Should I list conference session chairmanship in CV? I currently have on my CV a list of conferences I organized, or co-organized, a list of invited talks, a full list of talks, etc. Recently I have been asked to chair a session in a prestigious conference. I am very honored, and thus wondered: is this something I can feature on my CV? If so, would somewhere along with the conferences organized be "standard"?

The short answer is yes. Anything that can be considered meriting can (or should) be added to a CV in my opinion. I have a heading "Other meriting academic miissions" in my CV where I list things that I consider meriting but do not fit under other headings where the list is longer. this includes, invited talks, tenure evaluations, etc.

My strategy with my CV is to add everything into a "master CV" and then remove parts depending on the purpose of the CV. Therefore, add the meriting tasks you are asked to do. It is easy to remove them if they are irrelevant for the specific purpose.


Contacting an academic researcher by an outsider If a person is working in the industry and wants to ask a few questions to an academic researcher (based on a paper published by them), what is the correct protocol to follow?

Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?
Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'? Should the academic insist on knowing?
Any other consideration?

I am not aware of any specific protocol, nor do I think there needs to be.   I think that every academic is somehow responsible for the work in their published papers, and that responsibility includes at least some degree of responsiveness to questions about those papers.  But, as usual, some ways of going about this will do better in eliciting responses.  For me, I would want to know that the person who is contacting me about my paper (i) actually understands it, at least to a sufficient degree and (ii) that corresponding with them about my work will actually be helpful.  This includes some degree of knowledge of what they want to do with the work in question.

[I should say though that I work in parts of pure mathematics in which it would take a truly brilliant mind to find direct industrial applications.  So most of my correspondence is from students, other mathematicians, or people who aspire to be one of the above.  For people who work in more applied fields, please discount this answer accordingly.]

  Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?

If you mean "I am asking this question on behalf of my work for Company X": I think so, yes.  When correspondents do not identify themselves in this way, I am less likely to respond at all, and if I do, I will usually ask for some identifying information.

  Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'?

Does anyone want to answer a question which is framed in that manner?  I would help out a good friend who came to me in this way, but not a stranger.

In general, asking for help from an academic and not being willing to be forthcoming about what it is used for doesn't sound right to me.  If you are just prevailing on the goodwill of an academic to publicly explain her work, then have the good grace to say what you need it for.  If on the other hand you are actually trying to extract further expertise or information used for some proprietary purpose, then just writing to ask for it doesn't sound appropriate to me.  If you want to use someone's professional expertise for some proprietary purpose -- or really any purpose other than just advancing your own knowledge -- then you should invite the professional to enter into a paid consulting relationship, it seems to me.  In such a relationship, how much information about the use of the professional's expertise will be provided is something to be negotiated in advance.


How much is submission acceptance to high-profile conferences influenced by internal politics? I was speaking with several professors in my department about submission to high-profile conferences like CHI in human-computer interaction. Most of the professors were of the opinion that acceptance in most of these high-profile conferences (typical acceptance rate of less than 20%) is heavily influenced by politics: even though you may have comparatively good research, the editors will most likely be more favored toward accepting papers published by Microsoft Research or Google Research or from other high-profile universities where they have close relationship with the faculty and researchers.

The professors advised me against spending time and resources on publishing to these conferences and instead concentrate on second-tier journals (like those published by Springer) for better return on investment for my efforts.

I assume in good faith that most of the editors may not reject papers without reading them, but does anybody concur with the opinion of professors at my department?

It is an often-heard prejudice in CS that many of the top conferences are relatively closed "boys clubs". Indeed, if one just looks over accepted papers for multiple years, one typically ends up seeing the same affiliations over and over again, strengthening this impression.

However, this could be due to a number of (good or bad) reasons:

Papers from professors / labs that are well-known in the field may simply be of much higher technical quality, making it quite natural that they also get accepted much more often.
Professors / labs that are well-known in the field generally know how to write papers for this specific conference. They know what the TPC values, and how to present their results in a way that is appreciated in the field. As these professors are typically in the TPC themselves, they know what kind of papers usually get accepted and which are rejected.
Professors / labs that are well-known in the field often have a better grasp on the existing state of the art in the field, making it easier for them to identify what is good and novel. In my experience, "outsiders" have a tendency to overestimate the novelty of their contributions significantly. Further, well-known labs know what problems are currently en vogue in the community.
It is of course also perceivable that papers from well-known professors / labs are just not judged as critically. For instance, a reader may very well think that a paper is not applying a given technique correctly, but as the paper comes from the group that invented this technique, he gives them the benefit of doubt and assumes that they will know the technique better than him. He would probably not extend the same favorable thinking to an outsider.
Finally, for some topics, it is just easier for some labs to do good research than others. A common example are the web search tracks at the WWW conference. These tracks typically require the validation of new algorithms on real data, to which mostly only industry labs from Yahoo! etc. and their close collaborators have access.

Note that none of these reasons is really politics. Indeed, I would argue that all of the reasons above are significantly more likely than a paper getting rejected for the reasons you cited.

  I assume in good faith that most of the editors may not reject papers without reading them

I would say, at a top conference such as CHI, you can rely on your paper at least getting reviewed thoroughly, yes.

  but does anybody concur with opinion of professors at my department?

Well, given all the reasons above, it is indeed quite likely that your paper will be rejected. By definition, if a conference has a <20% acceptance rate, rejection is always a real possibility (clearly, it happens to most submissions). However, I am wondering why it would be better to not even try if you think your work is good enough for CHI. If the paper gets rejected there, you can still re-submit to a lower-tier venue, and you receive a number of hopefully helpful reviews. The only disadvantage I see is that it prolongs the publication process by half a year, but if you see any chance of the paper begin accepted at the top-tier venue, I think this should be worth it.


Is there any forum or FB group where people would exchange academic literature? Does anyone know any forum, FB group or other platform where students from different univerisites would exchange academic literature available in their libraries?

On Twitter, there's the #ICanHazPDF hashtag. Wikipedia explains:

  Users request articles by tweeting an article's title, DOI or other linked information like a publisher's link, their email address, and the hashtag "#ICanHazPDF". Someone who has access to the article will then email it to them. The user then deletes the original tweet. Alternately, users who do not wish to post their email address in the clear can use direct messaging to exchange contact information with a volunteer who has offered to share the article of interest.

This 2013 article has some more information about the practice, including estimated usage figures and demographics. According to the data presented there, 24% of #ICanHazPDF users are students.

On Facebook, I don't know of any groups devoted to sharing literature, but I've certainly seen a lot of (successful) requests on my Facebook feed along the lines of "Can anyone get me a copy of this paywalled article?".

It's also worth noting that, if you are already a student with access to a university library, the library itself can provide you with interloans or copies of material from other libraries worldwide. As a university student, you have access to people who are literally paid to help you find the literature you need. Don't ignore that resource!


Which license to choose for article publication? My editor is giving me the option to choose between:

The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)
The Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivative Works 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0).

to publish my article in their journal.

If I understand it, the basic difference between the two is that the first one allows for commercial use of the content of my paper from third parties.

Would the first one be less restrictive in terms of citations to my article? What is the most common option for research articles?

No license nor lack of a license will permit/allow people to cite your work. Citation isn't affected by copyright or by the license of rights. Not even patent holders can prevent citation. People can cite your work whether it has a permissive or a restrictive or no license at all.

License is a distinct issue that determines what people can do with your work other than writing about it. For example, can your work be incorporated in whole or in part in the work of another? Can it be so incorporated into a work for sale? Can someone take your work and extend it, while including your work within their own? These are the sorts of questions addressed by license.

I've often used an NC (no, commercial) license, but never an ND (no derivations) license. They aren't at all the same. An ND license seems odd to me for scientific publications. But always insist on BY, or you are coming pretty close to putting your work in the public domain (which some wish to do, of course).

But notice, that the various licenses of CC and others depend on you retaining copyright. Otherwise you have no rights to license. If you are transferring your copyright to a journal, then it is up to them to license in, not you. In that case, perhaps they are just letting you suggest what you think is the best course for the work. But only a copyright holder can license copy-rights.


Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name? I am PhD student in computer engineering and visiting a foreign university. My project is near to the end and, since my colleague and I got excellent results, we are writing a scientific paper about it.
I would like to submit the paper to the top best journal in our field.

I sent the draft to my supervisor here, that replied that he does not think that the paper is going to be accepted by the top best journal. He suggested to submit it to another journal, that we can consider the 5th best journal in the field. He said that we can still submit it to the top journal if we want it, but, in that case, we have to remove his name from the author list.

So what should we do?

Should we remove his name from the author list and submit it to the top journal?
Or should we satisfy him and submit the paper to the 5th most prestigious journal?

In my view, using authorship as a bargaining chip like this is ethically inappropriate.

Either the supervisor's contributions to the paper warrant including him as an author, or they don't.

