texts:
An engineer (me), a mathematician and a social psychologist (my supervisors) walked into a bar and decided to do a PhD project together. How do the three ensure that they do not have communication issues?

Each field comes with its own peculiar jargon and perspective. How does one achieve efficient communication while at the same time being true to their own discipline?

(we work in building dynamical models of human behaviour, the topic requires expertise from all three disciplines).


texts: What does it mean to do research with a phd student?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student and have recently been accepted by a professor to work on a robotics project in his lab. The professor mentioned that I will be working with a Phd student.

My confusion is as to what work I'll actually be able to do as the Phd student who is obviously more qualified will do majority of the work. So, will I just be left with useless work like analysis/ report writing or will I actually be given work?


texts: Can portions of my PhD thesis be later submitted to conferences?

texts: It's fairly standard to submit thesis chapters to journals. However, in my field (theoretical computer science) conference publication is much more important. Is there any problem with taking a section of my thesis and submitting it later to a conference? Would the conference object that this was dual submission?


texts: Conference proceeding after journal article

texts: Is it possible to write a conference proceeding about topics already published (by the same author, of course) in a journal article? It is understood that all the sentences will be rephrased and all the figures changed not to fall into self-plagiarism. In a conference, in fact, one often wants to summarize and gather together the results he has obtained in the last months of research.


texts: How do I know that an educational institute is accredited?

texts:
How can I investigate whether an institute is authentic and accredited?

Which web-sites or listings can I check?

For instance, say I want to investigate The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.


texts: How high should I rate a good student for PhD admission?

texts:
I am a relatively young faculty member. I was asked to provide a reference for a student of mine so he is admitted in a PhD program in Sciences in UK. The student is probably one of the best students I had in a couple of years in terms of academic potential. I firmly believe he will do well as he is bright and hard-working.

I have to fill in an online form rating him. My problem is that the form's scaling is very strong.
How can I honestly say that someone was outstanding (3%) and not exceptional (1%)? Even the third most positive option is unusually good (rated at 10%) which I feel as a characterization in itself should be strong enough for someone to be at least considered for a PhD.

My classes are never above 40 to 45 students and I believe that simply "lumping" all the students from my past couple of years in one sample is ineffective and unreasonable. I would probably be unable to single out one of my students as the single best student I've ever had so that I can place him in the top 1% interval with certainty and not top 3%.

As I said, I want to support him and I worry that simply putting him down as outstanding would harm him as other referees might be tempted to "max out" everything. On the other hand simply rating him as exceptional in almost all aspects would be just grade-inflation.

Could someone provide me with some advice on the matter and what they would do? The scaling I have come across before topped at 5% which I found reasonable but here this not the case.


texts:
What are the most frequently cited textbooks in the physics literature?

Note: I am not looking for guesses, but answers supported by citations data. What are some good physics citations databases?


texts: Who does a university answer to if their staff and academic advisors make mistakes that cost you time and money?

texts: I am in a situation where my university has made countless mistakes with their new online program.  Professors are "no-shows", do not instruct at all, and advisors have incorrectly registered me in their new program which has now delayed my graduation date and has cost me money.  Who do you report a university to that repeatedly makes so many mistakes but has no problem taking your money?


texts: What are the rules of authorship when posting a reply to a discussion?

texts: Me and a professor published a paper where he was first author since he did most of the work. Today, we have received a discussion and we would like to reply. I'll be the one in charge of the reply, and I was wondering if I could be first author of the reply. What are your thoughts ?


texts: Conference proceedings and talks on a CV?

texts:
I come from a multidisciplinary background, mostly biostatistics and bioinformatics. I'm currently updating my CV to apply for a post doc and I'm wondering how do people include conference proceedings and invited talks in a CV.

In my case, I have two type of abstracts:
- peer-reviewed conference proceedings which are published in journals,
- peer-reviewed abstracts accepted in national or smaller conferences which aren't published.

Should I make a distinction between these two types of abstracts? How do you separate abstracts selected for an oral comunication and/or poster and invited talks?

I used to have a section named Conference contribution and three subsections Invited talk, Oral communication and Poster but I'm not sure about this format and I'm wondering whether it's relevant to add this information or if I should filter more. Also, do people include all abstracts or only the first author?


texts: Appropriate topics over lunch with an invited speaker

texts: There's a speaker coming to my university to give a lecture that all students and faculty are invited to. My department is especially interested in the speaker because he will be talking about a field that is closely-related to us. Students in my department were invited to join the speaker for lunch (which is before his talk). Given that we're all socially-awkward academics and that we haven't heard his talk yet (but we do have the abstract and his background), what are some appropriate lunch conversations? Do we discuss what he'll be talking about later that day or avoid the topic? While I am interested in his work, I don't know enough about it to start an intelligent conversation about something related to his topic.


texts: I'm confused: someone said that a PhD in Europe is free, someone said that you get paid. What's true? And how hard is to get a PhD salary in Physics in North Europe?


texts:
The statements of

"Applicants who are invited to campus for interviews must be able to show proof that they will be eligible and qualified to work in the United States by the time of hire."

is almost associated with every open academic positions in US and I am wondering what does this statement clearly mean?
As far as I know, academic positions in US are opened to the scientifically eligible candidates worldwide, but receiving US work permit requires a sponsor (employer) inside US who should initiate visa application.
My 1st question: Does this sentence show unwillingness of the employer (university in this case) to support applicants' visa application? Does this position only open to those residing in US? or work permit holders?
From the immigration website, I learnt that there are some costs for the employer who is offering job to an outsider. But, universities are exempted from paying the biggest chunk ($1500).
My 2nd question: Considering low visa petition cost, what else is the problem that US-based universities are hesitant to hire such candidates.
My 3rd question: Is faculty selection in US-based universities based on candidate's merit or there are other parameters when selecting them.
Edit: I think the email received from UW can be of help to get better idea of the situation.

Dear XYZ,
When completing your application for employment at the University of Washington you were asked to complete the US Work Authorization Assessment. The second question asked was:
To legally work in the United States, will you require University of Washington sponsorship for an H1-B, other UW sponsored visa, or UW sponsored green card now or in the future?
You responded yes, that you would need sponsorship, either now or in the future. As a result you are not eligible for employment in staff positions at the University.

I emailed to HR of UW for clarification with this note:

Does UW consider only those foreigners for staff position who are currently having work permit in US? Those who are willing to obtain work permit based on the UW job offer are ineligible to work in UW?

UW Reply (Though I think the reply is by a robot):

Unfortunately, the UW does not provide sponsorship for Green Cards( or HB-1 visas, or any other type of work authorization requiring sponsorship.) for staff positions.

EDIT 2: Though my question is about academic staff position, about university of washington, I applied for research scientist. Here is the link to the job opening.


texts: How long does one need to keep the original data of a study / publication?

texts:
Most journals require to make data available at the time of publication (repository / upon request or similar). But for how long does the data need to be kept (field of on (bio)medicine)? This would especially be interesting in relation to the scientific wish to keep the data forever vs the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Journal guidelines as below seem not to specify this ...

https://www.nature.com/nature-research/editorial-policies/reporting-standards
https://authors.bmj.com/policies/data-sharing/


texts: Is it worth/okay to write an email to a grad school I'm waiting on in an attempt to strengthen my position as an applicant?

texts:
hope everyone's well.

To explain my situation, I'm waiting to hear back from Columbia University's MSOR program. It was my #1 choice when I applied, and I'm considering sending an email to restate my strong interest in the program and to strengthen my position as an applicant.

