texts: Would a manuscript be rejected if the cover letter is missing?

texts:
Recently, I have submitted a manuscript for publication consideration into a journal (impact factor: 2). However, I realized that in the final PDF proof the cover letter is missing.

I think I have forgotten to include it.

Does this mean that the article would be rejected or will not be processed?


texts: Best way to respond to a request for CV after graduation

texts:
I did a summer internship in an industry for 9 week. It was a great experience and my supervisor was a very formal and professional lady. She rarely smiled but appreciated my work every now and then. On my last day, she asked about my graduation date and I told her it’s just 6 months away as it was my last semester.
She responded: "Send me your CV when you graduate.”

Now I want to write to her. How do I begin with that? It’s been 6 months and there’s no particular opening in that department. Should I send my CV in the first mail itself? If so should I also include a cover letter? What's the best way to introduce myself?


texts: Can I address my professors by their first name?

texts:
A couple of my professors always signs off on their emails with their first name only, such as, "best, Simon".

Does this mean that I could write my emails to them with, "Dear Simon" or "Hi Simon" ...and also say to him in person "good morning, Simon"?

Or, should I stick with "Professor "?

Should I ask for permission, e.g., "can I call you Simon?" ?

(Not sure whether age matters, but both of these professors are very young...)

Thanks,


texts: How does one avoid bikeshedding in paper reading groups?

texts:
We read papers once a week in my group, and I'm additionally part of a graduate class that involves reading multiple papers a week.

I've noticed that, when asked to think about limitations or future directions one could take from this paper, I tend to focus on the minor details that I understand rather than thinking substantially about the contributions of the paper.

It also seems to come up in group discussions, where we go off track talking about minor tangents in the paper.

How does one avoid this for themselves? How do discussion leaders prevent this happening to groups?


texts: I know that arXiv have their own identifier system, but considering how widely adopted DOI is, why do they not use DOI perhaps as a supplement to their own identifier?


texts: Personal Life Dealbreakers for Academic Jobs

texts:
There are certain academic jobs such as Baylor or BYU that require a certain way of life. BYU, for instance, requires one to adhere to the Church Educational System Honor Code and Baylor typically requires a letter of recommendation from your Minister/Rabbi (their words) with one's application. For example, being in a gay relationship would be enough to be expelled from BYU.

These require a certain type of personal life choices and lifestyle, and, while they are very religious schools, there are other possible dealbreakers at secular universities. For example, secular schools have retracted offers due to the fact that the applicant for a faculty job is on the sex offenders registry.

There's a huge amount of gray area between these two data points that I have. Where is the line drawn on how much one's personal life matters at a secular school? What would have to be publicized about a faculty member's or applicant's personal life in order for the person to have an offer rescinded or tenure revoked?  Is it only about the research/teaching/service, or is there any examination on the person's life if that common knowledge in the community?

My question is mainly about the United States.


texts: Submitting manuscripts from a phd thesis when my supervisor is not available to review the final draft due to health issues

texts:
I'm planning to submit papers from my completed PhD thesis (finished less than a year ago) but recently found that unfortunately, my supervisor who had a significant contribution to my thesis is not well and not available for a review, preparing for chemotherapy :( What would be the ethical way of publishing papers and respecting their intellectual contribution without inconvenient communications with them at this stage?
Thanks, in advance, for sharing your suggestions


texts: If I'm key personnel on an NIH grant . . . can I put that on my CV?

texts:
I'm a postdoc in the sciences.

My supervisor submitted a grant renewal to the NIH recently and listed me as "key personnel" on it.  The renewal received very high marks and is likely to be approved.

Although I have received fellowships in the past, I've never applied for a grant, and I've never been key personnel on a grant before.

Would it be appropriate for me to list on my CV that I'm key personnel on this grant (if the renewal is officially approved)?  If so, how should this be stated?  Examples from actual CVs would be much appreciated.  (To be specific, I'm not sure whether I should list this alongside my fellowships, in my "Awards" section . . . or start an entirely new section for "Grants" or something like that.)

EDIT: This question is similar in flavor to this one, but I'm looking for a more specific answer than that question received . . . It's possible this should be marked as duplicate.


texts: What should be my prime focus for the next 2 years to improve my chances in securing an academic position?

texts:
I am a 5th year PhD student in Materials Engineering in the US. My research involved simulating a 3D printing process. I was able to publish 1 paper in my field related journals (IF around 2) and 3 more are in preparation. My performance could have been lot better but I was struggling to find a definite research direction in my first 2 years. I also wanted to learn new methodologies to create better models.
My advisor did not have experience in my area of research, so I had to formulate questions and also had to look out for solutions when I got stuck.

Yes, I am ashamed about my PhD experience. I should have done many things differently. Yes, I should have worked harder. But, I really want to be in academia. And I don't have a good CV to support that. What should be my prime focus for the next 2 years and how can I make my CV attractive before I start applying for academic positions? Thanks.


texts: Citation - Collection of images for machine learning

texts:
I posted this question yesterday which leads to my current question.

When I use a collection of images, which are not my own creation, to generate classifiers that an object-detection algorithm uses, how do I need to cite them?

The images are never used directly in the final algorithm, but the features in the cascade classifier that have been extracted from them. There are likely hundred(s) of images necessary to achieve a well working object-detection.

The algorithm is part of larger software project and I will need to write a report and hold a presentation about my research.


texts: Mathematica , Colab or LaTeX for exam summarys?

texts:
I had the idea to write a summary for some subjects this semester. Most of the time I used Onenote for my general notes in the lecture. The question is which editor is best for a summary?
Currently I am considering using the following editors:

Onenote
LaTeX
Mathematica
Google Golab

What would you recommend? As another summary I had also thought about making livestreams or videos about different topics. Is it worth the effort or doesn't it teach you enough?


texts: How prestigious is a Microsoft Research scholarship

texts:
This question is intended to be analogous to the Fulbright one; however, the Microsoft Research scholarship would be for a PhD.

How may this scholarship influence one's possibilities to work in the academia or in the industry? How does it compare, e.g. in terms of prestige and academia/industry opportunities, against the Fulbright? Is the scholarship prestigious in the US, UK or on a world wide scale  (especially if it is for a PhD in the UK)?


texts: How can I deal with a professor with an all-or-nothing grading habit?

texts:
In the exams for the course I am taking, all questions are full credit or zero. Specifically, each exam has only 3 questions (approximately 30 points each). The professor only looks at the result. So, if you have a minus sign wrong in your final answer, you get 0 points. Further, any student who does not get 30/100 on the midterm is "banned" from taking the final exam and automatically fails the course (this is a policy the professor invented himself, and only he does it). Due to this, lots of people fail this course every year.
Normally in a year it is expected 100 students take this course (this is an obligatory course), but since many people fail, there are 200+ people taking this course every year (and this is the only course like this. Most of people fail it). And he is the only professor doing this. (I think it is some kind of a mobbing.)
And he seems so much closed to communication. He denies everything and always tells that "you are not studying, this course is not that hard!" But logically it cannot be true. Because there must be "some people" studying the course.
Last year nearly 200+ people took the class, but only 50 people could manage to pass it.
And most of the students "failed" the course because of his 30/100 threshold. They were banned to take the final exam.
So how could I deal with this problem?

Clarifications:

As I know he was dismissed to give lessons for a while due his behaviors before. Many people informed his behaviors to central authorities, but nothing changed. (As I know last year some students wrote mails to authorities to inform about the situation.)
Students do not have representatives that interface with the university administration. I do not know If it is brought to department council as a big group or not but everybody in the department is "aware" of this situation for years. And some other professors condemn him during their own lectures.
I am not blaming my professor. I just explained the situation I am into and asked for suggestions. Now as majority suggested, I will study more to this course. However in my country only top 5% of high school students are admitted to engineering degree. So at least in my country, a "German system" of classes with very high failure rates does not make sense.
This is not a subject area where mistakes could have lethal consequences
The rector of the university is "friend" of this professor. So he is some sort of "untouchable". And people are scared to get stigmatized by him.
The professor is the department chair, so complaining to the department chair is not an option


texts: Citing a general fact but applying it to a specific point I'm making in a sentence

texts:
Here are two sentences from a paper I'm writing:

In addition to being context specific, competencies try to describe what a person needs to succeed in a context at a useful level of abstraction. This point is perhaps best illustrated by contrasting competencies to its more concrete evolutionary predecessor job analysis (Scott & Reynolds, 2010).

The first sentence is something a point that I, the author, am making.
The more general fact that 'job analysis is an evolutionary predecessor to competencies' is from Scott and Reynolds (2010).
It's a bit ambiguous: you could read the sentence as it is Scott and Reynolds (2010) who are saying that the "point could be well illustrated by contrasting" which is imprecise.
To remove ambiguity, I could write something like:

Job analysis is the evolutionary predecessor to competencies (Scott & Reynolds, 2010). The former is more concrete and the latter more abstract. Comparing the two is useful to illustrate what competencies are.

