texts: My First Authorship was Turned into a Second Authorship without Informing me

texts:
Early this year, I had a surgery-related study in rats and today I just found out my first authorship got turned into the second authorship in the final manuscript my PI planned to submit.

For the study which was my original idea, I spent a tremendous amount of time in conceptualizing the study, created the protocol and design for the stud (second and third authors also involved in this but not as much as I did), carried out all the animal surgeries and analyzed a part of the data independently (for this study, there were only two results we could get), and wrote the part of manuscripts.

The divided tasks between the first and second author for this project was I did all of the above mentionings, while the second author collected, collaborated with two other pathologists who are going to be the co-authors and wrote the discussion and conclusion section.

But all of a sudden, I was just informed today my PI is making the second author the first author because she spent so much time in collaborating with those pathologists and revising the manuscripts with her (they are very close to each other because the second author works full time but I worked the only parttime).

It was so ridiculous because it was our agreement before that she was in charge of the pathology section for the paper with other pathologist and I was in charge of other results. For the whole revision process, both the third author and I haven't been informed by any mean. And I always thought the manuscript was all done except the pathology part.

I brought up the concern to the second author and she told me she deserved the first because "I spent as much time as possible with PI in rewriting the discussion and manuscript" (without letting me know) and collaborate with other authors to put their input into the results which I don't even really need this part to make it published. (Moreover, it was my idea to work with the pathologists and I was the one who assigned her the tasks she needs to do with them).

I am so pissed off now and I would like some advice about my situation. I understand this second author spent a lot of time in revising the manuscript (she is good at writing so we agreed before she would write the discussion and edit the paper) but this was done without informing both first and third authors. And it was all because of me to make the project possible when none of the people including the PI likes the project early this year. I was the one spent every weekend and night time alone (until 10 or 11 pm can you guys image?) to carry out all the trails. I was also the one who analyzed the most important part of the data and gave all the inputs the second author needs to form the paragraphs. Now, what she did was just to put others' opinion (pathologists) into the paper, and remake the figures and table I made, so she and the PI wants to make her as the first author. Please help that this lab is so sneaky and horrible. And the similar sneaky revision happened before already to my work (Fountly, I kept my first authorship that time). I would like to take whatever I can to defend my right as I am done in the lab and I don't care if I will continue research in this field or to make the work unpublished.

*Note: Also, the PI and she added another person to the authorship who did nothing but for a "gift" because she is the new hire. but the other volunteer we had in the lab who actually contributed got nothing out of it. I feel so bad for her now too.


texts: How to cite and publish unpublished governmental statistics correctly?

texts:
Conducting a research which needs governmental statistics, I have encountered a problem. The problem is I need to have precise data on farming in an area, but the data are not published.

I had to go to the relevant governmental office and convince them to provide me with the data. Afterwards, I had interviews with officials and they--based on their internal documents--provided me with the necessary detailed data.

Now I am thinking how to cite the information; I think the obtained data should be published, at least as a letter to the researcher, so that I can refer to it.

What I am going to do is that I give the obtained information to the department and ask them to check it for reliability, then they issue an official document containing the necessary approved information. However, the point is I am myself preparing the tables etc., so this is my work--the tables produced by hours and hours of interview and then extracting the info and then making tables based on it--not theirs although they will check it carefully.

What to you think? How should I deal with it?


texts: Should you include press interviews and articles about your work in your CV?

texts:
Is it appropriate to include interviews (published online or in print magazines) in an academic CV?

What about articles/news published about your works? I mean brief (one paragraph) news that professional magazines publish about significant research articles.

If yes, how do you do this to avoid exaggeration?


texts: How do I deal with a stubborn co-author who won't respond to suggestions?

texts:
My research group is preparing a theoretical article in a field where author order matters (computational neuroscience), and it has to be submitted soon, as our funding ends soon. I am an author "in the middle of the list."

The first author (TFA) has made a first draft and started circulating it. Although results-wise everything is ok, the text is very poorly written (both in terms of English and general logic understandability). TFA is known to be not very responsive to even minor correction suggestions.

Our PI knows the situation but he started his PI career relatively recently and his management skills have not yet fully developed, as far as I understand it. He says that he will just rewrite the whole text in the end (as he did with a number of other articles before).

Technically I or another middle author could rewrite the draft completely to make it better. However I think it would make the first-authorship of TFA somewhat strange-looking, and in general I feel that there should be some better ways.

So the question is: how are situations like this typically resolved?


texts: In what countries is it possible to enter a life science PhD program directly after a Bachelor's?

texts:
I would like to know which countries allow admission to a PhD program directly after finishing a Bachelor's (Life Science), without requiring an intervening Master's degree?

And if you go directly into a PhD after the B.S., which countries support it? In India(my country), it is nearly impossible other than you join a integrated course.

Is it same everywhere?


texts: During an application/interview should an applicant justify leaving a current faculty position (pre-tenure)?

texts:
I have been in a tenure-track position for 3 years and am going back on the job market. Would I be expected to "explain" why I am leaving, especially when it is pre-tenure? I suspect that a search committee might think I'm leaving because I felt in danger of not receiving tenure -- that is not the case here. However, my reasons for leaving stem from a two-body problem that I'd prefer not to disclose until after an offer is made.

A more concrete way of asking: how should the application cover letter look different, coming from someone currently holding a faculty position compared to a newly minted PhD?


texts:
I wanted to bring up an issue I faced recently and figure out how much my graduate school application will be affected by this.
For some background, I am a sophomore math major at a good public school. In the first semester of my second year(i.e Fall 2020), I faced many problems that led to a case of terrible depression. I ended up getting an F in an art history class and two Bs in Probability Theory and another math grad class. There were many other internet access issues piled onto the existing problems as well. It would be an exaggeration to say that I even participated in the class. I only submitted about half the assignments and got an average score on the final exams.
I had a 3.91 GPA in my first year taking the major upper-div math courses(Abstract Algebra, Linear Algebra, Real Analysis) and a graduate class in commutative algebra. I got all As in my math classes with one or two A-s in some unrelated classes.
In my second semester of my second year, I am trying my best to fix this issue. I will likely get 5 As this semester including 3 key math graduate classes. I think I'll maintain this streak in my third year as well. At this point, my GPA is around 3.5 . By the time I apply to graduate school, I can hope to get it to around 3.7-3.82. My math GPA will be higher than that. I am currently aiming to get into a good PhD program(say a top 20 program, very roughly). I already have some pretty good connections with some faculty who are quite renowned in their fields and may end up getting good letters. I may also have some research opportunities lined up within the next year. I also took the math subject GRE and did well on it.
Will I be penalized for the drop in grades that semester when it comes to graduate school applications? Many of the other factors(GRE, recommendation letters) look decent enough on paper for now except for my GPA. Most of the people I know who got into a math PhD program have a near-perfect GPA. It seems almost like a minimum requirement at this point.
I'd be especially glad to receive a response from someone very familiar with the math PhD admission process or another student who faced similar circumstances.


texts: Are many new math results first published in monographs?

texts: Are many new math results first published in monographs (not in articles)?


texts:
There are several kinds of academic fights:

Two researchers may have different interpretations or modelling approaches to the same dataset. They claim that the other party is wrong in their publications.
Two researchers claim that they did the same thing first, not citing the other's work
Two researchers claim that the other party's research method, data collection process, and coding methods are problematic.

What are the names of these fights? How do I find recent examples of these fight?


texts: Can you post an article on arXiv while under peer review?

texts: Would doing so go against the declaration many journals require that the author has not submitted the work anywhere else?


texts: Is it ethical to apply to a scholarship sponsored by my employer?

texts:
I am a masters student in Computer Science. I also work for a software development company which happens to sponsor a scholarship that I want to apply to.

I was concerned about the ethical aspect of applying to this scholarship, I contacted the communications department via e-mail and asked if it is illegal and/or unethical to apply. Response said that company employees can apply, which means, I can apply. The answer did not state anything about the second part of my question - would it be unethical?

I also know that the CEO of my company will be the head of sponsorship committee.

Should I just ignore this weird circumstance and write my motivation letter as if there was no connection between my employer and the scholarship? Or should I not even apply?

Edit: My initial question had 2 parts so I split it into separate questions. The other question, How would applying for a scholarship sponsored by employer affect my employer's perception of me?, is posted on Workplace.SE. It is a different question and I expect an answer from a different angle to it.


texts: Getting accepted to present at a conference, but choosing not to go - including this in SoP

texts:
I am a masters student who has just had my extended abstract accepted to the largest conference in my field, however, I am faced with a very difficult decision that requires perspective.

The Problem Context: I have made plans with a long lasting friend of about 12 years to go away together on a trip during a period of the Summer in which the conference that I have been accepted to is also occurring - I made a mixup in the dates which has gotten me into this position in the first place. The likelihood that we will be able to make this trip happen in the future is very slim because he's going to be having children shortly. On the other hand, presenting at this conference (especially as a masters student), would really help to boost my application when applying to doctoral programs.

I think that if I didn't go on this trip, I would regret it, so I am leaning more towards this than the conference. However, I am wondering if it would be worth mentioning in my SoP that I was admitted to the conference - to signal that I have potential - but due to my previous commitments (without being too specific as to what they are), I chose to decline the opportunity to present.