Briefly put, I was a Chemical Engineering major and so wasn't initially intending to apply to an Operations Research program. Thus I had basically zero work experience in the field. However, I've gotten an internship in a consulting firm after applying, and I've been doing data analysis, database management, and web crawler development. I've done a lot more than was initially expected of me as an intern, and I've had a lot of fun in the process.

Would it make sense to send an email about this? The program isn't research-focused, which I think makes this a tad more sketchy, since the only option I can think of is to send an email directly to the admissions office. (i.e. since I have no prospective research advisor)

I'd be grateful for any advice. Thanks for reading, and be safe.


texts: Getting a recommendation letter when applying for a job before finishing graduate program

texts:
I am midway through the third year of a five year graduate program. Grad school has been fine and I am not struggling academically but there is a full-time job offering in my city (in a field related to my program) that is very interesting to me. If I take this job, I will leave my graduate program. I am not considering leaving my program for any other jobs.

What is the best way to go about applying for this job? The application requires two references and I will have a challenging time finding references that are not professors in my program. I would prefer that these professors not know that I am considering leaving the program, as I would like to stay in school if I am not offered the job or if I decide that it is not for me after all.


texts:
I could not find any guidelines on how to plan¹ and conduct a research project. Because it seems like when I have just a goal, i.e., a specific hypothesis to check, and passion in the beginning, the passion go away in a while, and without a specific plan and deadlines, I start digging into every little problem or new field of study and often reformulating the initial hypothesis accordingly. In the end, I just have a bunch of partially read papers and not-working or partially working tests or proof-of-concept code that gives me some insight into how things work (if I was lucky enough), but does not lead to any publishable results.

Why can’t I just “focus on checking a single hypothesis”? Well, because in most cases first implementation does not seem to work at all, so what I do is just keep reading stuff and testing subroutines or sub-hypotheses – and never end up in having an entire thing working.

(I'm a grad student only, so I do learn a lot of stuff still)

tl;tr: is there any “GTD: researchers guide”?

¹ not pro forma, but rather to keep on track


texts: What supporting documents to send along grad school application?

texts:
when applying to grad schools most university portals allow applicants to upload additional documents; I would like to know how can applicants make use of this opportunity and add documents to alter their status in the admission process.
though this question might be considered as not having a specific answer I must say: what type of content can be added to be considered useful. e.g. Drafts of manuscripts, research proposal (if it is not included in the required documents), other related works (such as projects, dataset, tools etc.), and CV (if not included in the required documents).


texts: What is the threshold for a software paper to be publishable?

texts:
I've been asked to referee a paper about a software tool. I'm struggling with whether this particular work is sufficient to warrant publication. The journal I'm reviewing for doesn't have a "notability/novelty" criterion, but they do require that the work be a "unit of publication."

Let's call the thing I'm reviewing "Feature." Feature is part of a larger package, let's call it "Package." Feature is a GUI tool that takes the data that has already been calculated by Package and plots it using a widely-used plotting backend. It has some nice stuff exposing options in the plotting backend as GUI elements, and a few options related to the nature of the plot being made (scatter plot vs. heatmap, basically, plus some toggles based on domain-specific labels in the data).

Here are some facts that are shaping my view:

There is essentially no scientific logic in Feature. It needs to be able to read the files, optionally multiply by a weight, and then it has a few stored toggles in the data to change which data is presented. But it's mainly a very simple GUI to analyze visualize data from Package.
The entirety of Feature is less than 1400 lines of code, with almost half being the GUI-specific.
Looking at the code, (especially non-GUI) I suspect that I could cut about 300-400 lines of code -- the developers aren't using scientific software tools available, including reimplementing a function that's in a library they include.
Currently, a paper about Package version X.0 is under peer review (X>1); cited in the manuscript I'm reviewing. All authors of the paper on Feature are also authors of the paper on Package.
The entire author list for Package is essentially one research group -- this isn't a giant community-wide effort. And the paper on Package version X-1 was published only 2 years ago, so I'm surprised they're trying to get two more software papers out already.

The last two especially annoy me, because I feel like the purpose of scientific software papers are to make scientific software development citable, not to pad your paper count. The authors will already be getting the citations based on the other paper.

On the other side, I came to this with some bias that one of the authors has a tendancy to care more about quantity than quality with publications. So I'm not sure if my leaning toward reject is partially based on that, or on the facts on the ground. (Hence the desire for other opinions.)

EDIT: I forgot to say that Feature is not yet merged into the main branch of Package, but it currently in a separate branch in the same git repository.


texts: Is it better to submit a new research grant proposal or an extension of previous work?

texts: When submitting a research proposal for a funding agency, I heard two different pieces of advice from principal investigators that have won several awards. The first suggestion is to submit a proposal that is directly related to the PI work and consider that as a preliminary result. The second piece of advice was to submit something totally new which might extend the boundaries of science. I wonder if there are any general recommendations for research proposals that would increase the chance of being funded.


texts: Telling my department about switching to a new PhD program - moral dilemma

texts:
Background
I'm a PhD student in a science PhD program in the US. I had a fellowship covering all costs + a stipend and so far I haven't  had to TA or RA. I'd be TAing from next year though.
I have had a shift of interest towards field B. I like to work (in academia) in a different field, and although I'm still interested in my current field, it's become clear to me through many discussions with the people in both fields that I should switch to B. I applied for PhD programs in B, surprisingly I got in despite lack of background, and now I have to make a decision within a few days to either stay in my current program and forget about field B or leave my current program and start a new PhD in B in the fall.
Interest-wise, it's clear to me that I like to migrate to field B. This is far from an over-night decision, and I let my interests in the field ripen over the course of a couple of years before getting to this stage. But I'm facing a serious challenge telling my current department that I want to leave for a new program, and I'd appreciate some advice on how I should do that.
Here is why this is challenging:

I've kept them in the dark about this decision so far (I know I shouldn't have, but it's part my personality not to share important updates until they're finalized and part the situation wouldn't allow me to do that confidently). I have signaled my interest in field B, but as an interdisciplinary interest, and as such, I've been encouraged to pursue it by my department.
My current department and advisor have been extra nice and cooperative with me. They supported me so kindly through a personal hardship I went through, while they definitely didn't have to.
So far, I've been on fellowship, only takin courses, exploring, etc., and no research or teaching output. Now I'm at a stage that I'll soon start "paying off" for the department's investment in me, and it feels morally wrong to leave now, after taking their money and giving nothing back.
There's an important milestone in my current program that's approaching within days, and I have to tell them before they actually start working on that, because that'd make it even worse if they put all the effort to send me to the next stage and then learn that I was planning to leave soon anyways.  Of course they know I've made serious decisions about this quite a while ago that now I have an offer. I'm afraid they might feel used if they learn as they were providing extraordinary support for me, I was preparing for leaving them without telling them anything about it.

My questions:

What's the best way to approach this and tell the department about this?
The truth is I've been in a situation that personally I couldn't put my mind into making this decision until this past week. I've had some time to clear my mind now, and I want to make this transition, but the items above are holding me back. As I said, I don't dislike my current field, so I'm even wondering if what I'm doing is so unethical, perhaps I should stay. Is this so unethical?


texts: How to search google scholar for singular and plural words?

texts:
I want to look up also the plural of my words on Google Scholar.
Here is a part of my search: "entrepreneur OR entrepreneurs".
Is there a more efficient way, for example using regex-like "entrepreneurs?"?
What about woman/women?


texts: Job advertisement: "Liaise professionally"

texts: Australian academic job advertisements often ask for candidates to show they can liaise professionally with people in certain other academic roles.  What sort of experience or achievements are they looking for?


texts: I'm an undergraduate student majoring in math, and ,as my graduation condition requires, I'm planning to write a thesis, but will it be okay to just write an exposition of the theory?


texts:
I've been a software developer for about three years now (making custom ERP software), I love programming and also other areas in CS like AI, but I really don't like the fact that you have to learn a lot of business related topics (accounting, finance, so on) and also having to deal with end-users and managers.