If they do, then he needs to be listed as a co-author no matter where you publish, and you need his agreement on where the paper is to be submitted.

If they don't, then he should not be listed as a co-author, no matter where you publish, and you and the remaining authors can make your own decision about where to submit (though you still might value his input).


Do US universities allow a professor to work in a brothel? Watch Sold in America: The Workers at 5:15, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch Dennis Hof says:

I have three PhDs working for me. One of them is a professor at UNLV (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and a working girl for me.

Is this plausible?
Do US universities allow a professor (part-time or full-time) to work in a brothel (full-time or part-time) while he/she is working as an active professor at the university?
My question stems from the fact that this gives rise to the possibility that a student may end up having sex with the professor in the brothel. I knew US universities do not allow professors to engage in love affairs with students. So, having sex seems to be a far cry.

It's typical for US universities to require disclosure of certain types of outside activities due to concerns with conflicts of interest and to comply with federal guidelines:
https://www.unlv.edu/research/coi#guidelines
There are also typically clauses that don't allow outside activities to negatively impact work with the university.
I think it's likely that this would fall into a grey area where there is clearly no direct conflict of interest for the purposes for which such policies typically exist, but a broad interpretation could allow a professor to be removed if those outside activities were considered too much of a distraction. If students were aware of the other position or could be clients, that might be seen as more of a problem.
That might lead to a legal challenge but I'm not aware of any related legal cases related to brothel employment by professors, and broadly US employers have a lot of leeway in deciding who they employ. There is this story of a journalist-stripper-professor who was fired from her journalist position when her employer learned about her blog about stripping, but apparently not her lecturing position.
Note that having outside interactions with students doesn't need anything as potentially controversial as sex work. There are lots of ways students could potentially have a conflict of interest with a TA or professor if they have some financial relationship: if they hire them as a tutor, if they work at a bar/restaurant and are left a tip, if the students' parents buy the professor's house, all of these could raise a potential conflict of interest situation.


Is it okay to submit a paper to a conference or publication from another field? For instance, my field is Information Technology and I would like to know if it is okay to submit to management and environmental science publication. Of course, it's not purely I.T. but this is a paper on how I.T. can help preserve the environment, specifically on reducing consumption of resources.

What are your thoughts on this?

There isn't anything wrong with submitting to a conference that might not be a perfect fit. I would urge you to ensure that the fit is decent enough that you won't be wasting anyone's time, but cross-polination can be great for both fields.

When I was a graduate student and was helping my advisor review papers for a prominent conference, I read an outstanding paper that I didn't believe was on-topic for the conference, and I suggested to my advisor that it should be rejected it even though it had a novel (and cool) contribution. When I discussed it with her, she said that for really excellent papers, program committees will sometimes be flexible. If I was convinced it was that good, she said, I should give it a positive review and let the committee sort it out. In the end they accepted the paper. It was very well-received at the conference, and the authors were excited to get the paper into the competitive conference, where it would undoubtedly be seen by a lot of people.


Is it a good idea to use Octave to teach an Intro to Matlab course? I just discovered GNU Octave, a free open-source alternative to Matlab.

I was wondering if it would be wise to teach an "Intro to Matlab" course using Octave instead of Matlab. My motivations are both idealistic (i.e. I want to support open source software) and financial (I want to save my university some money on licensing fees).

My concerns are that if Octave is too different from Matlab, it would be difficult to find textbooks and other teaching resources, and that when my students make it out into the real world they will most likely have to use Matlab and so they may be disadvantaged if they learned Octave instead.

Does anyone familiar with Octave have any insight?

EDIT: Since a few of the initial comments and answers are focusing on the name of the course, I want to clarify that there is no issue changing the name (and I probably will if I use Octave). Nevertheless, I want my students to have the skills to be able to use Matlab after passing my course, and my question is about whether they will possess those skills if I teach the course using Octave.

As suggested also by SiXUlm in a comment, if you want to avoid being committed to a specific software, rename the course, e.g.,

  Introduction to scientific computing

or

  Introduction to scientific computing with Octave/Matlab

During the course, outline possible syntax and library differences.

  when my students make it out into the real world they will most likely have to use Matlab

Most of your students will likely not use Matlab at all in the real world. A few of them will, but they would be able to fill the gaps by themselves.


Writing a reviewed article in resume/ Statement of purpose I am applying to several places for Masters in pure mathematics in the month of December.

I submitted a paper in a math journal and received its review. The reviewer mentions and I quote "I recommend
this article for publication". However, he has suggested to make some changes and upload a revised version. I am working on the changes but it may take a while and the next review might take more time and thus cross the application deadlines.

Now for university applications, I want to ask what can I write in my CV/SOP to show the current progress as in it is almost sure that it will be accepted and writing just submitted doesn't show the actual situation. Also, writing accepted will be wrong as it isn't accepted yet.

I don'n know about pure math, but I have seen faculty in science and engineering departments, having "published", "in press", "in preparation" articles in their cv. Your article is in a state further than what is understood "in preparation". Mentioning it in your statement of purpose/cv is quite OK.


What should I focus on to get admission in a Masters programme in the US? I am currently in my second year, pursuing a B.Tech. in Software Engineering, in India. I want to pursue a Masters' in the US in CS/CS-related fields. My area of interest is AI.

I still have two years to go before I will need to apply. So, what should I be working/focusing on in the next two years so that I have a good chance at making it there ? Keeping in mind the fact that i will need scholarships/financing options.

Please keep in mind that only a small percentage of Master students get funded.

It's less competitive to get into a Master program than a PhD, mostly because the students pay their own way.

If your grades are not the best you should try to get high GRE, good reccomendation letters, and possibly to some research during your Bachelor.

Are any particular reasons why you chose the US? There are many other school around the world that would cost you less and get a good education as well.


does prestige of university where I will be getting my Master's degree matter? I was recently admitted to few universities for my master's program and I narrowed the university of my choice down to two. The options are:

Option 1: A Mid-ranked public university in US (around #160 among the US National Universities,around #500 in World ranking ), where the potential supervisor is believed to be a good fit for me

Option 2: A top ranked university in US, here I am mostly going after the prestige, but supervisor is not as good as the university mentioned in Option 1.

If I am planning to get a job directly after my master's (i.e. without doing PhD, although I might go back to school for PhD after gaining some work experiences on my belt), which option would you take? I have very good GPA from my undergrad years (4.0), and my parents want me to take the second option, but the first option is considerably more affordable and plus I like the fact that the first university has a good potential supervisor...

any thoughts are welcome

:)

Go for option 2.

When it comes to an MSc the role of your supervisor is less important than that in a PhD. Yes, you have to do some research (not always) and working with a "great guy" if far better than working with an "OK guy", but remember you are doing an MSc and planning to go to industry. People will care more about your grades than your research potential (short-sighted but true in my experience).

In addition, being in a more prestigious institution opens you more avenues; it will be a better selling point 5 years down the line and the top-ranked US university will probably have a better alumni network than a mid-rank public university.

In general, MSc studies are a way to buy some credentials to use either in the job market or as stepping stone to move to a better institution for your PhD than the one you are already. Get the best possible.


Is there a way to get a job in biology for chemistry graduate? Now I am ending my PhD in chemistry but love to switch to research in biology (bioinformatics or biochemistry). I already have wide knowledge in biology via university courses and latter learning with MOOCs, as well as programming. Please give a hint on getting a job in biology.

The difference between chemistry and biology is not so great that it's tremendously difficult to transition between the two. (Versus, say, transitioning from a historian of first century Mesopotamia into quantum physics.)

If you're looking for a postdoc, then I'd suggest looking for a lab that's doing the same sort of thing you want to be doing in the end, then figure out how your current skill set could potentially be applied toward that problem. For example, if you're an organometallic chemist and want to move into biochemistry, look for labs who are working on metalloenzymes, or with protein structure determination using paramagnetic metal ions.

Chances are, there's someone out there who is working at the intersection of your current expertise and your desired expertise. Get a postdoc position with them. At first you'll be "the chemistry guy", called upon to be the expert on you Ph.D. topic. But over time you'll pick up more and more of the biology, and can transition into more straight-biology research. Once you leave your postdoc, you'll have the biology experience (and publications) under your belt, and will be able to demonstrate competence to people interviewing you.

One caveat with this is that - like all postdoc interviews - you need to feel your advisor out on your plans. Many will be fine with your transitioning from one topic to the other, but there will be a few who will want to rigidly slot you into your Ph.D. role, making you a chemistry mercenary for your lab. Obviously, don't take a postdoc with those sorts of people.

If you're talking about a "real job", then things get slightly more complicated. A postdoc is technically a training position, and so broadening your horizons is expected and desired. For "real jobs", though, people are typically hired to do a particular role, and they're expected to be mostly accomplished for that role. That's not to say that roles don't change over time. A similar approach to the postdoc can also be used here. Find a company which is primarily a biology company, but needs your chemistry expertise. At first you'll be doing just the chemistry work, but over time you may be able to pick up more involvement with the biology side of things.