From the perspective of a graduate admissions committee, I am sure that they would prefer to see on a CV that you attended and presented at the conference. But I wonder if being transparent in the sense that I was accepted and chose to decline presenting at the conference if this could be a net-negative for the application to the schools that I apply for.

Problem Definition: If I were to decline the opportunity to present at this large conference, but made mention in my SoP that I had the opportunity to do so and chose to decline, would this signal a net-negative to graduate committees? Alternatively, would it be better to not mention that I had the opportunity at all?


texts: Dealing with a coauthor whose contribution was not used in the paper

texts:
I recently completed a course project with some other students in my department. In this project, we discovered a few novel results that might be of interest to others in the field. I would like to revise and submit this project for publication (with the consent of my coauthors, of course).

The problem lies with one of the coauthors. The portion of the project that they wrote and sent to the rest of us was nonsensical. When reading their draft, it seemed as though they had not even read the reference material our project is based on. As a result, I and the remaining coauthors had to rewrite that portion from scratch, and the final report contains nothing written by that particular coauthor. (We left their name on the report since it was too late to change groups by the deadline.)

What should I do if we choose to publish these results? I worry that excluding the one coauthor might offend them if they saw the published paper. At worst, it might be considered academic dishonesty.


texts: Journal doesn’t react for several months – should I withdraw?

texts:
I submitted a paper to a journal in mathematics. For the last three and a half months, the status of the article is with editor. I sent a mail to the editorial office to update the status. They replied me saying they will ask the handling editor to contact me. After one more month I asked to expedite the process. No reply. Now for the last three and half months, there is no change in the process.

Is it better to withdraw the article or wait for some more time?


texts: What is the significance of the overview slide in a presentation?

texts:
The first slide which follows the title page of my presentation is the overview slide. It has the title for each section to follow in the talk (thank you Latex!).

My question is how much time is to be spent on the Overview slide, given the talk lasts twenty minutes? Should I talk about each section's one-line-synopsis to let the audience mull it over? If the answer is no, how do I transition smoothly from the Paper Title Slide to the one on Motivation for the talk (For example : Why I love Science?).


texts: What should be included when inquiring about the status of my application?

texts:
I am currently applying for research and faculty positions. After an initial phone interview, how can I politely ask for feedback on the status of my application?
What are the necessary, optional, and unwise topics of such a letter?
As a concrete example, here is a quick draft:

I am writing to follow up on our discussion a few weeks ago about the position in (My Field) at (Your Institution).  I remain very interested in the position and would appreciate the opportunity to work with you and the (XYZ) group.
In particular, have you been able to narrow the list of candidates, and am I included? Is there any additional information that I could provide to support my application?
I also appreciate that you sent me a copy of your unpublished manuscript. It promises to make an important contribution to the field by providing the type of robust approach to (The Method) that is required. I would like to learn more - would you be willing to share the supplementary information with me as well?


texts: Should recommenders be from the same discipline as the program one's applying to?

texts:
If I want to go to graduate school to study physics and am a math major, how bad is it to have recommendation letters from math professors, mostly? The problem is that I just have four physics courses and after being picky about professors, I might not end up with all physics professors. Further, math professors know me better.

So, will it hurt if my recommenders are more mathematicians than physicists?


texts: Should I use a personal github account or a new one to publish academic code?

texts:
When I want to publish academic code, should I use my personal account with a pseudonymous username or create a new one with a username based on my real name?

My current account uses a pseudonym as username and I write code where I use my real name in the commits and an e-mail address related to the pseudonym (e.g. to keep my personal mail address free from spam).
For university code, I use my real name and university e-mail address in the repositories, but the URLs of the projects still contain the username, so the pseudonym is quite visible.

My personal account contains a few non-university projects and forks of other projects (some for modifications used by my university codes, some unrelated to my university work) as well. There is nothing I would not want to be seen by others and some of the voluntary work may reflect positively on me.

Should I worry about the username being a pseudonym (nothing silly like "buffy_the vampire_slayer", but still unrelated to my name)?

When publishing code linked on the university website.
When publishing code with the URL linked in a paper.

Is it preferred to have an account for university codes only?

I do not think my university or department has any rules for this, so I need to decide it myself.


texts: Will you be expelled if you commit a crime as a student in the UK?

texts:
I initially thought this was off-topic but StrongBad told me this is not, so thank you.

A friend of mine has been a victim of fraud by someone at an university. This was investigated by the police and will almost certainly lead to a conviction and probably a prison sentence. My question is do universities (automatically?) expel people for committing criminal offenses whilst a student?

The specific University in question here is Cambridge.


texts: Is it possible to accrue vacation hours during graduate study as a research assistant (GRA)?

texts:
I currently work full-time for the Department of Defense.  I usually get three-weeks worth of paid time off every year.  This has been helpful because I like to go back home to visit family for about two weeks or take a long weekend and visit friends around the country.

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

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

Thank you for your time.


texts: Ethically, do I need to include as coauthor a person who provided basic knowledge to fill a gap in my research?

texts:
Consider the following scenario.

I am researching on a problem in a domain and I don't know anything about the existence of Pythagoras theorem.

After so much time of my research I figured myself that if a fact like:

  the square of a side which is opposite to the 90 degrees in a triangle is equal to the sum of squares of remaining sides

exists, then my research completes and I can publish a good paper. But I never encountered Pythagoras theorem during my search of literature.

If I came to know about its existence during a discussion with a colleague or any random person, then is there any ethical need to keep him as a co-author since I struggled a lot of time and didn't find by myself?


texts: How do I email my co-authors asking them to review a manuscript very quickly?

texts:
I feel really bad asking for my co-authors, who are also my dissertation committee, to provide edits on my paper so quickly, but it looks like it needs to be done.
I submitted a paper to a journal a few months ago. They got back to me a month later with "major revisions" recommended. I got a lot of great comments, but they will take me some time to complete. The journal gave me only a month to get it done and send it back in. Due to the other things on my plate, this was extremely unrealistic. My primary advisor said it is impossible to do with everything I have going on. So, I asked the journal for an extension. I emailed them multiple times. They did not reply. The submission date came and went and I still didn't hear from them. As a result, I assumed I was not granted the extension.
However, I received FINALLY an email from them about a week and a half ago stating that I have been granted a new deadline of August 5th. Again, I still have A LOT on my plate and those revisions are not my top priority. However, I got a major portion of my thesis finished yesterday so now I have time to work on these revisions. My primary advisor is aware of this new deadline but wasn't sure if it was feasible. However, we had a meeting today where we discussed it. The game plan is to hand it into the journal a week late and hope they accept it (she said many journals are OK with this and won't have an issue). August 5th is still unreasonable. And my department and my advisor are very supportive of mental health and having a work-life balance so they would never want me to work overtime on this (my advisor even stated today that I should not kill myself over this as research is supposed to be fun and remember to take a lot of time during the week off). In my department, most students work from 9-5 or 8-4 since it's strongly encouraged that we have downtime and a life.
Anyways, now that we have a game plan moving forward, I need to let my other co-authors know what will be happening. I will need to ask them to review my edits to this paper over the course of a week. A two-week turnaround is standard in the department, but I will request only a week. My committee also has another paper of mine to review at the moment and there may be some overlap there, so this is a lot to ask and I feel guilty (even though it is not my fault) and bad about asking them to review something in such a short period of time. In addition, my secondary advisor is a lead researcher in the country for COVID-19, so she is extremely busy with that as well.
My question is: what should I say in the email to my co-authors / committee? I really do not want to sound like I am expecting them to review it in such a short time and that I do not value their time or understand they have a lot of other things on their plate?


texts: How do I become motivated after unfairness in research?

texts:
I'm a chemistry undergrad in the honors college at my school and the following happened:

Last Spring, the college held a research conference and I did REALLY     well with one judge (49/50) and poorly with another. The judge I did poorly with cited the wrong research project, or whoever tallied the scores assigned the wrong score sheet to me.
Another professor was upset about how her student was judged too, and so when she heard about how I was judged, she grouped us together in one complaint, but our emails to the people in charge of the conference went largely unanswered regarding her student, and completely ignored regarding my situation.
Weeks later, a student in my research group who had been receiving massive praise from the honors college for having presented at a conference, received an award for her research. I was actually the one that
went to the conference, not her. It was known by the honors college that I went, but they must have assumed the other girl went too because she was in the same group. Perhaps I should have stepped in and said, "She didn't go, it was just me," when she first received praise, but I felt I was in an awkward place. I asked the girl early on in the school year to correct the honors advisor, but she (the girl) said it wasn't important. Our research advisor assured me there's no way of knowing that the trip to the conference was the only factor in the college's decision to give her the award and that she had not been consulted about it, which made the situation a bit less discouraging. That student did do research in another lab -- although I had heard complaints about her work in the other lab well before she and I were at odds.

A few weeks ago, I talked to the dean of the honors college about the situation, and I was pretty much told, "Sorry 'bout cha', that's life. Life is unfair." It made me feel like I was being really petty, and his tone made me feel chastised for bringing it up.