I've been thinking about starting an MSc degree in computer science and turning my career more onto academia. I think it's best to do a MSc and not directly a PhD because I feel that I can go back to industry if I don't like academia.

Is the move to academia over industry the way to go or I'll face similar problems there?

Here is some more data: I am still somewhat young (28 yrs) and with a B.Sc Degree in Information Systems with 4.1 out of 5 GPA from a small college.


texts:
I am writing some essays for some MBA courses and I will start writing my master thesis soon. I always prefer to source ideas out of books and journals, rather than online resources. Google Books is a miracle in the sense that I can find genuine free book resources and it allows me to verify any secondary and tertiary information I have.

However, I've been reading about this fair use rule recently and I am unable to answer this question now: if I want to paraphrase a specific idea (for example, the definition of "value" in marketing as stated in book x by author y), can I still go on and paraphrase it and include all the required citation? Is this still considered fair use? (I am asking this because I read that the fair use should be "trans-formative", yes sometimes I am commenting and analyzing others ideas but most of the times I am paraphrasing others ideas just for the sake of adding relevant information and literature review (especially in essays))


texts: How to refer to works that I did not read

texts:
In the context of my thesis research I have recovered the data of some important old papers whose data is sometimes referred by the name of its authors, but that are never explicitly cited.

I though it important to refer all the data of these papers somewhere, but if  were to I include them in the bibliography/references section, I may be giving the impression that I have read them.

How should I point to these works that I do not need to read, but that some readers of my work might be interested in reading? I know the answer might depend on the citation format I'm using or the type of publication. But I haven't seen any explicit indications for doing this kind of citation.

Thanks in advance for your help.


texts: What can I do with a research project that is my university’s intellectual property?

texts:
I'm working on a final year project on software development. I intend to publish it as a research paper on computer science, but the university says that it will hold intellectual-property rights (IPR) over all final year projects.

Can I publish the project as an independent research paper in a journal by including me and co-authors or will the IPR of the university cause problems?


texts: Is copyediting good for an academic career?

texts:
I have recently been involved in managing a special issue in a scientific journal. The chief-editor was somehow appreciative of my work and now wants me to join the journal's board as a copyeditor. I am puzzled by this request since I have no example of an academic being involved in such a task. Usually, being an editor (see Why become a journal editor?) involves more content evaluation.

Would my academic career take advantage of such a duty?


texts: Reference on the time it takes for a source code used for a research article to be released

texts:
Is there any research/study/survey/... that looked at how much time it takes for the authors of a research article to release the source code? Ideally I'm looking for an approximation distribution.

This question is a follow-up of Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles?


texts:
I am not sure if this question is within the scope of this community, but I am rather dumbfounded by the logo of Duke University Libraries, which can be found near the bottom left corner of its homepage.

To me, this looks like the profile of a much-despised Biblical figure, whom I doubt is subject the figure is really portraying. Who, or what, then, is the image portraying?


texts: Is dishonesty sufficient to terminate a grad student?

texts:
I am a professor who runs a research lab at a university. I have a grad student who works with me, and who also has a history of lying. Most recently, he took information home with him that should have been kept in the lab (which was a breach of our IRB/research ethics). I believe that it was an honest mistake, but the problem was how he dealt with it. He told three different stories about what happened with this information, each of which contradicted the others. So, he either has a poor memory for how he handles important study information or he is flat-out lying to me (I believe the latter). I need to trust that my students follow lab procedures when I am not around and that they will be accountable for their actions. I am liable for my students' actions and mistakes.

Have you dealt with a dishonest student in a research setting? Did this result in termination of the student or...?


texts: Should I cite every study that supports my point?

texts: Suppose I'm writing a paper and at some point in the paper (e.g. the background section), I write that "Vanilla ice cream is healthier than chocolate ice cream." I search EBSCO and find check all research studies that tested this and find and skim through 15 papers all supporting this claim, including the earliest pioneer research in the area up to the most recent. Is it then appropriate to affix in-text citations for all 15 of those studies to that sentence? What about if I find 50 studies?


texts: Forgot to email a professor back about a research opportunity. What to expect?

texts:
First off, I messed up big time here. I'm applying for a Fulbright academic fellowship after having finished my undergrad last year.

This spring, I figured I would email some potential advisors and get a head start on my application. I found one that was a good match with my previous work, and she agreed that she could host me as long as I got the scholarship in the end. (edit to be clear: the start date was clearly stated in our initial correspondence, contingent on me getting the scholarship)

But this coincided with a move to Europe (I was there for 6 months on a research scholarship) - I know this is no excuse, but just to explain the circumstances better - and I forgot to reply to her.

I sent her an email now apologizing profusely, expressing my understanding that she might not want to host me any longer, and explaining the circumstances to her (i.e. if she was still willing to discuss this further). I wanted to let her know that I wasn't shopping around for other opportunities, and am only emailing her back after so long because I couldn't find anything; on the contrary, our research interests align well (it's not a huge country and this is just about the only research group that works in my field anyway).

I'm operating under the assumption that she's going to say no, but lesson learned for next time. I'm just wondering how big of an offense I committed here?


texts: Does submitting TeX sources to arXiv increase risk of plagiarism?

texts:
It is mandatory that manuscripts that are TeX/LaTeX-based must be submitted along with all source files, which includes the tex document, images and supplementary files (like CSV files) required to generate the PDF.

According to arXiv's TeX FAQ, this sort of submission does not increase the risk of plagiarizing content. They claim that anyone with little knowledge can extract the necessary files from basic PDF files and that verbatim from TeX document can be easily detected.

Now, taking this from the practical viewpoint, is it really true that this does not make plagiarizing data easier than the simple PDF submission? According to my knowledge there are many potential plagiarizers who find it hard to take vector graphics from PDF files. Eventhough it is technically possible it does deter many to an extent.

So, does submitting (La)TeX source files to arXiv increase the risk of getting the plagiarized?


texts: Who issues the transcripts that applicants are asked to upload for a PhD application?

texts:
For applying on PhD programm I need to upload Bachelor Certificate, Bachelor Grades, Master Certificate and Master Grades?
I must upload it in PDF files.

My question is who is the issuer of these transcripts? Universities?

Do I have to translate these documents and the scan to PDF?

Please for a little guidance.


texts:
I have submitted a paper to a conference in theoretical computer science in China, whose deadline was today 06/Mar/2016, 11:59 EST. It is not one of the mainstream conferences, but I have heard some serious computer scientists advertising it. In some conference ranking sites, this conference is ranked B. On the other hand there are some prestigious specialized conferences that are also ranked B. So I decided to submit to it.

Looking for the historic of the conference in previous years, I have seem that the average acceptance ratio is 30%, and that the number of submissions each year is above 100 (some years way above 100).

Now for my surprise, I submitted my paper something like one hour before the deadline, and my paper received a number below 10. The submission system was easychair, and there were some boxes where we could chose the subjects of research related to the paper.

My questions are:

1) Is it normal to have such few submissions at easychair
just one hour before the deadline?

2) Is it possible that this conference is artificially increasing the statistics for the previous years? One weird thing that I noted is that
in previous years the proceedings were published at lncs. However this year,
there is no information about where the proceedings will be published.