One type of place I might recommend you try for is a startup. The environment in a startup company is constantly changing, so people who work there typically need to be flexible and do many jobs. If you get hired at a mostly-biology startup, you might be brought on as a chemist, but it's likely that you'll be called upon to pick up biology as the job requirements change.

Again, feeling the company out in the interview is key. Ask how they see the position changing over the next 2/5/10 years. Do they seem receptive to you picking up a biology role, or do they want you to rigidly slot into a chemistry-only slot?

Regarding picking up another degree, I personally don't think it's worthwhile for two subjects as close as Chemistry and Biochemistry/Bioinformatics. A big part of a Ph.D. is training on how to do research, and there's not that much difference between how research is done in Chemistry and Biochemistry. If you have a Ph.D. in Chemistry, you should be competent enough to pick up biology research on your own. If you're interested in having a dual Ph.D., by all means go for it, but if you're just interested in doing more biology-focused research, learning it in a non-degree setting is probably better.


Can I trust web of science citation reports? In viewing authors profile to try to assess their impact I notice that H-index is quite different in Google Scholar and Web of Science (citation report). In Web of Science there is also a search for Author which is marked as "Beta". Which of this reports should I pay more attention to?

Web of Science citations are based on a smaller pool of documents.  For one, their collection includes mostly peer-reviewed journal stuff, to the exclusion of theses, preprints and other non-journal sources which can be included by Google.
Because it relies on final journal versions, WoS also excludes citations in intermediate versions that may have been published on arXiv or elsewhere but are removed in the final manuscript.  WoS citation counts can also lag actual counts by several weeks, if not months.
On balance, WoS citation counts are subject to less fluctuations than Google’s.  I prefer Google because of the breadth of the search, but I would not compare WoS and Google numbers.


Response time of a research supervisor I had an informal interview with a foreign professor on Skype and things went well. We talked on Friday and he said he will discuss my case during the meeting for recruitment of students. He showed interest and we exchanged emails for the possibilities of scholarships. Mean while he even sent me a book and lecture related to work but he did not replied my email on Monday. I thought he must be busy due to his meeting and its Thursday and still have not heard from him. Tomorrow it will be a week of my interview. Its just 2 or 3 days but should I be worried or wait, until he gets back?

Sara, I would wait another working day (Friday), and on upcoming Monday morning, I would send the following email, so the he/she could respond the beginning of the next week:

Dear Prof.X

I would appreciate if you could let me know about the outcome of the interview?

Kind Regards,
Sara


How should I select the correct path for doing my higher studies I have already completed my four year degree in Computer Science. Now I'm working as a trainee software engineer.However I wish to continue my studies further, and want to do a MSc or phd as I am interesting on doing higher studies. But I'm afraid of applying for a phd because I feel I'm not good enough to do a phd yet.(I have a second upper class). Therefore I think to follow a MSc and I'm very interesting in data science field. But I have doubt, whether I am going to take a right decision or not when selecting the path for doing higher studies. Please could some one help me to understand the way of selecting the correct path for doing higher studies for a fresh graduate student. Highly appreciate your suggestions.

For physics PhDs in the UK, the minimum requirement is a 2:1 in your undergraduate degree, which you have (I say physics specifically because that is what I have experience with). However, applications are so competitive that you usually need above the bare minimum to be considered. This means either having a better grade in your undergrad or doing a Master's degree.

My suggestion to you is apply to both MScs and PhDs simultaneously. Then, if you get accepted to a PhD, great; if not, then do the MSc and apply for PhDs once you've done that. Good luck!


Does a PhD from US carry *more academic value* as compared to one in India even if the research skill set developed is same? I am currently an Indian undergrad in physics in my final year. My area of interest has very strong groups at two institutes in my country, and I have both the options before me.  But the story does not end here.
I have a friend who is a graduate student at an Ivy college in the US who has recently suggested that it would be much better to get into a PhD program in the US, because according to them

even if the knowledge and research skill set developed could easily be the same between X,Y institutes and a top school in the US, to apply for academic positions in India, a PhD from the US has more value.

But many people I have talked to have told me that a PhD is not really about QS rankings or a country. It is about the quality of the work that you have done as well as how strong the corresponding research community is at your institute.
These two views are opposites of each other, and I am not sure how to proceed from here. I personally prefer to stay in my own country due to a number of reasons.
Any help is appreciated.

While I was an Indian undergrad in mathematics, I was told similar things by my friends who were doing, or planning to do, their graduation at universities abroad. Specifically, they told me that:

The top universities abroad are better than the top universities in India for graduate education.
Even if I were to be admitted to a good university abroad whose graduate program is comparable to that of an Indian university, the university abroad will be more beneficial for two reasons.

Experiencing a different culture will broaden my perspective significantly, and help in my growth by opening my eyes to more possibilities.
I can build a larger pool of contacts at a university abroad than at an Indian university, and doing so is very important to gain further opportunities in academia.
Somewhat connected to the above points, one can expect more invited talks (and also given by more top researchers) at universities abroad than at Indian universities, and it not only stimulates ones growth by being exposed to diverse topics through such talks, but also gives more opportunities to build contacts with top researchers.

Of course, there is an underlying assumption in all of the above that it is meaningful to speak of the characteristics of "the average Indian university" and "the average university abroad". I preferred to read their advice as saying, "If you compare the opportunities at a university abroad versus an Indian university, assuming that you want to get into those universities and are fairly confident of being able to do so, then it's more likely than not that the university abroad offers the above advantages over the Indian university." Read like this, I think my friends offered a fair assessment of the advantages.
I still chose to pursue my graduate education in India, for the following reasons:

I anticipated that my graduate education would be a difficult time for me, and I would need the support of my family to help me through it. If I were to be abroad, I would have a much more difficult time coping with the stress than if I were in India itself. There seemed to be little point in trading my mental health for more contacts and comparatively better future opportunities; after all, it's not like a graduate education in India dooms my future in academia.
And indeed, my graduate education started off on quite a rocky note, and the support I have received from my family has truly been invaluable.

I anticipated that choosing a guide would not be an easy task. Not everyone who is a good researcher is also a good guide. Not everyone who can be a good guide is specifically a good fit for me. In short, I felt that gambling on my chances of finding the right fit for me at a university abroad is riskier than doing the same at an Indian university: the stakes are lower, the sunk cost (in case I fail to find a good match for me) is also lower, and hence my ability to try again at another institute (in case of failure at one institute) is also higher.
As it happens, I nearly failed my qualifying exams after I secured admission at an Indian university, and nearly signed up with a guide with whom I had spectacular incompatibility issues. Things have sorted themselves out now and I am happy to say that my work is progressing well, at last.

Furthermore, among my friends who pursued their graduate education abroad,  some did struggle with their mental health and returned to India to get support from their family, some did fail to find a suitable guide and were forced to return home and start over in India, and some who pursued their graduate education in India also failed and started over in India. There are also those who succeeded, of course, but I just want to emphasise that it's not such a rare event to face these kind of difficulties that they can be easily neglected from the equation.
In your case, the final decision lies with you, of course. You need to decide how much weight you give to each relevant aspect. For me, the balance weighed in favour of staying back in India. For my friends who were more ambitious and also mentally stronger, the balance fell the other way. Neither path is absolutely right or wrong: you need to measure what is right for you, as best as you can perceive. Good luck!


What are benefits of writing a survey paper? Currently, I am in 4th year of my Ph.D. and my area of research is very big and quite active. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever written a survey paper that could summarize the important results of the last 20 years. A few survey papers that I have found till now, span a very narrow variety of results.
I have made a notebook for myself where I have written down all the major results that I have encountered through my Ph.D.. I find it very useful from time to time; for example when I write the introduction of a paper or look for an open problem in the area. I keep updating the notebook whenever any new result appears.
Right now, I have enough knowledge to write a survey paper. And, I would have to study a bit more to make it more complete. But I am finding it wasteful. I think that writing such a paper would only benefit other researchers and not me since I already have my personal notebook with me. Also, I think, I would be wasting my Ph.D. time writing a survey paper when I could be solving my own research problem.
Are there any self benefits for writing a survey paper? If so, maybe I can get the motivation to write one. Thanks!

In many fields, well-executed literature surveys are widely read and widely cited because they help a lot of researchers not have to retrace the steps of the survey authors. Readers can quickly benefit from getting a big picture of the domain and then be guided into specific articles to dive into according to their specific interests. This is a very valuable kind of research contribution.
So, the primary intrinsic benefit would be that you would be providing a valuable service to your research community. By "intrinsic", I mean a benefit that is its own reward--in this case, the satisfaction of sharing helpful research.
For extrinsic benefits that would justify the time and effort (that is, indirect benefits that lead to other things that might be valuable to you), a well-executed survey article would be widely read and highly cited, so your number of citations would go up. For this reason, a highly reputed journal would like to publish such an article, since they want those high citations. High citations in reputable journals should generally be good for your career.
All that said, it would be good to talk to a more experienced researcher in your field to get their assessment of if your ideas would indeed be valuable and appreciated, since it is often difficult to assess that yourself, especially if you are a junior researcher.