To me, this isn't an issue about praise, it's about fairness, responsibility, and supporting students. The "life is unfair" argument he used just really bugs
me. In my view, something like having an excruciatingly painful, lifelong health condition is a "life isn't fair" situation. "Life isn't fair," for me, fails to be a legitimate argument for people refusing to be accountable for their actions or even just issuing an apology.

Despite support from professors, my research advisor, and the Dean of Students, I'm still really gutted about these things. I'm demotivated in my coursework and research (research was seriously my lifeblood.) I worked so incredibly hard and I used to get so much joy just out of working without the need for recognition.

How do I feel confident and motivated again in my education and research when I feel unsupported?


texts: my supervisors put me as last author in an article submitted to a journal. I had written the majority of the paper and even if it's not my idea, but it's my thesis subject. My supervisor who proposed the idea and corrects the article wants to become the first author and the one who doesn't do anything   wants us to take turns publishing (once me the first author, once him once the other supervisor). I stressed because i'm the one who needs the publications and not them who already have a job


texts: Feedback on "book summary" originated from master's thesis

texts:
I am transforming my Mater thesis into a book. I need to write a 100 word summary for the same as well. Should I be mentioning in my book that it is an extension of my Master's thesis? The following is the relevant excerpt from my book summary.

"This book, which originates from author’s master’s thesis, discusses laser-based ultrasonic NDT method."


texts: Should formatting affect grades of student essays?

texts:
I helped my friend, who never used LaTeX before, to convert her PG Diploma essay from a Word document into this system (for a molecular biology class). I convinced her that, with some learning, she could later produce better essays with LaTeX in shorter time, focusing on the content without worrying about the layout.

But she started to worry from the beginning.

She commented on the placement of large figures and tables which didn't fit immediately at the positions and pages where they called out. She was particularly concerned that these floating figures (placed professionally, I think, by LaTeX at the top of the following pages) "appeared in the wrong places in the middle of the next sections".

I explained to her that these automatic placements by LaTeX seemed "perfect" and  "optimal" to avoid large white spaces left at the bottom of the pages; and that this approach is what we see in most professorially typeset materials (e.g., journal articles, and my thesis ;)).

However, the professor who later marked the essay commented that these positionings "look odd" and "broke the logical flow", and he seemed to prefer the "inline placement" of figures and tables. My friend now thinks that some points were lost because of this.

--

Should (such) layout and formatting issues in general affect the grading of student essays?

If yes, I assume this professor might not be familiar enough with professional typesetting practices, or he simply didn't like what he saw in the essay. Is he free not to accept the common professional typesetting practices in his course?


texts:
I am currently a researcher (a postdoc) in a research group at a scientific institute. I obtained my Ph.D. degree 2 years ago and right away I got employed at this institute and started as a postdoc. I dare to say that I did a nice job during my Ph.D. and also I am working quite well here and my supervisor is happy with my outcomes.

Yesterday, after a discussion with my supervisor regarding some results he told me that now it is time for me to gradually start my own research (along with doing my job here) in order to strengthen my academic career so that I can have my own research group in the future. I am a bit stressed now because the main path of my research has been always chosen by my supervisors and also I always had their support. On the other hand, this has always been my dream to have my own research and become a pioneer in a scientific matter.

I have some interesting scientific topics in mind that I can follow but I am afraid that I cannot do a nice job alone. I think what I need is just a strong startup then I will get into my stride. Could somebody give me some good advice?


texts:
I am currently writing a thesis in which a lot of derivations are moved to the appendix. To make these derivations readable, I sometimes write sentences like "As we saw in equation X...", where equation X is present both in the main text as well as in the appendix.

My question: should I, while writing the appendix, reference the instance of the equation in the main text, or the one in the appendix?


texts: Conditions valid for plagiarism and dishonesty

texts: i had submitted an assignment requiring distributed code to achieve a fairly complex application. Since this was my first attempt I took help in the form of tutoring , demos of particular libraries and discussed solutions but did not directly copied any work or passed someone's work as mine . I took the the help of my childhood friend and he helped me in the limits of tutoring and discussions but he casually asked for the coursework and he emailed me all the solutions . I did not even cared to open that email but he did that on my uni account. Some solutions were different from mine , as i had taken a different approach. Although i have graduated in 2015 -- can this come back to bite me , just because of this email?I am scared because i am about to apply for a Phd


texts: How can I help my advisor not lose face when changing from a thesis to non-thesis program?

texts:
I am a comajor masters student who is experiencing difficulties in timely responses from my advisor. It has taken an average of almost 4 months for me to get feedback each time I have received feedback on my thesis since leaving campus.

As a result, I am trying to  convert from a thesis to a non-thesis based MS, take an additional course this fall, and be done. I would need to modify my program of study to include some independent study credits (requiring my advisor approval), representing my non-published thesis work, and be done this fall. The additional work is well worth it to me to avoid the uncertainty of depending on an advisor who is unreliable for timely feedback.

Because of these delays which are likely going to make even a fall thesis defense impossible, I have been in contact with the Ombuds office at my University. At their suggestion I then talked with the faculty who is the director of my graduate program and both seem to think this is the best outcome. The graduate director thought my advisor might resist this idea because it causes him to lose face.

I need my advisor's permission to convert to the independent study.If I do not receive this, I will have to take some additional credits - which I am prepared to do, though this is non-optimal.  Technically I need his permission to switch committees, too, though I have been told him refusing this is incredibly unlikely. Having suggested the idea to my advisor via email about a week ago, I have (unsurprisingly to me) not heard any response.

What strategies should I use to work with my advisor to change my program of study and committee which help him save face, but simultaneously causing my issues to be resolved in a way which results in him signing the paperwork?

The only reason I care is I want him to approve my program of study change, so I have to take less credits. If I didn't need this approval I would just drop the paperwork off to change my committee and be done (and easily escalate if he refuses)...


texts: Are there tools to prevent students from cheating on a programming exam administered on computers?

texts:
I'm teaching an Introduction to Computer Science Course, where we mainly do C programming. I've been assigned a lab for teaching the course, but there are more students than available computers. Also, I have no control over those PCs there, and almost every student has admin rights to them. It is also common that students bring their laptop to the classroom and connect to campus Wi-Fi, which I don't have control at all.

Exams are small algorithms to solve, and initially I was planning - as do other teachers in the course - to allow using a computer (from the lab or their own) for the students to verify the correctness of their algorithms. However, in the current state of things I think is pretty easy for students to cheat: They could use Facebook, e-mail, or any Internet tool to exchange source code or information.

Are there software tools that can help to allow use of a computer but still prevent unauthorized collaboration?


texts: Should papers under review be listed in CV?

texts:
First, I know this question has been asked already here but was never answered.
I am applying for an assistant professorship position (in CS) and due to overloaded teaching duties over the last years, I did not produce many papers. Currently, I am trying to compensate for this by submitting a lot of papers, which are under review. In my CV, I want to show the selection committee that I am actively working on research and actively submitting papers by listing these papers but I am not sure how they will be considered.
If you were a member of the committee, how would you receive this?


texts: What to do with long equation-heavy solutions?

texts: I am writing a paper about a problem that involves solving a certain equation. The problem is that the solution is very long and there are a lot of terms. My question is: Is there a way to present the solution in an attractive manner instead of just typing the solution, which is about a page long? Also, would the fact that the solution is long and looks unattractive affect whether the paper get accepted or not?


texts:
There are many websites offering pre-submission review services for a fee of several hunderd dollars, e.g., editage, editeon, enago and others.

In general this seems like a useful service - instead of waiting several months to get feedback from the journal referees (and probably a rejection), the author receives feedback after a week, and can then improve the paper and submit to the journal.

However, just like there are predatory journals, it is reasonable to fear that there are "predatory review services", that take your money and produce a worthless review.

So, my question is: what is a way to detect a good pre-submission peer-review service, and distinguish it from a predatory one?


texts:
When writing a paper which, as an aside, talks about the design of a user interface on a particular piece of software, can one insert a (correctly labeled and referenced) screenshot of the software to help readers understand - or does that cause copyright issues?

For example, I wouldn't use a photo unless I held the copyright, or a diagram - but I'm unsure of the legal position of a screenshot...


texts: Should I ask for co-authorship as an undergrad student?

texts:
I was assigned a research topic for one of my psych classes this term. I designed the study, collected and analyzed data and then wrote a paper. After I presented my paper to my professor, she was very excited and said this paper was publishable. She would definitely run follow-up studies on this topic. I then offered to join her team to run this study and she agreed.

Now I am not sure if I am only participating as a volunteer research assistant or as a co-researcher for this project, considering the research topic is not my original idea. I just designed the study, ran it and received significant results.

Should I ask for clarification on my role at the upcoming meeting with my prof ? If so, how should I approach? I don't want to appear too aggressive.


texts: Appropriate recognition for contribution to a book

texts:
I am a PhD student and my supervisor has asked me to make some significant contributions to a book which he is trying to publish.

He has asked me to proofread the book (English is my native language but is not his) but has also asked if I could effectively rewrite some sections to improve the communication and structure of the book.