3) I'm seriously thinking about withdrawing, since I can't imagine how the conference will reach a reasonable number of submissions, even if the deadline is extended. Do you think I should do that?


texts: Racial Classification in US College Admissions Process

texts:
Elite U.S. universities are known to have affirmative action policies based on race and sex (and maybe religion?), in an effort to promote diversity.

I wonder how they can classify applicants based on race, given that it is sometimes difficult to clearly identify or prove one's race.

Is there a checkbox dedicated to race on an application form? For example, can a child of an Asian mother and a black farther choose to be categorized as black so as to improve the chance of admission?

I am asking these questions purely out of curiosity because I was born, raised and educated in Japan, a rather homogeneous society where no official records on race are kept.

I wonder the U.S. registry keeps residents' races, so it is relatively easy for Americans to obtain official documents proving their races.

As for religion, I guess it is even more difficult to obtain official documents. So, do applicants discretionally select their religions without the need to prove it, or does the U.S. government have religious records on its citizens? If applicants are free to choose, some unscrupulous individuals can choose a minority religion that gives a better chance, regardless of their true faith?

I have no idea about international applicants. Outside the U.S., it is very difficult and sometime impossible to officially prove one's race or religion, so the U.S. college admissions committee considers nationality only in the screening process?

I have no plan to apply for a U.S. university or have no interest in ideological stuff. But I would like to know practical aspects of affirmative action in American universities.


texts: What to write for subject when contacting potential supervisor?

texts: I am trying to contact a potential supervisor about doing a master’s by research. I have already wrote my email by I am unsure about what to write for the subject box of the email. Different people have advised me on different things and I am unsure what do. Does anyone know what is a good subject line?


texts: Asking for Recommendation Letters for Multiple Grad School Applications

texts:
I would like to apply for many math PhD programs in order to maximize my chance of success.

My main question is how should I ask for recommendation letters. In particular, should I ask for a generic letter (in the sense that it's addressed to "the admission committee") to use for all my applications? Or should I ask for multiple letters from the same person for every university I want to apply to (presumably the letters have the same content, except maybe in who it is addressed to)?

Also, most PhD application deadlines are in December. But I finished undergrad at the end of last year. Should I ask for these letters now so as to not increase the time between when the professors know me and when they write the letter (this may mean I'm sending a letter dated February in November), or should I ask closer to the deadline around November this year?


texts: Is it wrong or looked upon to acknowledge God on Master's thesis paper?


texts: Can writing sandwich thesis in computer science be harmful to your career?

texts:
In the next months I will defend my thesis and I wonder if it is really worth it to write a traditional thesis. Although I have time to write it, I would consider a “waste” of time that I could use continuing my research (or improving some of my results).

On the other side, all my colleagues have written a traditional thesis, that is why I am not sure if a sandwich thesis would harm, somewhat, my future career.


texts: Publishing a paper - not enrolled in university

texts:
I've never delved deeper into this but I'm still curious: do I need to be enrolled in a PhD to publish scientific papers?

I have a MSc but I regularly read research papers of not-so-great-a-quality and think "I might write better stuff than this". It doesn't happen with the majority of papers but the point is: I don't think those authors are all smarter than me.

How does a 'private citizen' not enrolled in any PhD course publish a research to a journal?


texts:
DOIs are used to identified papers, presentations, datasets, programs, figures, audio files, video files, amongst other things. ORCID iDs are used to identify researchers.

Why using ORCID iDs instead of DOIs to identify researchers?


texts: Is there any reliable website other than google translate to translate from Chinese to English?

texts: So I have come across a paper that will highly beneficial to me and my research group ,but the problem its in chinese and it heavily involves chemical formulas and mathematical data,so its hard to translate using google translate.Is there any site that translates academia papers?


texts: PhD program application - CV (3+ pages) versus resume (1-2 pages) in the US

texts:
I am applying to neurobiology Ph.D. programs in the US that focus on disease research.

I am seeking opinions on my personal situation regarding the decision to include either a resume (1-2 sides) OR a CV (multiple pages) in my graduate school application for the schools that don't provide me much space to write about research. I also want to know about whether or not I can include research experience blurbs in the CV.

Originally, after being told by most schools that allow up to 5 recommendation letters to only submit 3 and after being told not to upload anything in the "optional and additional uploads," I felt a resume would be better for my application. Less writing and easier to read for the admissions faculty. However, I know many Ph.D.students that have submitted CVs, and almost every school I'm applying to states that I can submit a CV.

I don't have that much to discuss, aside from 3 significant 2+ year teaching experiences as an undergraduate student and 3 research experiences (2 summer internships + home university research since I was a freshman). Unfortunately, I won't have a paper out for at least another year due to an ongoing study. I am also active in several clubs/honors societies. Thus, my current "resume" is 3.5 pages long. I could probably get it to 2 pages, but this is where you come in.

Would you suggest to expand even more, possibly elaborating more on my research experiences so that my CV is around 4-6 pages, or would you recommend to keep it as a brief resume? For the CV, can I include 4-5 sentence research descriptions after I list the knitty-gritty stuff (e.g. program, what I did in that research program in regard to career building, etc.)?

The main reason I ask this is that I'm slowly starting to figure out some schools give me absolutely no room to discuss research experience. For instance, Johns Hopkins allows me to write a single page personal statement while answering quite a few other large points; thus, elaborating on research is hard. Also, I just contacted Duke who had a similar case in their application, and the Ph.D. admissions advisor for neuroscience told me to include details about my research experiences in the CV or the optional supplemental uploader. Harvard told me not to utilize the optional supplemental uploader to further discuss my research, although they allow CV uploads.

Regardless, for some of these schools, I will need to at least include a few extra sentences about my research whether that be through the optional file uploader or a CV. Has anyone had this internal debate or has a strong opinion on the better option? Thank you!


texts: Is there a financial benefit for PhD student to join a funded research project

texts: I'm a first year PhD in Computer Science at a UK university. Recently, my supervisor has asked me to join a funded research project consisting of other post-docs and lecturers, i.e. I'll be the only PhD student in that project. My supervisor believes that it will be helpful for me to join since my research topic and a project's theme have many similarities, which I also agree. However, he doesn't mention anything about if I get paid to work in that project. So, I wonder if it is normal for a PhD student to work in a funded research project without getting paid.


texts: Accept a PhD offer from a local school while applying to others?

texts:
I just completed a masters in CS at a local school while working as a developer. I liked the process and want to go on to a PhD in other places. My adviser supports my choice and is writing me letters to the other schools. That said, the (small) department has offered me funding to stay on for the PhD, starting in the spring. The faculty in my department study very different things from me. I am applying to much more prestigious places now. If I don't get in I will probably take a year to publish more and then apply again. With that said, should I accept the offer to transfer into the PhD program at my local school? Will it help or hurt my chances if I need to reapply? I could certainly say (credibly) that there is no advisor in my department that supports my interests. I saw this and this but am not sure what to do:

Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?

Trying other PhD opportunities while accepting an offer from my master supervisor?


texts:
I am having some serious issues with my dissertation.  I am currently on my third and perhaps last draft of my final dissertation.  I sent my draft to committee to revise after mentor said to do so.  The first reader took one week to respond.  The second reader has not responded for two months despite me sending reminders!  It is the university's policy for readers to provide revisions after three weeks.

