texts: What can/should be done about journals that spam potential contributors?

texts:
I'm a very early stage researcher and my first two conference papers could have been better, but that doesn't stop new journals spamming me with offers to publish my work. This morning I received two emails from:

Journal of Communication and Computer (http://www.davidpublishing.com/)
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science (http://ijpg.org/index.php/IJACSci)

Now this is clearly spam, they know nothing about my research area or they wouldn't be asking me, and my first reaction is to not waste my time reformatting work that I've already done. But am I missing something here?

Personally I feel that publishing in these general purpose repositories dilutes the (our!) publishing model and makes it harder to find related research.

So what is, if anything, being done about this?


texts: How casual is too casual for a PhD application personal statement?

texts:
I’m currently writing a personal statement for a PhD application I am putting together and I have the sentence, “Not to be overly dramatic, but when I saw the advertisement for this project I breathed a sigh of relief because...”

I’m wondering whether this sentence is a bit too embellished and casual to have here, because in the past I’ve been told that a personal statement shouldn’t be too formal but it shouldn’t be too casual either.


texts: Is having a co-adviser a good idea in a PhD program

texts:
I'm currently doing a PhD in mathematics and have been working with my current adviser for almost a year. My adviser is at an advanced age, however, even though he still has a couple of more graduate students apart from me. My work has been going decent, but with oral qualifying examinations coming up, I'm confused if having a co-adviser may be a good idea for me. There are a couple of reasons for me to think so.

First is the fact that my adviser is at an advanced age. Secondly, while my adviser was away for a semester last year, I worked with another faculty member, who recently told me to consider if I wanted him as a co-adviser. I've not spoken about this issue with my adviser yet.

In this situation, I'm really confused about two issues. Firstly, will it be a good idea to have a co-adviser at all in my case, or should I continue having a single adviser while continuing my work with the other faculty member and keep him in my committee? Secondly, if I indeed choose to have a co-adviser, how should I bring it up with my principal adviser so that he doesn't mind? This has left me very confused recently and I'd love to hear some general advise in this situation.


texts: Query regarding possibilities of editor's reply

texts: I have submitted my paper in an Elsevier math journal. For almost one year the status of my submission is "under review". Recently I have communicated with the handling editor. The editor informed me that he has received referee report and sent his decision to the editorial board for final decision (it would take another few weeks). I am very confused because the editor has not asked me for any revision of my manuscript. I would like to know what could be the possible outcome of the above situation. Does this automatically imply that the paper has been rejected or there is any possibility of the paper of getting accepted?


texts: Keeping my remote Job with MSC in Berlin

texts:
I am born & live in Uganda, and I got an opportunity to study MSC in Computer Science in Berlin while also having a remote job with a company in Egypt at the moment which pays me very well.

Now I have been chasing this MSC for a while now long before I got my remote Job, I had actually given up on it as I thought it would never happen. But then right now, I have this great Job which I do not also want to loose at the same time.

I am very confused at this point as I look at my self as someone who wants to eat my cake & have it.

 So my question is, what are the disadvantages of keeping my full time remote job & still being in school with all the course work & everything.

I might feel really depressed if I have bad grades. Should I just let the MSC go & move on?


texts: How should I approach the editor if I have been omitted from the author list of a paper I contributed to?

texts:
As I left my PhD in between, my name has not been put in the published paper. My PI published  the paper in a very clever way. I worked in the entire project and it was a team work. he put all the names who are involved except mine.

How should I approach the editor as I deserve an authorship? And one of the editors of that journal was our departmental head and his name was there in the paper.

Kindly let me know about your suggestion.


texts: How to get people to reply to emails and what to make of a no response?

texts:
Most people in research probably have first-hand experience regarding how difficult it is to get some people to reply to emails, e.g. (but not limited to) some reputed professors. It is also difficult to establish how to interpret a lack of response, because the person can be just busy and miss your email (i.e. "save for later" then forget about it) or might be purposely ignoring the email. I find the lack of response particularly annoying when contacting a listed "corresponding author" about their paper.

I have experienced several extremes: professors who reply within hours (or even minutes!); professors who failed to produce any response at all; even once I sent a job query and didn't get a response until after 2-3 months later, when the professor apologized about forgetting to reply and said he was very interested in my application.

The latter case almost cost me a job (luckily I had already secured a position elsewhere), and as it turned out later I could have resolved the situation by sending the professor a reminder that he had not replied to my earlier email. But how could I have interpreted his lack of response as either forgetfulness or disinterest?

The situation is usually better with postdocs and graduate students, who tend to reply, and when they do their replies tend to come faster.

Hence, my questions are:

How to improve the chances of getting a reply to one's email besides the obvious "be brief and to the point"
How to interpret the lack of response
When is it appropriate to send a reminder and tips to avoid annoying the recipient with it

Edit upon request:

The typical content of the emails I'm referring to would be regarding the work done by the email's recipient or at their lab (questions about papers published by them, for instance). Non-spam job applications or surveying possible collaboration could also be included here.


texts: Do I include non-academic works on my ORCID?

texts:
A children's book I wrote is about to be published soon. Should I include it in my ORCID account?

ORCID is very clearly concerned with academic works. However, it would be nice if someone who wasn't sure if the author the children's book and the math papers were the same person could check on ORCID and get an answer.


texts: Including in progress but invited publications in resume and/or CV

texts: I'm a co-author on two papers that were just recently submitted for publication. There seems to be a consensus that if you even include "in progress" papers, you should not include the journal they have been submitted to since they haven't been accepted by that journal. I was wondering if this is still the case for papers that are invited contributions to special issues?


texts: How an extremely competitive, but non-accredited "regionally" program will be perceived in a phd applicant application?

texts:
I am applying to a PhD program in law (business law) at a top university in the U.S. I got my master of law from an equivalent institution in the U.S.
I found an online-based MBA (master of business administration) program,
and I got accepted to the program.
According to their published data they are extremely competitive with an acceptance rate of only 7%. Majority of their students are graduates of reputable institution [ Harvard,Yale, LSE..etc.]. However, they are only accredited by the Distance Education Accreditation Commission (DEAC).
Since I study business law, I thought that it would be a good idea to reflect on that in my SOP and CV. (I am not applying to a business school. I am applying to a law school, but I just thought it is nice to nail down the technical aspect of business since my proposed research have some parts in business).
I am not sure how this would be perceived? should I put it in my CV and SOP as MBA or just point out that I am taking a program in business (just like you would reflect MOOCS or independent courses in your CV).


texts: Resubmitting manuscript somewhere else after rejection: Should I change who I list as my preferred reviewers?

texts:
Suppose I submitted a manuscript to Journal A which allows me to provide a listing of preferred reviewers. Further, suppose that Journal A rejected my manuscript based on feedback from two reviewers (I do not know if these two reviewers were on my "preferred" list).

Now, I want to submit my manuscript to Journal B, and I do not anticipate making any major changes to the manuscript (I will address all the comments made by the Journal A reviewers, but I will not change the paper by more than 10%).

My questions:

Should I suggest completely different preferred reviewers? Will suggesting the same reviewers again decrease the chances of having the article accepted?


texts: How to teach my students to appreciate all fields of study?

texts:
I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I don't know any other place to ask.

I'm a research professor, but I enjoy teaching and put a lot of time into my classes. I mainly teach introductory calculus and physics to mainly engineering students. One of the things I've noticed while talking to students is their hate and animosity towards the liberal arts.

I asked for some of my students reasoning and a lot of it was that History, English, Classics, etc. did not follow the "laws of logic and reasoning." There are other examples, but I those are the ones the most common, along with "it's not applicable to life."

I just want my students to learn that living in a bubble academically is not good for your knowledge, and the Colleges and Universities are there to help create educated individuals.


texts: Is it a good idea to submit a recommendation letter from a friend who is doing PhD at the university I am going to apply?

texts: I got a friend who is doing PhD at one of the prestigious universities. Two and half years back we were classmates in graduate studies. I have good relations with him. I started working for industry and he is doing PhD. He has good credentials as far his research and academic records are concerned. There is PhD vacancy at the same university but in different department. I need to submit two recommendation letters. Is it a good idea to take recommendation letter from him? Will it increase the chance of getting selected for that position?


texts:
I have recently submitted a paper to a journal, with the format required by the journal itself.

Now I am submitting on Arxiv a version of the paper with the same content but a different formatting (not the journal format, just a generic one).

I am wondering: should I keep the acknowledgments in this Arxiv preprint?


texts: How to react to some students who book an appointment and do not show up?

texts:
I wonder what is the best strategy to follow to respond to students who book an appointment with you and do not show up. It is just so un-nice when this happens.
I do not want the student to be upset but at the same time to honour his/her bookings.


texts: Is it unethical to have a possible future coauthor to review my current paper?

texts:
Many think it is unethical to have your coauthor to review the paper; many think it is not.

In my situation, I am discussing possible collaboration opportunities with researcher A. He knows the field well and might be the fittest referee for my current paper, which is also in this field.

Is it unethical to nominate him as a reviewer?


texts: How to use copyrighted images in an article?

texts:
I have developed an educational software in which I make use of some copyrighted images, for example from Disney, and am now writing an article about it.

How should I reference or cite that those images are copyrighted? Should I put it on a footnote or just blur the images inside the article?