Is it possible to get a researcher position in a prestigious institute with a degree from a not very well-ranked university? I'm currently in the 2nd year of my Ph.D. and I'm really interested in my future career options. I'm attending a double-degree study programme in two European universities, none of them being among the top ones. But, I'm employed as a researcher (not only a Ph.D. student) in a supercomputing center in one of them (member of PRACE, 3 years ago in top 40 from TOP500 list) since the beginning of my Master's degree, thanks to Dean's award for my Bachelor's thesis. Five years ago it was a top university in my country (slightly under 300 in QS WU rankings), but then the directorship changed and the ranking dropped drastically (to my shock completely out of QS WU rankings). The second university shares a pretty similar fate - from about 300th place to 520+ in the last 7 years (I have no idea, what happened), but still maintains at least 151-200 position in my field. In general, I feel, that while both of the labs I'm working in are good and productive, the problem lies in some other faculties who do not focus on research enough.

Is it possible to hope for admission into a researcher position in some well-ranked university in the future? I'm not talking only about post-doc now, but also in a long-time horizon. This situation makes me feel really inferior, so I'd like to now, if my researcher career direction is tightly bounded by this situation or if there is a possibility to overcome rankings with good research results over the years after Ph.D.

Yes, it is.

When you apply for a postdoc position several things will be important:

what you have done (i.e. does it fit with the future PI's research
agenda),
how successful it was (i.e. did you publish your results
    in a top journal) and
you know what you want and you are burning for it

The name of the university might matter as well but once you graduated from your PhD your personal profile should be distinctive enough and the name does by far not matter as much as after your undergrads where everyone looks the same expect from the university name, marks average and some internship.


How do people in academia know whether their research, result, theorem or thesis is original work? I am curious as to how academia continues itself without replication or reinventing the wheel. So many academicians in so many areas of work, how would one ever find out whether the work he or she is about to embark on can be considered an original work? That someone didn't already publish the very same result?

In engineering, we have all heard the story of Cooley-Tukey's method of Fast Fourier Transform. The story goes Tukey has been applying his own method of FFT for years without recognizing that the implementation was a fundamentally original approach. Until he brought it up in a meeting in the 1950s, he had always thought that this method was used widely given its extraordinarily simple implementation. Only later did everyone realize that Gauss had used the very same method 160 years earlier.

The same goes for the famed Wiener-Khinchin theorem in stochastic analysis. After two most ingenious mathematicians ever graced this earth came up with this theorem did they realized that Einstein had already published it a decade ago.

Doubtlessly, there are thousands of examples in all branches of natural sciences. It is less clear whether the social science encounters this problem since no two times and places are ever alike, and the social reality keeps on changing therefore novel results is always promised.

So how can one find out in the quickest way possible that his or her work is original work? Original in the sense that the end result is something that improves upon an existing result or opens up an entirely new field without duplications from other people. Does there exist a database somewhere to categorizes all recent and historic progress in a certain field? Are there people who are employed in academia or elsewhere to do this very task?

Edit: I guess same goes for asking a question without looking at the other questions first...seems like this question was resolved in another post T_T

I think that to answer this effectively, one needs to carefully distinguish between two concepts that are often conflated in discussing research: originality and significance.  The originality of a piece of work is the degree to which it is distinguished from other pieces of work, while the significance of a piece of work is the intellectual impact that it has.

I think that these two tend to get tangled up because what typically concerns us is significance, but significance can only actually be measured in retrospect.  Originality thus gets used as a proxy for determining significance.  Intuitively, it makes sense: the more creatively different an idea is, the more likely it seems that it will have an impact.

Originality, however, is a matter of both perspective and scale of measurement.  Newton's famous quote: "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants", summarizes that no intellectual work exists in a vacuum: the myth of the lone genius is just that, a myth.  Edison did not invent the lightbulb, he made a significant improvement in its design which moved it past the tipping point; Einstein did not invent relativity, he had a mathematical insight which crystalized a collection of growing problems that many were starting to pay attention to; Hopper did not invent the compiler from whole cloth, she simply was the first to achieve that milestone amongst a number of others who were working on the automation of computer control. Reinvention, at this gross intellectual level, is not only frequent, it is to be expected.

At a finer granularity of measure, however, pretty much every non-plagiarized work is quite original: even if two people come up with effectively the same approach to a problem, how they approach it and how they validate their approaches will generally end up being very different, simply because the space of possible viable realizations of a program of research is so large.  Likewise, even a highly "unoriginal" idea at the grand scale may have great impact when introduced to an area where it is not commonly used, such as the recent Bayesian revolution in cognitive science.

So, originality per se is not a very useful measure; instead, you really want to be able to evaluate the likelihood of intellectual significance in your work.  For that, there is simply no substitute for getting to know the community that you want to impact.  You can do the most beautiful and elegant research in the world, but if it does not connect with intellectual issues that matter to others, it will remain in a sort of limbo... perhaps to be revived in 100 years (cf. the swing between frequentist and Bayesian statistics), or perhaps simply to be forgotten in the archives of history.

Thus, when it comes to evaluating one's own research, the thing you really should be worrying about is not unoriginality, but insignificance.  If you are working honestly, you will be original.  To estimate the significance of a piece of your work:

Know who you are trying to affect, and learn how to speak their language.  This typically involves reading relevant parts of the literature.
With respect to that literature, be able to explain how your work changes how people in that community should be thinking and acting.

And that's the (perhaps unsatisfying) long and short of it: if your work is done honestly and has an impact on the scientific community, then its originality is sufficient.


How to handle a student who will not accept that he is wrong? I am a university marker TA, and after midterm exam I met with a student who would not accept that he was wrong. He thought his answers were correct but didn't explain to me why his answers were correct. He just didn't accept my explanation. He also blamed me marking his assignment wrong, but later I found out it has nothing to do with me. It is my first time being a TA. Should I just tell him to talk to the instructor, and that my job is just marking?

Actually, I didn't explain too much because I don't know how to help him understand he is wrong even though he read the sample answer. And he didn't tell me why he is right.

Should I just tell him to talk to the instructor, and that my job is just marking?

Yes.  There's no point in getting into an extended argument with this student.  The student thought his answers were correct and you explained why they were not correct.  Since you've denied the student's appeal of the grade, the next appropriate step is generally for the student to appeal to the instructor.

It's a good idea for you to warn the instructor that the student is likely to appeal the grade and to provide whatever information you can (such as a photocopy of the marked up exam question and any grading key that you used).


Is the quality of work done in PhD a measure of my abilities to pursue academia? As a fifth year PhD student in chemical engineering (in North America) who's about to submit his thesis in 4 months, I have a serious doubt about my capabilities.

My PhD thesis was in an area not exactly in my PhD supervisors forte and I did not think that to be an issue when I accepted the PhD offer. Though, he was always available to offer ideas when I was stuck or guide me with a problem, I did not get much help on the technicalities of my works. Infact, he learned more about the future scope of my modeling technique, my research area as I continued to work on it.

However, since my PhD work is (in a way) entirely my own idea, it also meant that I was limited by my technical skills. I have tried my best to make my work as much rigorous as possible. But I think I did not do a good job.

My supervisor on the other hand seems very pleased by my work. He never complained about my productivity and rigorour of the work. The experimental collaborators also seemed satisfied by my work.

However, I think I have wasted my PhD time, which has resulted in a weak work. My manuscripts are about to be submitted, so I don't know if the work I have done is upto the mark in academic community or not.

I have been to many conferences, but I have neither got any praise for my work, nor any critique on them. So, I am not at all confident about my contribution to academia.

I am losing my passion for academia, and I don't think I have the necessary skills to survive in industry.

If I look at the quality of my PhD work, I think I am not the correct person to pursue further in academia. Can my PhD thesis be an indication of my suitability for a future academic career?

I think you are overly harsh with yourself, actually. There are several things going on here. First is that you are now more mature intellectually than you were when you began the work so are more likely to discount it than others might be. You know it best and if you were starting now, with what you now know, you would start higher up the ladder. That is just growth.

Just as important to answer your wider question is that for successful academics their first work, the dissertation, is seldom their best work. The more you work, the better you get. Just like an athlete.

I'm impressed, actually, that you taught your advisor something about your methodology and, it sounds like, developed that yourself.

But, the work doesn't get easier as you go along. It is just as hard, but you gain additional insight into the nature of things, especially that which it is important to study. I'll predict that if you don't give up you will do pretty well. A bit of letdown burnout is pretty common at your current stage. Power through it.