But it really breaks up the flow of the paragraph, creating a more awkward reading experience for the reader.
Is having the sort of ambiguity of the first example, for the sake of flow and narrative, bad or wrong citation practice?
Edit: So my question here is about clarity and explicitness of citations. How clear should a text be as to what is attributed to whom? When does it get too sloppy or unclear who said what?


texts: Advice on publishing original theorems with easy proofs

texts: I got a rejection recently on a short paper that gave a fairly short proof that a conjecture of a well-known mathematician was false.  The reviewer said that “while the results are new and interesting,” “the proofs are fine, but not very difficult, and the techniques are not new.”  Nonetheless, the arguments previously evaded some top people in the field who were interested in the topic.  My question is, to what kinds of mathematics journals should one submit significant results whose proofs involve some clever trick rather than a revolutionary method?  Also, should one not strive to find the most transparent form of a mathematical argument?


texts: CV for a PhD application in applied mathematics

texts:
In my CV I want to know whether the following ordering of the categories is suitable. I thought of giving prominence to research work because I am applying for a PhD.

Personal Details (name,address,e-mail)
Career objective
Education
Publications
Conference presentation
Research Interest
Skills
Work Experience
Co-curricular activities
Extra curricular activities
References

Is the placing of Research Interest okay? Should I move it up? Where should I keep it?

As Career Objective should I write in general what I plan to do i my career once I finish my PhD or should it include the particular area that I am trying to research as my PhD. Say the specific field in applied mathematics.
For example: Should it be,

Applying for admission into X university’s Doctor of Y program.
or
Career objective : Become a leading researcher in the area of Z and contribute to the betterment of society


texts: One more year left before I apply to math graduate school. Any advice to obtain good recommendation letters?

texts:
I am in the last year of my undergraduate studies before I apply to graduate school. I have some questions and I am also in need of some advice.

I know one professor very well and I plan on asking him for a recommendation letter. I also plan on doing research with him next summer. But I need two more and I am not quite close with any other faculty members.

Are letters from professors weighted more heavily than letters from postdocs?
Is one class enough to get to know a professor/instructor well? Would two classes be enough?
What if I don't take a class with a professor but I do a reading course? Is a single term of a reading course good enough for a professor to know me?


texts: List of Research Institutes (excluding universities)!

texts:
There are many international rankings/lists for universities (e.g. QS ranking). However, I am interested in an science institute ranking/list that does not involve universities.

Let me give you an idea of what I am searching for: I am from Germany and I know that a major part of scientific progress is happening in universities. Nevertheless there are institutions such as Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics (Germany), or German Aerospace Center (DLR), or Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), or CERN (Switzerland), or Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Canada), with great significance in science. These institutions do not appear in any ranking, any list of science institutes, or my Google search for "science institutes".

  So where can I find a list of such institutions, e.g. by subject?

Question background: (1) I am curious in general to find a list/ranking that includes such non-teaching institutions too. (2) I went for several internships to science institutes, e.g. DLR/CERN. I am in my bachelor studies and currently searching for new internship opportunities during the summer vacation period. There are a lot of great opportunities in Germany, but I would like to spend this summer in some foreign institute (that is not an university) - to gain international experiences and because German scholarships (ironically) only financially support internships that are in foreign countries. However, in this context I am struggling to find such institutes... For example: I was looking for science institutes in Japan, but I only found the main universities.

Important Note: The ranking is not the important thing to me, but a list to have an overview!


texts: How to alleviate "back to school" anxiety as a graduate student?

texts:
I find myself experiencing back to school anxiety as a new semesters begins in less than three weeks, mainly because the unpredictability associated with graduate life.

In some ways it feels less structured than other endeavors such as starting a new semester as an undergrad, starting a new job or moving to a new country, since in graduate school you have to constantly prove yourself using your creativity and intellect and you have to do it alone. Whereas in industry (or some other structured work) you always have the opportunity to move up, or stay where you are at just by showing up to work, in academia there is plenty of room to free fall.

Things are on my mind at the moment:

How do I maintain a healthy relationship with my professor(s), how can I get them to look favorable toward me as a student while not appearing overzealous?
How can I find a new research topic that is interesting to me AND has
practical application AND leaves room for future works AND satisfies
my supervisor's research direction AND get it published AND host a
conference about it AND grabs attention AND leaves room for collaboration AND... ... ...
How do I balance these extremely open ended research oriented
courses? Will I find time to keep up my health and keep up my grade? Is my body even capable at waking up at 8:00 in the morning anymore?
Can I still learn given that I have forgotten so much and can't even understand the things I learned 4 month ago?
What if I hit a dead end and fail? What happens next? It is unthinkable.

Yes we all experience anxiety from time to time, but never is there a time when all these anxieties are bundled together then unleashed all at the same time.

Of course I could always pretend that things are going to be okay and just "deal with it"...but I find going into a new semester with a lot of anxiety does create problems, such as getting extremely upset at professors when they make a small mistake (it would be as if they are "intentionally" ruining my year), becoming overzealous at proving myself that I miss the point of a course altogether and professors are annoyed by high-fi questions only tangential to their course.

Is this feeling normal and is there anything one could do to alleviate some of the anxieties?


texts: Methodology of defining a research topic

texts:
My adviser asked me to come up with a research topic for a PhD student. As I'm expected to graduate in early 2016, my mentor considered this a good "exercise" for a tenure track career. Of course, this is not intended to be final, I am supposed to propose to my adviser this topic and then it will be decided whether it is good enough to suggest a direction of a student's research.

Based on the field of interest, I intend to propose a problem which I find interesting (and would gladly research myself, if the time permitted). To that purpose, I defined a number of milestones, covering some likely scenarios in the research progress. I also prepared around 20 papers, some of which serve as an introduction to the problems of the field of interest, while others are state-of-the-art approaches closely related to the topic.

This is basically more than I had when I begun my research. So, in that regard, I'm confident that I did a reasonable job so far. Of course, if you have any remarks, don't hesitate to add them.

My problem is that it would currently be very hard for me to come up with more than 2-3 topics prepared in that way.

Also, I can't help but wonder whether the topic I would suggest is "good enough" to lead the student to conduct quality research and eventually to a PhD. In this particular case, my mentor will shape the topic and guide the student so there is no worry. Besides that, I am confident that the suggested topic is a problem in the field, as I thought and investigated it a long before the request came from my adviser.

I find it a bit hard to believe that I'll always have such problems ready in my head, so I assume that I'll have to start from somewhere in forming one.

So, what methodology should I follow when defining research topics?


texts: APA Citation Followed by in-text reference to figure

texts:
I want to provide a parenthetical citation along with a reference to a figure in my text. What is the proper way to format this?
Blah blah blah (Li et al., 1994, 1997) (Figure 1).
Blah blah blah (Li et al., 1994, 1997; Figure 1).
Blah blah blah (Figure 1) (Li et al., 1994, 1997).


texts: Undergraduate changing research field with a deadline

texts:
I have a friend who is working in the wrong field of physics at the moment (not enjoying it.) They are still undergraduate however and have time to change this.

They are currently working on a summer project which will soon end. If they leave now it will be time (and a scholarship) wasted on them, because most of the summer project was teaching them the basics of what to do (a 6 week project.)

They are about to start their final year in undergraduate physics, and in this year the university offers a project based unit, with a similar structure to a summer work project, but with assessment at the end. Students taking this project often use it as a lead in to an honours year at our university, then honours leads into PHD if they get it.

Although university hasn’t official begun here yet, the deadline to choose a project is fast approaching (March 11). To choose one my friend needs to contact a supervisor in the right field and ask to take the unit under them.
I was wondering if anyone here has experienced or seen anything similar to this before, and what their advice to my friend would be. My normal advice to them would be to take your time to find the right supervisor/field of physics, and work under them regardless of the current work. (After all, they are still undergraduate and are allowed to make a mistake.)

However, due to the deadline for the project choice, it might not be easy to find the right supervisor. Which is why I’m asking online for any advice.


texts: What is the volume of this article in a journal?

texts:
I have this line about the article:

BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2007, 6:16 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-6-16

I think the volume is 6.
Then what is 16?

How should you correctly cite the Bibliography in Tex?

My BibTeX

%
% Published abstract
%
@ARTICLE{vladimir,
    author = {Kudriavtsev V, Polyshchuk V and Roy D L},
    title = {Heart energy signature spectrogram for cardiovascular diagnosis},
    journal = {BioMedical Engineering OnLine},
    year = {2007},
    volume = {6:16}
}

I am suspicious about the author and the volume field.


texts: Does it matter where you go to medical school?

texts:
There are many reports out there that say you should not go get an MBA or JD unless you are going for the Top 5 or Top 10 schools respectively. The rationale is that the lost salary and tuition does not make up for the expected NPV difference (get a professional degree vs. do not get a professional degree).

I have never heard this about medical schools. It seems reasonable to assume that most patients do not inquire about their doctor's alma mater and that there is a lot of standardization in the final board exam. Also, most medical schools have an extremely low dropout/failure rate (<5%). However, there is huge variability among the selectivity of medical schools,  ranging from an average undergraduate GPA and MCAT score of 3.35 and 20 respectively, all the way up to 3.89 and 38.

