Web of Science advanced search returns papers not matching the search criteria I am running  an advanced search in WoS but the results don't correspond to my search query, I am getting way too many unrelated the results.

I'm searching in the "Topic" field which includes abstract, title, keywords, and keywords plus. My search is similar to this, the following is just an example but I have multiple AND blocks and then multiple OR within each block:

  (apple OR orange OR "banana split") AND ( calories OR protein* ) AND
  (adult OR baby)

But some of the results only contain keywords from one or two of the AND blocks, instead they should contain at least one keyboard for each block. I have tried both the advanced search and the regular search using the "add row" option.

I have also tried the same same on Scopus and it leads to 10x less results.

Am I missing something? Why the results are not what is expected?

EDIT: these are my search words

(Digestibility OR “energy content” OR “Nutritive value” OR “forage quality” OR “nutritional value“ OR “energy intake”)

AND

(flower* OR leaf OR leaves OR litter OR branch OR branches OR twigs OR stem OR stems OR seeds OR seed OR fruit OR fruits)

AND

(“herbivor*” OR “ungulate*” OR “mammals” OR “grazer*” OR “browser*” OR "mix-feeder*” OR “livestock” OR “domestic animals” OR “captive animals”)

Right, so there are three elements here (let's call them #1, energy, #2, plants, #3, animals)

TS=(Digestibility OR “energy content” OR “Nutritive value” OR “forage quality” OR “nutritional value“ OR “energy intake”)
AND
TS=(flower* OR leaf OR leaves OR litter OR branch OR branches OR twigs OR stem OR stems OR seeds OR seed OR fruit OR fruits)
AND
TS=(“herbivor*” OR “ungulate*” OR “mammals” OR “grazer*” OR “browser*” OR "mix-feeder*” OR “livestock” OR “domestic animals” OR “captive animals”)

With no filters, in WoS Core Collection, I get 107k results for #1, 3023k results for #2, 270k results for #3. (Yours may differ depending on exactly which bits of the Core Collection your institution subscribes to).
Combined - #1 AND #2 AND #3 - I only get 1245, which is much more reasonable. But not the same as you were getting - why? You mentioned in the comments that you were searching All Databases rather than Core Collection.
Trying again in All Databases, I get 265k results for #1, 8490k for #2, 19019k(!!) for #3. And combined, 22532 results. So, we can see the problem here is driven by using All Databases. But why?
Normally, when you search a single database like Core Collection, you are only searching the Core Collection metadata for each article. This is not always as useful as you will find in other databases - eg MEDLINE might have really rich and detailed subject headings, but Core Collection will just have a few keywords.
An "all databases" search will search the metadata in all of them - MEDLINE, BIOSIS, Core Collection, and so on. It thus leverages metadata that only exists in one database even if the paper is found in several different ones - which can be really powerful, or can be really treacherous.
In this case, it's treacherous. You'll note that we get 2.5x as many for "energy", 2.5x as many for "plants", but 70x as many for "animals". So what's up with "animals"?
Web of Science "all databases" includes BIOSIS (if you have a subscription to it). If you open up a paper's record in BIOSIS, you'll see that it includes extensive keyword/subject heading data. This is from the first paper I picked out which matches the "animal" part of your query - it's about congestion charging in China.

Because BIOSIS is structured in a very logical taxonomic way, this paper - and millions like it - will be returned by any search for animals, primates, vertebrates, mammals, etc. And your search includes the keyword "mammals". Bingo. That keyword is massively inflating the results for your third section, and as a result a lot of papers that match parts #1 and #2 but you would not expect to match #3 are showing up as valid matches for all sections.
Drop out "mammals" and we go down to 473k results for that part in all databases, final results 3395 - much more reasonable and in line with the other results. The Core Collection search gives us 145k results for the animals search without "mammals", 1139 overall.


Mentioning my published papers in the motivation letter for postdoc application Is it ok if I mention one of my published papers in the motivation letter when applying for a postdoc position, in the following way:

I published an article "authors, title, journal, volume, issue..." where I used an approach which interfere with the research interests of the "name of research group of the employing institution".

You can mention a publication, but you can also simply refer to what you have done, as in "I have researched / worked on / etc. [subject matter]. I am interested in exploring it further.". If you are certain that the relevance of this is obvious to the people reading the letter, then you don't need to be explicit about it; mention some keywords in [subject matter]. If you are not certain the target audience knows of the connection, then you should certainly mention how [subject matter] is connected to whatever they are investigating.

The full bibliographic details are presumably available in your CV or list of publications (or both), so I would not mention anything more than the title of the paper or some prestigious collaborator (in my paper with professor blargh, we discovered...).


Is re-using parts of one's own SoP (or research statement) considered self-plagiarism? Are the following considered instances of self-plagiarism?

Re-using parts of one's own statement of purpose (submitted as part of a graduate admission application) in SoPs submitted with other graduate admission applications, during same/different admission cycles
Re-using parts of one's own research statement in SoP(s) or vice-versa

It is very unlikely that anyone would consider either of these problematic. An SoP isn't published formally, for example.

People reuse their own words in other contexts all the time. But self plagiarism arises when you publish something that is based on or contains elements of something that you published previously without citing the original.

The reason that this is a problem is that a person reading the new work wants to know the complete context in which it was developed. This is why you cite other works. But it is also why you cite yourself, rather than just reusing your words.

The original publication, itself has a context, not only what it says, but the references it cites. If your new publication doesn't point to that, the reader will find it hard to know the complete context. Scholarship builds on earlier scholarship. Lack of citation cuts the chain of context that is essential for the complete picture.

But the two cases you point to don't require the same chain of evidence to be maintained, so there is no issue.


Finding a self-funded research internship for summer (international student) - any strategies? I have read several questions for this topic, and haven't found one which is comprehensive enough for me and has all this factors that are unique to my case. I have won a special grant from an educational fund and now I can do a self-funded research internship in US. I am a third year undergraduate student majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The biggest struggle to date is to find a good lab and professor to work with. The process of looking up labs and researchers is time-consuming, and my emails rarely get responses. If you can kindly describe some strategies that might help me accelerate the process.

By the way, I want to do research in Computer Vision and/or AI and human interaction. If you have any suggestions for labs or professors, who are doing interesting and relevant work in these fields, can you please write them down?

Additionally, I wanted to ask whether it is acceptable to call professor's office and ask to read my emails, if they do not respond. Will it be considered rude?

Not very organized, but here goes.

Make a list of your specific interests (not just for now, going forward: are you interested in graduate school or work afterwards?). Areas of particular interest? Make a list of potential schools, their strengths (and possible non-matches with your interests, "weaknesses" is just too strong a word). Look which ones most closely match you. Check at their policies with respect to students like you (do they have an office for foreign students, or some equivalent?). Try to contact students/student ombudsman/... for a insider view. Check for alternatives for housing (it can be rather expensive, specially if you need to pay for utilities!). Check the courses offered, see which ones are near your interests. Check what requisites the courses ask for, see if you have them (or can learn them on your own).

In the end, this is a very personal decision, it is very little we can offer apart from general drivel like mine.


What are some characteristics of top quality research work in math? What are some characteristics of top quality research work in math? What do papers in top notch math journals have in common?

Since you ask about top quality research, I'll say some things about the extremes. Perhaps you can extrapolate a bit from the extremes to come to an understanding.

The first kind of superlative mathematical work is one that settles an old problem that many have worked on unsuccessfully in the past.

The second sort, though it may take a while to recognize it as such, is a paper that opens an entirely new field of mathematics. Sometimes the originator may not even recognize his/her work as a fundamental advance.

So, really good math papers are those that, perhaps, approach one of these extremes in some way. An old, settled, result proved with a new technique might be interesting if the new way of proving something lets others think in a new way about other problems.

Non mathematicians often think of mathematics as a bunch of facts. Early learners in mathematics think of it as proving theorems. But before you can have a statement of a theorem you need the insight to see what might be true and provable from what is already accepted. Some of those insights turn out to be valid, others not. But it isn't about the facts, nor about the proofs of the facts, but an exploration of what might also be true and provable. If you can do that, you are doing real mathematics.


Differences in the culture of writing and publishing papers in various fields I have not published any papers yet, and I was wondering on the process of writing and publishing an academic papers on different fields, and their differences. I have seen some related posts here, but none that fully summarizes the steps one typically takes to write/publish a paper. I'd like to see how this process may differ in various fields.

I would say all good research follows the general scientific method, or a tailored version thereof. In some fields the type of experiment and types of analysis are different but I wouldn't say this changes anything major. Research is research after all. The science buddies website is a good starting point to read up on the scientific method.

The answer by @Hosea is a mini version of the scientific method. I'm in the field of engineering and the same process pretty much applies (though in industry you typically do work and then see if you can also publish a paper on it).

In short the scientific method is as follows (from the science buddies website):

If you are aiming for a certain field or journal, read some of the most cited papers over the last year or two in that field or journal, and extract the style, outline, argument and logic flow from there. Your supervisor should also be able to advise you there.

