted a research proposal to a group during Post Doc application in an university. But I did not join the same university for post doc. Now I got to know that they are conducting the same research I had proposed.

How to deal with this? Though I am not working in the same area now, but it is my future plan.

Is it really good to use other person's proposal?

Could that topic have been a relatively "generic" topic or a topic that is now fashionable? In which case it is not unlikely that people come up with similar ideas. Fashionable topics are unlikely to be exclusively yours.

However, if it is an exotic idea, you may have been very unlucky. In which case, cut your losses and move on.


Using previously developed code for research at a new place My ex student developed a useful program while working with me and some other students/postdocs in my group.

Nowadays the student is a postdoc at a European university. She has a copy of the code and applies it sporadically. Recently she informed me that her current supervisor requested her to share this code with him, in quite a rude way, because she used the code to compute something for her ongoing job at her university.

There is no reason to share the code and I, as a coauthor, rejected that. What should be her correct answer to her current supervisor?

1) In retrospect it would obviously have been useful to establish general rules about using the code in advance. Is the code public? Is it available for use by any of the original co-authors without having to include the other authors on future publications? Can it be shared with or without consent from the original co-authors? Any of these rules are fine, they just have to be agreed on in advance.

2) Now that the code was used in a new project I strongly sympathize with the request of your students supervisor. I would be very uncomfortable publishing a paper based on a code that I have no access to. It means that I cannot verify the results in my own paper!

3) In sharing the code with colleagues it is perfectly o.k to restrict future use. You can say ``I'm sharing this code for the purpose of verifying the work on your current project, but if you wish to use it in the future you have to ask permission/include an acknowledgement/add me as co-author/etc. (whatever you and your authors feel is appropriate)".

4) Personally, I am strong believer in open software. If you publish a paper based on a code, the code should be made public. However, this is not a commonly accepted standard, and restricted and proprietary codes are common in many areas of science.


Where to draw the line for authorship for a software-announcement paper? I am currently working on a scientific software, for which I want to publish a software-announcement paper in a pertaining journal. While I am doing and probably will continue to do the vast majority of the work, it may be that others will contribute in a manner that brings up the question on their authorship on the paper. To avoid disagreements and subsequent issues, I would discuss authorship as early as possible if such a contribution seems plausible.

In a regular paper, the central criterion for authorship is intellectual contributions, while technical contributions such as a straightforward software implementation of some existing algorithm do not qualify. Moreover (at least in my field), it is rather untypical that somebody contributes only a small piece to a paper such the grey zone of authorship is rarely an issue.

In a software-announcement paper, however, I can think of several aspects that could be considered essential and contributors to which could be considered eligible for authorship:

Developing new algorithms and approaches. While this is clearly an intellectual contribution and could even justify a paper on its own, not all new scientific software features such a thing. Therefore it cannot be the only aspect qualifying for authorship.
Choosing the algorithms and methods to implement.
Devising the interface, usually targetting some particular scientific application.
Actually writing the software.
Testing the software. Given the application, finding proper test cases with a known behaviour can be a challenge on its own.
Writing the actual paper.

Moreover, it is much more likely that somebody makes a small, grey-zone contribution such as a bug fix, providing an example for the documentation or testing, suggesting a feature, or similar. This applies in particular if development versions of the software are published.

My target journal does not provide any guidance on this matter and neither could I find any general rules on the Internet. Hence I am asking whether there are any good (preferably established) guidelines on deciding authorship of such a paper, in particular as to which type of contributions can qualify for authorship at all and where to draw the line.

As the discussion underneath this post shows, there is no set of established guidelines within a single subfield, let alone across all academia, as to where to draw the line.

A different, not unrelated question: what are you trying to achieve with this paper?

If it's about trying to properly apportion credit for the work done in producing the software, then this is a hard problem: there's the work of the FORCE11 Software Citation Group and their paper. But as the software grows and changes, you're going to have to keep making these decisions.

If it's about growing a community around the software, to improve it, get more people to use it and contribute, then there's a thoughtful post here. That's about much more than just a paper, but notes many problems with giving the proper credit when a software project is updated and the members of the community change.