How do you make corrections to a published paper? What's the best way to make corrections to a published paper? Should I amend the original paper and mention in a footnote (or similar) what was changed and why or prepare a completely separate document and put that on my website/append it to the original paper?

I'm not so much worried about how to get it to the publishers that handle the paper, but rather about how to go about it. I would especially like to hear from people who have done something like that or know someone who did.

It depends on what the error is.

If the error is the publisher's fault—for instance, if they failed to make a correction you specified in the proofs—then they have an obligation to correct the error. In that case, an email to the editors alerting them of the problem, along with some documentation of the original list of corrections, usually suffices to get the problem fixed. (This will usually be accompanied by a "publisher's note" alerting the reader to the correction, although the original article will usually be updated to provide the correct information.)
If the error is something discovered after publication, then the best way to fix this is to prepare a short comment detailing the error, the correction, and its implications on your work. The resulting item is then submitted to the journal as a "comment" (or, in some cases, an "erratum," if the journal offers that as a submission option). In this sense, it is like any other comment on a paper.


Are (academic) job chances improved by extra-academic activities (Podcast, Popular Science Books)? This might be a really silly question, but I am wondering whether the chances to land an academic position can be improved by extra-academic activities. Say, people who are famous in their fields, but not for scientific contribution, but for say having a famous podcast on the subject or having written popular books on the subject?

I would assume that these researchers are attracting more students, but I am not sure how important that really is.

Of course we are not talking about a bad researcher, but imagine a choice between two candidates for an academic job: all things being equal, would this be a factor?

I have chaired and served on a number of faculty search committees, so from the perspective of a potential employment assessment (though I do not know your discipline)... If the non-academic activities are related to your topic of research, I would highlight that you have been successful in disseminating your research to non-academic audiences. For instance, I have given a TEDx talk on my research that is in layman terms and has received accolades from potential employers and upper administration at my institutions. I have also written policy briefs and reports for policymakers and providers that are technical, but not "academic." I have highlighted how this increases the relevance of my research. You could do the same and it would most likely be viewed as positive - as long as the non-academic activities do not overshadow or start to take the place from the academic ones.


What is a "provisional transcript, stating your provisional grades"? I am set to do a masters degree in the UK starting in mid September this year. It is exactly one year long.
I intend to do another masters after it which begins in October next year.
The structure of the course is we are examined on 4 modules in January and examined on 4 modules in June. We then write our dissertation from June to September. The weighting of the dissertation is 4 modules.
My problem is that I will have all my modules marks by September but not the dissertation mark.
I will get my certificate around November time.

I emailed the course director and he said that

"as long as you can get a provisional transcript, stating your provisional grades, before September, you are fine for the programme".

Does this mean that even if I do not get all my marks back before September, I am still eligible to apply and be accepted on the course?

Does provisional transcript mean an unofficial transcript with all my grades?
Or does it mean a transcript with my grades so far?

Provisional transcript: The school's current best indication of your classes and grades, subject to correction if necessary.


Use idea of a paper to prove new result I'm a phd student of Mathematic. I have following question. Recently, I proved something that I got main idea from some paper. To be honest, I don't like my proof, because I use the proof of  paper, then I changed a bit, and proved new result.  Though, when I show that my result to my supervisor he really likes. I told him that I used idea of some paper. In fact, 90% of proof is the same, but he said, it's okay, if someone didn't before.

Since that's my first paper, it is very important for me. I don't know what I can do. Do I neglect it? Do I need to mention that I use that paper? Is it possible referee reject my paper?

Since it's your first paper, you can in general assume that your supervisor knows better than you if it is worthwhile publishing. There are many publications out there - in math and other fields - that takes an idea or formalism from one paper, and applies it to a slightly different area. This is how progress in research works.

And yes, you should definitely cite the other paper. The fact that you've been inspired by something else does not disqualify your paper. In fact, quite the opposite can be the case, if it is not obvious that the idea from the other paper can be applied to a new area.


Where to put the theoretical framework in a PhD dissertation (social sciences) My dissertation consists of an introduction, background, literature review, methods/research design section, and a chapter for every aspect of a policy issue that I'm addressing. My theoretical framework states how I harness the literature that I summarize to my particular research problem. I thus feel like this could thus go in the lit review or as part of the research design.

I know it seems silly, but any suggestions would be great. I'm one of "those" people who needs a sense of structure (however illusory) to proceed on good faith.

Also, I've tried to search for examples in other dissertations, but it seems that a lot of work in my area these days goes straight to the analysis and primary research.

A different structure works for different manuscripts. However, the theoretical framework typically follows after the introduction and the literature review. The review should motivate the research question and the methodological and theoretical approach. The latter is then explained in the theory chapter, the former in a subsequent methodological chapter or subchapter. The methods chapter then bridges the theoretical and the empirical part of your study:

intro
review
theory
methods
empirics 1-n
analysis/discussion
conclusion


How can I find studies with statistical mistakes? I would like to create a list of known problematic studies that misused statistics.
I tried searching google and read a few papers on the topic, but none of them contained specific examples of bad studies.
Is there a list of such papers? is anyone aggregating them?
Note: if there is a reason not to reference them I would also like to know why.

The closest I would know of are Retraction Watch and PubPeer.
Retraction Watch
First, Retraction Watch has a database comprising retractions of scientific papers. Click on the arrow next to the search field "Reason(s) for Retraction", and you will see possible candidates for statistical mistakes.

PubPeer
Secondly, PubPeer allows anyone to write a 'post-publication review' responding to any scientific paper. Search for "statistical mistake" and you will find many cases in which readers raised concerns about published findings - some of them having led to formal errata, corrigenda or retractions. Here is one example, where the reader starts an extensive response with "I have no comments to make about the data, but I do have concerns about some of the statistical analyses", and goes on to list issues about the methodical approach of that paper.


Is it possible to do PhD in pure mathematics after engineering I have an MTech in Industrial Drives and Control (Electrical Eng). After that could not go for any work... After giving some tuition, I came to the conclusion that I am genuinely interested in mathematics... be it to study or to teach. Is it possible for me to do a PhD in mathematics? Or, are there any PhD options in Electrical Eng that are related to mathematics? I am even ready to take time and get a bachelors and masters in mathematics by distance education.

Sure, it is "possible".

I really question your stated rationale for it, though (couldn't get a job in engineering, thus staying in school and moving to a field that usually has harder time with job placement).  I think you would be better served beating the bushes and getting a job.


My advisor gave my main project to an undergrad and now I have no project, what should I do? My advisor doesn't have funding so I had to teach a class this summer, which consumed most of my time.  My advisor knew I would be busy teaching, so he got an undergrad to work full time on the project.  Now the summer is over and I don't understand any of the code anymore, because the undergrad has been working on it without me.  I also don't have another project so I am basically doing nothing with my time.  What should I do?  I still go to project meetings but I feel like it is not my project anymore.

Edit to answer questions:

(1) I was working on the old project for a semester before the undergrad started working on it.  But I didn't make much progress because I was TAing a class while taking a notoriously difficult breadth requirement, while also taking medication that impaired my ability to concentrate.

(2) The project was entirely my advisor's idea and in fact he has expressed frustration with the fact that I don't have any ideas of my own and I am not an independent enough researcher.

(3) My advisor doesn't seem to think I'm a very good grad student and I think he may have given up on me.

I see several issues here:

I don't understand any of the code anymore, because the undergrad has been working on it without me
I am basically doing nothing with my time

Well get on understanding it! Get the undergrad to explain to you what they've done. Or if you can't do that, sit down and spend your time working out what they've done. Research contains a lot of tedious sitting and thinking, not just creating and certainly not already understanding.

I was working on the old project for a semester
The project was entirely my advisor's idea and in fact he has expressed frustration with the fact that I don't have any ideas of my own and I am not an independent enough researcher.

If you've only been a research student for under a year then it's entirely normal that your supervisor would be providing the project. You are an apprentice researcher - your job is to learn to be an independent researcher, but you won't necessarily be at the start.
However, that doesn't mean you just wait for him to sort you out. As I said, you are meant to be learning to be an independent researcher. Spend some of your time trying to think of new projects for yourself. Read relevant papers and ask yourself what they could have done differently, or what questions are left unanswered. Think about what happens if you change one word in your original problem. Once in a while, try banging together completely random concepts, just in case you get some sparks.

I don't have any ideas of my own

It's time to start having some. Start generating ideas. For the first step, they don't have to necessarily be good ideas. Come up with lots of ideas, preferably vaguely plausible, first. Then start to think about whether of them might actually be worth testing out. Solutions don't pop into your head fully formed (generally). You have to try small steps and see where they lead. And most of them will be dead ends. Research involves trying lots of things that don't work, and finding a few that do.