I kept my mentor abreast of what's going on.  This particular reader has given other students issues with their dissertation.  My mentor then informed the department chair who is currently handling the situation and said that doing so carries risks and that it will take a while.  Since this sounds quite alarming I asked my mentor to speak over the phone for more details a couple of days ago and has not responded.  What could be the potential risks and time frame?

I should have graduated this week but given the above that is obviously not happening.  In speaking with others who have defended they have all endured some sort of academic "hazing" from their mentors and readers.

Of note, this particular reader is in charge of signing off to ensure that students have met all graduation requirements after defending so I would have to sit down with this reader after defending.

Anyone here has had a similar experience?  I don't want to pay for another semester because of the reader's evasion.  Would the university waive tuition/fees until I defend?  Lastly, what should I say when I am applying to postdocs regarding this?  Thanks!


texts: Should my supervisor acknowledge me in his recent paper?

texts:
In my chemistry undergraduate I did a project with my supervisor, I worked on it for around 8 months. Around a year later they published a paper on this same topic, after my project was handed in they asked for more details about certain elements that weren't clear in my final draft and I helped the best I could.

To be clear, none of my data was published in the paper and the research that was published was leaps and bounds more advanced anything I did. But I feel so they perhaps used my research to rule out certain things that didn't work or need repeating. Do you think my name should be mentioned anywhere in the paper as just an acknowledgement?


texts: What funding sources are available for mathematicians in Italy?

texts: In addition to European funds (ERC grants), what funding sources are available for researchers in mathematics working (or aiming to work) in Italy at different career stages ((1) postdoc, (2) RTDa/RTDb, (3) professor)?


texts: The concept of state of the art references in review of a paper

texts:
My question is that what improvement in introduction of a paper or other parts of paper the authors should do when the reviewers wrote the following sentence:

The authors have missed many important state of the art references

Thanks in advance


texts: How can we check if a book is a sequel edition of an older one with different names?

texts:
How do you check if  a book is a new edition of an older book, but they have different titles, without accessing the books? Are there websites which maintain such records?

For example, is this book

Fundamentals of data structures in C / Ellis Horowitz, Sartaj Sahni, Susan Anderson-Freed.
Edition 2nd ed.
Published/Created   Summit, NJ : Silicon Press, 2008.

a newer edition to this one

Fundamentals of data structures / Ellis Horowitz, Sartaj Sahni.
Published/Created: Computer Science Press, c1976.

Does the second one have later editions?


texts: Chances of getting R&D job in industry after PhD in AI/Robotics

texts:
I am a student of computer science from India and specialize in Artificial Intelligence & Robotics. I have completed M.Tech (for those who do not know, it covers 18 years of education. It is actually PG in engineering, sort of an Indian equivalent of MS, consists of a one year course work + one year dissertation ). I have a conference paper to my name and I'll take up my GRE exams in a short while. I wish to pursue PhD from the US. Let us assume I make it to one of the top 50 grad schools in US in the next academic session.

What are my chances of landing in a good R&D job in industry after completing PhD? I do not wish to stay in academia throughout my career. I do not wish to teach. Post-PhD, I'd prefer a transition to industrial R&D.

I have not really figured out the details, have just started conceptualizing a career plan. So I thought it wise to start with the basic question. Given my career objective, is PhD really worth it?


texts: Final paper submission while NOT attending the conference

texts:
I'm the corresponding author of my accepted paper in a conference. I won't be able to attend the conference so one of the co-authors will attend and present the paper.

Now for the final paper submission, I have to make a full registration for the system to let me upload the final version.

Should I register and upload the final paper while I know I'm not going to attend? I know that only the corresponding author can submit the final version.
Is it possible to register and then somehow transfer my submission to my co-author who will be attending or he needs to make a separate registration?


texts: Applying for grad school without undergraduate background

texts:
Is it possible to apply for a graduate program in theoretical physics without having a bachelor's degree in physics or mathematics?
I'm completely self-taught. I'm half way through Jackson electrodynamics and Peskin QFT. These books are taught to students at a graduate level, let's say that I can pass the GRE exam and graduate level examinations. Is it possible that this would substitute for an undergraduate degree?


texts:
I'm a PhD candidate in Industrial Engineering and currently in my fourth semester.
I passed my qualifying exam in the second semester. Till then I was a TA and I was fully funded by the department. starting from the third semester they started giving half stipend which drags me into endless financial issues in my life. I talked wih my advisor, graduate program director and the chairman, but no one exlplained me why that happened. I'm  not the only PhD student having the same issue in my department. I can't concentrate on my research and day by day I'm becoming a debtor.

I find it very difficult to approach my advisor. When ever I wanted to meet him, I have to take an appointment and he'll give a date in a month. Once we had a research meeting and that was the only one for these two years. When I see my senior students, I feel like they are used to this way.

Should get a Master and leave the PhD?


texts: How to deal with sources whose authors I don't have good relationship with?

texts: I used to have a good relationship with an author, but now it's broken. However, my work is heavily based on the work of that author, and I'm not sure if citing it without informing them is OK here. Would there be any potential trouble from this? What if they explicitly tell me to not cite theirs? I just don't want to make the relationship worse, because they may not want to have any affiliation with me. But this is just my thought, I really don't know what they really think.


texts: Is it common to make seniority distinctions between coauthors of a paper in math?

texts:
Twice now, I've read a paper written by a prominent researcher and some other "younger" researchers, e.g. instead of being superstars they're merely professors, I guess. In the text, he is referred to as the "senior author", e.g. in sentences that read like "In [4], the senior proved this result which is relevant to us because..."

I was a bit shocked, to be honest, essentially because I had never seen something like this in (pure) mathematics. In my mind there was always the implicit assumption that all others contributed approximately equally to the paper, which explained the alphabetical ordering of authors in (almost) all papers.

How common is this? Have you seen this before, and if so, how often?


texts: Is it possible to recover after completely botching my best chances to get a PhD?

texts:
I'm currently a master's student in computer science, thinking about applying to PhD programs. As I detailed in this post, I had the audacity to ask my advisor why he hadn't let me work on projects that he allowed other students with equivalent qualifications to work on and instead had me working on a project that, according to one of his co-authors, was not publishable (it was more of an industry thing and they were just going to stick it on the internet somewhere). In response, he fired me from my gave someone else the TA position he had said I would have and now isn't even responding to my emails. (And he refused to answer any of the questions I'd asked him, btw.)

Is it even possible to salvage my chances of getting into a top PhD program after this? He's a famous professor and very well regarded in his field. A letter of recommendation from him would have been CRITICAL in my applications to PhD programs. Now, I not only don't have a publication to my name, but have NOTHING to show for a project I worked three months on. I know that conflicts between advisors and students are typical, but do they typically result in a totally burned bridge without even a LOR? Presumably, my potential bridges with everyone he knows (several professors in other schools) are also burned for me as well!

I suppose I can try to find someone else in the department to do research with, but

this setback has delayed my application by at least a year, and
the only professor in my area who seems nice enough to work with is a very junior professor, and my understanding is that a LOR from a well-known professor is critical. (I've met all the other professors in my school in my chosen specialty and they all come off as complete assholes.)

I am left with a few questions:

Did I just completely blow my chances? If not, how can I possibly get on my feet to be a competitive PhD applicant by next year?
How is it possible to find a nice, supportive advisor?? I had done my due diligence: I talked to several of my advisor's students, and they had nothing but good things to say about him. I'm not sure what other sources I could possibly find. A friend of mine did the same with a different advisor, only for his true colors to come out after several months of working with him as well. Is it really just a roll of the dice, where even if I get into a PhD program, odds are the advisor is going to turn out to be an asshole?
In the future, am I just supposed to keep my mouth shut even if I have reservations about the project I'm working on?