Where you would see a big difference to the scientific method are in the "soft sciences" like humanities and languages.


Can leader position in a team make up for post-doc experience? Well, the situation is following - I'm doing my Ph.D. currently abroad, while still having a position in my home country. It's not a high-ranked university there, but the research institute itself is a very good, new supercomputing centre (40-50th cluster in TOP500 and getting new ones). Now it seems, that if I'll keep my current productivity level, I could aspire to get a senior position, right after my Ph.D.

That said, I'd love to have a family in a few years, but I'd also like to keep an opportunity to get to a better university in a future (possibly with them).

So, do you think, that accepting (if offered, of course) such leading position, could make up for the post-doc experience, if the subsequent publications from my team would be good?

I'm aware, that this is highly non-standard situation, as I know nobody who would experience it.

EDIT

To explain my situation in more detail - let's say I have an opportunity to become a leader of my own research team in a not-so-good university right after my Ph.D. with a chance to do a good research there, as the  quality of this research centre is much higher, than the uni average.

On the other hand, my long term ambition would be to get a research position at some higher ranked university. So, would this university usually prefer man with some leadership experience or a fresh "post post-doc" from some more prestigious institute?

EDIT 2

My home institute is in the Czech Republic.

I'm not exactly sure what your dilemma is. Normally a post doc is valuable because it helps you get a good position (i.e. not as a post doc). If you can do that otherwise, a post doc seems to me to be of little value. Of course, it can lead to broadening your circle of collaboration, which is a good thing, but there are other ways to do that also.

I think that most post docs would rather be post post docs. With real and secure positions.


Will time in a non-emergency medical transport driving job help a med school application? As a driver at a non-emergency medical transport company, it’s a person’s job to complete the process of moving patients in walkers and wheelchairs from place to place. This occasionally entails assisting movement from bed to chair and typically involves wheeling the patent from the room to the van, attaching their chair to the van, and wheeling the patient from the van to their medical appointment or new place of residence.

Many med schools look for volunteer medical experience or shadowing. Would the above described job fulfill this requirement? If not, would it help a med school application significantly in any way?

What you need to understand about the medical school admissions process is that they can quickly and broadly screen applicants based on numerical data such as MCAT scores and GPA. This is the "first cut", so to speak. After that, they're looking for interesting human beings, as much as can be determined from a paper application. Your transport job sounds like it fulfills the soft requirement of knowing something about what dealing with sick people is like. It probably isn't going to help "significantly" unless you can describe the experience in a compelling way. You get a short little space to put in a quick blurb about what you did. Statistically speaking, you're unlikely to write anything that would catch someone's eye. That's the cold hard truth when you're looking through a thousand applications, AFTER cutting out the other 10,000 based on MCAT, GPA, and whatever. On the plus slide, most applicants are going to be writing about volunteering in hospital or working in a research lab, but you have the opportunity to stand out! Try and make the most out of it, but temper your expectations. If resources were infinite, most medical schools could easily accommodate many more students than they currently do. If you don't get in the first time, try again!


Using IEEE Citation style, how should I Cite a Figure, that was based on one in a text? In a lecture I watched,
I found a very good diagram that explains a concept I am trying to explain.
I couldn't get hold of the original image, so I recreated it in Tikz -- with a few changes to make it perfect for what I am doing.

This lecture is not a primary source for the concept explained in the diagram -- it uses ideas from other papers I am citing. Though I do cite it a few times, where the ideas it explained were clearer than the base texts (as well as citing the base texts).

In the caption should I put:

  ... , then generating all the layers below. Right: A DNN initialized using the DBN [1].

Or

  ...  then generating all the layers below. Right: A DNN initialized using the DBN. This diagram based on one found in [1].

Or even -- since the caption is also drawing heavily on the lecture

  ...  then generating all the layers below. Right: A DNN initialized using the DBN[1]. This diagram based on one found in [1].

Where [1] is the index in my bibliography for the lecture.

Related: Creating a schematic figure based on an existing one

The most common way folks in my neck of the woods handle this would be to say "... A DNN initialized using the DBN (adapted from [1])."


How to publish a Paper? I noticed that scientists are one of the most hermetic societies around. Does anybody know how can some "nobody" safely publish an interesting idea, at least, interesting for that someone?

I think that there are plenty of people that have regular jobs and didn't make it through to the scientist/researcher career to be able to present a paper or the like.

Edit: Your question has been identified as a possible duplicate of another question. I think it differs in that I'm not asking how to make a paper and what kind of ideas are suitable. I'm asking how to publish it after I wrote it hopefully accomplishing a paper's requirements.

It seems to me that you have a common misconception about the nature of scientific publications.  You talk about somebody wanting to "present a paper" and "an interesting idea," but you do not mention what this is intended to accomplish.  This sounds to me like you're thinking about the publication as an end in and of itself, or as a way of making scientists listen to your ideas.  Neither of these is the case.

Scientific publications are, ultimately, about communication.  They are part of a long, slow dialogue within a community, and peer-review is a filtering process by which a sub-community attempts to determine "Is this piece of work substantial enough to consider taking seriously?"

If you just want to get your ideas out there, you don't need peer reviewed publication.  You can disseminate ideas through many different types of media, and if your writing is well-presented and interesting enough to others, you can draw attention and affect the scientific world without any need for peer review or even credibility (more's the pity).

If, on the other hand, you want to make scientists listen to your ideas, peer reviewed publication won't do that either.  Most scientific publications are barely read and never cited.  To have an impact on scientists, you need to figure out how to speak their language and how to participate in the community and its conversation in a way that relates to what other scientists are thinking about.

Honestly, this is really hard.  It's not because science is closed and wants to keep outsiders away: some sub-communities certainly hold such attitudes, but usually there are other related communities that are quite open and welcoming of newcomers.  Mostly, though, it's hard because you have to prove that, out of all the vast number of ideas floating by every day, your ideas are the ones that are worth the time and energy to consider carefully.  Doing that requires gathering strong and objective evidence, presenting that evidence in a clear and compelling manner, and placing it in the context of the larger dialogue in the community with which are you attempting to communicate.  All of those are difficult, and if a paper fails on any of them, it is likely to be rejected and/or ignored, because the people reading it won't understand why it's worth paying attention to.

Now, what does exacerbate the difficulty of getting involved in science is the difficulty of getting at some sections of the literature.  High-cost subscription-only journals can make it impossible for outsiders to access key parts of the ongoing conversation, thus making it much more difficult for them to participate.  Some parts of the scientific community have taken good steps towards addressing that (e.g., physics and math), while others are generally quite terrible.  If you're dealing with one of the latter, then many scientists will still gladly share pre-print copies of their articles, but it does make things much harder.


What are some good ways to provide computer labs for the students? Our university provides computer lab rooms for the students. We will soon build some new ones, and possibly re-build some of the old ones, and we are looking for new solutions.

What we have now looks like this:

From my experience, and a Google image search on "university computer lab", it seems similar to other universities all around the world.

But we would like to re-think the old ways and provide a better environment for the students, as envisioned in CDIO workspaces ("Workspaces and laboratories that support and encourage hands-on learning of product and system building, disciplinary knowledge, and social learning").

Perhaps a new floor plan with smaller rooms,
or new furnishings, something like what is described in
New Design and Synergistic Collaboration Revitalize Gallaudet University's Harkin Computer Lab?

We would like to hear from others who can share experiences from some alternatives. What have you tried? Did it work?

Just a couple of comments from local experience (CS Biased).

When building your lab, you have to ask what it is that makes it special. In many universities, you can expect that some very high fraction of the students are going to have their own laptops (this will vary by discipline, of course). Simply providing a generic computer may be a waste of resources -- a desk and a power-plug, with an external monitor and keyboard could be sufficient.

My take is that a computer lab today should serve a distinct purpose: Teaching a course on computer graphics: Have a lab with beefy hardware that will minimize waiting time when attempting renders. Teaching a physics lab? Perhaps have a data-capture system integrated into the workstations.

In the same vein, labs get used more when students see the value of going to the lab. A lab with large (or even dual) monitors will get used more, because it's A) less likely the students have that equipment at home B) more likely the students will understand the value of using that lab -- higher productivity  for example.
Consider a 'virtual lab': If the reason the lab is there is because of a peculiar software requirement, think about providing a virtual machine instance of the lab machine for the students to use at home. This can ease the grading workload on TAs too, by eliminating platform differences as an excuse.


Decision letter: disagreed with few comments I received the decision letter for the manuscript I submitted to one of the top journal in the area of network security. The editor recommended the publication of article after minor revision but I disagree with few arguments made by a review and also highlighted by the editor in his own recommendation.
I know it is acceptable to disagree the reviewer's comments but in my case editor also emphasized same argument which is made by the reviewer.
The reviewer and editor appreciated the performance evaluation we made in article but also asked for adding the simulation. Even though we already implemented the scheme in an automated protocol analysis tool, presented the results and discussed comprehensively.

I am a bit confused because at this stage I don't want to miss the golden opportunity of publishing my work in a top notch journal. Maybe I am misunderstanding what exactly editor want to ask. I decided to write an email to editor but my colleague stopped me and said it will not give a positive impression.