What advantages does a Duke M.D. have over a Marshall University M.D.? Am I correct in assuming that the average salary distribution over all US medical schools is relatively flat?


texts: Quotation/reference manager for print books

texts:
What is an effective and efficient system for storing quotes and notes from print books to be retrieved later?

When we read books and articles in electronic format there are easy ways to mark quotes for future reference -- as discussed in the SE posts linked below. Although I read most articles on my computer or a tablet, I still prefer to read books in print format. I am looking for an efficient method for electronically storing quotes and notes from documents I am reading in print.

A brute-force method would be to read books with my computer at my side, and manually transcribe and tag all quotes I like from the book, electronically linked to the book's citation information. I'm hoping there's a better way -- this method might simply be too slow to be feasible.

There are good answers to related questions, but their discussion of quote-tagging and referencing is for electronic documents. The good SE posts out there cover:

i) Why one should use a reference manager: Should I use reference manager software?

ii) Using Sente or LaTeX+JabRef to store electronic quotes, or summaries/notes on books: Reference manager with note-taking/quote-storing capabilities

iii) using TextCite or Citavi for the same purposes: Searching for a quotation manager


texts: Are references included in page limit on ACM conferences?

texts:
I'm trying to submit to a conference, the page limit information is as follows:

Full papers are a maximum of eight (8) and short papers are a maximum of four (4) double-column pages in ACM conference format.

But they do not specify whether the page limit includes references or not.

This brings me to a rather more general question: By default does page limits include references in ACM conferences?


texts: I wonder how common for professors to return scored midterm papers to students when the final is not accumulative? I want to reuse some of the questions next year and also is not willing to spend about 10 minutes class time just for returning the papers (90 students).


texts: Is there a way to filter publications by their grant information (say NSF grant ID)?

texts:
We're working on building a tool to evaluate the efficacy of NSF proposals, broken down by topic. We extracted the topics per grant using this dataset.

One of the criteria for evaluating the impact of a grant could be the aggregating and analyzing publication-level citation-metrics, perhaps using this list of databases.

However, there doesn't seem to be a way to filter papers that were wholly or partly funded by a particular grant. Do you have any suggestions about how this data could be retrieved, or how grant-giving bodies typically analyze this themselves?


texts: Is it possible to become a research assistant just after b.tech?

texts: I am a recent bachelor of technology graduate from India and want to become a research assistant just after b.tech at any abroad university (USA,CANADA,UK, etc). If it is possible then what kind of qualifications, GPA, academics are required? Also for becoming an RA at these universities is the GRE exam necessary?


texts: Mathematicians publishing philosophy papers and essays

texts:
I have a very brief question: Can a professional mathematician publish philosophy papers, essays, etc.? For example, would a leading philosophy journal, nowadays, consider publishing a paper or an essay about philosophy of mathematics written by a mathematician. If so, does any one have proof of such instances? I am of course aware of the fact that numerous mathematicians were philosophers and vice versa, but the standards have changed, so I seek recent publications (as proof).

Edit: Suppose I wanted to write an article about geometric fallacies and why geometric arguments fail, in general, when we use infinitesimals, limits, etc. or something of this nature. Would this be considered for a publication in a philosophy journal?


texts: Is Dean-hood largely irreversible, and if so why?

texts:
In academia, I have noticed a number of cases where a professor who becomes a Dean (or other non-department administrative post like Provost) effectively permanently stops being a researcher thereafter.  Rather than serving an administrative term and then returning to research (as often happens with department heads), they end seem to stay in administration until they retire.

What I am wondering is this:

Is this confirmation bias in my perception, or is this a real trend?
If it is a real trend, is this more due to selection bias (i.e., only people who would prefer to administer become Deans, unlike department heads), or to having one's research so disrupted as to make it hard to continue, or to some other factor?


texts: Husband and wife publishing together - Problem for tenure-track jobs?

texts:
My husband and I work in the same research area (of theoretical computer science). We were in the same PhD program and even had the same advisor. We are a great collaboration team, and really enjoy and are productive when we work together. In addition, neither of us have anyone else to collaborate with because no one in the department really works in quite the same area (not even our advisor - long story). As a result, nearly all of my papers are co-authored with my husband. My husband has a decent number of papers without me as a co-author because he is three years ahead of me in the program, so he has his papers from before I even started, and also has had more time for more papers since I have just completed the class-heavy portion of my PhD.

My husband has recently graduated and is a tenure-track professor at a good university. I would also like to be a professor one day. From what I've seen in my field, spousal hiring seems pretty common. So we figured that we would both apply to a bunch of universities and would end up being hired as a pair. However, we have been worried that us both being in the same research area and publishing together is going to cause difficulties being hired. Since I have a few more years left in the program, my plan is to to have two or three good publications that don't include my husband (I already have one single author paper in a good place).

So my question is, how difficult will it be for us to be hired together into the same department if we have so many papers co-authored together? Will publishing a few good papers without my husband improve the situation to the point that we have a reasonable chance of being hired together, even though a significant amount of my early work was with my husband?

Additional Note: Even just in my department, several of the new hires in the last 3 or 4 years have been husband and wife pairs where they were both hired into the computer science department. So it seems that this practice is currently very common in CS. I have not seen any that shared a research area, though.

Edit: This question is very different from the one asked at
PhD Student : Publish Paper with Wife? . That question is primarily about whether it is strange to publish with a spouse at all (and the spouse in question is not in academia), while my question is specifically about my husband and I getting hired together in the same department if we have co-authored a significant amount of our work together. The answers provided there don't really help with this question.

Edit: I have edited down the four questions to just a single main question.


texts: I have written this paper and I would like to ask, via email, from some professors in other universities to give me feedback. How is the best way to write such a request? First, what should I write in the email subject box? Then, how do I write the body of email?


texts: How to replicate others' results quickly?

texts:
Lately, I've been getting the impression that before I can conduct cutting edge research, I have to first master state of the art methods/techniques.  Often, this requires spending (i.e. wasting) lots of time trying to replicate the results that others have already established (i.e. make sure that I can do what others have done first before moving on to other territory).  When I try to master a new technique, I often find that it is extremely difficult because

Research papers don't seem to disclose enough details to replicate their results easily.
There are no advisors/colleagues that are familiar with these methods
Emailing the corresponding authors with questions about specific details about their research tend to go unanswered.

The only advice i've been given thus far is simply to read and re-read the research paper and dissect every little detail until I figure it out.  But are there any other general strategies I can use to replicate others' results more quickly?  In particular, I'm looking for strategies for replicating numerical results that require very careful implementations of mathematical algorithms.


texts: Is cover letter another name for the statement of purpose for a PhD position?

texts:
US Universities typically ask for a formal "Statement of Purpose" while European universities have no such specific requirement. Instead, most of the times they ask for a cover letter. I've been told that cover letters should describe what you have done, what you are currently doing and your future plans. They should also be personalized to the university you are applying to. The description looks similar to the statement of purpose.

Are they both the same thing? If no, what are the differences?


texts: How to respond to a possible supervisor asking for a CV I don't have

texts:
I'm a second-year graduate student in a large and well-known American physics department. For a variety of reasons, I've decided to "jump" sub-fields -- into biophysics, though I hadn't really started a project in the field I was initially interested in due to covid -- and am reaching out to faculty in the biology and biological engineering departments at my institution. One of these professors has asked me for a CV before we meet over Zoom.
This caught me off guard, because that question isn't usually posed in my department -- our presence here, and the mere fact of our inquiry, is taken to provide a presumption of competence and interest. We graduate students are encouraged to experiment in different groups if we are not yet sure about what we want to study. That, and the fact that I haven't done research in an academic setting for more than eight years now, when I was in high school, means that I haven't written a CV, and have very little to actually put on it.
I'm not asking about how to make one. There's plenty of pertinent advice both here and elsewhere on the internet. This professor has a relatively tight window of availability, though -- just today and tomorrow -- and I wonder whether I would make myself look ridiculous to admit that I don't have one prepared, and to ask to speak with him anyway.


texts: Do we have to make any changes to a Springer LaTeX template before submission?

texts:
The Springer template is by far the most bizarre out of all of the LaTeX templates I've seen so far. There is no problem as long as you stick to the two-column option, but the appearance of the single column option is just crazy.

The main problems are the following

The right margin being outlandishly wide compared to the left margin.
Smaller font size in main content
Bigger font in reference section

These issues can be corrected to make the format look identical to the published papers in the same journal. However is it necessary?

I would especially like to know from people who have published papers in Springer who have submitted it using the standard LaTeX template provided by the publishers.

This is particularly about Multimedia Tools and Applications, but I've noticed this problem in other journals sections that use the same template.


texts: Is it ethical to TA in another university?

texts:
My major field in undergraduate studies was A, whereas my current graduate field has been shifted to B (at a Canadian university).

I'm in trouble to find a TA position, as following:

At our department, B, faculty members prefer to choose the fellows, who had been in this field from their undergraduate studies. Because they themselves had passed these course within their studies, so are able to handle the case, more properly.
I'd just given a try for TA positions at department A (with which my background is compatible). Actually, the main source of funding at this department is TA. Therefore, the department does not accept unsolicited applications from the other departments for TA positions.