I would not like to have problems of an article rejection because of that.


texts: Why should (or should not) a university have a policy of not hiring its own PhDs?

texts:
My university (in France) is having a debate about the relevance of taking rules for preventing too many of its PhDs to be recruited here, or asking them to have some postdoc outside the region before. The same rules are also debated about the promotion to full professor (from what is called maître de conférence and is a tenured associate professorship).

Many people have strong opinion on these issues (me included), and I would like to gather a comprehensive list of arguments (in both directions) on this matter, if only to clear my ideas.

Some arguments may apply only under particular circumstances or in specific fields, please say so when it applies.


texts: Why many research results are presented as paid articles?

texts:
Many times I learn or look for some information, I find scientific article on ieeexplore.ieee.org or similar, where articles are paid. Most of the articles are written by some professors of universities or students about their work.

My question is, why do they sell their results?

If I was a professor and made some work, I would like to gain some acknowledgement for it and I think there is no better way then see others work based on mine. So why not to publicly share the article for free?

I understand that private companies sell their innovations because that's the main source of their income, but people at universities are usually paid and writing articles are part of their job.

So what are the advantages of selling results instead of sharing for free (is there any other except money)?

Does selling your results have any negative influence?

PS: I may not have enough backstage knowledge about how it works on universities and I don't want to offend anybody. I also don't mean work people do in their own free time, but work they do on behalf of universities. This just slows down the development and overall research in field in my eyes.


texts: Parts of thesis draft published without proper credit

texts:
My Master's thesis instructor has copied a chapter of my thesis draft into several publications, sometimes listing me as an author and sometimes not. They said it won't cause me any problems so I gave permission in one case but not the others, where I was just informed afterwards. As they were my boss and instructor, was in a hurry to submit the publication and insisted there will not be problems I didn't feel like having another choice.

After consulting with my supervisor I'm starting to feel doubtful, especially if any automatic plagiarism checking is involved because searching for various numeric results and phrases from my thesis in Google returns results with the exact same text and without my name in the list of authors.

I'm supposed to hand in the finished thesis this week and don't have time to rewrite the affected chapter. My supervisor said I should at least include a footnote explaining the situation. What should I write? I wouldn't want to cause trouble for the instructor either, they're a nice person in a difficult situation.

The other publications are all reports or conference proceedings available free of charge from government sources or the university's website so commercial publishers' copyright claims should not be an issue.


texts:
I have an article with in-text citations and list of references. I have not used any of reference managers, just used word.
Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?


texts: How to deal with consequential rounding errors when verifying the works of others?

texts:
to give a stupid example of a rounding error: on a test, the student is asked to calculate the circumference of a circle with radius 6.2. You personally did the math with π rounded to 3.14 and calculated 38.936, but one of your students rounded to 3.14159, and because of that their result is 38.955716.

Now, I doubt any decent teacher would discard this result as wrong, since the math itself was correct. However, what if this calculation was part of a much larger series of calculations for an academic paper, and the resulting rounding error throws off the entire result? It's easy to just come out and say "if you round X to 15 places instead of 14, your formula makes the English channel 10 meters wider" or "you rounded to 5 places, but if you round Y to 6 places, your result is no longer statistically significant", but it just seems like such a cheap way to give feedback for academics. Another example: "by rounding X to Y+1 places (or Y-1 places) in our formula to determine whether an event happened, we managed to shift 90% of our test group from 'happens 25% of the attempts' to 'happens 75% of the attempts'". It's an extreme example, but something like that

I know that such a remark can be seen as a meaningful one since it's a viable concern, but it's still quite a nitpick, and there's probably a reason why X was rounded to 14 places. Still, I can't help but think that a formula should work regardless of how many places you round X to.

If an academic paper you are reviewing could change result or even be invalidated due to rounding differently, how should that be handled in a peer review?


texts:
Russia and Israel have good histories of science and technology.

But, I never saw any Russian and Israeli university in the top 50 list.

Currently, the top Russian university, according to QS World Ranking is, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Its position is 114. This is far worse than China. The top Chinese university Tsinghua has a position of 47. The same problem can be seen in Israeli universities.

Why do Russian and Israeli universities score low in various world rankings?

What is the problem? And, why aren't they trying to improve the situation?

          |--------|-----------|--------------|-----------------|-----------
          |QS(2015)|Times(2015)|Shanghai(2014)|Webometrics(2014)|CWUR(2014)
----------|--------|-----------|--------------|-----------------|-----------
  Russia  |   114  |    196    |      84      |       129       |    48**
----------|--------|-----------|--------------|-----------------|-----------
  Israel  |   138  |    188    |      70      |       207       |    22**
----------|--------|-----------|--------------|-----------------|-----------

** this ranking is an exception.


texts: How important is number of publications and prestige of the publication outlets for getting a tenure-track job?

texts: More generally, what are the most important factors for getting a tenure-track job?


texts: Explaining a bad exam result at my annual review

texts:
As I posted yesterday, I've just taken an exam and failed (quite badly might I add). The course was externally hosted as part of my PhD training in my first year so it won't look very good on my record which has me very worried. I turned the exam in yesterday but I know I've failed, I left half unanswered. I just don't know what's happened to me.
I don't have an excuse for why I've performed so terribly other than the questions were harder (to me) than previous years And I'm burnt out.
How do I explain this failure to the panel?


texts: Is it ethical to slightly improve upon someone's unpublished work posted in arxiv and publish before the original work?

texts:
Is it ethical to slightly improve upon someone's work posted in arxiv and publish before the original work, however citing the original work?

I mean suppose the original work gets rejected in a top-tier journal (generally top-tier journal takes so much time) whereas the improved version gets accepted in a mediocre journal (suppose the mediocre journal is fast in reviewing).

Then what should the author of the original work (I am the author of the original work) should do?


texts: Should I thank the professor for forwarding me webinar/seminar invites?

texts:
I work in the research group of one of the professors in my college. My professor forwards me emails which he receives regarding some webinars/seminars being organized in college/companies or articles related to our work. However, those emails are forwarded and don't contain any message personally written by him.
In such a situation, should I thank him for every such mail? (which I receive thrice per week) or will such frequent thank-you emails be deemed funny and spam by him? but if I don't respond in any way, I fear he will think I am ignoring his emails and my behaviour might be taken as rude.
What is common practice in such a situation?


texts: Necessary to state power when using 'billion' in UK publication?

texts: In British English, a billion traditionally had a different meaning to in American English (10^12). In modern writing the American convention has pretty much taken over. Is it therefore okay in a British publication to write 'billion' and assume the meaning will be unambiguous (e.g. 'approximately one billion years old'), or should the figure (or SI equivalent e.g. G, Ga) always be stated still to ensure clarity?


texts: Should I write about quitting a currently Masters program in a Motivation Letter?

texts:
I am writing a motivation letter to apply to a masters program in an engineering field in an international university (Germany, Italy). I would like to continue from there on a research path.

However, currently I am enrolled in a professional masters program that I would like to discontinue. The reason for this is that the current program provides very limited research opportunities and will likely make it very hard for me to continue as a researcher.

I would like to know if I should write anything about my current masters program to the university I am applying to. On one hand, I would like to highlight the experience and the achievements I have gained in my current program; since I have not completed the program I cannot write about it in my CV. On the other hand, I do not want this to have any negative impact; how do I explain why I was enrolled in the program in the first place.

One year ago, I had no interest in continuing as a researcher; I only applied to the masters program because several friends of mine applied and because I was granted a 100% scholarship. Now that I have some experience in research, I know that I want to continue in this path.

My question is, should I include the masters program I am currently enrolled to in my motivation letter? if so, what are the main things that I need to write about?


texts: How to engage in the scientific committee of a conference?

texts:
I have published few papers with high impact factors in power systems already and graduated with M.Sc. couple of years ago. I am a reviewer in couple of top journals like IEEE as well.

I thought it would be exciting to enroll in scientific committee of a conference in my field, electrical eng. power systems, specially abroad. Well my question is:

How can I find a conference to engage in their scientific committee?
What qualifications should one have for that?
Is it normal to apply for this by email online? and how?


texts: Recommendation letter from CS faculty for math grad school (and vice versa)

texts:
I am in kind of a dilemma(ish) situation. I am a rising junior, and I plan on applying to graduate school in math, but I have not shut the door on graduate programs in CS or applied math either (am interested in algorithms, combinatorics, optimization, etc.).
There is one professor at my school who I am pretty close with in the CS department, who I also plan on doing research with. This professor does research in algorithmic game theory, which for all intents and purposes (at least in my opinion) is hopefully pretty close to "math".
I think they would be able to write a good recommendation letter, and it certainly would be helpful if I decided to apply to CS graduate school. However, would math graduate admissions prefer such a letter over a teacher I had? I would presume so, but I just wanted to make sure.
Also, on the flip side, would a recommendation from a professor in math help for CS? The professor in mind mostly does combinatorics. Thanks for your help!


texts:
I currently finished my undergraduate studies and I plan to apply to PhD programs in the near future. In the mean time I will be starting a masters to get additional research experience and take some advanced courses in my field of interest. I plan to go into Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) and I plan to take masters courses in CMP and get research experience in CMP. During my undergrad I was a Physics and Mathematics major who had taken some classes in Engineering to get some "hands on" and "practical" experiences. I did well in these classes and learned a lot. During my time as an undergrad I also have taken some grad courses in physics; all but one were CMP-related or CMP pre-requisites and I did well in these as well. Although I did well in my Physics, Mathematics, and CMP-related classes, I originally wanted to go into a different area of Physics and so my last graduate class was in this non-CMP area. I found out during that semester that this area was not that interesting to me after all and that CMP was something I really enjoyed. This class was also stressing me out and was going to affect my performance in the other CMP-related classes I was taking. As a result, I decided to take this class as Pass/No-Credit (Covid Pass/No-Credit); this lowered my anxiety and I was able to do well in my other classes. In the end I performed well in my graduating class and received some honors and accolades from the university.
During that semester it seemed to me that this was the right thing to do. Looking back now, I am wondering: will grad admissions frown upon the Pass/No-Credit in this non-CMP graduate course? Will they think I slacked off, or will my other classes counter this? Or should I not sweat it and move on?


texts: Ethics and legality of scraping (and ultimately publishing about) publicly available information from journal websites

texts:
I'm interested in scraping publicly available information from journal websites (such as article titles, authors, abstracts, and keywords).