UPDATE: This experience (and a couple others) soured me on academia completely and I ended up going into industry instead. So far so good.


texts: Justification statement for exceeding the maximum length of manuscript

texts: I am submitting a manuscript to a journal that specifies "papers must not exceed 30 double-spaced manuscript pages, including all figures and tables." My manuscript has 37 pages. The journal asks to provide a justification statement if the manuscript exceeds the length limitations. Based on previous experience with the journal, one of my colleagues told that the journal is not too strict and generally considers papers that exceed the maximum specified length. Since I am submitting a manuscript to this journal for the first time, I am quite anxious. Please advise how I may justify the length of the manuscript.


texts: Is it appropriate to attend a class one is not registered for?

texts:
Is it appropriate for a student to attend a class s/he is not registered for?

I am a CS student and I am almost done with my degree, but there are some very interesting electives that I will not get to take and I would love to simply attend those courses any way.

Is this inappropriate to do? Should I ask the professor's permission first?

I am not sure what my school's policy on the matter is, since I could not find a single source on the topic online from them.


texts:
Let's assume I learnt what plagiarism is on different websites such as university webpages, wikipedia, dictionary webpages, articles that can be reached Google Scholar, blogs, etc. and wrote about it.
As you predict my words, sentences, paragraphs will be similar or same what I learnt from them.
Is this considered plagiarism?
Is there a standard to understand what plagiarism is exactly?


texts: One of my group members did not contribute anything and I notified my course lecturer. Did I do the right thing?

texts:
So to describe the scenario, here is what happened. We were assigned a group task for business throughout the entire semester. Each of us discussed what topics to cover and came up with an equal amount of workload for each member. I had noticed that close to the due date, we were quite far away from finishing the assignment (I myself was to blame as well) but we managed to pull it off by the very last few hours before it was due. Except for one of my team mates who did not post anything into our collaborative assignment document, but did mention she had her research ready and was ready to start. We also had a couple of team meetings with our course lecturer to notify our progress and also clearly stating the deadline of this task so she was completely aware of what to do and when to finish it by. I overlooked this until about 1 hour before it was due (as I was working during this time) I noticed that her piece of information was missing. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and thought maybe she was finalising everything and then going to pull it off last minute. But nothing happened so I desperately tried to contact her only to find that she was completely offline from the phone and her provided social media. So we ended up submitting an incomplete assignment. I ended up contacting the course lecturer and he stated that considering what had happened she will receive a zero.

I later received a message the next day, stating an apology and her explaining how she had some "issues". She did not go into detail but I am assuming they are quite serious. Hence, I now feel extremely awful about her getting a zero. Should I recontact the course lecturer about this?

p.s I was definitely very disorganised with this assignment as I think i did not communicate often enough to encourage each other to complete parts by certain deadlines.


texts: Why and how to go to the US for a PhD-exchange semester?

texts:
Context: My wife and I are both PhD candidates in good-but-not-major eastern European universities, aiming to defend our theses in fall 2017 (i.e., in 15 months). She works in accounting, whereas my research focuses on engineering science. She has been accepted in an east-coast US university for an exchange semester as of January 2017.
Since for obvious personal reasons I do not want to stay one ocean away from her during 6 months, I'd like to visit US-universities at the same time (+/- 2 months).

Questions:
Exchange semesters are not common in my lab. So I lack perspective on how and why to go to the US. So here are my questions:

What is the purpose of visiting another university at the end of your PhD? What would be expected of me if I do go there?
Must such exchange be formally validated/accepted, or is a casual agreement with the lab PI ok? (N.B.: I am financially independent)
Can I directly contact "the one" Professor (of international and cross-fields renown) my research and saying that I'd like to collaborate, or is it mandatory to be recommended? Are there tacit how-tos?
Should I mention my wife's situation?

Note that I would have wanted such an exchange, even if my wife would not have been accepted for this exchange. However, her situation imposes the period.
My scientific supervisors do not have contacts in the US.


texts: Graduate student titles on funded research proposal

texts: I am currently a graduate student at a large research institution in the United States. As part of a research assistantship I have made significant contributions to an NSF funded research project. The PI and a Senior Person on the project (who just accepted an assistant professor position) are preparing a follow-up grant application where they will both be PI's. They have invited me to participate. As a graduate student is it possible to be a Senior Person on this new project? What does the role entail and what qualifications are necessary?


texts: If I use photos in my thesis that I found on Internet, should I cite them? If so, how should the photos be cited? Should I write something like "In Figure 4.5 [9]" or should I cite it in the Appendix? Or should I add the source in the caption?


texts: Is it ethical to obtain journal articles from places other than the publisher's official sites?

texts:
When I am at home and looking for journal articles I often find article PDFs  through google that have been uploaded to various websites (e.g., universities, institutions, arbitrary websites, etc...).

I am worried that using these files may infringe copyright since these articles may be bought by these universities (for example) and (by mistake?) were freely uploaded to their domain name like: www.university.edu.lb/journal_article1.pdf (probably for their own students?).

Is it ethical to use these downloaded PDFs during my research without going back to my own university elibrary to use them?
When, if ever, would I be breaching copyright or breaching professional ethics if I accessed these files?

EDIT: my question also covers books as, sometimes, these are entirely available on some sites (whether they are institutional sites or not).


texts: Can I talk about articles I'm refereeing?

texts:
For the first time, I've been asked to referee an article for a journal, and a prestigious one. I work in Maths, so the article has been online as a preprint on arXiv for some time, and it was on the top of my reading list anyways. I feel very confident that I can referee the article, that's not the problem. I understand it well, I don't have a conflict of interests.

But I don't know how to handle my refereeing work socially. Can I talk about it? When my office mate asks me "I've noticed you are reading this article very carefully and you're taking a lot of notes.", what can I say? Is it ok to say that I'm refereeing the article? Can I name the journal or the editor, if the conversation continues?

I'm thinking about the article a lot, so I'll inevitably talk about its contents often with my colleagues. Can I bring up my task as a referee? If I should hide it, what are some recommendations to do it?

I also happen to know another referee of the article. Is it appropriate to bring the review process up in a conversation?

And the killer aspect: If I meet the author on a conference, is it acceptable to tell them that I was a referee?

In short, I want to know what the appropriate boundaries are when discussing my refereeing work with others.


texts: How should I use a footnote reference inside a figure?

texts:
I am using a figure in my paper, wherein one of the components of the figure, I need to refer to a method that I have described in a section with an equation.
I want to use a small footnote reference in the figure, in the footnote, I will describe that I have explained the method in section X with the equation Y.
What should be the standard way to do it? Using square brackets (ex. [1]) can be confused with the reference section, so how to place it so it's not confusing.


texts: Is it appropriate to put conference volunteering on a CV?

texts:
From reading the many questions on here that relate to CVs it seems that some items are necessary on a CV and others are more appropriate at the persons difference stages within academia. As someone at the very early stage, masters student with no publications, is conference volunteering a plus or minus on a CV?

In my own situation I helped out at a 2 day conference that my department held. I assisted presenters with setting up their presentations and video recorded the conference for the university. As a smaller conference I was the only grad student that assisted.


texts: Is it wise to get another PhD in statistics after finishing PhD in math?

texts:
I am currently starting my second year of PhD study in mathematics at an institution ranked 70-80 in math in the US. In my first year, I have taken some courses in probability theory and passed two of three qualifying exams.

After taking the probability courses and since my girlfriend is pursuing a master in statistics. I found myself really interested in statistics, is it wise to get another PhD in statistics after finishing PhD in math, or should I try to apply for a PhD in statistics now?