Furthermore, my tendency to catch at least one TA position stems from two things:

Funding,
Teaching experience.

Now, as I found that there is no potential chance at our university to hit the mark, I thought there might be some chances to be TA at adjacent universities. I realize that the same issues may be occurred about such cases, too. But, I'm wondering whether such attempt is ethical or not.

Any suggestion about resolving this problem is highly welcome.


texts:
Starting around 2012, Timothy Gowers had much to say about the practices of Elsevier. Very roughly speaking, he argued that Elsevier made research articles expensive to access and profited heavily from the volunteer work of peer reviewers. Sympathetic individuals established a website called "The Cost of Knowledge", which hosts the electronic signatures of over 15,000 academics who have agreed to boycott Elsevier to some degree.

Things are relatively quiet now compared to the flurry of activity that followed Gowers' series of posts. The most recent information I can find is Greg Martin's letter of resignation from the editorial board of Elsevier's "Journal of Number Theory", which was posted to Gowers' blog in May of 2013. In it, Martin writes (emphasis mine):

  As far as I can tell, Elsevier’s responses to our concerns ended up being limited to a slight easing off of support for legislation limiting access to our research, together with a nominal reduction in individual journal prices. Regarding the latter, however, Elsevier’s “bundling” practice remains in place, making individual journals’ prices essentially irrelevant. Their (aggressively defended) lack of pricing transparency from one institution to another also speaks volumes, in my mind, to the limits of their desire to seriously address our pricing concerns.

My feeling is that not much has changed in the past two years, particularly since I would expect to hear an update from Gowers if any major victories had been won.

Can anyone provide more up-to-date information about Elsevier's pricing, bundling, and access practices?


texts: How to include incremental research in the thesis

texts:
I employ an incremental approach for my PhD research. In other words, at first, I propose a method to solve a problem and publish a paper about it. Then, I update my method by either improving its performance/optimality or adding more features so that it can handle more cases and I keep publishing papers reporting my progress. As a result, I have a pretty good publishing record, more than 5 papers as the first author in less than 3 years. However, between each paper, I sometimes make some major improvement such as completely replacing an old approach by a new (and better) one to solve the same problem.

At the moment, I am about to start writing up and face the problem of how to include all my papers in the thesis. My initial plan is to mainly focus on the last paper that I have published since it contains the best version of my research. However, doing so potentially makes my PhD research look weak since I have published many papers but only use one as the major theme of my thesis.

On the other hand, I am thinking about writing my thesis as a research diary that reports my journey to investigate how to solve one problem, e.g. at first I start with this approach, then after further research, I employ another one which results in better performance... But I am not sure if it is a right way to write my thesis.

My question is how to write a thesis for a incremental research. It would be great to hear from someone who was in the same situation. My field is computer science but answers from other fields are welcome.


texts: Combined degree in the UK for a US Student

texts:
In a recent conversation with a person born in the UK, he mentioned his son had attended a US college for a year before deciding to move back to the UK to finish school. He told me that apparently if a student completes one year of school at an accredited US university, they can do a combined bachelor's/master's degree in the UK in, as I recall, only an additional three years. Apparently that was what his son was doing.

I unfortunately neglected to ask him for more information regarding the process or where I could find more information online, and have no way of contacting him. A friend of mine and I have been looking into moving to the UK after college anyway, and I recently remembered this conversation and wanted to look into it. We're about to be entering our first year of college in the US, and are considering doing precisely what the man said, completing this coming year and then attempting to apply there for the remaining three years. Not only would it get us to the UK sooner, but it would also be good for costs considering how much cheaper college is in Europe.

Is anyone else familiar with such a system and at least where we could go to begin researching it? I've tried looking online but have, as of yet, found little real information. Or is it just that the information I got was faulty and there is no such system?


texts: How to explore Physics research as an undergraduate, keeping in mind the ever increasing weight on publications?

texts:
I am currently 3rd year Physics UG and have been working on Cosmology for past 3 years.

I want to explore different areas like QFT, Quantum Gravity and maybe a bit of basic Math research as well, before I enter into PhD.(I have 2 more years of MS education)

However, with an ever increasing stress on Publications for PhD applications, it's very hard. I can try get 1-2 publications if I continue in Cosmology, as I already know the bare minimum and can start my projects with comparatively less reading. But if choose a new field I'll first have to do a lot of preliminary readings and only then start my research projects. Thus lower chance of good publications.

So how should a Physics student go about exploring different fields?

Note: [I am not considering doing a course in QFT, Math as exploring the topic]

PS: I am from India where it is much less common for UG students to get publications compared US/Europe. So, if possible, please do consider this.


texts:
What is the right method to follow when referencing an article published on a website?

For example, I want to include the below sentence from this article.

  A mere 81.7 seconds later, a chunk of insulating foam tore free from the orange external tank and smashed into the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing at a relative velocity of at least 400 miles per hour (640 kph), but Columbia continued to climb toward orbit.

Is the below a correct way to do so?

"A mere 81.7 seconds later, a chunk of insulating foam tore free from the orange external tank and smashed into the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing at a relative velocity of at least 400 miles per hour (640 kph), but Columbia continued to climb toward orbit."

Under References:

Hutchinson, L, 2016. 'The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia, USA, ARS Technicia

Thank you,


texts: Should I do another Master's in CS to take courses covering recent developments in my field relevant to my work?

texts:
I already have a C.S. Master's degree with computer vision experience, but this was before deep learning. It's been 4 years since I've been out of school and most companies want engineers with deep learning experience.
I'm thinking about keeping my current job and doing another Master's degree part time because there are courses that I want to take. What do you guys think of having two Master's in computer science?


texts: Will medical institutions reject an applicant based on being 28 years of age?

texts: As I've contemplated the future over the past year, I have returned over and over again to the idea of becoming a doctor -- specifically, a neurosurgeon. However, I recognize that as a 28 year old Physics BS who would need to take a year of postbac courses before even applying to medical school, I might face unreasonable challenges should I choose to pursue this goal. I recognize that by the time I would be ready to apply, I would be 7 to 8 years older than the typical medical school applicant. My main fear is the idea of getting partway down the road to becoming a doctor and then being unanimously rejected by the institutions (schools, residency programs, employers, etc.) based on my age, rendering my efforts fruitless. Is this a likely outcome?


texts:
Suppose there is an engineering PhD student who is unsure whether to join academia or the industry after his PhD. He does not want to take chances and applies for internship positions during the course of his PhD. Here is a dilemma: the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could otherwise spend thinking about his research problem. OTOH, when he is not fully into research, he is unlikely to get attractive research-based internship positions.

How should a PhD candidate time his internship in a way that it does not affect his research and is also a very valuable experience on his PhD resume?


texts: How to appear legitimate when asking authorities about sensitive data for research?

texts:
I am a graduate student, and I am interested in doing my thesis on the modeling of utility networks, and how they are related / dependent on each other.  A specific case I would like to model is the effect of simulating the effects on water treatment and delivery networks, from interruptions in electrical networks.  I have located some open water network data, and I can also extract electrical network data from sources like OpenStreetMap, but I would still need some information about where water treatment plants are located, and if they also happen to be connected via underground cables.

I thought about contacting the city on which I am planning on doing my modeling, but I feel as though it may be alarming to them to have a random person (currently going to school in a foreign country) suddenly asking questions about their critical infrastructure.  When asked why, my truthful answer of "I want to assess where the network may be most vulnerable to interruption" would likely not settle any uncertainties.

I am wondering if anybody has any experience in approaching this kind of situation.


texts: Can I attend a PhD program with the intent to transfer my PhD credits to an MS and after 2 years, apply to a better university for a PhD?

texts:
I have been admitted to a PhD program at a  US university in the department of physics. The  department ranking is 100 (according to the US News ranking). In the PhD program, most of the students in physics study the fundamental principle in order to be prepared for doctoral studies. It takes around three semesters.  The  department I have been admitted to, also has an MS course.

My intention is to  transfer my PhD credits to the MS in order to gather more research experiences (2 years study) and later apply to a better university. Is it possible to manage this with my graduate supervisor? How  positive is my case? And how do you think my supervisor would respond to this?


texts: What do I do if my results are not ready before a conference?

texts:
My supervisor encouraged me to apply for a conference presentation, as he had funding for me to go.  The problem was that I had no results at the time, since the conference date was six months after the abstract deadline.  At the time I thought I would have results in time so I wrote an abstract (stating what I plan to do and why it is important, but posted no results) and got accepted for a poster presentation.