I am happy to do the work but would like to agree beforehand how my contribution should be recognised. As I will not be contributing any technical knowledge to the book I feel that co-authorship is not appropriate, especially as the book will be aimed at experts in the area so the content is more important than the communication. However, I would expect more than, say, a mention in an acknowledgements section.

Does there exist some sort of compromise between co-authorship and an acknowledgement which would better reflect my contribution?


texts: Is it necessary to have many slides when presenting in conference?

texts: Is it necessary to have many slides when presenting in conference, if the speaker can clearly present his or her research with only just a few slides? How to decide when to use or not to use the slide? Science and engineering fields of research are preferred.


texts: How should a reviewer provide comments to a journal's special issue in a field he is not familiar with?

texts:
As an editorial board member for a low impact journal, I've been approached to provide comments on whether I think a proposal for a special issue is acceptable or not. I'm quite inexperienced in this role, and it seems rather different from reviewing a paper or grant proposal. I have been provided a list of guest editors as well as a justification statement, however, the special issue is not directly in my field so I can only assume credibility from prior publications (if I can find them).

Have any others been in this situation, and if so, by what criteria did they make a decision on acceptability?


texts: How to assign grades in a game development course?

texts:
I am planning a course on game development. Currently my main problem is how to design the assignments and grade them in a fair and objective manner. In previous courses I taught (like basic programming or algorithms), I could always design homework assignments that had objectively correct solutions. However, in game development it is important to encourage creativity and imagination. Ideally, I would like to have each team of students work on their own game. But how can I assign grades to such assignments? There is no objectively "good" solution: each  game can be fun for some gamers and boring for others.

I could try to assign grades by "effort" or "creativity", but I do not have an objective way to measure them. And if I assign grades by my subjective perception of effort/creativity, this will inevitably lead to complaints by students who believe they made a lot of effort.

For background, the course is intended for third-year undergrads in a computer science department, and it will probably involve programming in Unreal engine and C++. But, I think the question is relevant to any course in which the main goal is to encourage creativity. What is an objective and meaningful way to assign grades in such courses?

NOTE: The question is related to https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/q/3656/1873. However, there the problem is that the students lack motivation or ability. In my case they will (hopefully) have motivation and ability, since it is a choice course taken by advanced students. Still, I will have to assign different grades to different students since I cannot give 100 to everyone..


texts: Which tools should be used to produce charts in computer science research papers?

texts:
What are good choices to produce charts in computer science research papers? For example, I think Figure 8 from
Staring into the Abyss: An Evaluation of Concurrency Control with One Thousand Cores (pdf), included below, is great. What tools were used to produce it?

Source: Xiangyao Yu et al., ibid., p. 215.


texts:
Question:

When I have a choice to take only one of two possible sequences: A theoretical one which aids my research and an applied one that aids my employability, which one should I opt for? (I must do the other on my own)

Background:

I am currently in a PhD program for Applied Math. I have finished all my core courses but am now required to take any (from a list) of courses which span Econ (Micro Econ, Time series type stuff), Management (Business Intelligence) and Statistics (Mathematical Stats, the gnarly stuff). My research is on Big Data Analytics from a Mathematical perspective.

I want to keep my options for engineering (Electrical/Industrial Engineering) and Business (Data Analytics) faculty positions open. I want to join academi and in my department, senior students have gotten jobs in all of the three quoted above.

From that standpoint, what courses should I be taking? My time is constrained and I have to choose one of the three. I know for my research, I will benefit from a more rigorous mathematical training in Stats but I don't know if this will help me get a business school job. If I choose one, I know I can (& will probably make time) do the other two on my own but I am confused which one to pick.

The way I think :

If I do stats, I will have a rigorous background in any kind of statistical inference which is gold for what I do but I will have no clue about microecon, finance or business intelligence. All three are big application areas for my research.
If I do econ/business intelligence, for my research, I might get stuck at times when I am trying to interchange an expectation with a gradient and wondering "under what conditions can I do this".


texts: How would native english speakers do in a Proficiency exam?

texts:
Everyday I get more surprised about the native language level of people. It looks like the habit of everyday talking tends to negatively bias their language level.

I’ve seen around some similar questions, but they are not exactly what I’m asking. We may also find a clue if we check a nation’s education level, but a high level exam is more restrictive than a basic education test.

Let’s suppose we are talking about USA, how would USA inhabitants do when they face a Proficiency exam or any of similar level?


texts: Getting PhD from average institution (gain experience) before applying for a PhD in top institution?

texts:
What do you think about an idea of getting a PhD in an "better then average institution" to get tons of experience to get a second PhD (in the same field) from top institution?

I'm now getting a MSc degree in applied math from one of the top Russia institutions, but I still feel like I don't have enough experience, and publications, and general "coolness" for applying to places like MIT or Stanford or other top universities - but I would really want to work with people there! Moreover the problem I've came up with for my thesis is somewhat "non-mainstream" (that's why I don't really have a thesis adviser and I'm guiding myself through it, so it turned out to be slower process than I expected).

I've been thinking of getting a first PhD in some good place in Europe, getting few publications, gaining more experience there and only after that applying into top institutions. From your own experience, does that seem to be a good idea? (I mean, having a completed PhD in some other institution seems like a great advantage from the lab's perspective - right?)


texts: Does getting an offer from a U.S. phd program earlier than normal mean getting a relatively better offer?

texts:
As I browse the Internet, I observe that a U.S. phd program may send its offers to the applicants at different time points.

However, does this difference imply the difference in favor? I mean, does getting an offer earlier imply getting a better offer?


texts: Why should I add co-authors on Google Scholar?

texts:
Google Scholar wants me to add areas of interest, photo, and co-authors. I understand why I may want to add the first two, but why add co-authors? All the publications already list the actual co-authors. Is it an attempt to turn the site into more of a social network? Is it an excuse for Google to spam them ("X added you as a co-author!")? What is the benefit for the profile owner?

For example, I have some papers with dozens of authors. Should I "upgrade" them to "co-authors"? I have no idea who some of these people are, but maybe the goal is to get as many as possible. On the other hand, if I don't add someone I actually know, will they be offended?


texts: Is it normal for good PhD advisors to micromanage early PhD students?

texts:
I am a first year PhD student in science. I have a good advisor, the kind that will spend time with you (he is busy not emeritus), read what you send him, reply emails, give good advice for future, good project management. I've googled for what are traits of good advisors and what to avoid in bad advisors (e.g. here) and he fits all of good advisors and none of bad advisors.
However the problem is I feel that he has micromanagement style. He is very detail oriented and tries to understand every step you do. I meet him twice a week, and it is basically a do this, show me this next time. He will tell me exactly what to do.
Granted however I am not a very strong student who is capable of independent research right away, but I still like to be able to do explore my own ideas, or at least be able to do things independently, as I think that is the point of the PhD. Hence my question is whether it is normal for advisors to micromanage early PhD students, and whether I should be concerned, because I definitely do not want to spend my whole PhD working like that. Maybe he will turn into a hands off advisor later?


texts: Is it good for the speaker to read notes during a presentation?

texts:
I am wondering whether it looks odd if a speaker reads notes during a presentation? I am asking this because, I noticed that a few presenters can’t present their work or research well due to nervousness and other factors such as language, pronunciation etc.

So if a speaker makes notes and just reads them properly along with the slides, how will it look? Will audiences accept or criticize such presentations?

How will it be if the speaker speaks by him/herself, but he/she will look into the notes at necessary?


texts: What is the process through which a department chooses to invite someone to make a talk at the department?

texts: How is the person selected? How far in advance is the selection process made? When a department makes an offer to have a speaker come, how often is the offer rejected? And what happens if the offer is rejected?


texts: Is it worth regularly publishing in unknown business & management journals?

texts: I notice some business & management full professors regularly publish in unknown or low rank journals. Yet I have previously been advised to be very careful where I publish. Is there value in the 'Stack 'em high' method in the Business & Management field?


texts: Are people who left academia happy with their decision?

texts:
Is there any extensive research/study/survey that looked at what percentage of people who left academia were happy with their decision after X years?

I mostly interested in the computer science field (machine learning) in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well.

People leaving academia can be PhD students or after (tenure-track, tenured, soft-money research positions, national lab researchers, etc.).


texts: Refusing a research project and/or assignment because of personal convictions

texts:
Is there a general rule about what a postdoc or graduate student can or cannot refuse to do because of personal convictions?

I assume that there must be institution-specific rules, but also maybe legally defined limits? I know that (fortunately!) in most countries, a supervisor cannot "force" a student or postdoc to do something that goes against their religious convictions, for example, but there can be grey areas that are not as protected as religious belief; what about personal opinions and life choices?