I had to teach a class this summer, which consumed most of my time
I didn't make much progress because I was TAing a class while taking a notoriously difficult breadth requirement

Your full-time job is learning to be a researcher. Since most researchers will also spend a lot of time teaching, learning to teach is also a productive part of that. But if you need to teach to fund yourself to the extent you are not getting a reasonable proportion of your time for research then you are not in fact funding your studies. Do you have a realistic plan for getting all the way through your course within the time constraints?

taking medication that impaired my ability to concentrate

Try out some ways of helping yourself concentrate. Breaking everything in to small tasks is probably a good place to start, but I'm sure there are other ideas that could potentially help too. If you are having serious problems, it might be time to consider whether you need to take a break from your studies. You should also be sure your doctor is aware of the problem. It may not be possible to do anything about it, but on the other hand it might be.

My advisor doesn't seem to think I'm a very good grad student and I think he may have given up on me.

I think that's probably your biggest problem. I think you need to have a serious chat with your advisor about where he sees your research going. It may be he really has given up on you, in which case you should think about whether he is correct that this isn't the right path for you, or whether you would get on better with a change of supervisor and/or subtopic. If, on the other hand, you are wrong, you need to know that, for your own sake. Then start thinking about your own goals and motivation. You're going to need more driving you than what (you think) your advisor thinks of you. I think motivation is actually one of the hardest aspects of being a research student.


Applying to US Phd Programs while doing a UK Master's I recently received a conditional offer from UCL in MSc Advanced Neuroimaging. I'll be completing this program through distance learning (meaning that I won't have to physically be present in the UK).

I was thinking about applying to PhD programs in the US this fall with the hopes of starting in the fall of 2020. However, while I was looking at the course requirements for the MSc program, I noticed that my thesis would require a final presentation in September 2020 and results will be notified in October 2020.

Will this overlap (starting a PhD program in September 2020 while finishing my master's thesis) cause a problem? Will I have to wait to apply in the fall of 2020? I would really like to apply this cycle so that I won't have to waster another year.

I'll speculate that most places wouldn't find it to be much of a problem, but it is up to the accepting institution, certainly.

However, you will need to get accepted based on your current record without the MSc and will need to present sufficient evidence of success in the doctoral program. Since most US doctoral programs in the US don't require completion of a master's first it wouldn't seem to be an impediment to be doing both. But you will need to be sure that the required work on either of them doesn't impede the necessary work on the other. It would be sad to fail at either because of overload.


Should I consider legal action if my attempts to persuade my university to allow me to complete my PhD prove unsuccessful? My situation

I could go into the details of the situation in some detail here, but I fear it would read like a shaggy-dog story. For the moment I'll limit myself to these (what I hope are) salient points:

I enrolled for PhD in October 2011.
I made a breakthrough in my second year, which would be the subject of my thesis. This work has been ratified by colleagues both within and outside of academia.
After this, I took a considerable time off for personal reasons.
The likely earliest date I would have completed is October 2015.
If I were allowed to do so, I could likely complete in October 2018, so three years late.
Some would say that because my PhD is two years long, I would be five years late. I would counter that that's two years of funding the institution has saved (this irony would not be lost on anyone familiar with the workings of academia).
A senior and respected academic is on my side and is currently doing his best on my behalf to persuade the powers that be. However, I no longer think it is fair to drag him into the dispute. He is kind and reasonable, and for that reason this has become his burden. I want him out of it.
Nobody has told me that I cannot complete my PhD yet. The university has not responded yet, and I suspect they never will.
I don't need any funding. I just need to be allowed arrange the final examination and get this out of the way.

My question

I'm wondering whether I shouldn't just force the institution's hand with (at least) the threat of legal action, rather than expecting someone else to fight my battles for me. At the same time, however, I don't want to start issuing threats. I would do anything to avoid this course, to be frank.

Can you offer any wisdom on doing this?
Are there any relevant precedents? The institution is UK-based.

My broad diagnosis of your situation is that your time in your PhD program was too short and too long ago to give you a clear understanding of what the process of getting a PhD entails.  That lack of understanding is definitely going to cause you problems so should be addressed right away.  What other problems you may have, if any, is hard to tell at this point.

Let me now try to address some specifics:

  Nobody has told me that I cannot complete my PhD yet. The university has not responded yet, and I suspect they never will.

I'm already a bit lost.  The university will certainly respond to halfway reasonable questions directed to the right people.  Whom are you asking?  You should start by talking to people in your department: your advisor, the director/coordinator/chair/whatever of graduate studies, the department head....

  I am considering legal action. I'm wondering whether I shouldn't just force the institution's hand with (at least) the threat of legal action, rather than expecting someone else to fight my battles for me. At the same time, however, I don't want to start issuing threats. I would do anything to avoid legal action, to be frank.

Please read this over yourself.  It's conflicted bordering on contradictory.  But let me chime in: no, you should absolutely not try to "force the institution's hand" with the threat of legal action -- certainly not at this point, and in my opinion and experience, virtually never for someone in your broad situation.  The institution knows its own rules and policies intimately and you don't seem to know them at all.  The institution employs a team of lawyers; you do not.  A legal threat is not going to spook them into any positive action.

Also, IANAL and doubly not a lawyer in the UK, but in order to bring legal action you need to have some legal basis: a law they broke, a contract they breached, something like that.  You didn't mention any such thing.  Timing out your PhD may not be very nice, but that's not the same thing at all.

  If I were allowed to do so, I could likely complete in October 2018, so three years late.

You haven't been in academia for several years, but you think you could complete your PhD within three months from now?  Unless you have a completed thesis ready to go (or better, already submitted to your committee) that is basically impossible.  Your unrealistic time frame is a bit worrisome to me.

  I made a breakthrough in my second year, which would be the subject of my thesis. This work has been ratified by colleagues both within and outside of academia.

This is a key point in regard to how close you are to finishing your PhD.  "Ratified" is a strange word to use, and "outside of academia" is not very relevant either.  If your "breakthrough" resulted in a publication in a strong journal, then you're going in the right direction.  But you still need to work out with your thesis advisor whether the work of this publication alone is sufficient to be written up into a thesis (such writing may or may not take substantial extra time).  If you haven't spoken to your thesis advisor about this -- or, and here I am cringing as I type and hoping I am way off, if you don't have a thesis advisor -- then you are much less close to finishing than you think, and whatever acclaim you have gotten from people outside of your department is good rather than bad but not nearly so directly relevant as you seem to think.

Let me end where I began: please talk to your advisor or other sympathetic department personnel.  Please do not try to strong arm the institution at this time.  Good luck.


Extremely mild punishments for academic misconduct After looking at My professor is rigging data and plagiarizing. What can I do?, I read through some of the case reports of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and I noticed that punishments seem to be very light. When COPE receives a case, sometimes an attempt is made to contact the institution, and then the institution does nothing: perhaps the wrongdoer is too politically powerful, or the institution doesn't have any will to act. Sometimes the investigation simply fizzles out after nobody bothers to look at the lab journals, even though the lab journals presumably exist. Sometimes the journal is told how to avoid such problems in the future, but no punishments are forthcoming for the existing case.

This is very different from what I believed before - that if someone did decide to falsify/steal data, their employment would be terminated, and nobody would ever want to associate with them again.

So my question is: where is the discrepancy between how I perceive the consequences of academic misconduct, and what COPE reports as actual cases? Is it perhaps because most of the misconduct cases are from no-name departments and journals that do not care about their reputation? Or are my impressions of the consequences of misconduct incorrect?

In fact, I have experienced this on my own: one non-mathematics professor at my school took my mathematics manuscript, added his graduate students as coauthors despite their having no relation to the work, and tried to submit it to a journal. I don't care about this specific publication, as it is so worthless that I prefer it to be rejected as to not be associated with me. The professor thinks it is significant only because he knows nothing of mathematics. But it does make me question the kind of integrity I assumed of academics. He is a chair professor at a top10 university, and his (non-mathematics, science) department is very well-respected, so brand name is not the cause here.

The situation you describe in your last paragraph does not sound like business as usual at all: on the contrary, it sounds so bizarre that I am having trouble picturing it taking place.  (This is at a top 10 university in the US??)  I suppose there must be more to the story, but: granting what you say, indeed this professor does not have the right to publish the paper without your permission.  Especially if you think the work is not valuable enough to be published, you should absolutely contact the journal ASAP to withdraw the paper.

Unfortunately I suspect that you're correct that punishments for faculty who plagiarize or commit other forms of academic misconduct are distressingly light, in particular for many of the reasons that you suggest.  If someone is caught intentionally falsifying data or -- the horror, the horror -- submitting a knowingly false proof, then the community as a whole is going to feel victimized and take some steps to ostracize or ban this faculty member.  However, if it's a case of stealing material from a student: it pains me to say this, but often the easy course is to slap the faculty member on the wrist and look out to be sure that this behavior is not repeated in the near future.