My opinion, for what it's worth: the more broadly you extend authorship invitations, and the more broadly you're seen to do so, the more likely you are to get community buy-in and future support. By making clear expectations about concrete contributions to the paper-writing process itself, you may reduce conflicts around the free-rider problem.


How to silence the voice that tells you you're being financially irresponsible by spending 4 to 6 years doing a PhD? I'm very conflicted regarding applying to (American) PhD programs vs. not doing so and finding a job in industry to have more money.

The thought of doing a PhD makes me feel financially irresponsible; yet, I have concrete research interests and would be doing a PhD for the right reasons.  I've also been told that my application would be strong for some good schools, so I feel I'd waste a valuable opportunity.

How do you decide to do a PhD, knowing that it's the "poor" route to take for the next 4 to 6 years of your life?  It feels like a reckless move, but at the same time, a dream worth pursuing, and that nothing in industry could possibly come close to digging deeper into my research projects that I've started on.

When you go to the industry, how do you silence the voice that tells you you could be spending your time advancing the knowledge of humanity, rather than devising new ways to make people look at an internet ad, or helping big stock exchange companies aimlessly move money from account A to account B, without any net gain for the world?


In my cover letter, how many faculty member should I list as people I want to work with? I am a grad student, graduating in the spring. In my application for postdocs, I include a cover letter that lists faculty members I want to work with. If there is one person that I am really interested in working with, should I just list that person? Or should I add another so that I sound open to working with other people too. More generally, if there isn't one specific person I am interested in, how many people should I list? How many is too many?

At least in mathematics, I would recommend something like:

"I am especially interested in working with X, as her research in Y overlaps with my interests in Z and W. I would also look forward to interacting with V and U, as their work is also related to my interests in T."

This might be different in fields where mentorship is less fluid (e.g., the laboratory sciences, if you would choose one faculty member's lab to work in).

Indeed, in my own postdoc, I learned a great deal from my formal mentor -- and I also learned a lot from his colleagues in his research group.


Does bachelor's degree have to be related to a PhD subject? I did a bachelor's degree in a creative industries subject (Audio Technology) because at the time, I didn't know what to do with my future so I decided to do a "hobby" (regretful, to an extent but many skills gained are transferable).

However, I am now starting my Master's degree in Computing (a conversion course that covers programming, web development, data/systems engineering, business technology and the like).

I am also gaining experience in this area also with my own projects and I already have a sub-field that I'd like to pursue for a PhD which relates more to business technology and technological consumerism - but, am open to other sub-fields also.

I have my mind strongly set to pursue a PhD after my Master's in the same field (or after a few years of industry experience), but I get a little concerned that my rather "weaker" bachelors degree subject (especially since it was split from a foundation degree to a full degree, yet I did receive a high 2:1), will hinder my PhD applications.

Any advice on how I can work around this or what I need to consider to better my applications? Or maybe I have a better chance of doing my PhD at the same university as my Master's?

I see that you question has two sides:

The weaknesses of your bachelor topic (as you believe it is): In most of the cases, the bachelor quality is mainly evaluated for the eligibleness of joining a master program. After obtaining a master degree, there will be no concrete need to check the quality of the bachelor, rather the quality of the master thesis.
Working in different topics/fields in bachelor, master and PhD: On the one hand, of course working on the same topic for several years makes you an expert in the field but with a very limited view. On the other hand, it is very common and normal to work on different topics. I personally know a lot of people who did their bachelors in a topic (e.g. Biology) and their PhDs in another topic (e.g. Computer Science).