What should be my next step?

Implement the protocol scheme in another tool (which in my opinion is strange thing)?
Submit a response with my revision that addresses the rest of the arguments and explains why I disagree with few comments (which might push our article for another cycle of revision or can be rejected)?
Send a personal email to the editor asking for clarification (which might make a poor impression on the editor)?
Something else?

A general principle that may increase your chance of acceptance is as follows: the reviewer is always right.

Of course, this does not mean that you cannot actually disagree with the reviewer. But at least for your answer letter, you should package your disagreement so that it can be understood as agreement. For example:

If the reviewer criticizes the lack of a performance experiment that you actually described in your draft, say "We agree that a formal validation alone would be insufficient to show the benefits of our technique. In fact, our previous draft already contained a section describing its implementation in a protocol verification tool and a simulation based on that implementation (Sect. X). However, we see that the structure of the paper was such that this section could easily be overlooked. In the updated submission, we have improved the structure of the paper as follows: (describe small changes)"
If the reviewer critizes the lack of a usability experiment (because you have concentrated on performance experiments), say: "We further agree that usability is another important concern of XYZ schemes. While the current submission focuses on the performance aspect, we have updated the Future Work section to give an outlook on planned user studies."


How to deal with a student who insists on getting a higher grade? Student presentations were a part of my grading policy in one of my classes. I had a student who tried hard to get a higher grade in the class. But after his poor presentation, he persistently asked me to give him full credit on his presentation. I told him that his presentation was not good enough to get full credit. But he has persisted and persisted in asking for full credit.

The student told me that this is what he does in all of his classes. How should I deal with this behavior? He does not deserve the full credit he says he needs.

There are multiple issues here.

The first is a student persisting, pushing for higher grades. For this, you should see the link scaaahu left What to do about "grade grubbers?" If you continue to entertain this student they will keep pushing. Why would they stop? There is no cost and a chance for a gain. However, you need to be strong and clear. "You got this grade because of your performance. You want a better grade then give a better performance."

Second issue, which I think you mentioned (but I might be mistaken here) is students needing a higher grade than they deserve. I just dealt with this issue (again) this past month. The student (and even an admin on behalf of the student) were practically pleading with me saying "I really need a higher grade, I know the semester is over, and I know I did not do a good job, and I know I misbehaved in class, but could you pleeeaaaase give me a higher grade?"

When you encounter this second kind of issue remember that you are acting as a judge. Because of this, your decision is going to set precedent which will be held against you (and perhaps others) in the future. So, if you really want what is best for all students (including the one asking) then you must hold steady and show that students must do the work for the grade they want. Otherwise, they will think there is a way they can avoid the work and still get good grades and that is clearly not the signal we, as educators, should be sending.

In short, tough love and make sure they respect the educational process (don't allow them to badger you).


How to escalate a complaint about errors produced by a journal from the Nature publishing group when Editor doesn't respond We have a scientific paper that was published at the beginning of this year in "Scientific Reports", an open-access journal by the Nature publishing group. However, upon publication, as authors we were shocked to see some of the figures (which were uploaded to the journal's website during submission) altered in an unacceptable way that changes the scientific meaning of the paper. It was clearly a "production" error during the final processing of the manuscript by the publishing team.

We have since been complaining to the journal and its Chief Editor (for several months now), but without any meaningful response from them; the Editor never bothered replying and another assistant promised to fix the errors but nothing happened.

As authors we are very frustrated to see our work being distorted online (in front of the readership) and we don't know how to complain about such negative experience and get the errors fixed.  Any advice on who to complain to or who can escalate this seriously with the editor/team of this journal would be appreciated?

As authors we are very frustrated to see our work being distorted online (in front of the readership)

Release a technical report which doesn't contain these mistakes and explain in the report that the errors were made by the publishing team.

  we don't know how to...get the errors fixed.

It seems you have exhausted the usual, informal routes. Perhaps you can escalate with your university's legal team, since there's surely a breach of contract which reflects badly upon the university. A strongly worded legal letter will hopefully prompt action.


What are good resources to read up on funding policies, especially pertaining to biology in the United States? I am a biology PhD. student in the United States. I would like to know a little bit more on how to navigate the politics and processes that guide grant funding. In addition to this I am looking for good resources to keep up with news that might impact or change these policies. I guess in short, what are some reputable sites, blogs, news sources, literature or books to help with this?

By tracking policy I meant any good resources that track any legislature or incentives that are being passed that might impact the amount of money going into grant funding. I am also just genuinely interested in the grant funding process or any insightful resources on how to best navigate the whole process.

There are a few blogs that I find highly informative regarding the politics, changes, and historical trends affecting science funding in the United States.

Drugmonkey often blogs about the NIH. Recent examples include:

NCI will ease that difficult transition to postdoc
Congress let the NIH drop the HIV/AIDS set-aside: Implications for NIDA?
RFAs do not narrow the NIH portfolio, quite the opposite.
NIH grant application changes are in the offing

Prof-like Substance blogs a fair bit about goings-on affecting the NSF, especially IOS and DEB divisions and also generally the BIO directorate, including historical trends and recent changes in proposal and funding procedures. Recent examples:

Your DEB panel summary will look a bit different this year
What you learn from reviewing a batch of proposals
My love/hate relationship with NSF preproposals
How do we make NSF science more sustainable?
Some depressing NSF DEB stats

There's also the blog of the NIH Office of Extramural Research, which is often very informative. I especially appreciate the posts that reveal data about internal workings and funding patterns of the NIH. Examples:

Understanding the Capacity of NIH’s Peer Review System
What are the Chances of Getting Funded?
Lab Size and Strategic Support of Science: Thoughts on Finding the Right Mix
Update on the Postdoctoral Benefit Survey

Science Insider reports on science policy. Examples include:

Decision to end monkey experiments based on finances, not animal rights, NIH says
NIH releases first agency-wide strategic plan in 2 decades
Budget agreement boosts U.S. science


What advantages do libraries offer over the internet for doing a literature survey in Mathematics or CS Currently my literature surveys do not involve trips to the library and I am wondering if I am missing out on something important. What sort of material/knowledge can the library provide that I would miss on google scholar.
Thanks

Almost none.

I recently wrote a research survey, while on sabbatical at an institution without a physical library, but with extensive electronic subscriptions.

I never missed having physical library access, even for papers dating back to the 1840s.  (In fact, the historical literature was more likely to be freely available than papers from the 1980s.)  Occasionally I had to use my home university's VPN to get access to a different subset of the electronic literature, and there were one or two books that I had to download via bittor—sorry, that I had to borrow from colleagues down the hall.  Yeah, that's it.


What are some strategies for using automatic grading technologies to get students to express their reasoning? We currently use an online quiz tool to give students questions in some of our engineering classes. These questions might be simple or very challenging, but at the end of all of them the students are required to put in "the answer" - a numeric value, or rarely a formula they've derived.  These quizzes are run every week, and are basically a sneaky way of getting students to do homework problems.  In that, they are very successful.  The quizzes are basically open-everything - they can google things, talk amongst themselves, ask us anything etc.

However, we are becoming aware that this type of quiz leads students to race to find the right equation, plug in the right numbers, and move on.  As an example, one of the questions from a recent circuits quiz was relatively straightforward in terms of the circuits concepts, but required careful planning of the math in order to avoid any errors.  We've been tracking the questions that we are asked during the quiz, and almost universally the students 100% understood the circuits concepts but were making math errors.  This is actually a good thing - we want to encourage students to learn to structure their reasoning in a careful, well-planned way, so we are OK with students struggling at it.  However, the question doesn't allow for any way to give feedback on it.   The answer either is or is not numerically correct.

Obviously we can have the students submit to us and we can evaluate them directly, but that isn't the point.  An automatic grading system isn't ever going to be able to give students the same level of feedback as a human TA, but I feel that we are not using it to its fullest potential to give students feedback on their process.

What are some strategies we can use for question design in automatically graded quizzes that might help here?

I think you've hit the limit on what automatic grading technology can achieve at this current point in time. Generally, this technology is only going to allow you to automatically evaluate questions with pre-defined answers. This doesn't work for theory or structuring. It probably isn't going to, either.

However, you can use it to evaluate concepts. I'm not exactly sure how your class works, but here are some example concept questions.

  Given [Situation X], what methodology would you use to solve [Problem Y]?

The answer would be from multiple choices.

You also combine this with over method comprehension. Let's do true/false.

  [Method X] is the process of..... (True/False).

From there, you can then start going through some actual calculation questions. If structured correctly, you can deduce the information you're trying to achieve.

If the student does well on the conceptual questions and bad on the math questions, they likely made some arithmetic errors.
If the reverse is true, the student probably just memorized the formulas.

These situations aren't always going to be true, though. They will never be as accurate as a human evaluating a student's process. But the estimates may still prove useful.