Now it is 1 week before the conference and I have very poor results.  I was able to complete the experiment, but the the results are much too poor to present.  Unfortunately I have no time to redo anything and do not have any previous research (am a masters student).  Which one of these is worse?:

Presenting meaningless results just so you can present
Presenting a vague poster (show the theory, methodology, importance, but no tangible results) to get around poor data.
Not showing up to the conference and get a partial refund.


texts: Are there universities that accept students with low gpa

texts: For some reasons I could not maintain a good cgpa although I was doing good in the second and first years and it became very bad when I decided to relocate to a new region_mainly because I could not adapt with the new life. Are there universities which accept physics major students with cgpa about 2.30 to pursue master's degree?


texts:
I'm an assistant professor at an undergraduate institution with significant research expectations.  A number of my colleagues insist on calling our school director their boss, which I find bizarre. In my training,
the head of an academic unit is a distinguished colleague to whom we are indebted to -- they sacrifice research time to perform necessary but tedious bureaucratic work -- but not a 'boss'. What is the norm at most institutions? Is there a division between primarily teaching and research institutions?


texts: Should I cancel / alter office hours for committee meetings?

texts:
My contract requires that I maintain a certain number of office hours a week where I am available to meet with students.  In practice this time is rarely entirely taken up by student meetings however.

Recently I have joined some relatively large university committees that (not surprisingly) have a hard time arranging meeting times. I have historically indicated that I am unavailable to meet during my office hours but I am not sure if this is the appropriate position to take.

The solutions that I see are:

Consider this time booked and unavailable.
Consider this time flexible and reschedule office hours as needed (this would likely be somewhat frequent and could also just create more downstream conflicts).
Cancel the office hours as conflicts arise.

What is the appropriate way to deal with responsibilities that conflict with office hours?


texts: What are the differences between Peer Reviewed Journals and Refereed Journals?

texts:
I would be interested to know the differences between peer reviewed journals and refereed journals in these aspects:

Conditions for the acceptance of papers for publications.
The time length of paper stage after submission.
Amount payable by authors.


texts: Is there a journal that publishes slides together with the text?

texts:
I mainly refer to applied mathematics when describing my experience

Often I find that it is easier to grasp a concept from the author's slides than from the description in a paper. When one has to summarize their findings for a talk, they often end up with an exposition that gives a clearer understanding of the "big picture" and the nontrivial details. It is easier to separate what is important and what is not. If someone really needs more detail and rigour, they can check the paper, but I think that 90% of the readership would get more from the slides than from the paper.

Of course a real paper is still necessary, to provide details to the interested reader and to testify that the details work indeed (and the referees can certify it).

However, slides are typically difficult to find. Some scientists self-archive (a subset of) their slides on their personal web pages; some others are hidden in conference sites. No database such as Scopus indexes them. It is often tricky to match up a paper and its slides.

So, my question is the following.

Is there any journal that publishes slides together with their papers? Or slides only? Or, more generally, that tries to experiment and consider similar less formal media for presenting real science?


texts: How to deal with errors in well established papers

texts:
I am currently supervising a Bachelors student for his thesis. I gave him a well-established paper to read of which I only knew the results but never checked the calculations in it. It was first published in 2006, is currently in its 6th version on arXiv and has about 330 citations, so I expected it to be mostly without mistakes...

Well it turns out I was wrong. My student stumbled over several mistakes and I found some more while trying to explain some calculations to him. In total we have found about 10 errors - some minor like a wrong index in a formula, some major like claiming that a function is convex while it is in fact concave and an inverted inequality sign in the final result...

Under different circumstances I would write the author, but I feel somewhat silly writing an email that basically says "Hey, this paper you wrote 9 years ago contains some errors." I really cannot imagine that we are the first to find these mistakes...

I also thought about commenting on the paper on https://scirate.com/ - this way the author needs not bother with it, but following generations could still see the corrections. On the other hand this could be a big insult to the author...

Is there any other way to make sure following generations don't stumble over the same mistakes? (The results are basically so well established, that active researchers take them for granted and don't try to verify the calculations - but following students will surely stumble over the wrong equations)
Should I just drop it? Should I still write to the author?
What is the "proper (scientific) way" to handle this situation?


texts: I take on more than I can handle and everything is left incomplete. Constant reminders from my previous supervisor, my current advisor, and colleagues, increases my anxiety level and sometimes I end up entirely avoiding work. I haven’t completed a paper as first author in the last two years, although I have two papers ready for submission for the last two months and two more I could complete with a week of uninterrupted work on each paper. These papers have been dragged so much that now I am losing interest in making any more changes. I will appreciate any suggestion for dealing with anxiety regarding works that I should have completed more than a year ago.


texts: During junior year, should I focus on taking advanced courses in my major for admission to grad school, or can I take courses for my minor?

texts:
I came in as a liberal arts major freshman year, and by around February realized it wasn't what I wanted to do.

I took general chemistry last summer. By the end of the summer, I had begun working in a research lab and was already on track to graduate with the rest of my fellow biochem majors. By that I mean I was in the same courses as everyone else,
 e.g., took organic, physics, required maths, etc.

This summer I'll be working a paid internship working in the lab, and might be able to get something published. Junior year will be this fall; I'm taking biochemistry and physical chemistry. In that regard, I'm on track with the other chem majors.

I'm not sure to what extent this is a "problem" per se, but I've really begun to enjoy physics and decided to minor it after the introductory physics courses I took this year. I was considering taking two higher-level physics courses both in the fall and spring of my junior year.

I want to go graduate school for chemistry. But will it look bad on my transcript if I have all of those physics courses junior year? That is, will it seem like I'm not focused enough in the field of chemistry? Should I be spending those seven credit hours on something like analytical chem or a special topic in biochemistry course instead? Should my junior year have more chemistry courses than biochem and pchem? Should I drop the physics courses to focus on more chemistry courses?


texts: I have a couple working papers on ssrn.com that I am preparing for submission to a journal.  If it is accepted, should I pull the ssrn.com copy from the website or block people's access to it by making it private?  Is there either a duty from the copyright change to remove it or if there is no legal obligation is there an ethical one?


texts: Is this a favorable response from the professor?

texts:
I am applying to a thesis-based Master's program where the professor hires the students in their research group. I've interviewed the professor on skype and we have emailed each other after the interview half a dozen times. Now, after a few months, I asked him when the admission decisions are sent and he wrote me:

Dear X, I am currently reviewing all the people who showed interest in my research group. The results will be announced after I am done with this in the next month. Thank you for your patience and understanding

So, does this mean I am still being considered for the research group or is this a polite rejection?


texts: Can I apply for a "potential" deferred admission

texts:
I'm sorry if there are similar posts, I had a look and couldn't find something exactly similar.
I will be starting my final year of Bachelor (in the UK), and I am going to start applying for an integrated MS/PhD in mathematics (in the US). Recently, I started thinking about going for a gap year before starting with my graduate studies, and I found an interesting (but very selective) internship which might be interesting.
However, my problem is, I do not know how the admissions process works for the internship. So I might end up getting an answer after having sent my PhD applications. So my question is: is it possible in some universities to ask for a "possible" defferal of admission? Conditional on a third factor?
PS: the universities I am applying for are UC Berkeley, and UCLA. I was thinking of emailing them but thought maybe someone would already have been in a similar situation here - and could maybe give me some advice :)


texts: Have researchers any incentive to publish negative or confirmatory results?

texts: Negative results are sometimes seen as failures, and confirmatory results as lack of creativity, even though both kinds can be useful. Have researchers any incentive to publish negative or confirmatory results (put aside the cases when they are forced to, e.g. certain registered clinical trials)?


texts: How can a TA help a student who is certain she sucks at programming?

texts:
I am a TA for an undergraduate Signals and Systems class (Electrical Engineering). As part of this, I lead a lab session, where we teach students how to code up various signal transforming operations in MATLAB, and visualize the transformed signals (for example, time-scaling, time-shifting, etc). So far it has been just basic stuff (it's only week 3), but the complexity will scale up quite a bit.

One of my students has some kind of "code-fright". She understands the theory (because there's a pre-lab in which you write down the theory of what you will be coding in the lab, and she does well here), but when it comes to coding, she just can't get started; her editor is blank till the very end, and she doesn't ask for help when I go to her; eventually, she's on the verge of tears, and is clearly very, very upset.

When I try to talk to her about what the code should look like, asking questions, and trying to get her to answer, she just remains stuck on the line, "I'm not good at programming". I repeatedly tell her that she has the theory down, and she simply needs to write it up in MATLAB, and reassure her gently that she can do this. But it doesn't help at all.

How do I help her out? The lab has 20 students, so as much as I wish, I can't spend more time with her. But I don't want her to forever think that "she sucks at programming".

EDIT - I forgot to add, this lab has teams. But she refuses to work with her partner (presumably because she wants to be able to do it on her own?). The partner does manage to get her code to work on her own.


texts:
I’ve just moved to Canada for PhD studies at one of its best universities.
One day during my master studies, I felt that I wanted to live the international student experience and decided to move to Canada which is far away from my home country (at least 16 hours by flight!). But before moving to Canada, I thought I needed to save some money as such I decided to work and save money. I worked at a good and well-known company with very good salary and benefits, my boss really liked me.
I left the job after a year and everyone there was shocked because I was so good at it.
I have to mention that during my work there, I also met my boyfriend whom I love very much!

Despite the fact that I met my significant other, had a great job and stable life, I went on my way and moved to Canada.
After only one month in Canada, I discovered a few things.

1) It feels bad to be away from my family and friends, although I used to live away from my family during the past few years, the increased distance makes it worse.

2) I've been thinking of going back to my home country since I arrived.