After scraping the data, I'm interested in analyzing the data and possibly publishing the findings.

Apart from open access journals for which this is likely less of (or not) an issue, what are the ethics and legality of scraping publicly available information from journal websites?


texts: How do academics change their area of research in the middle of their academic career?

texts:
Often, I have come across profiles of tenured faculty members who are now doing research in completely different topics than what they had done in their PhD, postdoc or in the beginning of their academic career. For example, a professor in our department had done his PhD, postdoc and initial career in using molecular dynamics for nanomechanics. However, over the course of time he also added quantum mechanics (density functional theory) and continuum mechanics in his research. In other case, I have seen a faculty with an engineering-physics PhD related to thin films shift to working on 3D printing and developing aerospace materials.

My question is, how do academics change their area of research and what efforts goes into establishing oneself in a changed research area?

I have seen academics hire a PhD student to work on a new research area and learn as they guide the student. But, how can someone guide if the area of new research is very minutely related to their area of expertise.


texts: Unequal pay between grad students, enforcing a more egalitarian policy

texts:
In my department, students can be paid quite differently, and accumulate multiple fellowships and assistantships. Departmental fellowships are provided upon acceptance to some top applicants. Students can also be hired as RAs by interested faculty members. RA stipends are also not fixed by the department, and vary quite widely depending on the advisor and on the funding body. On top of departmental fellowships and RA, some students also accumulate external fellowships that they earned independently.

One direct consequence of this approach is that some students are paid market-competitive salaries, whereas many other students end up not being funded at all (especially Master students).

On one hand, faculty who can afford to pay large stipends usually bring a lot of money to the department, can attract a large pool of very qualified students, and are very productive.

Most departments, on the other hand, have much more restrictive policies (some universities even set institute-wide stipend rates), and seem to be doing well.

I was recently on a committee that is trying to rethink these policies, disallowing the possibility of a combining an assistantship/external fellowships and a departmental fellowship, which will enable us to fund more students. However, one of our main concerns is that future top students may be more inclined to attend elsewhere (we lose a lot of excellent students to top schools abroad). Faculty who can pay better rates are also not satisfied with a possible change in policy. (My group is one of those that can pay competitive rates, but is willing to discuss.)

My question is: what are some issues to consider when transitioning from our more liberal student funding policy, to a more "egalitarian" policy? Anecdotal evidence is also welcome.


texts:
In my field (linguistics) sometimes datasets are important and scholars tend to include them in their CV. I want to know how to include my dataset in my CV?

This is the approach I have in mind: Uploading dataset in Harvard Dataverse and include the DoI in CV with the following style:

XXX dataset, The most important dataset in linguistics, DOI:XXXXXXXXXX

How does it look? Please share your thoughts on it.


texts:
Hi please tell me if i'm wrong here, I started a course a few years ago, may be 2.

It was an accountancy course, the ACCA. I left the course after 3 lessons out of 10 as the tutor who was supposed to do the course left on maternity leave and was replaced with a foreign (European) tutor who spoke broken English and all she did was try to make small talk jokes. Now I left the course and explained that this wasn't something that I signed up for and now they want £2300 of me. but I'm refusing to pay. Am I right or wrong and if someone can point me in the correct direction on how to proceed.


texts: How do I articulate my grade dispute in a letter of complaint (student grievance)?

texts:
I'm filing a formal letter of complaint (for a grade litigation request) over a grade dispute in an English literature course. I've got 90/100 (an A) in each of the 3 exams in this course. These exams make up 85% of the course grade. The other 15% is based on daily work (worksheets and responses). I was surprised when viewing my final grades that the grade in this course ended up being a B+. In the duration of this course, we were given three worksheets/response prompts that were optional. I did all of them and they were recognized with a '+' sign (but not actually graded).

After emailing my professor about this (and him ignoring me until I emailed the associate chair), he said that he added my exam grades (so he got a total of 76.5/85) and with the daily work he was able to bump it up to a B+ (a B+ is an 83-86). So I respectfully pointed out that the 76.5 is over 85 and not over 100 and that the daily work is a 15% that should be properly counted in, he replied saying that this daily work grade was based in comparison with my classmates (which is nonsense as (1) the daily work activities were not graded and (2) I was one of the few students who actually did them), I replied and argued but he didn't reply back. For me to get a B+, I would have been given 53/100 on the daily work grade.

I moved further with the dispute with the chair and was told to file a formal letter of complaint to which a committee will be formed and where the decision issued would be non-negotiable.

I don't know how to articulate my complaint. I feel like the administration doesn't get the issue (this was obvious in the correspondence between me and the chair). Also, I'll lose my scholarship and ultimately my place in university if the grade doesn't change, do I include that?

I feel like it's really obvious that I was done wrong by my professor but still afraid this won't be resolved. Sorry for the long post.

P.S. Several people assumed an A starts above 86 but actually an A is 90+. (An A- is 86-90)


texts: What to write in CV when transferring between schools?

texts:
I'm transferring between two PhD programs, same program two different schools. I have done 4 years of study in the first school but have not (and will not) receive any degrees and I need to complete 1-2 years of study in the new school to get my PhD. Assume that the new school is more prestigious. I wrote this piece in my CV.

  2010-Expected 2016 PhD in Compute Science from New University

  PhD Student at Old University (2010-2014)

  2007-2010 MS in Computer Engineering from Another university

  ...

However, the second line is kind of small and doesn't catch eye but if someone wants to read my CV it's there. The problem is I have not been student at New University since 2010 and I don't want to say that I'm a first year student. Also since I didn't get any degree from Old University I cannot have a separate entry for it.


texts: Is it possible or common to receive a scholarship from home country for international students?

texts:
I'm looking to pursue my PhD degree in a different country.
Currently I'm working on my Master's thesis.
It seems that the major challenge for me would be to receive a tuition fee waiver in the University I'm applying to, moreover, I know that some PostDoc students are sometimes able to receive a scholarship at their home country for the duration of their post doc.
Have anyone heard about similar cases with PhD ? is it a common thing ?

In my case my home country is Israel and the one I'm applying to is Australia


texts: Do we cite authors or papers when using author/year citations?

texts:
Numbered citations

In my field, we usually use only numbered citations, e.g.

  As shown in [1], the sky is blue.

This means that we obviously refer to a certain the paper (which can be found under [1] in the reference list). Saying something like

  As shown by [1], the sky is blue.

doesn't make too much sense, whereas

  As shown by Tyndall [1], the sky is blue.

works.

Author / year citations

Do we again cite papers when using author / year citations? Is "Tyndall, 1869" our name for a certain paper? Or are we refering to the authors?

In particular, which of this is correct:

  As shown in Tyndall (1869), the sky is blue.

  As shown by Tyndall (1869), the sky is blue.

  As shown by Tyndall (Tyndall, 1869), the sky is blue.

  As shown in (Tyndall, 1869), the sky is blue.

Sorry if this is a duplicate. This question and the answers don't really help.


texts: Referee made a mistake but recommended acceptance, what to do?

texts:
I recently received a referee report on a math paper in a mid-tier journal.

In this paper I proved (to give an example avoiding technicalities) that all dogs are cute.
But the referee claimed in his report that I claimed that all animals are cute (that is, he claimed that I proved something much stronger than what I really proved).

There is no way to understand the more general statement from my paper, and my guess is that the referee simply did not read the paper carefuly.

Now, the referee recommended acceptance, and the editor accepted his recommendation.

Should I do something about it? should I explain this to the editor?


texts: A way to search for journals that are in a similar area to a given journal

texts:
Does anyone know a website or application that can be used to search for similar journals to a given journal?
There are many ways to search for journals based on keywords from your title or abstract, e.g. Journal / Author Name Estimator (JANE), but I can't find anything that will give all journals in a similar field to one you already know about.
Many thanks if anybody knows of a tool like this.


texts: Is it unethical to hire students for private consulting work?

texts: As a faculty member, I tend not to involve students in any of my own consulting projects, but I often run into small units of work that would be great opportunities for students, especially undergraduates. Is it unethical for a faculty member to employ students as consultants/contractors for private, non-academic projects? I can see how many students may find such opportunities valuable, but I am curious about ethical issues that such a relationship might introduce.


texts: Should I be honest when someone ask which part of the paper is mine?

texts:
Not sure if this is an obvious question, or if someone has asked this. If so please tell me.