Can you still distinguish yourself at a second-tier grad school? I have noticed while reading CVs of professors in STEM fields that universities only hire up. First-tier and second-tier universities seem to only recruit professors from first-tier PhD programs, third tier universities only hire from top and second tier PhD programs, and so on. It seems like it is very unlikely for anyone graduating from a university that's not first-tier to have an academic career. I can think of a few explanations:

Maybe everyone wants to hire the first-tier "brand." Hiring committees could be too busy to evaluate the relative merits of their candidates, choosing to trust in brand names instead.
There could be something wrong with second-tier PhD programs and below that cause them to produce candidates unsuitable for tenure track. Maybe there is something that certain universities instill in everyone who goes there that causes both increased output when they are there, and a long and successful career afterwards.
Perhaps most students bright enough to produce an impressive amount of research in grad school are bright enough to produce an impressive amount of research in undergrad. In that case, most of the good researchers get admitted to top-tier programs, making it unsurprising that virtually every tenured professor came from one. In this theory, research potential is an innate characteristic that universities have little effect on.

If the first dominates, then I should not bother getting a PhD unless I can go to a top-tier university, or unless I think it will boost an industrial career. If the second dominates, I would still want to go to the best school possible, but it would not be completely pointless to go to a second-tier institution; maybe hard work could close the gap. If the third explanation is true, the university's prestigiousness hardly matters at all, and I should choose based on factors like how interested I am in the research being conducted there.
So, in the light of these guesses, do you think it is possible for someone to distinguish themselves at a second-tier institution through hard work, high research output, and maybe a really good thesis - or is the second-to-first tier gap impossible to jump?

First, I think it is important to recognize that the definitions of "1st tier", "2nd tier", etc. are not so universally defined. World or national rankings of universities are substantially based on the opinions of department heads. The differences between the #1 school and the #20 school may not be that large.
Professors also move from "2nd tier" to "1st tier" schools all the time based on demonstrated research output. Therefore, it is possible to improve your value to hiring committees with more productivity.
Now to analyze your 3 options (which I think are fairly comprehensive): I think all 3 have some impact.

Departments often hire faculty with new expertise, meaning that no one at the department is an expert in that subfield. If they are not expert enough to evaluate individual papers directly, they may use as a proxy the quality of the journals which papers are published in, or the ranking of a school at which the student graduated from. However, I think this has the least impact because the quality of an individuals' research publications can usually be assessed separately from the ranking of their alma mater.
"1st tier" universities often hire the most productive faculty and have the highest expectations for promotion and tenure. Faculty at "1st tier" schools may have the best research abilities, skills, or ideas and share these ideas or skills with their students resulting in their students also becoming more successful researchers.
"1st tier" universities can pick the most promising new graduate students, which includes students who had the best combination of ability, skills, and motivation in undergrad and going into grad school. These students are likely to continue to perform at the top.

To answer your question directly, I believe that a student at a "2nd tier" school could certainly distinguish themselves sufficiently to be hired at a "1st tier" school. It happens infrequently because the students at "1st tier" schools have the advantages of being advised by top researchers and being top students when entering grad school.
Nevertheless, distinguishing yourself for a faculty job is hard at any school. I know many PhD alumni of "1st tier" schools who left academia.
Finally, not every school can be "1st tier", and professors at "2nd tier" schools can still do good work in research and teaching. You may want to consider whether you prefer being a professor at a "2nd tier" school to an industry job.


Asked about bibliographic search skills for application I’m applying for a postdoctoral role in the UK, and I am asked to have ’bibliographic search skills’. I’m sort of at a loss as to what that means, specifically – does anyone know? I’m assuming it doesn’t just mean ‘can read a bibliography’. I have a Ph.D., so I’m sort of embarrassed not to know what this means, but there you go.

I would assume 'bibliographic search skills' means the ability to find appropriate literature 'from scratch' as @Tobias suggests. If that's the case, can I recommend a book that helped me with my literature searching, and can be read easily within a day:

Booth A, Papaioannou D & Sutton A (2012) Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review. Sage Publications Limited.

It's written from a health science perspective, but I found it useful in the social science to identify search terms, databases, perform searches, and filter results.


Influence of author on other authors How can I find out which authors are influenced how strongly by a certain academic author X?

A website that offers some related information: http://www.semanticscholar.org. Sadly, they don't give the precise number of citations, but a list of "influencing" and "influenced" researchers based on a metric which incorporates the number of citations.


Have textbook writers really read all the literature in their bibliography? Currently I am reading a textbook (in financial mathematics), and the bibliography is just huge. Pages upon pages of books and articles and whatnot. I'm talking hundreds of sources.