Sending preprints to colleagues I recently submitted a journal article and it is under review. I have not heard back yet. I am in contact with a potential collaborator, and I think it would be beneficial for her to read I have in the submitted paper. Is it advisable to send out preprints that have yet to be published? Rejection of a submitted manuscript is always a possibility.

I frequently privately share pre-prints that have not been published anywhere (not even pre-print servers) with colleagues who I know and trust.  I often won't say where it's under review, however, just because it's kind of pointless to say a place it might be rejected from.

In fields where pre-print archives like arXiv.org are used, once you've put it up in such a pre-print server, it's got a public date stamp and it's entirely reasonable and safe to share with anybody.  Likewise, once a paper has been accepted and is just waiting to appear, I feel it safe to share pre-prints privately.

With something that is under review and not on a pre-print server, however, I would not share it with people who I do not already know and trust.


Does anyone know how long the peer review process usually takes in the human-computer interaction journal Does anyone know how long the peer review process usually takes in the human-computer interaction journal (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hhci20/current)?
I couldn't find any information in their website

I looked at your link... for the first article I clicked on we see:

  Received 28 Apr 2015, Accepted 16 Aug 2016, Accepted author version posted online: 01 Sep 2016

So it looks like 16 months in that case.


How to deal with students leaving the class for 10 min during the lecture? In the freshman classes I teach (the class is like 30-35 students), some students would step out the class for 10-15 minutes and come back. The class time is 1 hour and 15 min. This is always interrupting.

I have asked the class before that this is a poor classroom etiquette, you have 15 min between classes to do whatever you want, so if you leave the class during the lecture please do not come back. Yet, they still do it.

Anybody is facing similar situation? and how you deal with it?

Clarification: I made it clear in class that if you need to leave, please inform me in advance. Or if you have a medical condition that requires you to leave regularly, please let me know. My question is not about those cases

The existing answers seem to me extreme.  I don't think some sort of draconian blanket "leaving-the-room policy" is needed here.  I would suggest the following:

For students leaving occasionally: Ignore it. They are adults and sometimes things in their lives may take higher priority than your class (e.g. going to the bathroom, feeling unwell, family emergencies, etc).  If it's distracting to you, well, deal with it.  It's a classroom, not a funeral, and you are a professional.  Take a breath and get back to teaching.
If you see a particular student leaving often: Have a private word with them to see if things are okay.  They may have special circumstances that you don't know about (chronic illness is one distinct possibility).  Once you know their situation, you may be able to offer specific suggestions that will reduce the disruption and/or get them more engaged in the class.
If, after talking to them, you are convinced they are just walking out from spite, and they won't stop: Follow your institution's policy on disruptive students.  Your department chair should have further guidance.  It may ultimately be necessary to drop them from the class.

A short break in the middle of a 75-minute class is a reasonable idea, but I would keep it very short: perhaps 1-2 minutes, enough to stand up and stretch, not more.  It should not significantly reduce the amount of time students spend on task.  (Otherwise, as mentioned above, you may encounter problems with your institution's authorities that your class does not provide as much instructional time as promised by its number of credit hours.  Moreover, some students will see it as wasted time and resent it.)  Better yet, break up the lecture with some other sort of productive activity (small group discussions, problem solving, etc).

I don't think it's appropriate to publicly shame students for poor etiquette, or shut them out of class if they leave.  You will unfairly punish students who legitimately need to step out for a few minutes, and anyone who is doing it from spite or boredom will just be further alienated.


Can you get a tenure-track position in philosophy with a J.D.? As stated in the title, I'm wondering if someone could shed some light on whether it is possible to land a tenure-track position in philosophy with a J.D. By way of background, I double majored in philosophy and psychology, and I am heading into my 3rd year of law school. A life as an academic sounds more appealing than it did a few years ago when I chose law school over a Phd., and I'm curious if a J.D. could suffice. Any helpful insight on this topic would be greatly appreciated!

Realistically, no.

There's more philosophy PhDs looking for jobs than jobs available in philosophy, and your undergraduate experience while helpful probably won't make you stand out as an expert in philosophy. Or to put it another way, while you've been earning your J.D. which prepares you for law, philosophy PhD earners have been studying the very subject material they will teach.

But you might be eligible for positions where they are looking for someone in philosophy of law. Specifically, if they want someone with practical experience (but then they wouldn't want you straight out of your J.D.). Probably a good way to ask this question would be to e-mail Brian Leiter (or someone else) who works in law and philosophy.


Advisor wants me to take ownership of my projects, but shoots me down whenever I contribute my own ideas My advisor says I should take ownership of the project I'm working on, so I can get to the point where I know more about it than he does.  But it seems that every time I do something extra, that I do in addition to (not instead of) what he told me to do, he finds something wrong with my idea, and wants me to do exactly what he told me to do instead of letting me carry out my idea.  How can I take ownership if I can't contribute my own ideas?

It seems like if I wanted to contribute my own stuff it would be an uphill battle, and I would need to defend my ideas very well, and fight him every step of the way.  It's a lot more work than just listening to him, and half the time he wouldn't let me implement it anyway.  So frankly I do not see the point anymore.

How can I take ownership if I can't contribute my own ideas?

Ownership is not just about contributing ideas. Everyone has "ideas." Rather, complete ownership to my (engineering) mind involves the following:

Understanding fully what the goal of the project is, what has been done before, why what has been done before won't work, and what makes this new project so challenging with respect to the state-of-the-art.
Determining possible courses of action (ideas, as you say) to achieve the new, challenging goal.
Using your expertise (or developing expertise, as the case may be) to come to a determination of the pros/cons of each potential solution (i.e., idea).
For the most promising potential solutions, implement/code/build prototype, etc., obtain needed feedback of how well or poorly it works, try the next "idea," if need be. Rinse, repeat.
Write up your results using compelling/convincing arguments, submit, give convincing talks at seminars, conferences, job talks, etc.

Perhaps you have not done much of the writing up phase (I don't know, you didn't mention it in your post). But, the writing phase can be fairly grueling: reviewers of your papers are not going to show the same compassion that your advisor shows you. The world of science is not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You must make a very compelling case as to why what you did makes sense for the problem you are aiming to tackle, why the results you obtained matter, why your idea is better than some other idea, etc. That is, you need to show people that you know in and out why you are doing what you are doing. Your advisor casting doubts on your "ideas" is no different than what the world of science does daily to all of us. The main difference being: your advisor cares, the rest of the scientific world doesn't (at least, not initially).

  It seems like if I wanted to contribute my own stuff it would be an uphill battle, and I would need to defend my ideas very well, and fight him every step of the way.

Exactly, see my points above. This project is, after all, your baby, not his. The life of a researcher is an uphill battle.

  But it seems that every time I do something extra, that I do in addition to (not instead of) what he told me to do, he finds something wrong with my idea, and wants me to do exactly what he told me to do instead of letting me carry out my idea.

This statement right here shows (to me, anyway) that you are not taking complete ownership of your project. The notion of doing something "extra" has no place in total ownership. This is your project, there are no extra credit points to be doled out: everything you are doing for this project is for you to show the world how you kicked this project in the behind.

  So frankly I do not see the point anymore.

Although I don't know your advisor, I would say that it sounds like your advisor is trying to help you do what any sane, decent PhD advisor would do: to help you along the way to becoming a great, independent researcher. My advice would be to think about the above points. After you get your PhD, the feedback you get about what you are doing in your research goes way down: be grateful for the feedback your advisor gives you about your ideas during this stage of your career.

I think if you take a more proactive approach to your work, and do your best, you can have a rewarding research career. Don't give up!


Re-applying to a Ph.D. program after acceptance? What would happen if I were accepted into a Ph.D. program but declined it later in order to work in industry. Would this have any beneficial or negative impact on a future application to this same university and Ph.D. program?
My field is computer science.

Its hard to make generalizations due to the varying selectivity of programs. That said, there are a finite number of first-round offers any graduate program can make. In our department, if we ‘spent’ one on a candidate who then decided not to take it, we would probably hesitate to accept them the next time.
That said, a few years later the people reviewing applications may have changed, and university IT systems vary, so in a large graduate program they may not even know that you had applied in the past.


Is it ethical to use a recommendation letter from a deceased professor? She was a really nice professor and she wrote me a good recommendation letter that resulted in a lot of good results with applications. Recently, this professor died from brain cancer, which was a fast and shocking death for me.

Tomorrow is the deadline for a grant. What should I do? Is it professional to use letters from the deceased?

If I cared enough about a person to write a letter of recommendation, I would be pleased to think that one day after I am gone that the person could use my letter for their benefit.

You will possibly benefit from this recommendation and possibly someone else will suffer if you are selected based upon the recommendation; however, competition is not generally considered unethical.

There are no legal questions raised that I can imagine.

It seems unconventional, but not extreme.

My feelings are that it would be ethical to use the letter.


Can a UK research council-funded PhD change direction to fall outside the scope of the RC? I am in my first year of a four year PhD programme in the UK. It's through an interdisciplinary doctoral training centre (DTC), and is funded by the EPSRC (who funds a certain number of places at the DTC, who then accepted my application and so granted me the funding). So the funding is administered by my university, but it comes from EPSRC and I am still bound by their funding rules.