Suppose I and A have a (math) paper. There are two parts, and I believe the first part is done by me, and the second part is done by A.

Now someone asked me a few questions.

Is first part your part/ your work?
Is second part your part/ your work?

Easy to see I have a few options here.

a. That is my part.

b. That is not my part.

c. That is our joint work.

I suppose, if I claim my part to be my part, I should not claim A's part as my part or our joint work. And claiming my part to be my part will also lead to a problem when we have another author B who doesn't really has his part. That is, probably we worked together and he didn't produce a part. If I claim my part, I might have to end up claiming B doesn't have a part, which doesn't seem to be good.

So the question is, how should I answer such question, when people ask me which part is mine? Also sorry for the bad presentation of the question, and any edits are welcome.


texts: When writing an email asking for PhD positions/projects

texts:
I've recently finished in Masters in Neuroscience in Germany ( & bachelors in pharmacy), and I'm trying to find a PhD position in European countries like Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. In most of them, I have to contact the professor I'm interested in working with myself. I've already emailed a lot of them ( app. 20, with 6 replying no positions available).

-The problem is, I'm afraid if my emails are too generic. Here's the part from my emails where I have some concerns:

"As you will see in my resume, I have steadily oriented my education and experience towards becoming an accomplished researcher of regenerative medicine/technologies for the nervous system. Being a pharmacy & neuroscience graduate gives me a unique perspective that is useful when exploring the regenerative capacity of the nervous system, whether through manipulating neurons directly, manipulating surrounding glia, or the use of stem cells."

For the rest, I clearly stated that I'm looking for a possible position in their group, what my previous accomplishments are, as well as who I am in a brief description.
Naturally, I only emailed professors whose research I like and is linked to what I want & mentioned in this paragraph. So, is it inferred that I like their research/field, or is it still to generic?

Of course I read their about their projects on their group pages, but I'm not sure if I can go as far as reading their articles, since it would take too long, they may have no positions, and I don't know how many should I contact. So I wrote it in a more general manner, and if a professor/group leader expressed interest, then I would read in a lot more detail about their work (their articles & reviews). But is this truly the only way for them to consider someone?

-Another point is how many emails. One acquaintance mentioned that he had to send upwards of 300 emails to find a position. I simply can't believe he can send that many emails, without them being a single copy, but with each professor's name. I think it would be in the range of 20-50 emails, but that's pure conjecture on my part. I need to know from your experience, since if they're not so many, then I can read more about the professor's work in detail.


texts: Are PhD students allowed to collaborate with other faculty without their advisors being involved

texts:
Is it possible/ethical for PhD students to collaborate with a professor from different institution on a topic different from their dissertation research without telling their advisors.

Are PhD students limited to exclusively work for their advisors or it is legitimate for them to do research during their spare time to publish papers with other collaborators.


texts: What is the relative prestige conferred by an invited review article vs a research article?

texts: What exactly is an "invited review article"?  I have the opportunity to be an author on one of these, but I have no clue how this looks in comparison to research articles.  (I am referring to invited review articles for reputable journals well-known in the field only.)


texts: Is it possible to replicate the experience gained in a grad school on my own without attending one?

texts:
Is it possible to become a researcher on my own? How do I replicate the grad school experience through self study or being an autodidact?

I came across these two sites: How to Become a Pure Mathematician (or Statistician) and How to become a
GOOD Theoretical Physicist.

I came across such a thing on CS Theory Stack Exchange too.

Is it true that if I follow actively what has been given in these sites I’d be a physicist or mathematician or an independent researcher? I don’t know about publishing papers. At the best, I can access arXiv and Google Scholar on my internet connection. I don’t think I’d be actively ‘contributing’ to research or advancing the frontiers of knowledge. At the best, I guess I can try answer questions on SE sites.


texts: Will a masters degree from Japan be seen as less valuable?

texts:
I'm a canadian engineering  undergraduate student in the field of robotics and I'm considering doing a masters degree in Japan when I finish my bachelors.

I've talked about this with my internship supervisor (a well known professor in my subfield) and he claimed that research in Japan is usually seen as less relevant because (his words) :

  they tend to stay isolated from the worldwide community and ignore
  new developpements from other researchers.

I'd really like to study in Japan as I have a great interest in their culture and also because popular culture suggests that Japan is one of the leading countries in the field of robotics (This might be wrong).

However, I would also like my future masters degree to not be seen as second rate.

Will a masters degree in Japan be seen as less valuable? and if so, how would it impact my future career?


texts: Cite a developed version of an algorithm (citation chain)?

texts:
My work is based on algorithm A that is actually a developed version of algorithm B. When I cite algorithm A, should I also cite algorithm B?

Due to the conference page limit, I prefer not to cite algorithm B, as A has already cited B and I do have cited A. Does my this "citation chain" work?

Another dilemma to me is when algorithm C incorporates (not develops) algorithm B, given the fact that I have to cite C anyway and actually I have used algorithm B, can I choose to only cite C without B? (again, to save space)


texts: How are papers on NIPS Proceedings licensed?

texts:
I can see that there is a copyright claim on the NIPS Proceedings webpage for the years 1987 to 2017 but I haven't been able to find under what license the papers are copyrighted. How can I see that?

In particular, I'm looking for the license of the images in the paper "ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks."


texts: How to avoid writing a grant with an advisor

texts: My postdoctoral adviser would like to co-write grants; however, I am at a stage in my career where I believe it would be better for me to write grants on my own. I will soon be faculty (in 5th of postdoc and on job market) and to my knowledge it is important to demonstrate that I have an independent research program and obtain funding to support it, rather than to gain funding with a former adviser, which will lead to question marks about how much of the ideas are mine. Cowriting grants would also limit my ability to use the same ideas that are based on my work in future independent grant applications. I have also been explicitly advised by others who have worked with my adviser that he has in the past written grants that very strongly build on the independent work/ideas of mentees. I know that my adviser can do this if he wants, but I don't want to help him do it or enlist as a co-I. Any suggestions for how to decline without ruffling feathers? I would like to maintain a good relationship with him.


texts: Supervisor wants me to support a diploma-thesis software tool after I graduated

texts:
During my last year of MSc. studies, I was part-time employed on the university project. The project was related to my diploma thesis, and my task was to create a data-mining software and run experiments using this software.

I've finished the software, run the experiments in it, successfully graduated, and finished the studies. It was a huge success for me and for the university as the diploma thesis was awarded in a student's competitions, being top 10 among 2000 diploma theses.

Despite this success, the software I developed is not production-ready, rather just a prototype. For my experiments I considered only happy-case scenarios and if there are some unexpected inputs from the user/from connected systems/uploaded CSV files do not match specification, etc., the software crashes and cannot be used.

My supervisor wants to use the software usually twice a year. When he runs into some troubles with it, he emails me to deploy fixes so that he can run the experiments. In the first year and a half after I finished the project and the software, I did it three times. Now he is asking again to debug the problems in the software and fix them. I do not want to do it, because:

I have no time for it because of very time-consuming projects in my current job.
I am working in a different industry now and during two years I forgot many things from the software development and specific solutions I used.
I already lost accesses to the production environment at the university, so I am not able to deploy fixes.
I feel stressed out by the requests. As this was a prototype I did not set up logging, and I usually struggle to find and fix the error cause. I sometimes even cannot reproduce the errors locally and then I really do not know how to fix it.

I wrote these reasons to him, but he insists that I should still help them with it. He offered me they will pay me again some hour rate to support the software, get production accesses again, etc. But the money is no matter for me; I just do not want to continue with supporting the tool.

I feel there was some misunderstanding from their side about what are difference between diploma-thesis prototype and production-ready software. We never agreed officially that I would support it. We just once talked about that I would support it "for some time if some problems occurs", which I believe I did (three bugfixes and approximately three months of work during a year and a half after I graduated).

Is there a way how to politely refuse while still keeping good relationship with the supervisor as he is always very nice and polite?

I was thinking to offer him a one- or two-day workshop for some of the current university employees where we could go through the code on GitHub, and I would officially hand it over to the current employee. But it would not be a solution for him, as there are only a handful of postgraduate students in their group, and they are not programmers, so they cannot take the software over.

And I feel bad about writing to him: “I do not have a solution, I do not want to continue with that, and I do not care that you cannot use the software any more...”


texts: Someone has a title Lord and is a Professor.  How will I address a letter?  And what will the correct manner be after Dear?


texts: How to find book titles in other languages?

texts:
I received a major task from my professor and I was wondering what approach is academic custom to take in such a case.

My supervisor wrote an article on a certain topic (I prepared already some source material for him). Now he asked me to check which of the (mostly German or French) books in his list of literature are available in English. For those I can't find a translation, he asked for "equivalents".

Doing this my way round would be to check the major library catalogue (like WorldCat) for the authors. This is extremely time consuming even when limiting the languages of the works searched for and I have explicitly been forbidden to exceed the allotted time for my job (it's a financial issue of the university... I will exceed a bit for no payment, but I can't work like 50% over the limit, people would also notice at some point).