Did the author really read all of those things during the course of writing the book? Is that normal?

Or is it just something they think will be useful for students, i.e. a source they may know as popular in the field but haven't read themselves? For example, somebody in mathematics might now of books by Rudin and what topics they contain, without ever actually have read themselves, so they could use that as a source without having read it, i.e like this:

  for further information about functional analysis, see (Rudin, 2003) [1].

Yes, an author will presumably have read all the material, but not "in the preparation of the book". Typically, if you write a book, you already are in expert in the area and you have read, at one point or another, most of the seminal work in your field, so you don't need to read everything in detail again when writing the book.

I should also point out that "hundreds of sources" really isn't that much. I am a comparatively junior researcher, and my "standard bibtex file" which contains papers I regularly cite already contains multiple hundred entries (and of course I have read all of these at some point - not always in great depth, though).


Co-author conflict after paper got accepted I am a PhD student.

My paper got accepted with minor changes and then re-submitted again and accepted by the journal. In the meantime, I had conflicts with my supervisor who is a co-author of my paper and I decided to change the lab. Now, he sent an email to the editor stating that the paper was not confirmed by him and now the paper is blocked till he confirms. He will never allow the paper because of the personal conflict. Can someone tell me what can be done?

It is unlikely that a journal will publish a paper if one of its authors states that it should not be published at this point (for various reasons). However, it would also be more than questionable for you to demote the other author to only be included in the acknowledgements section (at least if you did not do everything that you could to resolve the situation).

So that leaves you with trying to resolve the situation. One way of dealing with such problems is to elevate the issue. Possible points of contacts could be the dean of your former department or your dean of studies. In some places, where you have a secondary advisor whose role is to help you in case of precisely such problems, then she/he should be your point of contact.

To prepare any of these meetings, make sure that you have a statement of what happened that it is as accusation-free as possible, while trying to stick to the facts. While such issues are better discussed face-to-face, preparing the statements helps with getting your point across in an organized way.


Are there any mobile application for conference attendees? I'm currently attending a conference, and considering that (almost) everybody has a smartphone, but not necessarily an Internet access (because of roaming charges), it could be nice to have an application that could cache the program, the local map, the list of attendees, that could be updated with program changes.

Does anyone know such an application? Ideally, that should be a "meta"-application, that could be instantiated for specific conferences (a bit like Easychair).

Conference4me will do this more or less automatically. It displays the conference schedule including talk titles, authors, and abstracts, as well as maps of the venue, the list of participants, and other information. All this can be browsed offline but the app will automatically update it every several hours if it has an active internet connection. You can add sessions to your agenda and the app also makes it reasonably easy to add them to your calendar system of choice (at least it works with Google Calendar on Android).

However, the app's functionality depends on some cooperation from the conference organizers. For starters, it can only pull information from Indico, EDAS, and OpenConf, so the conference has to be organized using one of those systems, and all the relevant information has to be uploaded. Additionally, the conference organizers will have to ask the app's developers to manually set up the link between the conference website and Conference4me's data stream. It's apparently not a very involved process for the organizers, but you can't just download the app and immediately use it on any arbitrary conference with a website.


Charisma vs. credentials in academic hiring While it's clear that having a sterling CV with lots of high profile papers will be beneficial to getting hired, I often hear from other faculty that, when hiring, they are looking for someone who "fits in", "could be a friend", and overall is "nice". These, to me, are ways of saying the person is charismatic, or at least quite pleasant to be around. It is unclear to me how much this is actually true, or said in retrospect to talk up the newly hired person. Here are my questions:

Have you ever been part of a hiring committee (or just hiring a postdoc for your group) when you and/or the committee chose someone who was "friendlier" over someone who had a better CV and/or gave a better talk?
Why did you ultimately make this choice?
In hindsight, do you feel it was the correct choice to make?
Alternatively, if the most credentialed (but possibly less friendly/charismatic) candidate was chosen, what was the discussion about this? Did the relative charisma of the candidates come up when making the decision?