3) I miss my boyfriend very badly although we talk everyday.

4) I had a great job with very good salary and now I get less than half of my previous salary.

5) My social life here sucks, I’m working on it but things are moving very very slow!

6) The main concern: I joined a small research group; only 2 PhD students and 2 masters students and no Post docs. The supervisor is very busy (we booked a meeting and he has never showed up in time! In a best case scenario he is late by an hour), he doesn’t show any interest in guiding me or helping me define my PhD project, I thought he might be busy but after taking to the students it seems that he’s always like this. He never seems to have time and I need to chase him down to talk about research and ensure things move forward. Even one of his masters students said that if I wanna have a good PhD, I must find a co-supervisor because he’s not organized!
Besides, it seems that the supervisor does not have available projects as of now and he is currently away for the next two months.

I feel like I’m sinking and made the biggest mistake of my life! I'm no longer sure I want to continue my PhD studies! I only think about going back home. I don’t know what to do. Should I look for job back home? Stay? Ask the previous company to hire me back?

I’m afraid and nervous and have no one to consult!! Please help me cause I feel like I’m wasting time here while being unhappy and very far away from my loved ones :(
?


texts: Where can I find statistics about papers (length, writers, etc.)

texts:
Different fields have different writing culture. Some fields prefer single author papers, and others prefer group efforts. Some fields prefer a short paper with a survey of a new results, and others prefer longer and more technical papers.

Specifically I'm interested in mathematics (and its subfields, if such breakdown exists). Is there any way to obtain some sort of statistics as to how many papers were published, how long they are, and how many writers were involved? Some statistical analysis and trend-changes would also be very interesting to me.

Do these statistics exist for other fields? I'd be interested in also knowing how different is the publishing culture in mathematics compared to other fields (STEM, social and humanities).


texts: Publishing figures in conference abstracts - will this constitute formal “publication” that will preclude our publication of this figure in journal?

texts: I have a manuscript in final stages of editing to submit it for publication, most likely to an ACS journal.  My advisor would also like me to present this research in the upcoming ACS conference.  I need to submit an abstract and they give the option of including a figure.  I'd like to include my graphical abstract if this won't preclude submitting the same graphic later as part of the manuscript.  So does a conference abstract count as "published"?


texts: How do we solve the problem about bad behavior (unfair evaluation) in lab?

texts:
My undergraduate student told me that he had some problems when he attended the lab session in our department. This lab session is mandatory and one of the components of the course evaluation.

The source of the problem is the lab assistants. They asked him many irrelevant questions about their student union, like the name of the chair, secretary, etc. Unfortunately, he is not a member of this union, so he could not answer. Therefore, they failed him and he has to retake the test.

I want to help my student.

Previously, I considered reporting this case to the chair. However, I remembered that my chair once said that he did not like students who do not join the student union. Hence, I did not report to him.

Do you know the best way to solve this problem with minimum effort?

For further information, the university is located in a developing country in South East Asia.

Note:
The union is a student organization. Historically, the union were the response for the repressive regime. To become a member of the union, the student should attend some orientation activity. Most of the activity is hazing.


texts: Is there a single term to define all sources (e.g., academic papers, grey literature, books, blogs, etc.)?

texts:
Is there a single term that includes all the following types of sources:

Scholarly publications
Government and think tank reports
News reports
Books
Blogs (written by academics)

For a paper, I used all of these sources. I am trying to tell someone how many articles I have read. Is "articles" a valid collective term for this?

"Reviewed 15 articles on .... These included scholarly publications, government reports, books, and blogs."

"Sources" isn't a very clear term for those outside of academia:

"Reviewed 15 sources on ..."


texts: PhD student and slow, painstaking writer. Any advice?

texts:
I am a PhD student (in the UK, and part-time, member of faculty at the same time)
But I struggle to write well and fast. To quote my supervisor:
The greatest weakness [of your report] is a ground hog day feel to it. I feel like you've woken up and started your narrative afresh at various places (this may be the reality) but a more consistent effort could improve efficiency of expression and clarity.
If effort alone solved this, I wouldn't be asking this question, but this does point to a long-standing problem. I am a slow, painstaking writer, with a history of overcoming impairment / clumsy pen-holding. Even in my native language (French) and in any topic.
My usual "strategy" has been to accept that limit and work with it, by:

Focusing on science (computing was transformational for me at school, thanks to typing and programming Maths/Science homework)
Displacing writing with work that provides material - preparing diagrams, software, bibliographies, synthetic tables, that can make their way in the work
"pre-writing" - like a procrastinator using pre-commitment, writing for a conference paper because the short term and specific focus kick-starts a short document
"recycling" writing. Starting again appears to fail, so I rework existing wording and presentations, e.g. merging an earlier report with a conference paper and new material; torturing sentences to adapt them to a new order...
Building a top-down structure first, and focusing on structure - to avoid the patchwork quilt impression that re-using written material would leave.
I have tried recording myself, as my speech can be clearer, but this has proved very inefficient too - suddenly a lot of umming and erring; speaking above family is also not always an option.

But (as well as still being a lot of work) this results in the poor efficiency of expression and lack of clarity that my supervisor remarks. At worst, the work can be a collection of tables, diagrams, bibliographic notes, commented to give them context. Hopefully it is not always as bad, but:

What other strategies would you recommend?
My "paradigm" has been to accept, my limited writing. What practices would help me change paradigm? If am not limited to my history, what would I do to level up?


texts: Is it acceptable to be listed as an author based only on technical assitance?

texts:
I am a PhD student in bioinformatics/computational biology. A year or two ago I helped a fellow student using a software package she needed for creating a certain type of figures for her project. This week I got an email from that student asking if I wish to be listed as an author in a paper she is submitting in which she used these figures.

Other than helping to get her started with this software package and maybe helping her a bit with improving her code otherwise, I made no contribution to that project and in fact had only a very vague idea what she was working on until I saw the manuscript this week. I estimate that at most I dedicated 5-10 hours  to the whole thing.

So my dilemma is if such a minor contribution justifies me being listed as an author.

On the one hand, I have invested very little in this student in terms of time and effort, and was not involved at all in her research process per se.

On the other hand, I did invest a considerable amount of time learning to work with the said software for my own project (totally unrelated to hers) so I think there was some kind of knowledge/skill transfer involved that may have saved her some time.

If it matters, the paper has four authors other then me: the student that I helped, her two supervisors, and another PhD student who to my understanding was much more involved than me in this project.

I'm looking forward to hearing your perspective, O wise ones.


texts: Is it required for a supervisor to understand the technicality of his PhD student's research

texts:
In my department, there are 2 styles for a supervisor to supervise student.

In the first one, a supervisor understands his PhD student's research deep enough to provide technical advices such as which algorithms to try, possible solutions for a problem, or even to be able to read and comment on the source code.

In the second one, a supervisor understands his PhD student's research just enough to comment about the feasibility and novelty of the research and its contribution, but does not understand exactly how the research is carried out.

In my opinion, the second style is easier for a supervisor to not only supervise his students but also looks for new ones, as his candidate pool is larger. It also helps a supervisor to have more diversitized research group.

On the other hand, it is harder a supervisor who has deep knowledge about the research of his students to find a new one, as he can only look for those whose research is close to his. But this makes the research of his group more focused.

So, I wonder which one is a common practice, and if a supervisor should have deep understanding, e.g. technical level, about the research of his student.

My field is computer science but answers from other fields are also welcome.


texts: What if the production editor does not respond to important email after a few days?

texts:
I sent my review of the proof for an article back to the production editor. However, due to the large amount minor corrections I made (roughly 50), I requested a second review. I sent two emails. But now it has already 4 days, and there is no response from the production editor.

I am so nervous because if the typesetter corrects the manuscript inappropriately or even publishes the paper without fully addressing the correction, it would be too late to do any further action.

Can anyone give me some suggestions?


texts: How to sort search results from SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge by number of citation in a specific field?

texts:
I use SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge to search papers.
What I need to do is to sort the result in a descending order of number of citations.
SCOPUS and W_of_K both provide this feature.

But I further need to confine those citations only in a specific field.
For example, statistics paper can be cited in another statistics paper or in a medicine paper. What I'm interested in is how many times this paper is cited in another statistics paper.

Using scopus and Web of science, I can see all the papers that cited this paper and then confine to a specific field. But I have to do this for all papers one by one.
Thus I wonder if there is any search engine that can to this automatically.


texts:
I am a Graduate in Life sciences who has been working in a corporate job for the past 2+ years.

I am currently researching and aiming to apply for PhD programmes in Europe. In requirements for PhD I have come across the need for Recommendation letters from past supervisors.

It has been over three years since I worked under a Research supervisor. And I feel it would not be appropriate to ask them after a long term.

Are there any means by which I can proceed without recommendation letters ?
How will this affect my chances for acceptance?


texts: Who should cover conferences expenses for research work done in a lab a researcher just left for another lab?

texts:
It would be quite interesting to have others' experience and opinion on what guidelines are followed, and/or would make sense to follow regarding conference expenses for a researcher having recently transitioned laboratories.