For example, I am wondering if personal convictions are a valid and protected reason to refuse:

Experimenting on animals
Applying for defense/military funding (e.g. DARPA)
Collaborating with companies with discutable ethics
Working on any type of dual use research
Conducting experiments that generate significant amounts of pollution

Most of the time this kind of ethics dilemma can be avoided by carefully choosing a laboratory. But not always - money can be tight, reviewers can ask for animal validations after submission... So I am wondering if there is a rule of thumb for determining what is a "reasonable" reason to refuse an academic project based on moral arguments.


texts: Is it possible for someone to do their masters in Maths once they've earned their degree in Computer Science?

texts: I was wondering. Is it possible for someone to major in Maths as in do their masters in Maths once they've earned their degree in Computer Science?


texts: Published manuscript to handbook or manual

texts: I am presently developing a handbook/manual based on our published methods in a not-open access journal. The content of the manual is different (i.e., format and structure) from the published version and we made a modification, for example, we structured our manual to a "recipe style" so it's easy to use and follow by users. We cited the original paper and we borrowed and cited some of the figures (and some new ones). I am wondering would it be against the journal policy if I do this? Or any advice about how I will handle this. We also plan to publish the manual through an organisation.


texts: My internship mentor would not write a recommendation for me, should I include the internship in my statement of purpose?

texts:
I'm finishing up my MS and getting ready to send out PhD applications, and I am not sure about a particular item that should be included / or should not be included.

I spent a semester at a high profile government office (I was strong-armed into a position I did not apply for) doing something that was related to my area of interest.

It was ultimately "unsuccessful" since the person who was "mentoring" me was adverse to writing me a recommendation. But my MS-supervising professor who wrote me a recommendation for the position seemed surprised when I suggested he not include it in his own letter of reference. I'm hesitant to mention it, but am a little concerned about a gap in my transcript that just reads "Professional Practicum".


texts: change of study plans within ABET accreditation

texts:
Currently, I am working in a CS program that has decided to follow the ABET accreditation. The problem is that we are about to implement a new study plan for the next year, which is more suited to the outcomes that ABET asks for an accreditation in CS, because the current one has some drawbacks. The question that I have is which study plan should we present to ABET, the current one and state that the new one should be enclosed into our continuous improvement plan? What about the graduates that we have with the old study plan, should we assess them or wait until we have graduates with the new study plan?
Any help?


texts: Stylistically is it acceptable to include equations and formulae in a literature review?

texts:
I am writing a literature review as part of a master's thesis in mechanical engineering.

I am discussing the approach of one author and I was wondering whether or not it is acceptable to include equations that the author has used?

For example I might say: Smith has used the ideal gas equation (and then write the equation) in order to calculate xyz...

This raises a further question in that should you include an equation if it is obscure, and omit commonly understood equations or not?


texts: Is repeating a mathematical formula or equation in a scientific paper considered bad writing?

texts:
I'm writing an engineering paper which is filled with equations (physical demonstrations in the theoretical section and numerical methods demonstrations in the methods section).
I want to rewrite one of the first equation I introduced, because I introduced it in a particular context and now I want to use it in another context and show different properties of it. Is this considered a bad practice?
Since all equations are numbered, there would be an equation which is numbered twice. I could solve this problem by not numbering just the second appearance of this equation. Or I could just reference the number, and let the reader go back a few pages. But that would affect the readability of the text (all the other instances in which I reference some previous equation are usually in the same paragraph, so there's no need to turn a lot of pages).
What should I do? Redundancy and readability or conciseness and elegance in spite of readability?


texts: How can a software engineer become competitive for a PhD position in computer science?

texts:
I'm looking to apply to grad school once my wife finishes her PhD next year. She has a post-doc lined up in Canada and I'm thinking during that time would be a great time for me to finally start mine (PhD).
My issue is that I do not have any research experience and I'm about 4 years into industry as a practicing software engineer. I have a bachelors and masters in computer science and I'm currently about to publish a paper with my wife that is a mix of CS/Biology. Given that she is going to Canada, I'm wanting to try to get into University of Toronto, which seems highly ranked. What things can I do starting today to get into this school given my experience?


texts: Is it ethical to use someone else's research as an illustrative case?

texts:
I have developed a framework for describing a phenomenon in organizations and would like to illustrate its use by referring to a case study published by another author. In other words, I would be fitting another study's descriptions to my own framework.

The paper will be published in conference proceedings.

So, is it fair game to use another person's study to illustrate my framework?

I have my own field work that I would like to use alongside the other study, so the other author's case study is complementary and... illustrative.


texts: Can I apply for masters program on Polymer Science after having completed my masters of Pharmacy..

texts:
I completed my master in 2012 with a specialization in Pharmacognosy. After completing my graduation, I joined a company as a Pharmacist due to unavailability of job related to my area. Currently I am working as a asst prof in a reputed organization. Few months after joining i realized the narrow opportunities of Pharmacognosy. Later I started to search articles on natural polymers, that lead to go for a second masters program on polymer science.
Please suggest me am I in the right path. And how do I mention this on my application and statement of purpose/motivation letter.
Thank you in advance.


texts: What are the moral and legal consequences of "not thanking" government for not providing viable grants?

texts:
Recently, on various social platforms, an image containing an unusual acknowledgement in some paper have been circulating. This is about the following paper RF fingerprint measurements for the identification of devices
in wireless communication networks based on feature
reduction and subspace transformation by J.L. Padilla, P. Padilla, J.F. Valenzuela-Valdés, J. Ramírez, J.M. Górriz, Measurement 58 (2014) 468–475, which has the following Acknowledgement:

 "This work has been carried out despite the economical
difficulties of the authors’ country. The authors want to
overall remark the clear contribution of the Spanish Government
in destroying the R&D horizon of Spain and the
future of a complete generation."

Another interesting example provided by @Federico Poloni is the paper  Rumour spreading and graph conductance  by Flavio Chierichetti, Silvio Lattanzi, Alessandro Panconesi,
where the authors write:

"Unacknowledgements

This work is ostensibly supported by the the Italian
Ministry of University and Research under the FIRB
program, project RBIN047MH9-000. The Ministry
however has not paid its dues and it is not known
whether it will ever do."

Another paper recently published offers a sad story in the acknowledgements,(I will just put the reference here "On functional representations of the conformal algebra", by Oliver J. Rosten, Eur. Phys. J. C (2017) 77:477
DOI 10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5049-5)

In "A New Horned Dinosaur Reveals Convergent Evolution in Cranial Ornamentation in Ceratopsidae by Caleb M. Brown, Donald M. Henderson, Current Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 12, R494–R496
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.041, there is a proposal:

 Funding for this research was provided by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology and the Royal Tyrrell Museum Cooperating Society.
C.M.B. would specifically like to highlight the ongoing and unwavering support
of Lorna O’Brien. Lorna, will you marry me?

In "Rotational splittings with CoRoT, expected number of detections and measurement accuracy" by M. Goupil, et al., Caleb M. Brown, Donald M. Henderson, Current Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 12, R494–R496
, where is the following text:

 We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments

There are also more:
Van Valen (1973). A new Evolutionary Law. Evolutionary Theory 1:1-30.

I thank the National Science Foundation for regularly rejecting my (honest) grant applications for work on real organisms (cf. Szent-Gyorgyi, 1972), thus forcing me into theoretical work

Although I fully empathize with the authors view, I wonder about the legal and moral consequences of considering adding of such an acknowledgement in one's
future career.

P.S. If you have discovered a similar story in a different paper that it is not listed here, please feel free to add it. Thank you!


texts:
I am a future PhD student here in Germany and I am worried about whether the PhD German title (Dr.rer.physiol.) will be accepted internationally in general and in Germany in particular. In fact here in Germany there are many different titles that is possible to get after the PhD, the most common is Dr.rer.nat (literally, Doctor in natural sciences), but then You can be also Dr.rer.med, or Dr.rer.phil, Dr.ing. or whatever (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doctoral_degrees_awarded_by_country).
But my question is; which is the relevance of one or another title?
Could be really make a difference get one instead of another?
I am really wondering about because there are not really clear info on this topic and I would like to know what is better for my future career!

Thanks a lot
I am looking forward to any answer!
Marta


texts: In journals submissions, what does "Confirmation of Intent" mean?

texts: I am planning to submit a manuscript for a special issue in a journal. The guest editor puts a deadline for Confirmation of Intent. What does this mean? What the editor expects from the authors at this level? are there any samples of such thing?


texts: What will happen to non open-access publications in the UK after 2014?

texts:
The UK recently decided that from 2014, all research papers supported by public funds must be published in open-access journals.
For instance, the Research Councils UK announced a new policy stating that:

The new policy, which will apply to all qualifying publications being submitted for publication from 1 April 2013, states that peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils:

must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access
must include details of the funding that supported the research, and a statement on how the underlying research materials such as data, samples or models can be accessed.

My question is the following: what could concretely happen if someone does not respect this policy? For instance, if someone publishes both in open-access and in paywall journals, does that mean that only those in open-access count in the report to the RCUK? Or does that mean that you can get "black-listed" if you publish in paywall journals?
EDIT: Directly related question: what happen if one publishes a paper in a paywall journal and publishes at the same time the pre-print on a freely accessible archive?


texts: Do academicians consider Challenges on Kaggle to be research-worthy?

texts:
I am a somewhat new-ish member of Kaggle competitions with 1 submission. Do academics research via Kaggle challenges/competitions? If so are there any prominent names?

If not why? They provide well annotated training data-sets, and typically do not put any publication restrictions as well.