This year I am undertaking a number of relatively short research projects, and in September I will submit a project proposal for the remaining three years. It has been stressed many times by my programme directors that the main project must fall within EPSRC's remit, and that the proposal will likely be checked by the EPSRC. For my short projects I have been careful to satisfy this requirement and have made direct reference to EPSRC guidelines in my proposals to ensure that I stay within the remit.

My question is this: suppose I submit a project proposal which gets approved by the EPSRC and I start the project sincerely intending to follow through on my proposal. But over the course of the project various unforeseen issues and distractions the project changes, and moves into an area not covered by my funding research council. Will this cause me problems down the line? Or once I've cleared the hurdle of the project proposal, will I be in the clear, funding-wise?

It is a serious problem if the unforeseen issues make it impossible to fulfill the terms of the grant.  You will need to work with your programme directors about that.

If the unforeseen issues and distractions merely make you prefer not to fulfill the terms of the grant, than too you could ask your programme directors.  But don't be surprised if they prefer that you do fulfill them.


Should a phd student try present a review paper in a conference? I am a PhD student and I am doing a literature review for my dissertation. Despite the fact that I am working on the topic, I am not an expert; but I have enough information because of my previous research during MSc and have a published paper in my CV.

I submitted an abstract of the review paper for oral presentation in the most important conference about the topic and it was accepted. The review is about the developments and contributions from researches in some countries. Then, I told my advisor and he suggested me not to submit the final paper because he thinks that kind of review paper must be done by experts, not by PhD students (it would seem such as teaching to experts); further he thinks I will spend a lot of time which should be spent on my PhD dissertation. I really want to present the review; however, I do not want to contradict my advisor.

Do you think it is convenient to present the paper?

What is the contribution of your paper going to be? It's a review paper, so you're not going to be contributing any new techniques or results. You say you're not an expert so you're not likely to make any deep connections between different areas of the field or between your field and other areas of study or present any great insights about why things are the way they are, where the field has come from, how it got where it is and where it's going to go next. So what is the contribution?

The usual deal with a conference talk is that you stand up and tell people about your work. They want to listen because they don't know about what you did and you understand it better than they do. What you're proposing is that you stand up and tell them about their work. They already know what they did and you're not an expert on it, so they (at least, some of them) understand it better than you. Why do they want to listen?

Your main motivation seems to be to score "CV points" by presenting at the conference. That could easily be nullified by giving yourself a reputation for not doing research and giving superficial talks with nothing much new in them.


J1 or J2 visa for post-doc Me and my husband both are accepted from US universities for post-doc. The universities will not pay us for post doctoral work. My husband won a scholarship from our country for 1 year, but unfortunatelly I couldn't. He will apply for J-1 visa. My question is can I do post-doc with J2, or should I apply for J1? As applying seperately for J1 requires more personal foundation, we would prefer J2 for me. As I will not receive any payment from the university should I apply for working permission (EAD) for J2? Or is it best to apply for J1 at the beginning? Thanks for your answers..

You should apply for J-1.

I had exactly this question when my wife got accepted for a postdoc in the USA.  She started before me.  I was told that although it may be possible to work on a spousal visa, it is far easier to get J-1 directly.

Note: One difference was that we both got paid.  An unpaid postdoc sounds quite exploitative to me, to be honest.


How to decide whether to publish your paper in conference proceedings, as a journal article, or as a book chapter? I thought that this simple question has been already asked here on Academia, but it seems to that it did not happen (or, I was not able to find it).
So, I will ask it.

You have accomplished some good results in your scientific project, and you want to publish a paper about it.
How do you decide you would like it to be published into some conference proceedings, or as a journal article, or as a book chapter?

I am considering that all these three options envisage peer review, and are all top-A destination for your paper.

I work on computer science so any particular advice and opinion in this area are strongly appreciated.

As one of your fellow computer scientists, I often think of it this way:

Start with a conference paper: the page limits mean you'll likely only be able to present the core elements of the work, but it's a fast route to feedback, publication, and beginning to get your results noticed by the community.
Next, upgrade to a journal paper: this is where you put out the nice full version of the work, with all of the details and supplementary information.  Generally a bad idea to do before you've got a version in print somewhere else, because many computer science journals are dreadfully slow (I think this might be because we've got conferences for a fast option, so journals feel less pressure than in other fields).
Use book chapters only for reviews and similar.  The problem with book chapters is that they're generally much more difficult for people to find.  Most conferences will either be open access or will go into an archive like IEEE Xplore or ACM DL that most institutions have access to.  Books, not so much, and it seems to make a quantifiable difference.

There is also the option of workshops, which you did not mention.  These, I think, are a great place for preliminary work or for work that you want to discuss with a very particular community.


Prof asked to interview me, now I can't get in touch with him - what's the etiquette? So here's my situation. I'm currently finishing up my masters (and that's a tale for another day) and have applied to a few universities for PhD.

Late Feb I was emailed by a postdoc who wanted to interview me on behalf of his prof who was inundated with grant applications and whatnot. We spoke on a week later, that went well, and I was told that if I was successful, I would hear from the prof himself. The following week (on a Friday) the prof himself responded to me that he wanted to have a follow-up conversation with me about it.

I replied that Sunday  letting him know I was free any time. I heard nothing, so I sat on my hands for a week and sent another reply letting him know that once again I was available that week if he wanted to talk. He informed me he would let me know but was on his way to a conference. This time I gave two weeks, and yesterday (April 7) called twice, about an hour apart, leaving a voicemail the second time, and sent a follow up email about an hour later as well. So, it's now been almost four or five weeks.

His voicemail mentioned an assistant that I have not contacted and I have likewise not emailed the postdoc since our previous conversation.

Is there anything left that I should do about this? How should I take this?

When I was interviewed by profs the first time I applied for grad school I don't recall having these issues. I want to be assertive/not look disinterested but also don't want to overstep any bounds. How responsive should I expect a potential prof to be?

To my knowledge this question has not been investigated elsewhere on this site.

I had similar issues with contacting my future PhD supervisor when applying and found the most efficient route was contacting the assistant. The professor is clearly busy but definitely doesn't want to be inundated with your emails. The assistant may plan his schedule and can book you in. Contacting the post doc isn't as efficient and can look like you are sidestepping the professor.


Is pasting an excerpt from Wikipedia in a paper without reference plagiarism? Assume you are reviewing a paper and discover that some general definitions therein have been copied from Wikipedia without mentioning the source. Should it be considered plagiarism or can it be considered legit because Wikipedia is freely available and anonymous?

Surely this behaviour shows poor effort in literature research because if something is on Wikipedia it surely is also in some more authoritative document. However, generic definitions of centuries old concepts should now be copyrightless and Wikipedia is as good as any textbook or giving one in your own words.

Copyright for a written work expires some years after the author's death; the length of time under copyright law varies from country to country. Wikipedia and other sites use a variety of licencing models which allow the material to be copied and the conditions that apply to the use of the material.

But regardless of whether something is still copyrighted or not, open source or not, freely available or not, if it is quoted, cited, copied or otherwise repeated in a text, if the source is not cited then yes, it is plagiarism.

When something passes into "common knowledge" then it can be written without having to find a quotable source. But there are also specific situations where something that might normally be considered "common knowledge" needs to be referenced to a source, such as student work where values, definitions, etc., are expected to be researched for accuracy and should also therefore include a reference.

There may also be the case where the value/definition is used in a way that is outside the norm, e.g. a definition that is unusual in the mainstream but is used in a specific way for a specific context, or a value that is based on some work that extends the precision beyond what is considered to be the norm.

The criteria remains, that if someone else wrote it and you copy it then not crediting the original author/source is plagiarism - academic theft.


On discussing empirical studies Usually, empirical studies are built on theoretical backgrounds. When I am writing on a specific subject and would like to cite an empirical study which has been done on this subject and discuss its results. Can I simply cite the study and discuss its findings WITHOUT citing the studies which formed the theoretical background of the empirical act?

For example, assume that study X measures the impact of social media use on teens. X states that, before empirically testing the effects, 'we relied on study 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 to form our 10 statements' (effects). 'Findings revealed that the top 3 effects were effect A, B and C'.

When discussing the results, can I simply say that the study X found that the top 3 effects of social media are A, B and C (X 2010, p. 20). Am I obligated to add that the effect A was drawn from study 1, effect B from study 2, etc... you get the idea.

If the studies used in study X are relevant for the  discussion you are writing - and not just because the author of study X cited them, you should cite them individually.

However, as you are writing  a academic text, you should at least put some effort into contextualising methodology of other stories. The extend of this would of course depend on the overall relevance of study X to the main argument of your own paper.

Citing a work can mean two things:

a merely mechanical notice saying you have read a particular text and used some idea and/or wording from it
a complex statement on the orientation of your research, for example what research tradition, school or network you follow

So if you would like to quote your study X (as it is nicknamed in the question) simply for referencing a source on a statement, it would be enough to quote study X and not the underlying works.