Is there anything like a catalogue listing authors' works and their translated equivalents?


texts: If you have no choice, is it acceptable to translate a recommendation letter for yourself?

texts:
Inspired by the question Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?

I have a related but somewhat different question: Given no choice, is it acceptable to write a recommendation letter for self?

This question is based on real cases. In non-English speaking countries, many professors don't know how to write good recommendation letters in English. The professor may know how to write papers in English in his field. But, when writing recommendation letters, he has limited vocabulary to write about his students. In other words, his English is not proficient. To make the matter worse, some professors may only be able to  write simple English sentences. The professor may tell the student the contents of the letter in his native language and ask the student to translate it into English and then signs it.

The student may want somebody else to write the letter because he does not want the professor to do this unethical thing. But, the professor just happens to be his advisor (undergraduate or master). The student may want to suggest that his professor ask the professor's colleagues for help to write the letter. The professor may say no. Therefore, the student writes the recommendation letter for himself by translating the professor's draft in their native language into English.

Is it acceptable? If not, what should the student do?


texts: Is there a way to check to which scientific journals a specific library has access?

texts: Is there a way to check which journals are available in a specific library/university? For example, my university library has access to some, but not all, the scientific journals related to Machine Learning in Springer. It would be helpful in case I need to move in order to get access to a specific topic or group of related papers.


texts: What is the median math GRE subject score for admission to a Group 2 or 3 PhD program in applied mathematics?

texts:
What are the typical (median or maybe third quartile) scores on the math subject GRE for successful applicants to a math program at the PhD level, in applied math, at a Group 2 or Group 31 school?

1This is a ranking system the American Mathematical Society uses for graduate programs. Generally, Group 1 schools are considered the best, while Group 2 and 3 schools tend to be smaller and less prestigious.


texts: Pagebreak within tables of scientific articles

texts:
I do not know if this the suitable forum for this question but I would like to give it a try.

In my thesis I have several very long tables that cover almost one page. Because of this I am getting into the problem of pagebreaks within the tables. I would like to know what you would consider to be typical in scientific contributions about how to handle this. As far as I see it, there are 3 options:

Simply break the table and continue with the remainder on the
following page
Do not break the table and display the table as a
    whole --> This leads to huge empty spaces at the previous page
Split a the table into two similar tables with different entries but
        with identical column names and headers. In this case I reckon that
        I should also use two headers for the table something like Table 2.1
        and Table 2.2

Has someone of you encoutered this problem in a thesis or scientific paper?
Of course, if you can think about other options,I'd be quite happy to hear about them.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.


texts: Teaching a class because advisor bought out and advisor input

texts:
The situation is thus: my institution allows professors to buy out of teaching a class.  This semester, my advisor has done so and as a result they needed someone to fill in.  After discussion with my advisor, I applied for the position to gain teaching experience (having had none previously).

Thus far, teaching the class has gone smoothly but our department has a huge waitlist problem.  When I originally applied for the position, the class had 40 spots.  Later, without my input, it was increased to 60, and there were still over 50 people on the waitlist.

Prior to the class starting, my advisor attempted to get the department chair to increase the class size to 90 so that more waitlisted people could get in.  However, the chair responded by saying that the department felt that it was important for graduate students, particularly in their first attempt at teaching, to have a good experience, so they didn't want to increase the class size so drastically without my approval.  I responded telling them that I didn't feel comfortable taking on so many students when I hadn't taught before and the issue was dropped.

Now, in the second week of classes, my advisor is again pressuring me to admit any waitlisted students that would like to take the course, increasing the class size to 70+.  I've told him several times that I am not comfortable with this and thought the issue was closed.  However, one of the waitlisted students has gone directly to my advisor and now he's specifically telling me to admit this student.

As it stands, I currently have 62 students in a 60 person class and I understand that taking on one extra student is technically not a big deal.  However, I feel uncomfortable for several reasons:

It feels like I'm rewarding bad behavior (e.g., the student going to my advisor and forcing entrance into the class)
If I admit this student for going to my advisor, I am concerned that every other student on the waitlist will go to my advisor and I'll get similar e-mails about all of them and suddenly my class size will be 70+ students

Technically, I don't have to admit this student, but that would be going directly against what my advisor is telling me to do.

I guess the questions are:

In the long term, how much control should my advisor have over my class?
In the short term, should I admit this waitlisted student?


texts:
After completing my Master's Thesis, I continued to learn about the topic and unfortunately what I found is unsettling.

I found that the whole hypothesis is wrong. The basic assumption on which we could do some useful work is wrong. My supervisor and his supervisor both are working in the same field for years.
The topic was offered by my supervisor from the University, who is a PhD student and the topic was also verified by his supervisor. Still, its frustrating to find how they could have missed such a basic assumption and expected[Maybe] a student to figure that out.

Now my Questions are:

Isn't it the supervisor's responsibility to verify these things before?
What should I do morally, should I inform my University/supervisor? If yes. what happens to my Thesis grade.
Since I entered the Master's curriculum to continue into a PhD program, and since I want to continue in the same field as my Master's Thesis, how does this whole wrong hypothesis scenario affect my chances of getting a good PhD program.

As I can think, why would some professor hire a student for PhD, when if he/she reads my Master's Thesis can understand the whole idea/hypothesis amounts to nothing.

While applying for any PhD program, I need to provide at least 2 academic references. After figuring out regarding my Thesis, I can't even think of asking my supervisor of his recommendation. What do you think, how should I go about finding right references.

Honestly, I am really stressed and am thinking of enrolling into another Master's program, but I wish there is a way to find a right PhD program.

I am sorry for not providing details of my Thesis/Uni etc. for obvious reasons and for a long post with many questions.

Please help, as this whole scenario is really freaking me out.


texts: Should graduate students who are graders help undergraduate students with homework?

texts:
In my department, we hire graduate TAs as both graders and teaching assistants. The teaching assistants are assigned to lead discussion sections that meet twice per week. The graders are assigned to grade all of the homework and exams.

The department requests that both TAs and graders spend three hours in the academic skills center. During these three hours, students can basically ask the grader/TA whatever they want.

My current assignment is an upper division undergraduate course. Many of the students aren't prepared for the course difficulty (ten hour homework assignments, projects, and exams). Inside the academic skills center, I am asked frequently about how to do homework problems when I am not a TA.

How should I handle this situation? Am I responsible for helping students do every single individual homework problem before the assignment is due? I thought that a grader would solely be responsible for grading homework. I spent a nontrivial amount of time helping students do their own homework.

Should graders have some sort of protection from these scenarios? I don't know why an undergraduate student would ask the grader grading their homework for help.


texts: Should I include name of potential advisor on my statement of purpose (SOP)

texts: I am currently writing my statement of purpose (SOP) for top graduate schools in engineering majors in US. I am wondering should I include name of my potential advisor on my SOP (Is it a good idea to do that)? The problem is I am thinking if I do not include name of advisor it might be the sign I did not look at his/her research page and I am not very specific about my plan. On the other side, if I include name of potential advisor and my application is not competitive or he/she is not accepting any graduate student this might cause others not to look at my application since they might think I am not interested in their research.


texts: What do you do if your PhD advisor tells to publish your work alone without his name?

texts:
I am working with an advisor, but I don’t really understand him. He replies to my questions and suggests things. He also provides documents to help me in my research.

However, when it comes to publishing (which is important), he excludes me from his papers. I feel like my name is a shame if appeared next to his name. Last time he clearly said: “Try to publish by yourself.” What does this mean? How to handle such a situation? All I want is to take my degree and end this struggle.

Edited:
Thanks all for your answers. As many asked if I did contribute something and my advisor took the work without mentioning my name? No, this did not happen. But, I have done research work by myself and came up with conclusions supported with experiments/simulations/derivations ... etc and I feel like they are publishable. I am, I compare my work to recently published papers in the same area and I see that, sometimes I have better quality. But, my advisor is a perfectionist and it takes him years to write something which is absolutely unusual in my area of study. Plus, he doesn't have enough funds.
So, I have two scenarios in my mind: 1: He is afraid to perish his name with me 2:He doesn't have money to pay for publication fees/charges
Both scenarios are bad. Again, I can't clearly ask questions. The advisor is impulsive person with everyday mood. Not friendly at all.


texts: MSc Dissertation Tables & Figures Errors submitted

texts:
I submitted my dissertation yesterday, one day before the due date.
Upon reading back through the dissertation, I noticed quite an error in my methods and discussion.
Unfortunately, due to adding a number of extra tables in my methods which in turn automatically were updated, I now have elements of my methods which is referring to the wrong table.
This also occurs in my discussion.

Example: "As shown in table 1 a p-value of....".
When in fact that is actually number as table 2.

I have a couple of hours so I could resubmit but I'd be cutting it very tight. Do you think I will lose many marks because of this?
I estimate referring to the wrong table occurs 6-8 times between methods and discussion but some references are on the same page so are clearly seen.

I emailed the lecturer but I haven't heard back along with a fixed copy.