Perhaps they consider such challenges trivial. Just a query on an academic's perspective on the challenges here.

The only thing I've heard about Kaggle from an academic's perspective is from Graduate School Students at Stanford, who need to participate in a challenge as a part of their coursework (which is pretty cool).


texts: Would several withdrawals (W) affect my chances at graduate school admission

texts:
I am an undergraduate math major and I have already had to drop two classes (one due to my mother being sick and other to do with an attendance policy). This semester I'm having trouble with my health and concentrating and debating on dropping two more classes. My GPA is a good 3.9 but if I stay with these classes I am risking a lower GPA (as I am only an upper freshman with 26 credits). I am getting A's in my two other classes. My questions are:

1. How bad are 4 W grades on a transcript when applying for a graduate program in mathematics?

2. Does having documentation saying I dropped due to depression/PTSD help if they can be "attached" to the transcript?

3. If I was able to do well in my GRE would that help soften the blow of a W grade?

Thanks. I appreciate any answers. I have only two days to drop with a letter grade W.

P.S. I am at City University of New York if that makes a difference and plan on going to grad school there too. I realize that my question is similar to How do some Ws on transcripts affect PhD admissions in mathematics? but it does not address GRE scores playing a role and whether documentation helps?


texts: Is there a branch of sociology that deals with nutrition and active lifestyles?

texts:
(Please excuse my ignorance if this is an obvious question, but my Googling skills don't seem to be up to par today.)

I was just wondering if there is a branch of sociology that deals with health and wellness - like nutrition and exercise - when looking at a community or nation as a whole. If there is, would this be something that one could study in graduate school? (I'm interested in how lifestyles affect societies, not really the biology and chemistry part of health. I mean, I realize that I'd probably have to learn about those things, but they're not what I want my main focus to be.)


texts: My collaborator has asked to be only acknowledged in a paper. Should I make him a co-author?

texts:
I am writing a paper in mathematics. It relies heavily on a result from a different topic that I phrased, felt that it should be true, but I did not know how to prove that result. I asked someone who works on this different topic to help me with the proof, and he has found a proof for the desired result. Let’s call him Bob.

I would like to thank this person and ask him if he wants to:

be a co-author in the paper,
just be acknowledged in the paper:

  The author wishes to thank Bob for generously allowing him to use his proof of [result].

At the beginning of the proof of the result it will be mentioned that:

  The proof is due to Bob.

Bob says that he would be happy to be acknowledged and does not think that he should be a co-author (unless he can further contribute to the paper). He also mentions that he is not working on my topic and hence not enough familiar with what the paper deals with.

My question is: Which of the two options (1 or 2) should be chosen?
It should be emphasized that the result I have been helped with is critical for the existence of the paper. Moreover, is it okay to submit the paper to a journal as a single author, and ask the editor to have the opinion of the referees on whether Bob should be a co-author or not?

I read Should all authors on a paper be comfortable explaining every aspect of the paper?, I guess that there are differences between mathematics and other topics, aren't they? For example, in brain research people from different topics collaborate and we do not expect that one will understand what exactly the other did, but in a math paper I would expect that every author will understand what his friend did. Or perhaps I am wrong?


texts: How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?

texts:
I have a master's degree in International Studies, and a double major with Computer Science from undergrad.  My transcripts suck.  There's no other way to dress it up.  I have pretty good teaching experience, and my GRE scores are awesome, and I suspect my recommendations are as bland as everyone else's.  Basically, to an admissions committee, I suspect I'm the model of a student who is probably smart enough but didn't work hard enough.

I want to do a Ph.D. in Political Science, but the response from my applications is looking pretty grim.  Am I permanently out of the running, or is there something I can do for the next few years which will help to counterbalance my unfavorable GPA?


texts: Statement of purpose imposes word limit, but I already have a significantly longer version. Can I submit it as it is?

texts:
I am currently in the process of applying to a PhD program at a university in Canada. As part of the application, I need to submit a statement of purpose. The prompt for the statement of purpose is as follows:

A statement of purpose (maximum 500 words) that discusses your career goals, why you want to do research, and the areas of research that interest you. If you have done any original research, please describe the results, their importance, and your particular contributions. If you have specific research plans, outline them here.

I have already written my statement of purpose for other universities and all of them required a maximum of 2 pages. My statement of purpose is currently 2 pages long, with a total of 1,249 words. I have described everything that the prompt mentions in these 2 pages, but I do not think I can do that in under 500 words. Is it ok to submit it as is? If not, how do you suggest I proceed?
Thanks for the help.
Update: I emailed the University in question about the length of the statement of purpose, and it turns out that their application form was not updated. They in fact allow a 1-2 page statement of purpose. I think this is helpful for future situations.


texts:
I'm an undergraduate and would like to write about certain topics and post the documents online, available to everyone to read and probably indexed by search engines very soon.

However, I think that if I do this, I'm very likely to have written about the topics of my bachelor or master thesis/theses before I write it/them. What I post online is planned to be high-quality but of course not scientifically published.

If I copy parts of these works without stating I wrote and made them publicly available earlier, does it qualify as self-plagiarism? If so, does it still count if I create the documents now, copy parts of them into my thesis, but only upload them after I (hopefully) got my degree?

Are the rules the same around the world or does it depend on things like the country, the academic discipline, the university, the kind of degree or other scientific work, or other things? If it does, please tell me what's relevant in the comments so I can add that information. However, since adding the probably most relevant details isn't hard: I'm a German computer science student studying in Germany.

If I post the documents pseudonymously, do I have to prove they are written by me or does the examination office have to attempt to prove they aren't written by me? Does it make a difference whether I use a pseudonym which is clearly not a person's name? If I do, how would I quote myself if I have to?

This question is about a similar topic but I don't think mine is a duplicate of it because the linked question is about publishing in a journal, not about writing one's bachelor or master thesis.


texts: What is the advantage of being a Math/CS double major in graduate admissions for someone who wants to work in TCS?

texts:
Doing original research in Theoretical Computer Science requires a quite good understanding of almost all areas of Mathematics.
I think double majoring in Mathematics and Computer science for someone who wants to do research in Theory is very important.(Or at least having a knowledge of Algebra, Analysis, Logic, Topology etc.)

I'm wondering how do graduate admission offices take this as an advantage?( Specifically in comparison with other good applicants which have publications or higher GPAs.)

Thanks.


texts: Mentioning LGBTQ Identity in Personal Statement for PhD Applications

texts:
I'm currently applying to grad school to do a PhD in physics in the United States. I would really like to mention in the personal history statement/diversity statement essays: 1) the work I did in my undergrad to create a safe, informal community for other LGBTQ students in my department and 2) how it's a future goal of mine to be an openly gay professor (having an out-and-proud academic role model would have been very valuable to me, even though that may sound ridiculous*).

Is it prudent to mention my orientation in these essays? Or am I just asking for trouble?

My identity is very important to me as is the work I have done/plan to do to make academia a more accepting environment, but at the same time, I am scared that I will be risking my chances of getting into grad school by mentioning what's still considered a very 'controversial' issue by many people. Hope this question is appropriate for this forum, and thank you in advance!

(Edit 11/25) Note these statements are not the statement of purpose (which is entirely academic) but rather extra essays requested in addition to the statement of purpose. UC Irvine gave advice here about these essays as:

  Write about your contribution to diversity in your Personal History Statement or Diversity Statement of the graduate application, if there is one. If there is no Personal Statement or Diversity Statement, then include a paragraph about your contribution to diversity and diversity activity in your Statement of Purpose.
  If appropriate, briefly explain what obstacles you have had to overcome and how
  that shapes what you aspire to do in your future career. This has been found to be an accurate measure of future success, dubbed grit.
  Describe any contributions to increasing diversity in the Personal History
  Statement or Diversity Statement. Discuss specific things you may have done
  (mentoring, tutoring, Physics or Astronomy Club president, etc.) that have acted to broaden the participation of women, minorities or other underrepresented groups.You could also discuss what you would do at the institution you are applying to improve equity and inclusion there; for example, start a graduate women in physics group or lead outreach events. Be sure to read up on what programs already exist at that institution.

*To explain just one example of why it would be useful to have an out instructor, I was subjected to explicitly homophobic criticism by one instructor at my undergraduate institution. I did not complain because I did not know whom I could trust, but if there had been an instructor who was out/even out as an LGBT-supporter/ally, I would have felt comfortable complaining about the harassment.


texts: How can I tell if I'm being too picky as a referee?

texts:
I am a mathematician, frequently asked to referee papers. (As my career progresses, I now find myself frequently asked to referee good papers.)

I have found that I've gotten pickier and pickier as a referee. I just now finished a referee report (for an excellent paper, submitted to an excellent journal) with 53 bullet points on it: mistakes I found, requests for clarification, other suggestions.

On another occasion I believe I submitted six "revise and resubmit" reports for the same paper, before finally recommending acceptance.

In all these cases I am spending a lot of time reading the papers (which is worthwhile; they're interesting papers!), and I'm almost as meticulous as if it were my name on the paper.