However, if the underlying works of study X are important in the argumentation where you cite them in - for example in a discussion - it would be a good thing to show you have read and reflected on the literature the study X is based on.


Should I do a group project on my own? If so, how? Recently in one of my courses I have been assigned a task to be done in small groups (of 3 people). It turns out not to be too long (especially with some previous knowledge that I had), so over the course of an evening I have done roughly 60-70% of the work and the remainder would probably go even faster for me.

However the task was a group task, so I would feel that it could be quite inappropriate to just do all of the work and leave my other two friends nothing to do. I wouldn't like to make them feel left out and I wouldn't like to come across as a know-it-all. At the same time, I know that thanks to said experience not only will I need less time to complete the work, but also it is quite likely that the quality will be higher, potentially leading to a better grade and so benefiting all three of us.

Whatever I decide to do, I think I'll probably finish the task just for educational purposes, so the way I see it I can do one of those:

Tell them that I have the task complete. Apart from the disadvantages mentioned above they may feel compelled to also do all of the work, but forcing them to do so is absolutely not what I intend--if they also want to do so for educational purposes then they are of course welcome to, but I'd prefer to avoid them feeling like they have to do more than their fair share of work.
Pretend like I've only done some parts of the work and assign the "missing" pieces to them. First of all, lying about such matters seems to be a silly solution and also I feel like it could be easy to get caught and eithet be in worse position than 1) or have to lie more. Second of all, as I said when they complete their parts, it is possible that I'd feel obliged to make some changes to their work, potentially changing enough that it stops to look like their work, for us to get a better grade, which would be in all of us' best interest, but that would bring out some of the issues from 1)

How should I approach this topic, how should I communicate my ideas in the best possible way? Again, I don't want them to feel I treated them wrongly, but a the same time I wouldn't like our grade to suffer (in one of previous homework tasks I did give in even though I knew I was right at some points when discussing our solutions before turning them in, since I didn't want to come across as the smartass correcting everyone on everything, but our grade did turn out a bit lower then I would've gotten, had I turned all those tasks in by myself)

A group project in class isn't the same as an assignment at a job.  The teacher doesn't need this project done and isn't paying you to do it.  The project is assigned for your benefit and it was assigned as a group project because not only is course material to be learned but also teamwork skills are to be honed.  Use this opportunity to practice working with a group.  Hone your interpersonal skills and see how good you can make the result in spite of having less skilled teammates.  That's really the point of group projects.


How do I use lemmas that are probably already proven, but including the proof myself is quicker than looking up a source? Suppose I have proven several lemmas during my work that are neither original nor significant (these results were needed for applied engineering/CS research, not mathematics). I believe that if I spend enough time going through articles in minor journals/theses in theoretical CS/applied mathematics, eventually, I will find the statements/proofs of these results. However, it seems that finding these results may take more time than it took to prove the results.
I am curious whether there is a chance that not providing citations could be perceived as plagiarism in one form or another. Would it suffice to state that I do not claim that the results are original without providing a citation?

You do need to make some effort to find in the literature a result you think is known, but after that what you propose is common and I feel is fine.  I do it sometimes.  In such a situation, I tend to say ``the following is probably known, but we include a proof for completeness.''
Even if you find the all your background lemmas in the literature, it might still make the reader's life easier if you include some or all of their proofs.  It is really annoying to have to request seven obscure papers by inter-library loan, and then figure out all the different authors' notation, just to fill in a few pages of proofs.


What to do when you want to research something your advisor does not want you to? When entering my MS I had an advisor assigned to me because I didn't finish undergrad in the university I'm now in. I want to research graph theory but my advisor researches in computational geometry, and every problem I proposed to him he dismissed as being too difficult (without really explaining why) and proposed an optimization problem with metaheuristics instead. As I'm approaching the end of the first semester now, I need to have an advisor confirmed and a topic semi-defined, so I half-heartedly accepted one of the problems he proposed just to get on with it.

Now it is about 3 days later and I'm already regretting the decision I made: I'm 22 years old and really like researching, but the thought of dedicating 2 years of my life on something I'm "meh" about does not make me happy. I think it is clear my advisor isn't going to open his mind to new ideas but is it too late to switch advisors? Since dropping out is not an option, as I moved from a different city and just settled in here, what should I do about it? Should I give up convincing him and try to find a new advisor in a month? Is it "normal" for people to take a research topic they don't really like for a masters program?

Edit: I realised I made a bad choice of word that made me seem like I am mad or demanding something from my advisor. I edited my question.

This sounds like you are mad at your supervisor, however, keep in mind that researchers are often very specialized in a particular field, and would have difficulties supervising a project in a different field, or using a method they are not familiar with. THerefore, if you want to do a particular project/work in a particular field/with a particular method, it's up to YOU to find a supervisor that has the matching expertise. Otherwise, you may indeed do what your supervisor suggests you.

Where I work, students have the opportunity to choose their own supervisor that matches their interests. If they don't, they will get assigned to someone. In that case, the students are warned that they may have to do a project that is suggested by the supervisor.

Sounds like it is the same at your place. And in that case, it is normal to do something that you don't really like.

Let me tell you, it's better to work at something you do like. Therefore, get out and find a supervisor that works in your field/method. And don't blame the supervisor for having his own interests.


What does it mean when it says on a grad school application to choose recommender "familiar with the candidate's scholarly abilities"? I'm applying to graduate programs in Biomedical Engineering. The University of Pennsylvania application says the author of one letter of recommendation must be a faculty member who is familiar with the candidate's scholarly abilities. In layman's terms, does this mean they want a letter from a faculty member who has served as my research advisor?

It doesn't necessarily mean your research advisor. It could be a faculty member you've taken classes with, someone you've worked on a project with, etc.

What the admissions committee is looking for is evidence that you will succeed in graduate school - and that means evidence that you can think independently, tackle difficult problems, and so on. Choose faculty members who can speak to your abilities as a student and a (future) researcher.

When I asked for LoRs, I asked (1) a faculty member I had taken several classes with and with whom I was working as an undergraduate research, (2) another faculty member I had taken several classes with and had a good working relationship with, and (3) a faculty member who I was currently taking a class with (and who admittedly was an alumnus of my top school) :-)


Teaching Multiple Subjects I plan to do my PhD in Computational Linguistics in the near future. As one would imagine, it requires a bit of knowledge in Computer Science as well as Linguistics. Particularly, I enjoy French and Japanese.

The problem is that I want to teach too many topics at the university level. In my imaginary world, I would teach courses in Computer Science that overlap with Computational Linguistics (e.g. Structure of Programming Languages, Artificial Intelligence, etc.), as well as French and Japanese.

As far as I know, we have only one professor at my university who overlapped topics - the Russian department needed a temp, and one of the Computer Science professors was a Russian native; he filled in for a semester.

Presumably I would only teach courses that overlap with my research (the Computer Science courses I listed, French/Japanese Syntax/Morphology, etc).

Granted this is pretty specific to my case, so how about I generalize: how plausible is it to teach multiple subjects that are inter-departmental at the university level? If it is indeed plausible and is something that I can specifically work toward, what steps are necessary to be able to do so?

Edit: To clarify, this would be teaching as a postdoc, not particularly during my PhD. I think my brain would explode if I tried to take on that kind of workload.

As someone who is doing my PhD in Natural Language Understanding I first of all recommend you are careful what you wish for. Undertaking a teaching post while doing a PhD is very time consuming and I have found that it has got in the way of my research. So much so in fact that I limit myself to no more than 6 hours of teaching a week.

  In my imaginary world, I would teach courses in Computer Science that
  overlap with Computational Linguistics (e.g. Structure of Programming
  Languages, Artificial Intelligence, etc.), as well as French and
  Japanese.

I'm sure it's different depending on the university, but whatever department is paying your PhD stipend most definitely has first call on where and what you teach. Although I'm a mathematical linguist, I spend all of my time teaching programming and artificial intelligence. Another reason for this is because my background is mathematics and computer science.

  Granted this is pretty specific to my case, so how about I generalize:
  how plausible is it to teach multiple subjects that are
  inter-departmental at the university level?

Taking on a PhD project is about becoming a specialist, not a generalist. Everyone is arguably a generalist. If you are a Computational Linguist, just take on modules such as Intelligent Systems, Computational Linguistics, Mathematical Linguistics, Logic Programming, Math for Computer Science, etc.

  If it is indeed plausible and is something that I can specifically
  work toward, what steps are necessary to be able to do so?

I think it is possible. However, you would need to get explicit permission from your project advisors which I imagine would be difficult. You would then have to discuss how you can help with the other departments such as Linguistics. However, be prepared for rejection if you are not classically trained in the subject and hold some sort of academic merit.

When you start your PhD you will not become a lecturer most likely. You will be encouraged to take on a teaching assistant or demonstrator role, aiding a lecturer. This is still good as it's the next best thing and sometimes you can get loads of marking. It will also give you loads of time to reflect and decide what you want to teach.


Latin academic positions I was wondering if there was a standard system, at some point in history, for academic positions in Latin.