I don't know what other people are doing, and I have heard more stories of faculty skullduggery on this site than in the rest of my life combined.  But for whatever it's worth, 99.9% of all faculty members I've ever met would sooner break into my office and steal my computer than steal a paper from a student.  If the trends are different in other fields and/or other parts of the world (and I think they must be, to an extent), I am really sorry to hear that.  Academia without academic integrity is one of the most hollow pursuits I can imagine.


Including article unrelated to my area in CV I have been teaching economics in a university for the past 5 years and, before that, working in the area of economics for the past 15 or so years. 20 years ago, before I studied economics, I studied French literature. Recently, I dug up my master's thesis in literature, updated and polished it, and then submitted. One of the top journals (generally considered top 5) in the subject area accepted it. I am wondering now whether I should include the article on my CV when I apply for economics teaching jobs, or even on my profile page of my current institution. I am worried it might look weird. I have some good economics articles too, so it's not that I am lacking good publications. Any thoughts? Thank you.

It’s your work, and you’ve published it, so on ethical and completeness grounds, you should include this publication on your CV.

If you wish to indicate that it’s not an active area of interest, you could always list it separately in your CV as “Other Publications,” “Publications from Master’s Degree Studies,” or something to similar effect.


How do I referee a paper when the authors may be behaving dishonestly? This is a follow-up to this question:  Should I recommend rejection for a paper I referee if the authors don't make changes that they could have made?

To recap:  I was sent a paper to referee by a top journal.  My first report pointed out that the authors had only considered one of two possible behavior patterns that their system might have.  When the authors resubmitted, they basically ignored what I had said (although see below).  So I sent it back, asking that the changes I had asked for before actually be made.

When I read the second draft very carefully, I saw they had actually added a very short paragraph that seemed to be arguing against the second type of behavior I was worried about being possible.  It was so minor I didn't even notice it before I asked my earlier StackExchange question.  However, the manuscript authors made an error in their attempt to demonstrate this point quantitatively; as I pointed out in my second report, their argument actually showed that I was correct.

Now, they have submitted the paper a third time.  This time, they very enthusiastically acknowledge that I am right--both types of system behavior are expected to occur.  However, they now claim that their numerical calculations actually include both possibilities, and that they actually did all along!  The letter says that they just explained things really badly.

They have made more changes to the manuscript.  It now states that both behaviors can occur and that both are fully included.  I am not in a position to check whether their results are consistent with this.  The paper does a lot of heavy numerical calculation, which would take a long time to replicate.  Since the bottom line result is not going to depend much on the intermediate details, it is plausible that their graphs could have been showing the fully correct answers all along.

However, the format of the paper suggests otherwise.  Add to that the fact that the second draft of the paper actually argued obliquely against the type of behavior that they now admit is natural.  I feel like there are two likely possibilities.  The first is that the authors are being dishonest.  They missed the second possibility, and now that I have pointed out that it definitely occurs, they have reasoned that they can fib about the matter and it will be difficult to refute their claim.  I am rather unhappy about this possibility; I hope it's not the case.  The second possibility is that the communication between the two authors of the paper was extremely poor.  The person who did the actual writing would have to have been quite ignorant of what his coauthor was actually calculating.  This is a less troubling but still far from ideal situation.

So, once again, I find myself unsure what to do.  Should I share my misgivings with the editor?  Or should I take the current draft's claims as is--chalk the whole thing up to incompetence rather than dishonesty?  I have, after all, no concrete evidence of fraud.

It is hard to tell from just your description alone (and without knowing the actual paper and revisions), but honestly this does not really sound like unethical behavior to me. Basically, what seemed to have happened was the following:

Authors hand the paper in. You review and claim that one of two important aspects is missing.
The authors disagree and, in an attempt to calm you over, write a short token paragraph about the second aspect (that they, in all honesty, don't believe to be very important).
You insist that the second aspect is super-important and needs to be covered more explicitly.
The authors give up and describe what the may think to be a minor aspect in much more detail than what they originally planned to do. Note that it is well possible that the authors were fully aware of this and had the data to do this all the time, but just did not think about it as something important. That they now agree that this is super-important sounds more like an attempt to win you over than anything else.

I have seen these kinds of exchanges play out in many, many journal submissions. Whether this actually improves the paper or not depends primarily on whether the second aspect was actually important or not. You say it is, but I have definitely seen reviewers get hung up on absolute sidenotes as well (which I am sure they honestly thought were essential), ultimately to the detriment of the manuscript.

More generally, it sounds a bit like you were a bit the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of reviewer in this process. What kind of change did you expect after the second review round? You wanted this additional behavior covered, and they did - and now that they did, you wonder why they did not do so from the beginning and presume that something unethical is happening. If they wouldn't have addressed this point, you would have been unhappy because the authors did not fix your major comments.

What I generally try to teach my students is that when you review for journals, you need to recommend fixes that can actually be done. That is, there needs to be a reasonable and doable change that would actually make you happy to accept the manuscript. If you think that a paper can in no reasonable way be fixed, recommend rejection (and don't accept another review if the editor decides for revision). Never recommend revision if you won't like any outcome.

Edit based on Lohoris' comment to aismail's answer:

  I've no clue why is the other answer who got all the upvotes, this one seems reasonable and to the point, while the other one basically says "you suspect something, don't bother, go on, everything's nice" which is a wtf for me.

Accusing authors of fabricating the data is a serious suspicion and should not be raised lightly if there are other plausible explanations. It's not that you "shouldn't bother", it's that it simply does not sound like the data has been fabricated to me (or, at least, it does not sound significantly more likely than in any journal submission where the code etc. is not public, which is a systemic problem). There are any number of (good or at least less bad) reasons why the authors may now have data that they did not report on in the first version, including:

The authors generated this data in the many months between revisions
The authors had the data all along but did not consider it very important
The authors wanted to save up this data for another paper (either to salami-slice, or because they truly thought that those should logically be two separate papers)

It is widely accepted that even major changes to the data and analysis can happen in between major revisions, and indeed it is common-place at least in my community to add more data to the paper based on reviewer request. This is basically the reason why we do peer review in the first place - if we always remain suspicious when the authors do more than cosmetic changes, why do we recommend revisions in the first place?

I understand that the authors were talking about a "miscommunication" in the response letter, but frankly, after two revisions (especially with a very critical reviewer in the loop), most authors tend to write in the response letter whatever they think gives them the best chance to calm the reviewer over. I would not give too much weight to whatever people write in this non-public document.


Subscribe to cross-listings on arXiv I'm interested in subscribing to cross-listings on the arXiv; similar to their regular e-mail alerts, but with the caveat that I'm interested in papers cross-listed on both quant-ph and cond-mat. The majority of papers relevant to my research seem to be cross listed between those two one way or another.

I haven't found any way to do it through the arXiv subscription system; does a third party service exist? Is there a better way to zero in on these intersectional areas? Barring the existence of such a method, I may try to create my own; is there a stable API worth using?

Edit: Found the API, must have missed it earlier

For the benefit of anyone who might want to do something similar in the future, I took a stab at making a script to fetch recent crosslisted submissions. I based it on the example Python API parsing script. It's not perfect, but it will get the cross-lists which were posted within the 24 hours ending the previous day at 8pm (roughly corresponding to the /new/ page, except without the weekend aggregation). It also filters out the update submissions (as opposed to new submissions, which is what I'm primarily interested in).

Currently it prints out an HTML format, which is suitable for a web-page or e-mail. I set it up to run as a chron job and output to a local file, which I refresh on my browser; you could also set it up to email it to yourself every day, and I've included some commented code that would do that.