The final pre-offer stage of most academic hiring processes is the "on-campus interview". This is when the candidates come, one at a time, spend a day on campus, give talks, speak with faculty, etc.

By and large, every candidate who receives an on-campus interview is qualified for the job. Therefore, at this point of the process, it is no longer useful to try to sort candidates by the strength of their CV alone. That has already been done at earlier stages of the process, and the candidates who received an on-campus interview already made it through that process.

Therefore, it should not be surprising that, from time to time, someone with at "worse" CV gets an offer before someone with a "better" CV.  There are so many factors that the department takes into account, and the CV is just one. That does not mean that having a better CV is irrelevant at the end - it is very relevant! But it is just one piece of evidence among many at the end of the process.

There is a lot of controversy about "fit". In the worst case, it can be a way to act on hidden biases, which is a valid cause for concern. You can read about all sides of this debate on in the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed.


How can a PhD student seeking to transfer to another PhD program prove his/her research skills when his job is mostly teaching? Suppose that our friends Alice and Bob are both academicians (academician: a member of the faculty of a college or university) in universities A and B respectively.

University A requires a lot of teaching and administrative work, whereas university B requires a certain amount of research and only a small amount of administrative stuff.

Alice enjoys research very much but she cannot spend enough time to conduct research and be productive in terms of publications.
Bob, on the other hand conducts research since it is part of his job and does not really spend effort to improve his projects.

Let Charles be a member of the admission committee in university C that has an open PhD position.
If both Alice and Bob applies to the position, he will see that Bob has been involved to more research projects than Alice, moreover, Alice has no publications and has spent her time on teaching.

The thing is, Alice does teaching really nice and gets positive feedback from both professors and students. It is clear that Alice can do her job above-the-average. Bob, on the other hand does not even need a feedback. He proved that he can do research by his projects and publications.

Suppose that both Alice and Bob are started working as faculty when they were master's students and now they are PhD students who want to find a position in a different university because of their own reasons.

Considering that both Alice and Bob are currently faculty members, Bob is one step further from Alice in terms of getting the PhD position, if not many steps.

What can Alice do to prove that she can be a way more better researcher given time and opportunity?
Is there any "Charles" who is ready to give that chance?

If you are "Charles" (a member of an admission committee), would you give that chance to Alice? If you would, under what conditions?

"What can Alice do to prove that she can be a way more better researcher given time and opportunity? "

How do you know? From your description, Alice pines to do research but has absolutely nothing to prove that she is a better researcher. Teaching and research are entirely different skill sets; being good at one does not mean being good at the other! She has allowed herself to be stuck in a mainly teaching role, rather than a research focused role. Universities don't just want researchers, they want sharks; people that know exactly what they want and go after it. Alice making excuses will not make her appear to be a shark.

If Charles is interested in hiring a researcher, why would he ever choose someone who has, from your description, absolutely no experience in research versus Bob who presumably has a track record? That said, if Bob isn't a shark either but just kind of drifted from lab to lab and acquired the 15th name on a couple of papers along the way, I can guarantee that they aren't going to be too interested in Bob either.

If Alice wants to do research, then she needs to make some fundamental changes in her life. Her best bet is probably to carefully read her contract with regard to responsibility hours then go to her department and demand a change in her schedule to allow her greater time for research. Then she needs to buckle down and produce and publish.

Alternatively, she can try applying for places and say that she is looking to break away in order to do research, but again research is expensive and she will really need to sell whatever experience she has in order to convince them that they should take the risk on her.

I'm genuinely sorry to have to be blunt like this, but I see no other way. I think there should be far more appreciation for teaching oriented professors in a learning institution. Instead they get some lip service and little else. But you came here for truth, and this is the truth as I know it. Nobody will care about what Alice might do if they see absolutely no background that supports such assertions.

On a personal level as an example: when going for the NSF graduate fellowship, I didn't receive one even though the reviewers stated that the idea was great, the proposal well written, and the research seemed reasonable and doable, because I hadn't published enough papers. As an undergrad, I had published three. That wasn't enough though, apparently. Nonetheless, it hammers home the point that it didn't matter how bright I made the future sound given that my past wasn't up to snuff.