What I mean is that today each country has a standard system that names each academic position, for example in England if you are the head of a university you will be called a "chancellor", regardless which university you head, as long as it is in England.

Different countries today use different words for different positions, some are derived from Latin, some are not. I was wondering if there ever was a standard of Latin-language academic position titles that have been used in the past at some point by several or more countries? Because I'd wager some countries had Latin titles but they were the only ones to use them.

There is no homogeneous system to name the position in LA. Moreover, there is no unique academic structure. This situation is a source of misunderstanding and many times you cannot find the equivalence position.
An example in Uruguay: In Medicine, as undegraduate you can be student or (last year) internship. In a Department of a Faculty (named "Clinica") you can be (in order) Resident, Chief of Clinic (also named grade II), Assistant Professor (also named grade III), Agregate Professor (also named grade IV) and lastly Titular Professor (also named grade V). Hope to help in some way.


How should a teaching assistant explain his absence to the course instructor? As an international TA getting accustomed to the landscape of my University, I managed to earn the ire of my instructor/professor for having not shown up during the discussion/office hours.

In a strongly worded mail, he has sought an explanation while reprimanding me saying that another instance of this would lead to serious consequences.

I am afraid that I may lose my assistantship as I curse my folly for being so careless. I have apologized to the Professor over mail but from the tone of his reply, he seems to have not considered it. Please suggest how I must handle this predicament.

The best way to handle this is to acknowledge that you've screwed up, and to explain how you're going to make sure that you won't miss any class meetings and other events in the future. If there's a justification for why you missed the event (for instance, if you had an examination for a class you were enrolled in overlapping with office hours), you can mention that.


Startup funds and lab space when leaving tenure-track faculty position I've been in a tenure-track faculty position at an R1 for just over a year. I want to leave this position for a non-academic job, but have not yet lined anything up. I haven't made a decision about when to leave or give notice, but my intention is to give the university at least a few months' notice.

My question is about my research lab, which I run with startup funds. What can I expect to happen to my remaining startup funds and lab space once I announce my intention to leave? Do faculty in this situation normally continue to have access to startup funds, or does funding typically get cut off? My main concern is whether I'll be able to continue paying my employees until my departure.

I left my former R1 for another university last year. Like you, I had research funds and two labs. I'm in the social sciences so your mileage may vary.

I spent down my research funds as much as possible. In the last months, I asked all my grad students what books and equipment they wanted and bought them whatever they needed. I tried to reimburse their conference travel where I could.  I'm pleased that I left with just a small balance remaining.

I did not give instructions to the disposal of my labs. They both reverted back to the department which I'm sure has its own plans, but I thought it best for my own mental health not to try to dictate what would happen to them -- and I haven't inquired since I left. That path would just lead to frustration and tears. But I was in full control of the lab until the very last day they were in operation.

If you're a PI on a grant, you could ask the agency either to: 1) let you transfer to the new university; 2) assign a new PI or co-PI at the old university to take over the grant; or, 3) terminate the grant if neither are possible.


Is it called research misconduct when someone publish his own work under the name of other people? One of my friends has a lot of research works, but he is kinda of lazy in the publishing process. As a result, he has a lot of unpublished research materials. Right now, he is realized that he needs citation count to be able to get some benefits which I don't want to disclose here but I could just tell it's not academic benefit but it is heavily related to only citation count and not even the number of publications (ridiculous yeah? but sadly true!). Also, if he publishes those research materials under his own name and cite himself it will be counted as self-citation and again it is worthless to be qualified for that benefit. This matter leads him to publish his research works under the name of his other friends and in those papers he cite himself just for sake of citation count. The research materials are not questionable and in my opinion even they're remarkable. But he is reluctant to publish it under his own name because he thinks he will miss that benefit and he does not have such a long time to publish his researches under his own name and wait at least a couple of years to accumulate citation counts. This is a really complicated problem and I'm wondering is it a real research misconduct or not? More generally, it really hurts me that some good researchers will be judged solely based on some numbers like citation count, which leads people to these kind of activities. Any idea or suggestion is appreciated.

This does not sound ethical at all. I would say that both your friend and the people who are willing to take credit for his work are lying and misrepresenting their accomplishments.

Furthermore, what your friend is doing is extremely short-sighted. If the material in his publications is remarkable as you state, then he will gain far more citations in the long term by having his name on all of them, rather than trying to artificially inflate his citation count for short-term gains.


Should I secretly record a meeting to prove I'm being discriminated against? I'm a PhD student at a university in the UK. The head and director of graduate studies at my department are trying to get me removed from the department.

Almost all of this is going on over my head, but my supervisor has told me about a number of meetings and emails that have gone on about this topic.

On the basis of what my supervisor tells me, along with my own previous interactions with the head of department, I feel quite sure that what they are doing is discriminatory against me due to a disability that I have.

However, since I am not included in any of the emails etc. about this, I have almost no evidence. This makes it very difficult to defend myself against what they are doing and saying.

While my supervisor is on my side and doesn't want me to be kicked out, he has a very poor understanding of disability issues and discrimination. His number one priority, of course, is protecting himself - ultimately it looks really bad for him to have a student that the head of department warned him would be trouble and ends up getting kicked out.

So he will tell me about these things in person, but not by email - if I ask him anything by email, he asks me to come to his office to discuss it.

Should I secretly record a meeting with him where I bring this up so that if it comes down to it, I have some evidence that the action is discriminatory?

No.

Such action should be the very, very last resort, and only undertaken if you have taken legal advice on whether it is advisable to do so.

As a UK student, you should have support available to you from the Student Union, which will almost certainly include disability representation.

The Student Union will be able to advise you on how to proceed on this matter, and possible provide you with a third party representative to join you at any meetings you have.

Also, you mention emails that exist 'about you.'  You are within your rights to request these to see what they say by making a freedom of information request.  Again, seek advice first before undertaking this action.


Unintentionally Left Out Authors I'm presenting a poster at a conference in the coming months and I unintentionally left out authors (the senior authors) on my work due to my lack of familiarity with the submission program on the website. Unfortunately, I did not go back to correct this until it was too late and the deadline for adjustments had passed.

I'm now faced with presenting the poster without all authors listed on the poster. I'm fairly embarrassed that I let this happen. I've reached out to the organizers and was told no more adjustments can be made. How do I handle it from here? Do I just disclose during presentation that I unintentionally left them out and credit them at that point?

It is what it is, at least as far as the official program is concerned -- tell the missing author about it and apologize.

What's more important in practice is that all authors are listed on the actual poster you will be presenting. That's what people really see and will notice, so make sure it is complete.


Where can I publish the proceedings articles of a small conference? I am responsible for publishing the proceedings submissions of the Scandinavian Symposium on Physical Acoustics, a smallish yearly conference with about 50 participants. After the symposium, participants who held a presentation are encouraged but not required to submit articles to the symposium’s proceedings. Typically, these proceedings end up with 5–10 articles, all of decent quality.

My aim is to publish the proceedings through a channel which makes the articles visible and searchable through at least Google Scholar. In 2016 and 2019, when I was previously responsible for publishing the proceedings, I uploaded the proceedings to arXiv.org through a process that I established with arXiv moderators and later described on my blog. This gave us the visibility and searchability that we wanted.

In 2016, this went fairly smoothly, but in 2019 there was an issue. Our symposium accepts a wide range of proceedings articles, including working papers that present a research setup and briefly describe preliminary results. However, arXiv have a stricter policy saying that “arXiv only accepts submissions in the form of an article that would be refereeable by a conventional publication venue”. The arXiv moderators therefore rejected one of our proceedings submissions, as they judged it not to be “in a format appropriate for publication in a conventional journal”. This is of course their prerogative, but it left the uploaded proceedings incomplete. (We ended up uploading the last article to ResearchGate instead.)

My question is therefore whether there are any other channels that we can upload such a proceedings to, which would give us similar searchability and visibility to arXiv, but where we can also be certain that we will be able to upload all of our proceedings submissions. Could ResearchGate, HAL, or another site be an option?

We ended up publishing the proceedings through ResearchGate, using this procedure:

The authors send their submissions to the proceedings editor for approval.
The authors upload their approved submissions to ResearchGate, following a guide provided by the editor to ensure that the metainformation is consistently registered.
The editor uploads a proceedings index to ResearchGate, which gives an overview of and links to the proceedings submissions.

This ResearchGate procedure has some advantages:

Fairly straightforward, both for editor and authors
Good searchability: The proceedings submissions are automatically indexed by Google Scholar
Good visibility: ResearchGate helps by suggesting the proceedings submissions to other relevant researchers

It also has some disadvantages:

Unlike the arXiv procedure, the individual proceedings submissions do not link back to the index.
The authors are required to register ResearchGate account and do the work of uploading their own submissions. (Unlike arXiv, ResearchGate never allows uploading by third parties such as a proceedings editor.)

All in all, this approach was quite successful and we are fairly happy with it. I imagine we will use it again next year. Of course, however, this is not the only possible approach, and I would still be interested in other suggestions!