Is it possible for me to get admitted to an good institution(ranked 30-40 in US) with only some backgrounds in math?


texts: Author qualifications to list in medical journal

texts: I'm a computer scientist collaborating with colleagues in our medicine faculty, and I'm writing a first draft of a manuscript we'd like to co-author for publication in a medicine journal (actual journal TDB). Looking briefly at similar papers, I notice that it's common for authors to have their qualifications (MD, PhD, etc.) listed along with their names. This isn't a convention common to my own field, and I wondered whether there are standard guidelines for which qualifications to include. I have several, including Masters, and a doctorate (DPhil) equivalent to a PhD, but no medical degree. Which should I use, and is it appropriate to use "PhD" instead of the actual doctorate title to avoid confusion?


texts: What to do about an important typo mistake in my submitted conference paper?

texts:
I just noticed there is an important typo mistake in my recently submitted conference paper. Actually it is like inserting a "-" where it shouldn't be and of course the whole algorithm might not converge if you use the above "-" in the formula! Well, if the reviewers try to dig out the mathematical details leading to that specific formula he might notice that it was a typo, otherwise he might claim that the algorithm shouldn't work as it is not stable because of that "-"!!

Anyway, as the submission has closed, i contacted the conference chairs to update the submission with that only change and they said not possible!
I also considered putting that in arxiv, but it'll be permanent and I cannot do any future modifications in case!

What about putting the correct version of the paper in my university home page?
Is it fine?
Do you generally advise that? I mean if the paper gets rejected, how high is the chance someone else use it in his/her work and publish it earlier than me? is it risky?

p.s: The results and conclusion and the claims are all made correctly and regardless of that typo mistake


texts:
ArXiv expects (La)TeX sources to be submitted rather than a PDF. But - if you build a document on a different system - different TeX distribution with different updates - you are not guaranteed to get exactly the same result. Worse than that - some packages/functionality which you're using may be missing.

How, then, should I approach making sure my (hopefully upcoming) ArXiv upload actually build and produce as little divergence from the version I build at home?


texts: What is the best way to turn down a Postdoc offer?

texts:
I've been recently offered a couple of Postdoc positions, and I was wondering how you as professors would prefer to be informed if a candidate would rather work with another institution.

I know we are professionals, and these things are to be expected, and probably the professor has another candidates to choose from, but I just want to be as respectful and professional myself as possible, so how would you turn down an offer, or would like to be turned down.


texts: Justification that 'good exposition' is uniquely defined

texts:
What evidence is there that changes to exposition that improve clarity for one reader will necessarily improve clarity for another reader?

The context I'm thinking of here particularly is referee comments (although the answer will probably apply more broadly). In various places I've read that if a referee says something is unclear then they are automatically right, because at least one reader has had trouble understanding. It seems to me that this assumes that 'the clearest description' will be the same for all readers. It is not clear to me why it is fair to rule out the possibility that the text simply doesn't align with the referee's preferred viewpoint.


texts: How to determine who is the PI and who the co-PI?

texts:
Suppose I submit a grant application with other investigators. The application form has one "PI" and some more "co-PI"-s.

Is it important who of us is the "PI" and who is the "co-PI"?
E.g., is being a "PI" like being a first author on a paper, which (in some disciplines) is considered more highly than being a second author?

Is there a common way to decide who gets to be the PI and who the co-PI, e.g., by alphabetic order of surnames (like the author order in some disciplines)?


texts: Is a letter of recommendation from an employer useful, when the company has shut down?

texts:
I worked for a while with a company developing software, at which I also used mathematics (my field of undergraduate study) often. I was close with my employer until the company shut down, but we still keep in contact every so often.

When applying to master's programs, alongside the normal letters from my undergrad professors and research advisor, would a letter of recommendation from this employer hold any weight? I know he could write a very positive one, but it would be more concerned with work-effort, attitude, etc than anything academic.


texts: I have to present a poster in two weeks and data analysis is going nowhere

texts: I am a first year PhD student in Psychology and I messed up. I submitted an abstract for a poster presentation before I had results in my hand thinking I will have it all done in time for the actual presentation. My advisor was very encouraging. I started analyzing the data a week ago and I feel very lost. I have made some minor progress, but I don't have a real "story" to say about my research, and I am worried its a dead end. I'm not sure what to do. How intense do poster presentations get? What does a bad poster presentation look like? Should I back out of the poster presentation? Or should I go ahead with it in the hopes that I find some minor interesting thing to say?


texts: For graduate admissions, focus on bachelor thesis or other research publication

texts:
Given a student coming to the end of their undergraduate career working on both a thesis for their bachelor degree as well as a separate research project in a research lab, which would hold more weight towards graduate admissions in US schools.

The main questions started with; in admissions, do people read the bachelor thesis.

I never have, but can't be sure of a standard.  If the student is working on a research topic that is set to be submitted for publication, should they focus on that paper and not worry about the bachelor thesis, vice versa, assuming time is constant and the bachelor grade remains the same.

My first thoughts were, a bachelor thesis is not peer reviewed, so any peer reviewed article would be much more likely to be read or at least glanced over beyond the title.  No one expects much out of a bachelor thesis, so it will be hard to convince someone to read it, maybe without some two page overview summary linked to the application.


texts: Should I prefer a grad-school recommendation from a PhD holder who doesn't know me well, or an MS holder who does?

texts:
I work at a start-up as a research intern, and I'm looking to get a recommendation letter from somebody within the company for my graduate application. I'm primarily looking at one of two people:

Person A: He has a PhD from a top-5 university, well recognized in the industry space he's in, and is also the CTO at the company I work at. I do know him semi-well and thinks I'm talented, but I've talked to him very rarely as he wasn't my manager.

Person B: He has an M.S. from a top-20 university, pretty recent graduate, and is a researcher at this company. I know him pretty well, as he's my manager and we have very frequent meetings; he would be able to discuss my research potential in heavy detail.

I'm at a loss as to who I should ask for this letter. I'm really, really leaning towards Person A since he's an alumni of the university I have as my top choice, but Person B would know me much better.


texts: Advisor moving to Industry for a year, How should I reapply for PhD elsewhere?

texts:
I am in my second year of PhD. A lot of the past 1.5 years was coursework and little research. I have been working with my current advisor for the past 5 months and have a publication in the pipeline.

However my advisor informed me that he is planning to take a year long break from academia to work in industry and plans to come back. Like most of the advisors he offered me the following choices:

Search for a new lab
Continue working with him; keeping in touch over email and occasional skype sessions

However he isn't yet tenured and I am skeptical that he might choose not to return to academia.

My department is a pretty small one and moving to a new lab doesn't seem feasible because I am not interested in other labs' research. In some cases the research is good, but I found the lab environment unsuitable when I rotated with these.

I would like to complete my PhD. Another option is to possibly quit with a Masters and then reapply to other graduate schools. However I have the following concerns:

If my advisor is against giving me a recommendation letter, should I still apply rather than looking for another lab in my current university?
My graduate school GPA is average and so was my undergraduate GPA, I have couple of publications since joining the graduate school. Will a low Graduate school GPA further reduces my chances of getting an admit again?
Should I mention my situation(about my GPA; quitting PhD because advisor moved) in my Statement of Purpose?


texts: Can a reviewer ask for the primary data (actual collected data in a prevalence study)? Is the information confidential or can be shared? Even if can be shared, does the reviewer have the authority to ask for it?


texts:
I've just started reading papers about speech recognition and algorithms on medium sized graphs (~800,000 nodes and 4,400,000 edges with some connected text data). I think a problem of these papers is quite often, that it is difficult to check the experimental results. It is difficult to check them because of two reasons:

The source code that was used to generate the results is not (publicly) available
The data is either not at all available or it is not clear which version of the data was used

When I start writing papers, I would like to make it easier to check the results.