How to get started on a PhD? When visiting my old school to attend the graduation of a friend, I ran into my old tutor. Exchanging stories and ideas, she nearly immediately offered me the option of a PhD position under her.

Now, I have applied for such positions before at other institutions but never got accepted. To do it right this time, I was wondering whether there were any resources available (books, blogs) that cover the early PhD and application process experience so that I may learn from others.

If relevant: I will be pursuing this PhD in the field of modern media, part-time, in the Netherlands.

In The Netherlands, as a PhD Student (promovendus) you will generally be a salaried employee of the University with a 4 year contract (which may be terminated at the 1.5 year mark if things are looking bleak). On the website of the University Association of The Netherlands you can download the CAO which contains information on the regulations under which you'll be working (articles 2.3, 3.1, 6.8 and E.12 are of particular interest). If you are working part-time then the length of your contract would reflect that (e.g. you'd get an 8 year contract if working 50%).

You can also do a PhD as employee of a company (buitenpromovendus) in which case these regulations would not apply. These generally take far longer (as you are performing regular work for the company, and your work on your PhD is tangential to this).

If your tutor has offered you a position, then the application process could be as simple as saying "yes". There is no formal admission process, though you must have a Master's degree in the relevant field before pursuing a PhD (if this is not the case, then it is still possible but more complicated).

In The Netherlands, applying for a PhD is the same as applying for any other job; if your tutor has offered you a position, then all you need to do is accept. If the offer is not yet formal (or contingent) then a normal application process would consist of submitting your CV and then (hopefully) getting a "job interview".


Can I resubmit my accepted paper after I withdraw it from the same journal? I have withdrawn my paper after it was accepted for financial reasons.

Can I resubmit it to the same journal ?

That depends entirely on the journal itself. If the submission process is automated, you could just try and see what happens. But you could, and probably should, contact the editor for information, explaining the earlier withdrawal and why that isn't an issue at present.

But, I assume some journals wouldn't like to reconsider it. And take care that it isn't a predatory journal. They might want to accept it again, but you may have better options elsewhere.


How/when will I know if my conference paper will be selected for a special issue? My paper was published at a good conference (in the field of theoretical computer science). The proceedings mention that some papers will be selected for publication in a special issue of journals X and Y.

How will I know if my paper is one of them? If it is not, I would simply submit it to some other journal later on. In general, will the conference organizers let me know of a timeline? Basically, I wonder if I should just wait for (say) a few months, and if I hear nothing, then assume my paper was not selected.

If you haven't received an invitation a month after the conference, it's safe to assume that your paper won't be invited to the special issue.

Special-issue papers for theoretical computer science conferences are normally selected by the program committee chair (or a small subcommittee), based on nominations and discussion from the program committee.  The two natural times to solicit those nominations are (1) at the end of the review cycle, months before the conference, when all the papers and reviews are fresh in the PC members' minds, and (2) immediately after the conference, when all the talks are fresh in everyone's minds, and the PC chair's work is otherwise finished.

Once the PC chair selects the papers, there's not much else to do.  Under normal circumstances, the guest editors (usually the PC chair, but sometimes other members of the PC) email invitations to the selected authors shortly after the conference.  Occasionally the invitations go out even before the conference, but that's rare.

That said, sometimes additional papers are invited later, especially if some invited authors decline, and some PC chairs are just less organized than others.
If you have good reason to believe that the PC thought your paper was especially strong (for example, unanimously strongly positive reviews, or PC members telling you at the conference how much they liked your paper), it can't hurt to send a polite note to the PC chair or a close colleague on the PC asking whether the special issue papers have been selected.  (Asking whether your paper will be invited is a bit presumptuous.  Just don't.)


Why do research faculty pursue administrative positions, such as dean, provost, president, etc. ? Do such positions spell the end of one's research? At a recent seminar talk, I was amazed to note that one of the two coauthors (not the presenter) was the president of a large and well-known university, since I had always assumed that taking on such a position would necessarily mean the end of a research career.