It is very common for PhD researchers to do a post-doc in a different lab, and for post-docs to move from one lab to another. In that case, which lab should cover the conference expenses to present the work done (and fully completed) at the previous lab which the researcher just left? Should it be the one where the work was done? If that lab refuses, should the new one cover the expenses or should the researcher give up the opportunity to present his work? Or maybe the new lab should cover the expenses anyways as the researcher is now affiliated there?


texts: Conflict of interest: My research reflects badly on my PhD supervisor

texts:
Post Q2 2016

I am in the final stages of writing-up my thesis. Unfortunately, my findings don't seem to reflect well on my supervisor. I have just had a key chapter returned with many comments like "rubbish", "full of mistakes", etc. I don't think they are justified.

I am reporting on the quality control of a trial for which she was PI. There is clear evidence of QC problems and it seems to me that there is a conflict of interest which is preventing objectivity in the feedback I'm getting. I feel that I'm being pressurized into coming to conclusions in my thesis that I don't agree with - i.e. the trial didn't have any significant QC problems.

My relationship with my supervisor was amicable enough before I sent her this chapter. In order to complete my conclusion I need to reach some sort of agreement, but after her recent outburst I feel this will be difficult.

My University doesn't seem to have any policy about this type of conflict of interest, yet it must be common enough. What should I do?

UPDATE (June 2017):

The good news is that I submitted my thesis and it was accepted with minor changes at my viva. My examiners were kind and described it as a 'tour-de-force', though after five hours of argument I suspect they just wanted me to go home ;-) Therefore I have my PhD.

The bad news is that the papers derived from two of my PhD chapters which detail the quality failings in the trial have yet to be published. This is despite significant support from my examiners who both felt it was very important for the information to be published. At present there is a big row going-on at the highest levels of the University with good scholarship being pitted against the medical school's desire to avoid reputational damage and potential loss of future grant income.

I sincerely hope that no other PhD student is going through this sort of debacle, but just in case I give the following advice:

Don't give-up. Just keep on writing the best thesis you can. Let the pages become chapters and the chapters become a finished thesis. Save worrying about your viva until after its been submitted.
Don't keep quiet about problems with your supervisor. Stand-up for yourself and keep in the light. In my case I made sure senior management knew was going on and also that I was documenting everything. This wasn't something that they could easily sweep under the carpet. In the end it became very much in everyone's interests that I got my PhD.
Try to maintain a relationship with your supervisor and keep the arguments on a professional than a personal level. You want your supervisor to congratulate you on getting your PhD and write-off the arguments over your thesis as healthy academic disagreement.

I must thank the >1,000 people who have viewed my original posting. Good luck to all PhD students and remember that careers are built on results not methods ;-)

UPDATE (March 2018):

My main paper was accepted by the key journal in the field in August 2017 and finally appeared in print, March 2018. I'm still working on getting the second paper accepted.


texts: One of my co-authors is an "IEEE Life Member" can I add this to my IEEE transaction manuscript?

texts: I just finished a Transaction Manuscript, and one of the co-authors is a "Life member IEEE". Initially, I inserted "Senior Member IEEE" just after his name in the manuscript, but he pointed out to me that he is a life member. So my question is, can I remove the "Senior Member IEEE" and insert "Life Member IEEE" even though I haven't seen any paper having "Life member IEEE"?


texts: Are relationships allowed between students and faculty?

texts:
What sorts of restrictions do universities place on romantic or sexual relationships between faculty and graduate students, and what are the underlying issues that motivate these restrictions?

For example, suppose the student has previously taken a class from the professor but has no plans for further academic contact.  What other factors could help determine whether a relationship would be allowed or considered appropriate?


texts: Is it necessary to add email address to paper?

texts:
Short and simple question. Am I allowed to not include my email at a publication?

On a related note, what should I  do if I don't have an e-mail address, or have an e-mail address at my university which will expire when I leave the university?


texts: How should I state 'MS dropout' in my resume when applying for data scientist positions?

texts:
I've read a couple threads on how to state a PhD dropout in a CV, but wanted to query opinion on the case where the degree in question is a Master's instead. Additionally, my situation is a bit different from others in that I'm mostly done. I plan to complete 33 units by the end of this semester but need 36 to graduate with the degree. I'd rather not stay an extra semester for 3 units.

My M.S. program in Statistics (top 3 program) ended up being mostly theoretical, similar to the Ph.D program here, and the theoretical courses were largely uninteresting to me after my first year. I found that I'm more interested in the programming aspect of things, as well as machine learning. My program specializes in a specific branch of statistical thought, rather than machine learning.

I am now looking for a data scientist position in industry. The question is, How should I state a 'MS dropout' in my resume?


texts: How inclusive should my CV's publications be?

texts: I'm in the process of transitioning from industry to academia. Over the years I've been minor contributor to a number of publications and conference presentations and published once as an undergraduate in the school's peer-reviewed journal. This work was in a number of different fields that are different than the direction I'm going. Should all of this appear on my CV, or should I limit it to work done since going back to graduate school?


texts: COVID-19 anxiety's impact to my output: any strategies for mitigation?

texts:
In the COVID-19 pandemic I am dealing with anxiety for the first time, and professionally floundering.
I'm usually good at prioritization, but the state of the world means emergencies, and anxiety magnifies the perception that I am the only person who can deal with them. Sometimes I am: I have high-risk family, have lost care for them, and my university is not making safety-centered decisions very well. I am joined by other new-anxious in not being able to buy safe help: parents of young children, colleagues with disabilities, and anyone who has family sick with COVID, many of whom are wondering where precisely the buck stops, except with themselves... My normal support circles are broken or only available over Zoom, which is less helpful than in-person access. Sleep, for many reasons, is now hard for me, yet vital zoom meetings happen at every hour. Compounding this, large projects I committed to in January are now much more difficult to finish, and past due.
Deadlines are deadlines, students get helped or they don't, grants forgone today add uncertainty to an already complex tomorrow. The law provides protections, but won't help with tenure cases, or provide funds to keep students fed. My field and academe in general are trending more competitive, not less. I am usually quite productive, publishing multiple papers a year, writing grants, etc. I am doing the 'right things': I exercise daily, have a therapist, am exploring meds, and have taken up meditation. I am lucky to be in the hands of good care, but that care is often stymied by the culture of academe. "No one you can delegate that to?" asks my therapist.
It does not help that those above me in the chain of command are largely uncomfortable with the idea of mental health, full stop. Advice to 'pull together, 'buck up', and 'chill out' has come, along with signaling that mental health is outside the preview of academe. This is even as they show their own symptoms of great stress. While industry settings often have clear ways to handle mental health situations, my institution has no such resources for faculty and staff. Academic settings also have less 'chain of authority' to directly assist individuals. "Talk to your boss" is not necessarily sound advice. 'HR' is not a useful resource either.
I am specifically looking for academe-focused strategies to cope and potentially even better succeed, with this anxiety. I am Jr. Faculty in one role, Staff in another, highly autonomous in both, at the same institution. Most of my commitments are to individuals outside of my department. I do not see this all 'ending' soon.
Those with anxiety pre-pandemic: do you have strategies I might try? How does one prioritize and strategize when everything is on fire? Can anxiety in fact be a superpower when applied correctly in academe?
Everyone: are there there things I should do to minimize impact on my academic career? I need to stay competitive with individuals who are younger and have less complexity than I do, as we will be evaluated equally.


texts: Is pregnancy a valid explanation of a weak academic performance?

texts: I am a foreign student and currently applying to several PhD programs in the US. My GPA in the 6th semester was a lot disappointing, and pulled down my overall GPA and ranking significantly. The reason is that I got pregnant, by accident. I want to explain this situation in my statement of purpose or address an email to the admission committee, so I want to know how Americans, especially professors, will normally react to this explanation? Will they regard it as understandable mistake or unforgivable sin?


texts: Is single parenting compatible with success in academia?

texts:
Good day.

I'm currently a PhD student in computer science. I was married and have a daughter with my former wife. There is a probability that our daughter
will live with me. Could you please tell me is it possible to be successful in academia and to raise a child alone? By "to be successful in academia" I mean eventually to receive a professor position. Could you please share your experience?

Additional details: my university has a kindergarten and I live in Germany. My concerns are more about is it enough to have 9 working hours per day for writing the PhD thesis.


texts: If I get a paper for anonymous review, can I discuss it with a friend?

texts:
Sometimes I get a paper for review, and I am not sure about certain points in the paper. It could be really helpful for me (and for the paper) to discuss these points with a friend who might understand these issues better.
Suppose the friend is unrelated to the authors, so has no conflict-of-interest. Is it, in general, allowed to show the paper to the friend and ask for opinion?


texts: How can I get a list with all papers that cites one person's papers in the last month?

texts:
I want to know which papers cite papers of author X in the last 30 days or 60 days. Is such a query possible? I don't know any provider that supports that kind of view on authors' citations.
I can use alerts from Google Scholar to get that information every week. But I want to do this as a search query right now. Semantic Scholar also does not provide this opportunity. Does anybody know a site that supports this query?
How can I acquire this information without using Google Scholar and going in the citation of every paper of the author and sorting them by date or restricting the date range?


texts: How to measure achievement in a field where large collaborations are normal?

texts:
In some fields of research, huge collaborations are the norm. This is especially true in experimental high-energy physics.