Thanks for any help


texts: Adding an Author After paper got accepted in a conference?

texts: I have submitted a paper to a conference, but some one in lab help me after the paper has been submitted. Can I add them as a third author if the paper got approved to be appear in the conference ?


texts: Should I mention unfinished master work in my CV in order to show I have research experience?

texts: I am going to apply a mathematics PhD in US or Canada. I am doing a master right now and I have quit a master degree before, which was a research-based degree in theoretical physics. In my CV or resume, should I include my unfinished master degree in order to show I have related research experience? I don't know if research experience in different field also count. One drawback I can think of is committee may think that I don't have the ability to finish my work.


texts: Mentioning a personal tragedy in an academic style paper. Is it allowed?

texts:
I am working as an editor for an edited book volume on covid-19.
I have come across a very peculiar chapter submitted by an author. In the chapter, the author discloses a personal incident where the author's father's friend passes away due to covid-19.
I am not sure what to do here i.e. whether to email the author as that paragraph seems very peculiar. Is describing such kind of incident, which I see as highly emotive and personal, allowed in academia for example book chapters or journal papers?


texts: Submitting thesis without supervisors' reviews

texts:
I am a Ph.D. student, about to finish my thesis draft. My case is a bit special as I didn't receive any guidance from my supervisors. It is very unlikely that they know details about my work, results or even what I propose in my research.
I have submitted three journal papers but I will receive reviews, not before my thesis submission. As, I don't have the official approval of my results, so I have second thoughts about my work. Although, I have worked hard enough and was honest in my research.

I request the suggestions about how can I proceed? Is it ok to submit my thesis to reviewers/reporters without my supervisor's reviews?

Thank you a million in advance


texts: What to do when a referee asks me to do something impossible/unreasonable?

texts:
What are my best options when a reviewer misunderstands my work and asks for an unreasonable improvement? She was very clear that this was a major issue and that she would only accept the paper under this "improvement".

Should I withdraw the submission?
Should I write to the editor and try to convince him that the reviewer is wrong? (Possibly asking for a new reviewer).
Should I make the revision normally trying to convince editor and referee that what they ask is impossible?
Something else?

I'm inclined to go with the 2nd option.

The field is in the intersection of Mathematics and Computer Science, and the journal is not a top one.

Edit: I've made the revision normally, as suggested here. Thanks to everyone that commented as I wouldn't have done so. In the end, I was happy with the revision.


texts: How does the community decide whether to name a model/theorem after an author?

texts:
In this question I asked:

Assume that Jane Doe has published a paper in 2010 where she has developed a model or a theorem or a similar result, let's say for concreteness that it relates to "growth"
Now assume that Jane Doe is writing another paper in 2015, where she refers to the model/theorem from her paper in 2010.
Is it acceptable for Jane to write: "Doe's growth model (2010), implies that ..." or "Doe's growth theorem (2010) implies that ...", or even "The Doe growth model (2010) implies ..."?

The answer seems to generally be "no".
@jakebeal states:

"Newton's Laws" and "Hawking radiation" and "Rayleigh scattering" are retrospective judgements of significance by the community.

@user2768 states:

Writing "Doe's growth model" or "Doe's growth theorem" suggests that the community has agreed to name Doe's results this way.

This leaves me with the question: How does the community come to agree to call such a model "Doe's growth model"? By what process is this decided?


texts: Do we explain a graph in results or discussion?

texts:
My project is to characterize a behavior and I have several graphs for the same, that I have put in my results section. Should I explain the graph in the results section or the discussion section of my project report?

For example, say a graph has a groupwise comparison, do I have to explain the inference of the difference in the curves in results or discussion? If I have to do it in the discussion section, wouldn't it be difficult since to explain such a thing I'd have to repeat the graphs there too?


texts: Journal got blacklisted recently – how to withdraw the paper from the journal and database?

texts:
Recently, the journal where my paper was published got blacklisted in a so-called blacklist. I was very surprised since the journal existed more than ten years.

My questions:

How to drop the paper from the indexing databases, such as Scopus. What will be the consequences and what are the procedures?
If I will keep the paper in this journal, how it will affect my academic career?


texts: Do we ever, in a research paper, mention methods we tried but did not get a satisfactory result?

texts:
I have been working on an application where we have tried two alternative methods. Both methods are used for the same purpose, but the first one had several problems. Despite getting results we had to look for another method that solved those problems to some extent.

Can I mention the rejected method along with the accepted method in a research paper?


texts: Does a professor have the academic discretion to design the curriculum for his class?

texts: Suppose, for instance, that a political science professor was tasked to design a curriculum for his quantitative methodology class. Generally, a quantitative methodology class covers the application of mathematical techniques in analyzing data. Can a professor, then, given his academic discretion, design a curriculum that focuses on the philosophy of quantitative analysis and not on the actual math?


texts: Can a postdoc conduct collaborative research with people that are not their PI?

texts:
I am a junior faculty member at a research university. I am working with postdoc A  on a project. Postdoc A's PI, Dr. B, works in the same university, but is affiliated with another department. Prior to starting the project, postdoc A and I have agreed that we would work on the project during their spare time. We did not inform Dr. B about this arrangement. When the project is about half-way done, Dr.B found out that A is working with me on the project. Dr.B approached me and told me that all postdoc A's projects have to go through them, and claimed that postdoc A could get fired by the school if the school found out that postdoc A is publishing papers without their PI.

My questions:

Is it true that all projects of a postdoc have to go through their PI (even if the research is conducted during the postdoc's spare time)?
Do I have the obligation to let Dr.B know about my collaboration with postdoc A, given that we agree to work on the project during A's spare time? (I know as a courtesy to a colleague, I probably should have informed Dr.B about it before the project starts...)
What can I do at this point to make sure postdoc A's career is not affected by this incident?


texts: Issues with Master admission because of transfer to another university during undergraduate studies

texts:
This year I'm trying to get into the Master's program. There is one particular university where I want to get into, say its name is X.
X is asking me to provide transcripts of my all previous higher education programs, even uncompleted ones.
The thing is that during my undergraduate studies I've transferred from one higher institution to another. The first university was one of the best programs in my country, it featured many hours of great courses and so on. However, because of my not very good performance there I had to transfer to another university. During my studies in the first university, I got 6 Bs and 2 Cs and a couple of passes which yielded a GPA of 2.85.
Now, I'm in the last (4th) year of bachelor studies in the second university and got a GPA of around 3.4. It is worth mentioning that while transferring some grades from my previous university got matched to classes of the second university (and thus some Cs and Bs from the first university were added to the transcript from the second university), so I can be admitted to the second year.
Fast forward to the actual question. As I am highly dependant on scholarship, I feel like if I mention my first higher institution experience and attach a transcript for it I won't be able to get a scholarship here. If I don't mention it though, I will create a chance to be rejected because of a discrepancy in my portfolio, as in the transcript from my second university it is mentioned that the standard period of study on my program is 4 years. And it is also stated that I was enrolled in 2018 and will be graduating in 2021 (3 years here), exactly because I was admitted to the second year.
I don't want to violate any rules, but, even though I have a solid portfolio (in my opinion), I feel that If I will attach a transcript from my first university the race for a scholarship will be pretty much over for me, so I don't really have anything to lose here and it's might be worth trying to take a risk. I also think that there is a small chance that admission committee members won't notice the discrepancy.
What would you do in my situation?
Thank you


texts: I have a MS in CS with couple extra courses in statistics at graduate level. I am interested in statistical machine learning, however the research can be carried out in Statistics and Computer science department both. I was wondering if anyone has an insight on how hard it would be to get into a statistics PhD with a Masters in CS, I do have some publications and currently working as a Statistical analyst.


texts: Acknowledge somebody whose advice is not relevant to the current manuscript anymore?

texts:
I received some advice from two researchers, which were helpful at the time. So, I mentioned the researchers in the acknowledgements section of my paper’s early version.

After the first draft, the paper has been substantially modified, and their advice is no longer that visible on the paper. Should I still keep the acknowledgement? I feel it is difficult to remove it, since the paper is being circulated between more than ten co-authors. I would have to give some reason, but then I don’t know if I look silly for saying that their advice was after all not so useful.

What to do?


texts: Should I take a "positive, but not enthusiastically strong" letter of recommendation?

texts:
I'm currently applying for a Masters degree in a competitive program, and most things on my application are going well.

The problem I'm having is with securing a letter of recommendation - I have already secured two strong letters, one from a workplace manager in the field that I am applying for and another from a professor in an unrelated field. Regarding the third letter, a professor that I spoke to said that he could write a "positive, but not enthusiastically strong" recommendation.

From reading up on answers here and on other sites, it seems that in most cases I should look elsewhere for a letter. However, in my case I do not yet have a letter from a professor in the field that I am applying for. There are a few other professors in the field that I will reach out to, but assuming that they reject my request, should I take this letter?