How can I tell if I am going overboard with this? I have never heard any negative comments by anyone – including by journal editors, whom I asked for feedback on this matter after sending my reports. Indeed, editors have acted extremely happy that I've read these papers in such close detail. Nevertheless, I wonder if I am investing too much time in this, and/or annoying the authors.


texts: Linking to ancillary material formatted as Jupyter nb?

texts:
I'm in the process of preparing a manuscript which provides ancillary material in the form of a Jupyter Notebook (*.ipynb) explaining how we implemented some key parts of our results. I'd like to link to the nbviewer rendering of our ancillary material, especially since some readers may not be familiar with how to read a *.ipynb file. For instance, 1511.08044 provides several appendices in this way, each of which can be viewed with a link of the form http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/arxiv.org/src/1511.08044v1/anc/1.energies_vs_vgate.ipynb.
This naively seems to depend on knowing the paper identifier that arXiv will assign the manuscript once published, however, such that there doesn't seem to be a way to provide a link that works on initial submission. Is there a best practice known for providing Jupyter Notebooks that doesn't introduce this circularity?


texts: Is there any difference between DBA (Doctor of Business Administration) and Ph.D in a Business major?And which is better for future researchers?

texts:
What is the main difference between DBA and Ph.D in a business major in terms of course works, study, area of specialization?
How these programs relate to future career individually?
Does DBA has the same funding possibility as Ph.D in a business major?


texts: Searching for remotely working industrial Scholarship For university department Students

texts:
I am biomedical Engineering student and CEO(chief executive officer) member of one new Medical device manufacturing Company (from third world countries), we have here many Students with no specific purpose and Experience in manufacturing some simple medical devices (such as Dental Vacuum former) with long time surfers and know if the university student of this field can want to do this works they have may problem to solving (like needs to multitasking designing, finding funds, market knowledge and ...).

So Two days ago, One of my University Professors said that there are some Scholarship  via internet which are between industrial or university organization based of their needs that could be done by remotely workers and no need to move from my base country.

Based of my working field and some other concerns (like money and ... !!!), I like to know more about this kind of Scholarship.

Specifically, about how could we create this kind of corporation between those Scholarship Investors and my University Biomedical Engineering Department with some goals like using  developing some of our industrial planes (Like Rehabilitation Exoskeleton designing or Step Climber Wheelchair ...) with sharing them with others organization with multi side benefit agreement? (Creating money for our university, Students and our company and ...)

I have read some answers to post like this:

  One of the hardest parts of remote collaboration is making sure
  everyone is on the same page. Agreeing on work flow in advance is
  critical. To me the most important thing is that everyone has a good
  understanding of the roles and expectations of the individuals. A good
  timeline, that is flexible, is also very useful. Agreeing upon
  software, programming, and writing style issues at the outset is also
  useful.

So thought this kind of works needs to have some more specific requirements and some symmetric searching fields between universities Professors and the second part, So I be happy to hear more about those.

I  know A little about the available platform for this kind of works (like GitHub and git) and eager to know your experiences in this field as well as you suggested measures to establish such partnerships in the absence of them.

I thought I can ask this question here based of this kind of question (What are useful tips and tricks for collaborating remotely?) and thought by myself maybe some university professors or student which involved on this kind of scholarship and hope to ... if this is off topic please advise me to Edit my Question to be more this forum oriented.

I really appreciate your help. Thank you.


texts: How to recruit PhD students when industry pays so much more?

texts:
I'll be starting as a tenure-track professor in a few months where I'll be doing research on software developer tools. I have seen that it is extremely difficult to recruit good PhD students in this topic area (even at elite schools), since most of them are heavily recruited by industry. Understandably, it is hard to say no to 120k+ USD salary straight out of undergrad.

How should I go about attracting talented grad students in a topic area that has to compete with such high-paying companies? I do have funding for these students but it isn't anything like industry.


texts: Is it acceptable to submit papers anonymously to Computer Science conferences that don't ask for anonymity?

texts: Normally, a CS conference will give a clear indication in its Call For Paper (or in its submittion instruction) if the peer review of the conference is blind. However, if an author forget the anonymity requirement and submit a named paper, the result may be a merciless rejection even without any peer review. I have encountered such a thing, so I am just wondering is it acceptable to submit a anonymous paper to a conference even if the conference does not ask for it ? whether an anonymous paper would cause some trouble to the reviewers or the Program Committee of a conference if the peer review is not blind? Of course, the submittion system of a conference would record the information of all authors, including their names.


texts: Work flow for publishing figures under Common Creative license (in order to ease re-use in journal publications)

texts:
There are already answered questions on academia.SE about the re-use of already published figures. Here, a IMHO quite simple solution was proposed but triggered the question "Why is not everyone doing it?", indicating that there could be drawbacks. In this question, I would like to base on the mentioned solution and ask detailed questions about its feasibility.

Problem

Several journals obligate the authors to sign a copyright transfer agreement. If the authors publish a figure in the scope of this agreement, they are in general (this may depend on the journal's policy) not allowed to re-use the figure elsewhere without permission of the publisher. Therefore, if the authors would like to re-use a figure in another journal article, book, etc., these are the ways to go:

don't care about copyright and publish anyway (could cause serious trouble)
modify the artwork and publish a modified version (a gray area and probably tedious)
check what the publisher's policies are (perfectly legal, but tedious and varies from publisher to publisher)
ask for permission (perfectly legal, but definitely tedious)

Why is the second option a gray area? If I am not mistaken, one still needs the permission of the copyright holder (in this case the publisher) if the artwork is derived from the original. Of course, if the authors want to plot data (copyright does not apply for data), they can chose to use different colors, fonts, line widths, etc. in their figure. But I guess there is no clear statement when an artwork is so different that it is not derived. Additionally, one has to alter the figure every time, which in some cases simply does not make sense. See also the points made here and here (and the references therein).

Solution?

The answer could be quite simple. Publish the figures under a Creative Commons license and use them in your publications along appropriate attributions. So why is not everybody doing it? Are there legal issues? Or is the work flow too complicated? From my point of view it is perfectly legal and requires the least effort (well, apart from the complete disregard of copyright). But let us get down to detail.

Q0: What is meant by figure when I have software code that generates it?

Personally, I often use LaTeX and TikZ to draw figures. In this case, is the figure (i.e., the output of the LaTeX/TikZ code after compiling) subject to copyright or the code itself? Or alternatively, is it sufficient to share the code on a public repository and use the resulting figure in the publications?

Q1: What license is suitable?

A short web search showed that the Creative Commons CC-BY license should be a reasonable choice, as it requires proper attribution but allows re-use under a different license (which I assume will be the case for most journals). Any comments?

What about the code that generates the figures? I used GPLv2 in most of my projects without giving much thought to it. But technically, I would like to allow the use of the compiled version in commercial journals, so maybe GPLv2 is too restrictive in this case.

Q2: What is the correct attribution in a publication?

As already asked here, what is the correct attribution in the figure caption, assuming that the figures are published on a repository that issues a DOI?

Q3: Is there an existing implementation of such a work flow?

Are there any tools that automate version control of the code that generates the figures, deployment of the results to archives such as figshare or zenodo, keeping track of the deployed versions etc.?


texts:
I am a Ph.D. candidate in economics in the UK, and now start my 4th and hopefully final year of the program.
I currently consider changing my supervisor (SV hereafter) because of an ongoing conflict. During my second year, she matched me with a former Ph.D. of hers, "co-author" or "CO" from now on, so the three of us could write a paper together. While things started OK, CO became increasingly possessive of the project. His tone became aggressive and disrespectful, he gave me non-sensical, inconsistent instructions, lied to my supervisor behind my back about things I had never done or said (learned of this during meetings with my supervisor), and he repeatedly deleted content I produced from our draft for reasons that stood in complete contradiction to earlier agreements. Suffice to say, progress was unsatisfying.
I was baffled that SV did not intervene, but seemed to go along with him; I had severe self-doubts. Yet after a particular crappy "revision" of our draft by CO, SV shortly after told me she considers CO's input crap and admitted he's difficult -- turns out she was not paying attention and had until then simply trusted CO by default. I was relieved, but unfortunately, nothing changed afterward; while SV repeatedly agreed with my views, she nevertheless continued to humor CO, and backed him when he criticized me for lack of progress. At some point, SV finally admitted to me she has no understanding of our project topic and what we are doing, which explained a lot of her weird behaviour.
This toxic situation has taken a toll on me mentally, and it needs to stop. Unfortunately, SV is a leader of our rather small field, and I was told not having a letter from her is a red flag in job applications. Fortunately, I have done research assistance for another young prof at our faculty who appreciates me, and he would be willing to take me on as his student.
Any advice on how I can handle this gracefully? I have no reason to trust my SV anymore, and think her perfectly capable of ruining my reputation if I changed. Is there a way to protect me against this? Or should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?


texts: Should I leave the first authorship of our paper to the student who did the project whereas I solved it?

texts:
I (as a Ph.D. student) supervised a masters project.

In particular, I defined the problem statement and prepared a sketch of the solution, that is, the steps which had to be done to achieve the solution. The masters student basically followed those steps which were mostly programming implementations. I composed the paper. Now, the paper is ready to be published, and I'm in a dilemma in selecting the first author of the paper.