Are there m/any examples of people that continue to do substantial amounts of research when in a senior administrative position, such as dean, provost, president, etc.?
Do research faculty often become deans, presidents, etc.? Why do faculty usually do this? (I understand that there might be a pay increase, but does it usually indicate that they no longer want to do research as intensely?)

In these positions, one gets to influence the direction of the whole university, rather than the direction of the research of 1 to n individuals. At such magnitude, one can effect more change.

Often people get disgruntled with the way things are run at the level they are currently working. The only way to fix things is to move to more managerial positions. Don't like the way the Masters program is run? Become Coordinator of the Masters Programme. Don't like the way the faculty is being run? Become Dean.


How to find the h-index of a professor? I am an Computer Science undergraduate student and I am looking for my potential mentor for my PhD study. I guess besides research interest, personality etc., h-index is an important factor one should consider. So I wonder whether there is a way to find out about the precise h-index of an arbitral author.

I've been using Microsoft Academic Search. It's cool, it often finds the right person and gives you his/her h-index. However, I believe that this tool has underestimated the h-index of many researchers. (I think so because I've tried typing in some very famous professors' names and the h-index that Microsoft gives is about 10~20 lower than the actually value).

Moreover, since I am mostly interested in Human-Computer Interaction so I am also referring to ACM SIGCHI's Most Frequent Authors Page. The page is awesome: it gives you the most brilliant professors ranked by their number of publications. However, I think h-index is a better metric than the number of publications alone.

I could, of course, go to the professors' websites and read their publication list. But I want to know whether there is a better, more efficient way of finding h-index.

There is no such thing as "the precise h-index".

The h-index is defined as the largest integer h such that at least h of the author's publications have at least h citations each.  But what's a publication?  Do first-author publications carry more weight?  Do ArXiv, technical report, conference, and journal versions of the "same" paper (all of which may have citations) count as four papers or one?  Or does it depend on the difference in content between versions?  (How do you measure that difference?)  Does the quality of the venue matter?  If so, which venues count as "real" publications?  Do survey articles count?  Popular science articles?  Blog posts?  StackExchange questions?*  Do self-citations count?  If so, does a citation to a paper by X and Y, in a paper by Y and Z, count toward X's h-index?  How much (and who) are you willing to pay to make sure you've really counted every citation to every publication?

The different sources of the h-index make different well-reasoned decisions about each of these issues, none of which make sense for ALL areas, even within computer science.

  I think h-index is a better metric than the number of publications alone.

This is a pretty low standard.  You can do better.

*At least one of my StackExchange questions has more citations than at least one of my papers.


Is being socially reclusive okay for a graduate student? I am Ph.D student in computer science and mathematics. I have published a few research papers and working on some papers. I am an after mid-stage student and I spend almost 90 percent of my time in my study place. I do exercise for half an hour per day. Before joining the Ph.D I was shy and now I am not shy, but my collegues around me now find me a strange person. This  is due to the following reasons:

Many times I don't talk to the people whom I meet while going back to my room or some other place. This is because I am in a thinking mode, thinking about a research problem.
I don't participate in group activities as the feedback given by my collegues.
I don't congratulate (much) or wish people around me like on occasion like new year, birthday etc., but I congratulate people around me on their research or academic achievements. Let me elaborate more, I do congratulate my friends and family outside academia.

Although I know my behavior, when working I try to avoid distractions. Many people find my avoidance weird. I can't be perfect as I spend most of the time on research problems. How to tell them I am not avoiding them?

Note that I have many friends, but not like hundreds, but some. I usually talk with them every day.

Question: Is being weird okay for a graduate student?

Is "OK" good enough?

It's "OK" to be strange and reclusive, but being socially reclusive will stunt your career long term. You will not be considered for projects, not be sought after for collaborations, students who go on to success will not be as likely to reference your papers or publications in informal situations, and you will be less likely to be considered for promotions/tenure/etc. Not maliciously perhaps, but the social recluse just doesn't come to mind as often as more gregarious colleagues do. It essentially closes doors unnecessarily. This isn't to say that you shouldn't be true to your personality, but the fact is that success in any field of endeavor, even academic ones, is as much affected by your social skills as your intellectual skills.