Is my university using TA's excessively? Currently, at a broad level, the scenario I am observing is as follows:
Tasks by Instructor (assistant professor, associate professor, professor)

Collecting presentations from either the internet or asks TA's to make a presentation or rarely prepares a presentation for a given topic and presents it in front of students.

Doesn't deal with coding

Clarifies the theoretical doubts asked by students during class timings only.

Tasks by Ph.D. TA

Prepares content for instructor class (sometimes)

Prepares coding and theoretical content for tutorial class

Clarifies doubts in tutorial class

Deals with both theoretical and coding aspects for the tutorial sessions.

Receives more doubts from students since students work on the topic after a (theoretic) introductory lecture by the instructor.

Prepares assignment questions and also answers keys.

Evaluates the submitted assignments, makes result sheets, distributes grades and deals with grade discrepancies.

Most of the time, postgraduate TAs assists in the last two steps. (It is not happening during pandemic days).
In general, for every couple of weeks, there will be a tutorial class. It takes at least  4 full days to complete all the tasks with satisfaction. Covering both mathematical and coding aspects in great detail is a challenging task. And even if one prepares with so much effort,  it may not be useful for the research work.
So, I am wondering whether the workload is the same for a Ph.D. TA's in other universities or is my university is using them excessively?
Note: Although there are guidelines regarding TA work, no instructor follows them in strict sense.

Actually, I don't think it is excessive, though it may be a bit steep. It was a long time ago, but when I was a PhD student in mathematics at an R1 in the US, the "load" of a TA was about half that of the teaching load of a professor (1 course equivalent vs 2 for a professor). I don't see anything in your list that is really out of bounds, assuming #1 is occasional. In fact, all of it is good training for anyone wanting a career in academia. You need to practice all these things to get good at them.
I was thrilled (thrilled, I say) when, as an advanced TA, I was given complete responsibility for one section (of many) of an elementary course. The course was pretty standard so there wasn't much course design prep and the final exam was common to all sections, but, otherwise, the course was mine.


Is a bachelor in Computer Science Engineering a viable idea if my ultimate objective is to be a mathematical modelling engineer? I want to mathematically model reality and use these models to solve problems. Will a degree in Computer Science Engineering allow me to do this?

Additional background. Reading the overview of a master's graduate degree (MSC to be exact) in modelling mechanical engineer, it really spiked my interest. I am not a mathematical genius though, and I need to at least see applications and more or less concrete problems/implementations. Also relevant could be that I am a senior in high school and I learned programming all by myself.

Systems I would find interesting to get to know better by creating mathematical models

I am most interested in physics and general mathematical patterns, like the approach found in Albert-László Barabási's book Network Science.
I am not interested in specializing in any particular field just because of the field itself.

From my own experience, Im doing PhD in computer graphics, mainly physics simulation, and I have a master in mathematics, the program was called "mathematical modeling" it was mainly analysis, partial differential equations, numerical analysis and continuum mechanics.

Physics simulation is nothing else then solving partial differential equations and I can see that a math background is much more useful then computer science background when I look at my peers.

So I would recomend a math degree with a focus on numerics and physics.

edit: I see that you are a little bit worried to study math, that it might be way too much math for your taste. However, you are in a great position because you have a great motivation to study mathematics. You can always come up with things to model with math you are being thaught at school. From using projective spaces in computer graphics to fourier analysis in image processing . BUT remember one think. Do not expect that profesors will motivate you(it is a bonus if they do) but you have to activelly look for things that motivate you, everyone gets excited by different things.


What productive academic work can you do with minimal attention in a small (<30 minutes) block of time? Ok, here is a major issue I have with much of my work (which is experimental/computational research): I am a graduate student, and spend much of my day doing 5, 10, 20 and 30 minute experiments (both biological and computational), which require set up and monitoring, but result in small to medium size hunks of time when I'm really not doing much (essentially just checking every 1-2 minutes to make sure everything is still working). During these periods of time I either a) attempt to do other work or b) procrastinate. Both are not great, since either a) I'm constantly shifting my focus from the latter project and end up making mistakes in it or b) I'm procrastinate (usually by reading articles, twitter, etc.)

Does anyone have advice for how to deal with these small, awkward period of times (< 30 minutes) - is there something which you find useful to do that you can also shift your focus from incessantly?

As an example: http://xkcd.com/303/

Given that you can't do something that requires your full attention during this time, I would at least advise to follow Matt Might's advice to procrastinate productively on meta-work:

Read articles (or answers on Academia.SE!) about how to be more productive as a grad student.
Read a few pages of a book on data analysis, visualization, academic writing, or some other research skill.
Use the time to review your schedule, make to-do lists, schedule a meeting, etc.
Try a relevant Coursera course that has video lectures broken into small bits
Put some thought into a tiny bite-sized aspect of your research or research presentation: How should I organize this manuscript? What is the best way to visualize this data?
Unfocused literature search: check in on your favorite journals or conferences and identify interesting papers (to read later, when you can give them your full attention)
Do a favor for someone else: Even if you're not teaching or grading this semester, I'm sure someone in your department is, and would be happy to give you a pile of quizzes to grade.
Update your CV and/or web page.
Start preparing a presentation on your current work. You'll present it to someone, somewhere sooner or later, right?
Think about your ultimate career goals.
Use the Internet to look for promising potential collaborators at other institutions.
Try out a new programming trick, LaTeX package, or software tool.


Who all are considered authors of papers written on behalf of a research group? In epidemiology it is not uncommon to see papers written by a bunch of authors on behalf of a research group (say "the X research group"). See, for example, this paper (randomly chosen from pubmed):

  Moreira L, Pellisé M, Carballal S, Bessa X, Ocaña T, Serradesanferm A, Grau J, Macià F, Andreu M, Castells A, Balaguer F; on behalf of the PROCOLON research group.
  High prevalence of serrated polyposis syndrome in FIT-based colorectal cancer screening programmes. Gut. 2012 Sep 14.

My question is: are the members of the research group X (whose names and affiliations are usually reported in the Appendix at the end of the paper) considered as authors of the paper?

Edit: I am particularly interested to receive answers that apply specifically to epidemiology, but of course experiences from other fields are very welcome!

In particle physics (and we have some very long author lists) they are.

Authorship rules are generally set out in the collaboration's Memorandum of Understanding (whatever it is called) and can sometimes call for odd things such as a paper being credited to someone who didn't even know it was being written but whose work calibrating some systematic effect of a minor subsystem a decade ago was used in the paper. That happened to me once, I checked inSPIRE and discovered I had a new paper out. Turned out to be a nice one, too.

To avoid that many of these documents have a "recent membership" type of clause so that you have to have been an active member of the collaboration in the last (typically) year to be credited. "Active" is defined by things like sitting shifts, attending collaboration meetings, contributing institutional funds to the general pool or hardware to the experiment and so on.


Letter of Recommendation Reminder (deadline tomorrow) I asked my professor to write a letter of recommendation in late July, with the deadline of October 1st (which is tomorrow). He responded in the affirmative, and was quite happy to write my LOR. I sent him a reminder email a week ago, which he did not respond to. The deadline is tomorrow, and I still haven't received any notice that he uploaded his LOR.

The other professor I asked already uploaded his LOR, so I'm just waiting on this professor. At this point, unless he uploads the LOR on the deadline, I'm afraid it will be late.

How should I send him an email to prompt him to upload his LOR? I already graduated so I can't visit him in person. Is there a chance he's backing out of writing one for me?

Thanks for any advice in advance!

With a deadline of tomorrow I'd say it's too late to email him. Phone him instead. Try to pick a convenient time (accounting for timezone differences). If you can't reach him, call the department office and leave a message.

If he's already committed to writing a LOR for you, it's unlikely he's backing out now. Yes, he might have underestimated the amount of work he has left or procrastinated a little too much (don't we all), but he'll be well aware that you've put your faith in him to write, and if he refuses to write one now you'll almost surely miss the deadline (and by extension fail to get admitted). It's only responsible for him to finish the letter then.


Am I entitled to any benefit by implementing an idea from my professor's published paper? I'm an undergraduate student. A new professor joined our college this year. The new professor went about asking other department faculty about students proficient in programming and one of the existing faculty recommended me. Now apparently, this new professor is not so good at programming, and wanted someone to implement an idea from one of his already published paper. Now I have been asked to do it and I agreed, cause I like programming. Now my question is, do I stand to gain anything non-trivial from doing this? What would be the proper stuff that I could ask the professor in return for doing it?

This is a perfect situation for you to suggest that if possible you would like to get started on a career that includes publication of scholarly articles, either alone or in collaboration with the prof. Ask him if this project is a good vehicle for this. It assumes either the implementation or an extension of the original paper is valid for publication, of course. You might wind up a big winner. He will, in any case, likely consider you for a future project if this one doesn't seem right to him. There is little to lose.

Don't ask him for a gimme. Ask for collaboration and help in learning how to develop and write for publication.

There are two additional thoughts. Maybe he just didn't think of it, so your approach might wake him up to the possibility. And also, he may put your name around to other faculty who might be willing also. Just expressing your interest can start a lot of wheels turning.