"""
Adapted from
http://arxiv.org/help/api/examples/python_arXiv_parsing_example.txt

with modifications by Alex Breitweiser

This is free software.  Feel free to do what you want
with it, but please play nice with the arXiv API!
"""

base_cat = "quant-ph"
cross_cats = {"cond-mat.str-el", "cond-mat.mes-hall"}

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import feedparser
from datetime import date, timedelta
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# Base api query url
base_url = 'http://export.arxiv.org/api/query?';

# Search parameters
yesterday = date.today() - timedelta(1)
dby = yesterday - timedelta(1)
start_date = dby.strftime("%Y%m%d")+"2000"
end_date = yesterday.strftime("%Y%m%d") + "2000"
search_query = 'cat:%s+AND+lastUpdatedDate:[%s+TO+%s]' % (base_cat,
                              start_date,
                              end_date)
start = 0                     # retreive the first 5 results
max_results = 50

query = 'search_query=%s&start=%i&max_results=%i' % (search_query,
                                                     start,
                                                     max_results)

# Opensearch metadata such as totalResults, startIndex,
# and itemsPerPage live in the opensearch namespase.
# Some entry metadata lives in the arXiv namespace.
# This is a hack to expose both of these namespaces in
# feedparser v4.1
feedparser._FeedParserMixin.namespaces['http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/'] = 'opensearch'
feedparser._FeedParserMixin.namespaces['http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom'] = 'arxiv'

# perform a GET request using the base_url and query
response = urllib.request.urlopen(base_url+query).read()

# parse the response using feedparser
feed = feedparser.parse(response)

title = "New %s submissions cross listed on %s" % (base_cat, ", ".join(cross_cats))

body = "
%s
" % (title)

body += 'Feed last updated: %s' % feed.feed.updated

# Run through each entry, and print out information
for entry in feed.entries:
    all_categories = [t['term'] for t in entry.tags]
    if not any(cat in cross_cats for cat in all_categories):
        continue
    arxiv_id = entry.id.split('/abs/')[-1]
    if arxiv_id[-2:] != 'v1':
        continue
    pdf_link = ''
    for link in entry.links:
        if link.rel == 'alternate':
            continue
        elif link.title == 'pdf':
            pdf_link = link.href
    body += '
%s
' % (pdf_link, entry.title)

    # feedparser v5.0.1 correctly handles multiple authors, print them all
    try:
        body += 'Authors:  %s
' % ', '.join(author.name for author in entry.authors)
    except AttributeError:
        pass

    try:
        comment = entry.arxiv_comment
    except AttributeError:
        comment = 'No comment found'
    body += 'Comments: %s
' % comment

    # Since the <arxiv:primary_category> element has no data, only
    # attributes, feedparser does not store anything inside
    # entry.arxiv_primary_category
    # This is a dirty hack to get the primary_category, just take the
    # first element in entry.tags.  If anyone knows a better way to do
    # this, please email the list!
    body += 'Primary Category: %s
' % entry.tags[0]['term']

    # Lets get all the categories
    all_categories = [t['term'] for t in entry.tags]
    body += 'All Categories: %s
' % (', ').join(all_categories)

    # The abstract is in the  element
    body += '
%s
' %  entry.summary
    body += '
'
print(body)

'''
email = "foo@bar.com"
password = "f00bar!"
msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['Subject'] = title
msg['From'] = email
msg['To'] = email
msg.attach(MIMEText(body, 'html'))
smtp_host = 'smtp.gmail.com'
smtp_port = 587
server = smtplib.SMTP()
server.connect(smtp_host,smtp_port)
server.ehlo()
server.starttls()
server.login(email,password)
server.sendmail(user,tolist,msg.as_string())
'''


Is it OK to submit a poster version of an already accepted full paper to the same conference? My advisor has suggested that I should send a poster version of an already accepted full paper to the same conference.  He suggests that I should do this because he thinks this will trigger more discussions about this work and make it known by more people. The intention is good, but I have a concern since it is a poster version of the same paper in the same conference. I feel weird.

Can anybody give me more suggestions? Should I do this?

Some conferences explicitly encourage (or even require) poster presentation of papers.  In this case, there is typically an option to simply request that your existing paper also be given a poster slot.  Thus, it may in fact be quite reasonable to seek to present in both ways, if the conference supports this.

It would not, however, be appropriate to submit a separate poster paper that pretends to be different than the accepted paper.  That would be self-plagiarism, and the conference organizers might look very badly upon you for doing that.

I would thus recommend getting in touch with the poster chair and asking if they allow accepted full papers to have an accompanying poster as well.  If so, that's great, and you probably don't need to submit anything more than a formality at most.  If not, then accept that there will be no poster and don't submit anything!


Letterhead in application letters for tenure-track in computer science in USA? I'm a postdoc in computer science preparing an application for a tenure-track full-time faculty position in a US university. The opinions on whether to use a letterhead or not vary: Postdoc using current university's letterhead for job application cover letter (academic/national lab jobs)?, Should I use my university's letterhead for a cover letter for a job application?, Letterhead ethics, The Professor Is In: Why Letterhead Matters.

Which choice is prevalent or advisable for the position in question: with or without letterhead?

I've served for 15 years on my (top-5 US computer science) department's faculty recruiting committee, including three as committee chair.

At least in my department, whether your cover letter uses letterhead  Does. Not. Matter. Really.  The hiring committee is looking at the information in your application; formatting is at best a secondary concern.  Most committee members will never even read your cover letter, because all the relevant information is repeated elsewhere: In your CV, your research and teaching statements, your web page, your DBLP profile, your Google Scholar profile, and especially your recommendation letters.  I did read cover letters as committee chair, but only because that made it slightly easier to classify applications into our target research areas.

As a sanity check, I just went through a random sample of the candidates that my committee rated highly in last year's faculty search.  About half of their cover letters were on institutional letterhead.


If you were an editor-in-chief, would you appreciate to be informed that an associate editor has published sloppy information in his journal? (Edited with thanks after the early comments helped gauge the perception of the post.)

This is the situation

I came across an article published in a reputable journal in the field of physics and engineering science.

The first author of this article is a member of the editorial board.
A handful of other co-authors follows. They are also affiliated to serious education establishments and hold positions with some standing.
Author and co-authors are associated by a grand research project. This lets me think that this article attracts and will attract attention for a while, at a minimum via legit self-citations.
Parts of the article had been copied and pasted, or slightly edited, from grey literature related to the same research project.
One of these parts is relevant for understanding the inner workings of their research outcome and, pragmatically, comparing my work and theirs. But

some terminology is plainly wrong (apples-for-pears)
some terminology is subtly wrong (community-bound misnomers)
some formulas lack
the references do not contain information integrating these lacunas

Therefore, it is impossible for me to verify the work they did and take at face value some claims of the article relevant for my investigation.
I have reached out to the research team

first asking for additional information (I had started my study from the item of grey literature of point 4)
the first author acknowledged the apples-for-pears glitch but did not provide the lacking information
I asked again for that integration I needed
radio silence
I then discovered the article, pointed out to the inconsistency with the paper, and urged the need for an integration, out of lack of alternative sources
radio silence
I moved on, carried an analysis of the topic at a considerable time overhead, and proposed to their judgement an integration for the lacking parts
radio silence

To sum up, 1-3 describe the context; 4-5 describe the problem; 6 describes what I did in search for clarifications.

Now onto the considerations

The shortcomings I have spotted must have passed several coarse filters.
The number of eyeballs (several co-authors and perhaps a couple of reviewers) that could/should have spotted at least some of these shortcomings from the outset is high.

I feel that the situation is particularly anomalous because of point 1.
That is, granted none is perfect, I would expect that associate editors are particularly strict ensuring that their own publications set a standard for the journal, or do not betray that standard.
In my view, this is surely no research misconduct, rather either a questionable research practice or a minor shortcoming, depending on judgement.
However, I feel this is not exactly OK.

I am also quite willing to wait for a few weeks for a satisfactory answer to come or for me to develop another perspective on the state of the play, also thanks to this community.

Now onto the questions

In this meantime, at any rate, I would like to gather views from this community on why

you would recommend to inform the editor-in-chief of the shortcomings in points 4-5 and motivate a request for revision?
you would rather recommend not to do this?

(I am neither an associate editor or an editor-in-chief.)

Reading your post, I did not understand exactly what the problem is with their article. It may be sloppily written, but your post comes across like you are looking for reasons to complain about it.

It is unfortunately common for articles to be poorly written. Of course, depending on the journal one expects varying quality, but even in top journals writing and presentation quality may not the primary concern for publication.

On the other hand, if you have comments on how an article can be improved, you have to be very careful when emailing the authors. Unsolicited criticism does not usually go over well.

  A handful of other co-authors follows. They are also affiliated to serious education establishments and hold positions with some standing.

This does not seem relevant to the question.

  Author and co-authors are associated by a grand research project.

Similarly, this doesn't seem to be relevant.

  Parts of the article have been copied and pasted, or slightly edited, from grey literature related to the same research project.

Are you accusing them of plagiarism, or did they only copy from their own past papers? If the former, that is a major concern and you should contact the editor, but only about this particular point, not the rest. If the latter, note that attitudes on self-plagiarism vary and while it is inadvisable, it is not always considered unethical.

  some terminology is plainly wrong (apples-for-pears)
  some terminology is subtly wrong (community-bound misnomers)
  some formulas lack
  the references do not contain information integrating these lacunas

These are issues for the presentation but not issues with the work itself. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas for how to improve the article, but as you are not the author of the article, there is no direct and easy way for you to do so. If you feel strongly about presenting their work more effectively, you could consider writing a blog post or other piece of exposition putting their work in a positive light and clarifying such issues.

  I asked again for that integration
  radio silence

Were you polite in your emails? Did you compliment their work at all? Did you express interest?

If not, I would probably respond with radio silence too. Yes they could improve the article, but they did not ask you for your unsolicited feedback. They are not obligated to answer your email.

  I then discovered the article, pointed out to the inconsistency with the paper, and urged for some integration

It sounds like you emailed the authors and just told them to change their paper. This comes across as rude. You need to be more tactful in your suggestions.