Say I'm evaluating someone's resume, and that person is transitioning out of one of these fields into something else, such as a career in industry or teaching. I'm not a specialist in that field, and I'm not familiar with current research in it except at a very broad level. How do I tell whether this person was any good at what they did? I can do a literature search on the person's name, but that will just pop up a bunch of papers where the list of authors looks like this: "The XYZ Collaboration: A. Aarons, J. Abelson, ... [183 additional authors not shown]"


texts:
Because of different backgrounds in higher education systems, different titles are popularly used for administrative titles in academia such as

  University level - President, Vice Chancellor, Rector, Principal

  Faculty level - Dean only

  Department level - Head, Chair

For leading a faculty, the only common term is Dean. Am I right? or there are other alternatives too?

And more interestingly, the title of Dean is only used for the manager of a faculty, not other positions. Correct me if I'm wrong.

What is the historical meaning of dean, and what is special about this title, which is only used for a specific level in academia.


texts:
Do tenured faculty get to micromanage clinical professors and other non-tenured instructors with respect to the classroom?

Shouldn't clinical professors be allowed control of their own classrooms and operate with intellectual freedom (in general)?  Let us just assume for the sake of simplicity that we are talking about a clinical professor who has done a good job in the classroom (good student evaluations, good DWF rate, hard working, dynamic, puts in a lot of effort, meets course description, etc.).

"Micromanage" includes things like forcing someone to adapt a communal exam format, removing the ability to emphasize/de-emphasize certain topics in the classroom, etc.

Also, do lecturers, adjuncts, and teaching post-docs (all with PhDs) get the same (or similar) set of rights?  Let us assume the same set of circumstances as I listed above for clinical people.  What would be the potential consequences of simply saying "No, I won't participate in being micromanaged." and fighting for your right to intellectual freedom?


texts: Is there a risk of sharing my idea with other researchers via e-mail?

texts: I sometimes need to take the opinion of other researchers who published studies close to mine, so I send my research question and what I will do to answer it through e-mail. Assuming that this is a good behavior, Is there a risk of that on my idea? if there, how to protect it?


texts: Is it a bad sign if I do not get anything from problem discussions with professors or fellow students?

texts:
This is a question specifically about mathematics.

All math people I've talked with like discussing problems (or math in general) with others, and most people claimed that they learned most from communication rather than from reading textbooks. My situation is, however, different. Most of the time I have math-related conversations, I find that I'm not comprehending what I'm being said, even if it's something not hard (unless I'm familiar with the topic being discussed very well). [In particular, this is true of lectures. However, I am able to understand my notes.] (I'm not sure what the reason is.) In contrast, I learn much more from books and, more importantly, from posting questions on math stackexchange. I was wondering whether this is normal, and whether this will be an obstacle in writing a potential PhD dissertation, since in that case my adviser would probably be the primary source of information, and I wouldn't be able to write a math stack exchange post asking for help.


texts:
I started noticing something that left me wondering a bit. My estimate is that the average paper (for example submitted to physical review journals, contains of the order of 50 citations). But if the average paper cites 50 other papers, then each paper should also receive 50 citations on average.

This is definitely not my track record. One could argue that cited papers are dominated by a few rare events (very important papers with thousands of citations), but by the very definition of an impact factor this cannot be the case, (unless one considers books, but I would assume they comprise max 20% of the citations): only top journals as nature reach an impact factor of this order, but these are far from the only papers cited. Many of them are other physical reviews, with an impact factor of order 3.

So that leaves me wondering, where are the missing citations going?
Is it just a matter of delay, or is there a flaw in my logic?


texts: Is it legal to upload PDFs of my papers on a personal website & research-networking websites?

texts:
I've created a .com personal website where I intend to describe my research, including full-text PDF copies of my published papers. I was going to also make these PDFs available in my account on academic social-networking websites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu. I've seen many researchers do the same, and indeed these websites will happily accept anything you will upload.
However, I have doubts whether this would actually be legal. Most of my papers are not open-source, and without a subscription, one would just hit the journal's paywall. Is it likely that if I upload these PDFs, I am inviting copyright infringement allegations from the publishers, or any other sort of legal problem? My field, if relevant, is experimental psychology.
Having researched this question on this SE site as well as some of the above-stated ones, I found no conclusive answer. Various proposed alternatives to the uploading of full-text PDFs seem to be to either upload preprints or personal "accepted" (but not journal-formatted) versions, or to state (both on the personal website and on academia.edu etc) that full-text PDFs are available upon individual reasonable request. However, none of these options seem ideal, when you'd simply like whoever is interested in your papers to be able to quickly access them in the obvious places.


texts: How do I follow up with a potential PhD supervisor?

texts: I had an interview with a professor 3 weeks ago. He told me that we would stay in touch and probably have another meeting in 3 weeks. I have not heard anything from him in the past 3 weeks so I wonder how do I "stay in touch" with him?


texts: Does building an app or software system count as computer science research?

texts:
I understand that this topic is a bit vague, but if someone could give me a pointer in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

I'm currently an American undergraduate taking part in an internship at a Japanese engineering university in a professor's research lab for the summer. I have no prior experience with computer science research, and my understanding of it is pretty fuzzy, but I assumed it would involve a decent amount of theory and less software engineering practice.

However, many of the graduate students in my lab are working on projects that I would only think of as software engineering. For example, one is developing a system to effectively generalize how various sensors could interact with a common server. Another developed an iOS app and a server backend that basically gathers data from the app into the server for analysis (and the analysis isn't anything particularly special or innovative from what I understand).

The professor's main research project is developing a web app that uses a special algorithm to analyze discussions on a forum. The algorithm part is what I would think of as research, but from the papers I've read regarding it, they seem to focus on the app as a whole and less on the algorithm.

Do all of these things count as computer science research? Would they perhaps fall more under computer engineering research with less emphasis on computer science theory? And (at least in America, where I plan to attend graduate school) is this a common kind of research for graduate students and/or professors? It just seems strange to me that what I view as basically building a useful app counts as academic research. It seems more like engineering to me and less like research.


texts: Re-applying to medical school after misconduct

texts:
I am a nontraditional applicant for medical school and wanted to ask questions about my application here. I was previously enrolled in another MD program. I had an undiagnosed disability that resulted in some abnormal behavior, including research misconduct (data fabrication). It led to me withdrawing from medical school program, but I have spent several years recovering. I have finished a PhD. I have published many papers including a few at top journals (Cell) since then.
I maintain a strong interest in academic medicine and I am ready to take another go at it.
How might my application be processed differently? How successful could an applicant like myself be? Do you have advice on how I can present myself in the best manner? Do I have a chance?


texts: I found an error in my exam that caused me to lose time on other questions, resulting in a lower grade. How can I appeal?

texts:
I'm a student in college, and while I was taking a linear algebra  exam, I noticed that there was a mistake in the last exercise. Our exam is composed of two parts: multiple questions and  exercises. I usually prefer to start with the second part while everybody starts with the first one.
I spent about 15 to 20 minutes before I called the teacher and said that there is an error. He confirmed the error and announced it to the rest of the class. At the end, I left some questions in the first part blank because I ran out of time.
The problem is that I received my grade (16/20) and I'm not really happy because if I had more time I could've done so much better (19/20 if I had finished the  three other questions).
How could I ask him to upgrade my grade  and explain to him that I really deserve it and that I really need to have (19/20) so I can pass my semester?

Update:
I saw my teacher today, and he didn't even give me a chance to talk and said that there is nothing he can do. When I said that this is not fair and that I spent time to find the error he said "You should've passed the exercise". I don't know what to do now, any idea?


texts: Collaboration tool for students and teachers

texts: I'm looking for a tool (web application) similar to Atlassian Confluence but for academic purposes. The main purpose of that is to allow selected teachers and students from different schools collaborate on a project. It should have features like file uploading, to-do lists, calendar, rules assigning etc. Also it should have a possible low price-tag. I'm from Europe so if it could be a European tool that would be great.


texts: Conducting a literature review, what period should the papers be taken from?

texts: In conducting a literature review i.e., research done on a particular topic for a certain period of time what is the prefered period of the review? Would it be advised if the time period is from 2000 to present only?


texts: Is it appropriate to acknowledge Satoshi Nakamoto in a paper devoted to blockchain?

texts:
My question is highly relevant to this one: is-it-appropriate-to-acknowledge-stackexchange-in-my-msc-thesis; however, in my case, Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonymous person (or persons) who developed Bitcoin.

I believe, would be great to acknowledge Satoshi genius and the importance of his invention to my current research, but not sure whether appropriate (in academia context) is to thank the pseudonymous person(s)?


texts: Where can I find examples of research misconduct reports?

texts: I am writing a report documenting evidence for research misconduct. The report is to be submitted to the ethics board of a university. Are there publicly available examples of such reports? Not the formal investigation results but the actual report that triggered the investigation. I want to get an idea on how these are usually written.