Another option that I have is to secure a strong third letter from another manager at my workplace. Would taking a third letter from a work manager be better? I am leaning towards this being the case, but I also do not want to jeopardize my application by not having a letter from a professor directly in the field I am applying to.


texts: Can I pursue a PhD while working as an Accounting Instructor/Lecturer?

texts:
I plan on becoming an Accounting Professor in the near future. What I was hoping to do was pursue my PhD while working for the university as a lecturer/instructor. I read that many people work as a lecturer while pursuing their PhD, and that many universities offer this opportunity. I also read that it usually depends on your field of study. That being said, my question is:

Is this the case for Accounting lecturers?


texts: Do I need to have teaching experience before entering grad school?

texts: I'm considering going back to graduate school, but I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach. Is that the case? I have no teaching experience at all. Will that negatively affect my chances of getting in?


texts: What prevents people from manipulating data to write better papers?

texts:
Many papers use nonstandard data sets, which means the authors could have manipulated the data behind the scenes to make their paper look more impressive.  It seems that this could be done very easily: for example, one could cherry pick the items of the data set to make it seem like an algorithm has 90%+ accuracy while in reality it's about 60%.

What prevents people from doing this?  Is there something I'm missing?


texts: When is the earliest a US university will create an official transcript?

texts:
This question about not supplying a transcript from a university they just started attending in an application to a different graduate school got me thinking. At what stage of being a student will a US university generate an official transcript.

When is the earliest I can get an official transcript:

After being admitted, but prior to registering for classes?

After registering for classes, but prior to starting classes?

After the start of classes, but prior to full refund drop date?

Some other time?

Presumably this information is buried in some webpage of the university registrars office.


texts: Do certificates from accredited online courses play any role in applying for a graduate program?

texts:
I am very interested in an online course which can be enrolled either for free without a certificate or with money and a certificate.
The contents in both cases are absolutely the same. I wanted to know whether a certificate makes any difference in the grad application since as far as I know they don't ask to show certificates and I can mention the course even without a certificate in my CV.
So, is there any use at all of the certificate if the course content without the certificate is exactly the same?


texts: How much data should be shared in the collaboration?

texts: Well, I am interested to know how much data, code, results, etc needs to be shared in a successful collaboration. For example: when engineers collaborate with AI researchers to optimize an engineering problem using specific algorithms, should engineers have access to the whole optimization dataset? Even optimization code should be shared among different parts of a research team?


texts:
I'm just trying to find a reference for what the term "library" or "framework" means in programming.

Are there any ways to find such terminology in papers? I've searched many papers, they all use the term "library" or "framework", but they don't define what the word means. Am I doing something wrong?

I'm guessing it would not be okay to define the word myself, but that I'll need a reference for it.


texts: Some students giggle at me while I teach!

texts:
I am an associate lecturer and its my second term with the undergraduate students.

I noticed some of my students laugh when I teach. Its the most annoying thing I ever felt in my academic life so far. I always think, why some laugh while others appreciate my way of teaching? Its very puzzling.
At the end of my first trimester I received a very positive feedback from the majority students. But just those couple of giggling students ruin my whole confidence.

I don't speak funny and I look average too but why why that happens with me?

Is it normal in academia? Did this happen to anyone else? And how I can deal with them?


texts: Should one cite unethical research that may contradict one's current research?

texts:
Most people are familiar with the controversy over citing Nazi medical experimentation and related unethical findings. I'm not questioning that.
Assuming that citing unethical research in order to bolster or support one's own findings is, in fact, unethical, does the situation change if the prior unethical findings may contradict, falsify, or otherwise be potentially detrimental to one's own findings?
For example, many feel that publishing this is unethical:

In this paper, we demonstrate that splines are reticulatable in six-space under the Transhalpine Coordinate System. Evil Nazi Supervillain (1941) demonstrated that a spline can exist in six-space. Assuming this to be true, our model demonstrates how such as spline can be reticulated with respect to the Transhalpine system, to wit....

Assuming that would be, in fact, unethical, would this be any different:

In this paper, we demonstrate that splines are reticulatable in six-space under the Transhalpine Coordinate System. Goody-Two-Shoes, Angel, Seraphim, Hero, Superhero, and Person-Who-Was-Mostly-Good-Except-That-He-Jaywalked-Once-When-He-Was-Eight-And-Was-Continuously-And-Justly-Punished-Throughout-His-Lifetime-For-Said-Act (1932) demonstrated that a spline can exist in six-space. Evil Nazi Supervillain (1941) obtained a contrary result in which splines cannot exist in six-space, but we only mention this because ethical requirements require that we disclose to you that we are are aware of a prior result that may affect our findings. The result was gained by attempting coordinate transformations on splines that had not granted informed consent for geometric experimentation. In this case the researcher was, like, a super bad guy and you, like, totally should ignore his findings because he was even more evil than Dr. Doom and his paper is probably full of shoddy praxis, negligent notetaking, and even outright fabrications.
Assuming that a spline can actually exist in six-space, our model demonstrates how such as spline can be reticulated with respect to the Transhalpine system, to wit....

Generally speaking, is it more ethical to cite or not cite the potentially problematic prior result?
I suppose the gist of this question is which ethical duty is paramount:

The duty to honestly account for the current state of research and disclose potential findings that may affect the current paper.
The duty to not acknowledge or use unethical research.

Could this one of the "unusual circumstances" mentioned in this answer?
I suppose that the Don't Cite Unethical Research rule could be clarified as actually meaning that it is unethical to benefit from prior unethical results, so a citation that does not benefit the later researcher (but in fact serves more as a disclaimer) would be allowed. Would that be more along the lines of how this would actually be handled?


texts: Inappropriate reference requests from Journal reviewers

texts:
A journal article I submitted to a highly reputable journal has been returned with a number of revisions requested, most of which are useful and helpful and will improve the quality of the article. However, two of the three reviewers have also suggested articles that should be added as references to my paper. These articles are not appropriate to reference in the paper; I have tried at length to find relevance but cannot. I assume that the reviewers are authors of these papers and wish to increase their citations.
The email from the (unnamed) journal editor asking for revisions is pro forma and includes a line asking for any inappropriate requests for citations to be referred to the editor.
Analysis of the authorship of the requested articles suggests that the two reviewers in question are affiliated with the same institution. Two members of the editorial board of the journal are at the same institution, so it is at least possible and perhaps likely that the editor shares an affiliation with the 2 reviewers.

My supervisor (and co-author) suggests I try and find the suggested paper that is least inappropriate and reference it in our article ‒ "throw them a bone."

I feel that we should address the other revision requests comprehensively but decline to reference the articles, giving our reasons.

Ethics vs Pragmatism, yes, but I also want to get the article published and this may not be the hill to die on. Will my approach mean rejection? Do I have any recourse if it does? Should I call this out to the Editor in Chief?

I'm interested in other people's experiences.


texts: What level of detail should be included in a CV when listing the courses assisted?

texts:
I am a teaching/research assistant.
In my academic CV, I have a section called "Courses Assisted". I am not sure which way to go. I have two three different schemes on my mind:
First one, write all the semesters and list the courses assisted in that semester.
2015 - 16 Fall

AB 101 "An Introductory Course"
CD 223 "An Advanced Course"

2014 - 15 Summer

CD 232 "A Hard Course"

2014 - 15 Spring

AB 101 "An Introductory Course"
CD 232 "A Hard Course"

2014 - 15 Fall

AB 102 "Second Part of That Introductory Course"
CD 223 "An Advanced Course"

and so on.
The second one, write the course names and then list all the semesters that I have assisted that course:
AB 101 "An Introductory Course"

2015-16 Fall
2014-15 Spring

AB 102 "Second Part of That Introductory Course"

2014-15 Fall

CD 223 "An Advanced Course"

2015-16 Fall
2014-15 Fall

CD 232 "A Hard Course"

2014-15 Summer
2014-15 Fall

and so on.
The third choice, I put a table like below:

Clearly, the last one contains much more information and takes much less space. But it is a little bit harder to read.
Even though the first and the second choices seem to take almost equal amount of space, the second one takes less when there are a lot of semesters and not so much courses.
The third one is not so ordinary and it takes a little bit more effort to read. But it contains almost all the information.
I am addressing the ones who are in hiring committee: Do you care about that much detail or do you only want to know which courses the applicant assisted? Is it worth to put that detail of level to reduce readability?
Or am I overthinking?


texts:
I want to start my own journal; the area would be in the applications of novel psychoactive substances.

Does anyone have any experience in this eg web based or paper etc?


texts: Does it count as academic dishonesty if I use the references of someone's assignment?

texts: I'm currently working on an essay topic that a mate of mine happened to have done before on another course. He gave me his reference list on some ideas that coincide with my topic and stance, but I'm afraid that if I use them it might count as academic dishonesty. Am I in the clear?


texts: How to arrange an invitation letter for research visit in another university (for PhD student)?

texts:
I'm a first-year PhD student in Communication and Media Science. As part of the study program, I am obliged to visit the university abroad (the best would be in next year).

There I need to carry out part of my research, but I would also like to be able to participate in classes with other doctoral students and observe the work of the lecturers. I would like to do this (3 months) at universities in Finland and the Netherlands.

Is this feasible?  Where should I start? I have never taken part in an academic exchange before. Every advice would be appreciated.


texts: How to reference/link to an online code repository, whose location may change in the future

texts:
We are about to publish a paper in PLOS One Computational Biology about an algorithm that we developed. The code will be open-source on GitLab and we want include some obvious way of finding it.

It is suggested here that one should include the link to the code repository directly in the article (ideally the abstract). I think this makes a lot of sense.

However, I am a bit hesitant, because the location of the code might change in the future.