Look at the mid-nineteenth century physician Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who identified that hand-washing and sterilization of instruments drastically reduced incidence of death from childbed fever. Because of his poor social skills (note that he was actively abrasive and confrontational rather than merely reclusive), he was unable to gain acceptance for his findings, and unsanitary medical practices continued despite his efforts.


Is writing recommendation letter job for a faculty required? Do professors who are in a position to write a recommendation letter for me "have to" write a recommendation letter? For example, my PhD advisor, can he suddenly (without any reason) say that he won't write a letter? I mean does it depend on their will?
More specifically, if some professor has promised me a recommendation letter earlier, can he suddenly change his opinion without any reason?

As stated in the other answer, no professor has to write a recommendation letters for a specific student. The most common reason is that it would be a letter the student wouldn't want anyway, ie a bad recommendation.

On the other hand, it is part of the job of a professor to write recommendation letters for students in general. So if a professor states that he/she categorically refuses to writes recommendation letters for anyone that would be a reason for complaint to their dean or head of department.


The chances of postdoc position higher in PhD country Are the chances of getting a postdoc position or full academic position higher in the country you are going to study your PhD in? What if you are not a citizen? Is it important to take into account postdoc stage and career path possibilities when you decide the country you want to study PhD?

In my surroundings (Germany, Switzerland), normally it's not a problem to get the first postdoc after you get a PhD in the same country.

However, a PhD in some country that is (sometimes wrongly) believed to have an inferior level of scientific merit may actually block the further scientific degree carrier abroad: impossible to start PhD studies a second time ("already has PhD"), and impossible to get a postdoctoral position as well ("bad PhD").

As a result, it is important to weigh the situation and think where and how to earn the PhD degree. I know people who have dropped basically complete PhD works right before defence just to be able to restart in another country.


Is it commonly accepted to refer to a Master Degree in Statistics as M.Stat.? I have recently obtained a Master Degree in Statistics from Tor Vergata University of Rome.

Can I routinely use the term M.Stat., which has the strength of being much more specific and informative, or is it more appropriate to use the generic M.Sc. term?

You can only use the degree that is displayed on your certificate. I am not aware of any case in which one can make up one's own academic degree just for convenience. The only case of something similar would be when it comes to international adaptations (e.g. the German "Dr." is equivalent to a PhD (except the Dr. med.)). By using "M.stat." you would imply that you received this specific degree, which you did not. In my opinion this would be fraud.


Summary high School Mathematics in the USA I am a young postdoc at a large crowded university in the USA. Also, I am not from the USA, so my school experience has been very different from the high school experience of my students.

Since I am teaching mathematics classes, I wonder whether there is a good and comprehensible summary the American students have seen in their high school mathematics classes.

Given the fractured education system in the USA, good and comprehensible may be mutually exclusive, but the question is worth a try.

Every state has their own standards of what is covered in high school math classes. Many states (but not all) modeled their standards on the Common Core standards found in this link. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/

The topics covered are sorted into the categories of 1. Numbers 2. Algebra 3. Functions 4. Geometry and 5. Statistics and Probability. Each category gives more specific standards students are expected to master.

If you would like to see how topics covered by standards are presented good resources are EngageNY (https://www.engageny.org) which provides sample lessons/worksheets for the entire Curriculum. One note is most most teachers I knew who used EngageNY would modify/scaffold the material extensively for their students. Also to see sample exams JMAP has archives of New York's standardized tests by year/subject http://www.jmap.org/JMAP_REGENTS_EXAMS.htm and also with questions sorted by standard http://www.jmap.org/JMAP_REGENTS_BOOKS.htm

An important note is that Common Core standards go up through Algebra II but it is possible that some or even most of your students also took Pre-calculus and maybe even Calculus in High School as well. If you want to see what might be covered in a high school Calculus class one option is you can look at the course overviews for Advanced Placement calculus https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-calculus-ab-course-overview.pdf?course=ap-calculus-ab and http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-course-overviews/ap-calculus-bc-course-overview.pdf