On the one hand, I feel I am the right one because I solved the critical part of the problem, and the student just implemented what I had already planned. On the other hand, he may want to apply for a graduate position later, and I understand that he would morally expect to be the first author as this paper is his only serious research output. My supervisor left the issue to me by stating that my opinion would be his.

We unfortunately didn't set any specific set of expectations beforehand, particularly regarding papers and authorships.

According to a neutral mind, who most deserves to be the first author?

PS. The field is electrical engineering.


texts: What are the important factors I must consider while applying to a CS program for an MS after majoring as a mechanical engineer in my undergrad?

texts: I have a master's in mechanical engineering from a pretty decent college in my country with a GPA of 7.9/10. I'd like to know what constitutes a good application to a Master's program in CS (ML, to be precise) and how I must choose my Universities that are safe and in those I have a chance.


texts: If I am "homeless" researcher, where can I get affiliation?

texts:
I cannot attend any western university right now. I can relocate in future.

But I already have article which will soon go into publishing process. So affiliation could be useful right now.

I do not like idea of publishing without affiliation or with affiliation to institution which do not work within my field (molecular dynamics).

I don't like idea of putting affiliation with institution which does not pay for my job.

Where and how I can get affiliation for myself? Should I ask for affiliation directly? What if I can possibly work for that institution in future?

PS.
I attended to many universities. Article I have was made while I attended to small one building institution (csu.ru). Institution did not pay for article nor I have any grants. Only payment I received was for teaching junior classes 2 years ago.

PS2.
Ethically I should put ALL contribution to my work.
But I didn't use laboratories, nor computer power, nor payment for last 6 months. The main expenses were computing equipment for about $2000 which I bought with money from my teaching. I was enlisted for some grants, but I already did my "payment" for this with other article, so everybody is with good relations to me.

PS3.
My previous affiliated institution is not involved for 6 months already, during this time I did my work. No, I don't intend to slap my previous institution, but I am looking for new one.

Should I just email people from other institutions with collaboration proposals and publish under their institution?


texts:
I am wondering if I get an NSF math postdoc will I be able to defer for a year in order to spend a year in a one year position somewhere other than the host institution I applied with, and then go there after that?  What if I am willing to forfeit the first year of NSF funding to do so?

More specifically, the place I applied for NSF has offered me a postdoc and is open to me spending a year at IAS before going there, and I am wondering if should I get the NSF that will still be possible.


texts: Is being an honors student really worth it?

texts:
This is a something I'm really concerned about. I am an undergraduate physics major, and I've been in the honors program at my university for a little while now, and that means certain things. I must take at least 1-2 honors courses (or do an honors-contract in a normal course) every semester, I must make a yearly update to a personal portfolio/e-portfolio, I must obtain a sufficient amount of research-group credit hours before I graduate, and I must defend an undergraduate thesis.

I do like all of this, but what starts to bother me is one other requirement, as well as a few things within the program. We must attend at least one 'Honors Student Council' event per semester (not a big deal, but these are ridiculous/stupid most of the time). Also, most of the other students in the program are snobs and stuck-up compared to other non-honors students. I do like the chance to learn a lot more about the material presented in my classes through honors and course-contracted classes, but I'm starting to think that I could just do that on my own - that is, set that up with professors on my own.

However, I don't really know how useful having an 'honors' distinction on a degree will be. Is it very useful? I've been thinking of quiting the honors program, but I wouldn't want to do it if it will drastically hurt me later on. For example, how much of an impact does having an honors distinction have on graduate school/job applications?


texts: What makes a good reference letter for a junior faculty position

texts:
I'm in the process of applying to junior faculty positions (e.g. Assistant Professor). This will be my first time I ever apply for an academic position.

My direct supervisor asked me to write a first draft for my own reference letter for this application. I know that this can be considered unethical but I cannot change it. I have never before written such a letter nor read one. The examples I found online are not very helpful.

What are the elements of a good reference letter?

What distinguishes an excellent reference letter from a good one?


texts: Is "lab" too informal a word for a formal cover letter?

texts:
When applying for a postdoc position, it makes sense to write something like this in the cover letter:

Dear Professor NAME. I am writing to apply for POSITION in your lab

What I'm stuck on, is that a cover letter is a formal letter, so should be written in a formal register. However, the word "lab" is an abbreviation and so inherently informal, which makes it seem wrong. On the other hand "laboratory" sounds even more wrong because no-one says "at my laboratory" in speech.
Is the word "lab" appropriate in this context?


texts: Took GRE two times, same scores with minor differences - worth sending both?

texts:
I took the GRE for the 2nd time recently and unfortunately, after 4 months of studying (again for the 2nd summer in a row), received the exact same score overall as my score last summer.

Last summer, I got a 157 on math, 154 on verbal, and 5 on the essay. Recently, I got a 157 on math, 153 on verbal, and a 6 on the essay.

Is it worth sending both GRE scores to the graduate schools I'm applying to (I know they all, for the ones that accept the GRE, accept multiple scores). Even if they don't superscore, I feel like it may show that I tried to increase my score and went out of my way to take it a second time...also a higher essay score may be worthy to show for. What do you think? It's a very small matter, but I feel that it may be slightly beneficial at best in terms of my overall application, so why not?

By the way, I'm applying to biomedical neuroscience PhD programs that focus on disease therapeutics.

Thanks for your input!


texts: What is the best way to go about doing research as an undergrad (pointed question inside)?

texts:
I am a 19 year old sophomore at a well-regarded state university.  I currently have a double major in the arts/humanities and public policy, with a minor in linguistics.  I just took the intro to PoliSci course, and I think I've done pretty well in it (practically guaranteed a 4.0).

Anyways, onto the question.  So I emailed my professor (as it was an entirely online course), and sent this....

"Professor ----,

[insert some stuff about grades, course]

Lastly, are you aware of any research/volunteer opportunities in the PoliSci department at ---?  I am aware of the [insert name of local policy network], but was wondering if you knew about any other interesting things going on.  I'm really interested in public policy (my additional major is in it!), but the international relations section in the course also interested me.  I'm particularly interested in humanitarian/human rights work.  I haven't taken many PoliSci courses yet, but I would be interested in getting involved in the PoliSci Department in any capacity.

Thanks,

Corjine"

He responded a few days later with this:

"Hi Corjine,

[stuff about courses/grade]

In terms of research work, most professors are happy to work with students as both research assistants (i.e., you help a faculty member on their work) or as research advisors (i.e., you work on your own research project and a faculty member provides oversight). I'd recommend looking at our bios online and directly contacting anyone that who's work look interesting or related to what you're wanting to research on your own. If you need additional help, you can also ask me and I'll do my best to refer you to the most appropriate person (I can also send an email introduction to that faculty member to help grease the wheels)." [emphasis mine]

thanks,

Professor ---"

I haven't taken many PoliSci courses yet.  The meat of my courses for this upcoming year will be my arts/humanities and linguistics courses, as that is how my degree is designed.  The majority of my junior and senior level classes being PoliSci and upper level courses.  So for the next year or so, I'm not going to have much formal polisci experience.  I'll only be taking public policy analysis and a methods of analysis class (read: statistics for PoliSci students).

What I'm worried about is how I'll go about getting research experience without much of an academic background in it.  I've had a passion/enthusiasm for politics for a long time, and the intro class was a breeze for me (barring a few theoretical concepts).  I'm just afraid about how it will pan out if I take shots in the dark without having the proper background, so to speak.  I'd love to get a jumpstart on research/volunteering/engagement if possible, but would it be more valuable for me to wait until junior year?  And would that reduce my chance of a good recommendation from the professor?

I really am at a loss here.  I haven't had any formal research experience before, and I'm working my first, true job this summer.  I'm winging it the best I can, but I want to make sure I'm not totally shooting myself in the foot at the starting gate.  Any suggestions/advice would be helpful!

tl;dr Is enthusiasm/willing to learn a good substitute for formal academic experience, or should I just hang tight for a year and wait to do some research?

Also, if this isn't an appropriate question for SE (I'm still pretty new here), let me know and I'll post elsewhere.  Thanks!


texts: What is a learning agreement used for and when it is necessary

texts:
I am going to be at a university as an exchange student. I will not take any courses and will work with a professor. There is an online application form which asks me to upload a learning agreement and the website of the university provides a suggested template for it. Also, I have searched about what this agreement is through many sources.

It seems that this "learning agreement" is for those people who are going to take courses in a university other than their home university. Am I right?

If my assumption is true, does it mean that I do not have to upload this kind of agreement?


texts: How much should university ranking matter while choosing a place for graduate studies?

texts:
How much should I weigh in on the ranking of a university (provided by various academic ranking websites) while choosing a university for graduate studies? The universities that I am considering have equally strong faculty profiles in the areas of my interest. So in order to take the final decision, should I factor in this 'so-called' measure of academic repute in the form of rankings?

Though the phrasing of the question apparently makes it akin to how university ranking affects post-Ph.D. prospects, the detailing in my question reveals that I am not really looking for that answer. My question is that if I have been accepted at several places (outside the top 5) all having similar faculty profiles, should I use 'rank' as a deciding factor?