Are there any good ways to work around this? (such as e.g. redirection service, where I could update the URL; perhaps especially for academic work)

Or is there another way of addressing this, such as revising the manuscript (like I said, it is PLOS One).


texts:
In business (e.g. IT industry) remote work (aka "telecommuting") can be relatively common (see e.g. a recent StackOverflow blog post). It is exceedingly rare (or even nonexistent) in academia, even though most part of academic work consists basically of thinking and writing, which can be done in any environment. Are you aware of any successful implementations of "remote work" in academia?

Of course, there are many factors making it less feasible - an academic employee usually has other duties (e.g. teaching) which can't be done remotely, there is also the social aspect of research, meetings etc. (although this is not that much different from similar aspects in a programming job, unless we argue that doing science is "more creative" than mere programming and thus requires more physical presence). Also, currently available tools still make e.g. making a web seminar or math meeting difficult (no blackboard), although this too is changing (see e.g. G+ Hangout seminars: TCS+). However, given the scarcity of jobs, "N-body problems" etc., it seems to me that the potential for remote work (even part-time) is, as of now, underutilized in academia.


texts: How can I address several deans in a letter?

texts:
I am part of the student council at my college and I would like to email a letter to all of the deans.

How can I start the letter without writing "Dear Deans?"


texts: Sharing research results in platforms that may soon disappear

texts:
The recent open science/source/access movement has put pressure in publishing not only in open access journals, but also in sharing raw data/figures/etc.

That being said, given the volatility of our current sharing platforms, how can that be done successfully in a way that will last for a significant amount of time and not die out with obsolete technology?

For instance, some people suggest (for instance, [1,2]) sharing and uploading data to ResearchGate, figshare and other platforms, run by companies that are likely to go bankrupt, disappear, be outcompeted or become obsolete in the near future.

If we dig a little deeper, the recent boom in open access journals is also likely to die soon and it is possible that only a few publishers will survive. What happens with the published papers that die with the publishers?

What about the software to read the published data/research notes? How can we guarantee that data will be readable a few years in the future?

Is there a way to publish data/papers that is not subject to the uncertainty of time, making it time-resistance, in some way?

[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/142
[2] https://gsnmunich.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/how-to-legally-re-use-your-own-figures/


texts: Is there hard evidence that the grant peer review system performs significantly better than random?

texts:
Funding agencies in academia use peer review to assess the quality of submitted grant proposals and to decide which proposals should be funded. I have some doubts that this system actually works based on the following findings:

A recent study in PNAS "found no agreement among reviewers in
evaluating the same application".
We have by ourselves performed boot strapping on reviews provided
for the same proposal submitted at multiple calls in multiple years
(yes, the guidelines allowed this) and obtained on average almost exactly the overall average acceptance rate of the calls.

My question is now in the opposite direction ... Given that the grant review and panel system is quite costly: is there hard evidence that the grant peer review system provides results significantly better than random?

E.g. Do studies exist where e.g. 50 proposals were funded based on the standard review process and 50 random proposals were funded at the same call and then 5 or 7 years later the number of high profile papers, citations or similar was counted? Or do studies exist were re-evaluations show the same outcome as the original evaluations of proposals?


texts: Post-doc wants to break his promise of including me on author list

texts:
I am a master student, working for X lab of Y university as a research assistant.

3 months ago, a post-doc(my direct supervisor) recruited me into a project when he wanted to submit his paper within a month, telling me "You can coauthor if you join." Since then I worked overtime to finish exactly what he told me to do, implementing all his new ideas (but none of them worked).
Later he gave up previous submission, had the project updated a bit and now preparing submission to another conference in a month. Last week I asked "Am I on your author list?", only to get "Let me think about that." Project is almost finished currently, in terms of both experiments and writing.

Now I have no idea what to do, his reply sounds like a NO to me. To fight for that, I don't have any strong argument other than his vocal promise. My contribution is not direct, but a part of code he used was written by me (for another project), and I successfully implemented his new ideas.

Given such situation, should I ask him again for this authorship?
Or should I explain everything to PI? If then, how to?


texts: Terrible grade in undergraduate research project, how will this affect graduate admissions?

texts:
I have graduated this year with a second class first division. In addition, I ranked sixth. However, the problem is that I scored a D+ in my undergrad research project. Now I am aiming to pursue a masters degree at UK. My supervisor did not show up regularly plus he was 2 hours far away from my place.

I am really worried if this is going to ruin my chances into getting accepted in a good university such as Glasgow, Sheffield, Bristol or Bath. Do you think I have a chance?

BTW: I am an international student majored in engineering.


texts: What can first author do if co-author who submitted paper put himself down as corresponding author without first author's permission?

texts:
N is the first author for a paper (PhD work) and there are three co-authors, B, C and D.

B and C are from the same department and the author D is from different department but they are all from the same institution. B had the biggest contribution in terms of the experimental work and N spent a long time writing the paper.

The paper was sent to all for revision. After the paper is ready, the co-author submits the manuscript considering herself as the corresponding author without the first author permission. The problem is that she gave an incorrect email address of the first author to the journal.

Is this situation illegal? Can the first author contact the journal and at least change his correct email address?


texts: Can my UK PhD permit me to use the title "Dr.-Ing." in Germany?

texts:
I'm moving to Germany in a couple of weeks and I'll be setting up as a freelancer. I'm just curious about my title though.

I got my PhD in the UK in 2015, it states "Doctor of Philosophy" on the certificate, as usual, but my research was in Computer Science, specifically experimental application of Computer Science techniques to Engineering problems (in fact, my work was actually funded by an automobile company based in Germany whom I visited quite regularly).

I'm no longer in academia, but last summer I was briefly at Hannover University, where somebody suggested that I would be eligible for the Dr.-Ing. title instead of the plain Dr. title.

Fact is, I would like the Dr.-Ing. given the technical nature of my freelance work, but I am not sure whether I am legally allowed to use it.

Can anybody advise me?


texts: My assessor is giving me spelling advice - but he's wrong

texts:
I'm writing the thesis on which I aim to graduate with a bachelor's degree. I've got an incredibly nice assessor, whom I sent part of it, and he gave a lot of helpful feedback on structure, relevant and irrelevant details, et cetera.

But he also suggested that a word is spelled wrong, when it isn't. Now, this isn't just any word; it is the name of the product I am creating as an IT student. Not the proper name, because that would be exempt from spelling conventions, but the generic name with which I refer to it very often; like, several hundred times, scattered over not just my thesis but all the relevant documentation.

This isn't a question about the spelling itself - the word is in Dutch anyway. But I want to know if I should be adopting his wrong advice because it comes from the person who is going to grade me; or engage in spelling debate which can come across as pretentious. It doesn't help that I'm a language nerd and that this isn't something to be settled with a single link to a dictionary; the term itself is a new compound, and there are specific rules for forming those that I consciously followed.


texts:
I applied to a PhD program in Applied Mathematics, but was accepted to the PhD program in Mathematical Finance instead. It seems that one professor found my background in control theory and signal processing attractive.
The school I was accepted to is great, I'd be getting a decent amount of funding and my potential advisor seems to be a nice guy.
However, I'm concerned about having the word "finance" in my degree. My fear is that it could pigeonhole me to academic positions in business schools after graduation (where most of the former students of my potential advisors have gone). My original goal was to become a professor in a math/engineering department or a researcher in a tech company after my PhD, and I doubt that a PhD in Mathematical Finance would help me to get that.
Does anybody knows where do people with PhDs in Mathematical Finance end up going?


texts: Which citation style is the most concise and has the least impact on word count?

texts:
I'm writing a research proposal with a small maximum word count. References are included in this word count. Fortunately, the citation style is not specified.

I was wondering if there is any (widely accepted) citation style that will generally produce the shortest citations. As far as I've found, MLA seems to be the shortest as it switches author names to "et al." when there's four or more authors, whereas other citation styles that I've looked at only switch with a higher number of authors. Is there any style that would consistently produce shorter citations?


texts: As faculty, can I bring about changes in our outsourced campus bookstore?

texts:
I am tenured faculty at a state university in the US. Our campus bookstore is not run by the university; instead, it is owned and operated by a large, well-known corporation, and has a contractual agreement with the university to "be the official bookstore" and to operate in the center of campus.
Over the years, I have grown increasingly frustrated by the poor service offered by the bookstore. To name only the problems I've encountered this fall:

A full week into classes, many of my students have not yet been able to obtain their books. Neither they nor I have been told when their books will be ready; bookstore staff are not answering their email, and their phone goes straight to a recording.

A complaint on their Facebook page reads: "Please get more people working the registers, kids are waiting in line shoulder to shoulder with others for hours because there’s only one person working the register!" This, in the middle of a deadly pandemic!

My question is this: As a faculty member, do I have any ability to coerce them to improve their service? For example, if I were to join the relevant Faculty Senate committee, and pester a bunch of people in my university's administration, would I be able to bring about change? (And, if so, what would be the best way to proceed?). Or, would I merely be driving myself crazy?


texts: Is it advisable to use a URL link shortening service when writing an academic article?

texts: Is it OK to present a URL using a link shortening service such as bit.ly? The reason I'm asking is that I think it's a lot easier to enter this URL (e.g., if you read it in a paper) as opposed to full URL. Or is this a bad idea?