The first problem is easy to solve: I can simply provide the source code (e.g. on GitHub or my personal web space).

The second problem seems to be much harder to solve. The data is often quite big (speech recognition: several GB; graphs: about 2GB). This is too much to upload it on my personal webspace / GitHub.

How can I show which data I'm using in my paper? (Currently I give a link to the data source and note the data when I've downloaded it. Additionally, I note the date/version of the source if possible.)

Are there projects that try to solve this issue? (e.g. by providing space for important / interesting projects like dblp, a version history and good download speeds)


texts: Strategy for submission of articles to highly ranked journals

texts:
I am working on a research project that all total will probably end up lasting about two years.  As the research progresses, I am writing articles about each new discovery/study, with each article becoming more relevant to current interesting trends (for lack of a better description).

What I mean by this is that in the plan for publications my group has, the first article discusses just the structure, dynamics, etc. of some new interesting carbon/silicon/etc. system.  The second article will elaborate on this for an even more novel, more developed structure than the first.  Then the last article will (hopefully) provide a deep new insight into how this structure can be used for energy storage/transport/etc.

As I'm sure you can tell, each article gets more interesting, and thus I think each article has a better chance than the previous one of making it into a more highly ranked journal.  Our current strategy is to submit the article to a succession of less prestigious journals (each getting rejected) until it eventually gets into one.  This way, it ends up getting into the journal it probably deserves to be in, and not something lower,  and there's always the chance it is accepted into a highly ranked journal as well.

However, I am curious if this is a bad idea in the long run.  Will editors remember "Oh, they already submitted articles to us twice and got rejected; what are they doing it for again?"  Will they be quicker to dismiss the next article they receive even though it is higher-quality/deeper research than the previous one?

Or do the editors give each new submission a fair chance for acceptance, with no memory of previous submissions?

I know some of you all are journal editors, so any insight you can reveal to me about your thought process would be quite appreciated.


texts: How serious of a mistake it is to accidentally addressed a grad school admissions director as Miss instead of Ms?

texts:
I am applying to a grad school in the US and I am asking application questions through emails. In one of the emails, I accidentally addressed the admissions director as Miss, even though the title of her choice is Ms., as shown in her signature. We've had a few email exchanges before where I had addressed her correctly as Ms., but I wrote this email under stress and in a hurry (it was a difficult subject and time sensitive) and made this title mistake.
Also English is not my first language. She looks young and I am not that familiar with US titles. I had a vague impression Miss is associated with relatively young people and only upon further checking did I realize Miss is used to address unmarried women.
How serious this mistake is? Is it sexist or rude?
I will pay attention and address her correctly in the future. Any other suggestions?


texts: How often do US graduate programs reevaluate their requirements?

texts:
The spark for this question was a remark (you'll know which one when you see it!) made in this answer. My other reason for asking is that I recently learnt that one physics PhD program went ~25 years between curriculum evaluations. That seems like a long time period to me, but is it unusually long?

My question is, in principle, quite simple:

  How often do US graduate programs, particularly in STEM fields, tend to reevaluate their curriculum and requirements? Is there a typical time frame?

Note that I'm not talking about year-to-year changes to the syllabus of individual courses, or the institution of new elective courses. Rather, I wonder how often a department might have a curriculum committee (or a similar structure) evaluate the program's structure for core courses, and the mandatory number of other courses. I'm also primarily interested in established programs that have been around for quite a while (that a two year old program is still figuring out its policies isn't terribly surprising).

Note also that I have added the reference request tag. If there is an actual report or survey out there, that would form an ideal answer. If someone happens to have experience from multiple programs that would also be useful, but if, like me, you only know the answer for a single program, a comment is likely more appropriate.


texts: How can you determine whether a journal is indexed in ISI or SCI?

texts:
What are the main difference between SCI and ISI Journals?
How  can you determine whether a a journal is indexed in SCI or ISI?


texts: How should I deal with discouragement looking at others success?

texts:
I'm a master CS student. I had so many troubles in my life. I didn't have proper schooling and were in difficult situations which led to me being not so good compared to my peers now at the graduate school. For example I had problems with math and so and when I got into my new graduate school everyone was almost far better than me. Then I started working day and nights to improve my skills and after a year of really hard work now I achieved almost their skills. However in that time my peers were also developing their skills and doing fancy projects and so on. Sometimes when I get to look at their success and projects I feel stressed and discouraged that I really still have way too long to achieve that. Or that I'm really putting so much work into myself because of the problems I went through but at the end I find myself still far. Whereas my peers are enjoying their lifes and at the same time achieving something. I know life is not fair nor I'm jealous, but sometimes I just feel sorry about myself that I work really hard but without much difference :(. This is also is leading so some self-confidence issue, that whenever I see one of my peers I get stressed and sometimes afraid to discuss a topic with them because I don't want to look bad not  knowing that easy stuff for them.

This is always leads to a voice in my head saying: oh if only a professor in MIT or Stanford sees how hard working you are, you might be there now. But of course I won't because I will always be far from the students there because of what I went through.

What to do to overcome this?


texts: As an independent/non-affiliated researcher, what would I replace a logo with on a business card?

texts:
I'm currently not affiliated with any academic institution; but - I still get around, interact and need some business cards.

The thing is, without any institutional information, a card tends to look kind of empty if it just has your name, address, email, and phone (and maybe your website).

Also, having an institute/company logo gives the business card a basic color scheme to work with, and anchors to position elements "against".

What would be a useful replacement - content-wise or design-wise - for an institute/company logo?


texts: What are the acceptance rates at various CS masters degree programs?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate student at a top CS school who is looking to apply for my Master's soon (in about a year or so). I am applying to my school's 5 year masters program as a backup, but I would prefer to switch schools just to get a different experience.

My first question has to do with the acceptance rates of various CS Masters degree programs. I found that it was very difficult to search for the acceptance rates for various schools that I am interested in. Some of those schools include Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, and CalTech. However, I was unable to find acceptance rates for any of these schools. Could someone point me to a resource that I could use, or just give me the acceptance rates? Also, are there any "underrated" schools that I should be aware of (and by underrated, I mean high acceptance rates and good departments)?


texts: In computer science, how hard it is to get a job at an industry research lab?

texts:
As a PhD graduate, how much easier it to get a job at a research lab like the ones at Microsoft, Intel, Google etc. compared to getting a job as a Professor at an R1 university?

Is it possible to get a job at an R1 university, if one spends a period of time publishing papers at an industry research lab?


texts: Using one's middle name in place of their first name in academia

texts: Why do some people use middle name for their first name like attorneys?  And is this ok in the academic venue?


texts: Consequences for not attending an academic conference/forum in which your paper was already accepted?

texts:
BACKGROUND

I was previously an engineering PhD student but I left the program.  I was really too inexperienced for the commitment of a PhD.  Further, my wife wanted me to leave and pursue an engineering job with a salary.

A while back I submitted an abstract to a relatively prestigious conference/forum, where the corresponding paper was suppose to be submitted 3 months after this acceptance.  Since I was leaving the program, I basically neglected this responsibility while applying for jobs throughout the semester.  However, my adviser expressed anger on this saying I must submit the paper because they already accepted the abstract and I could be barred from the forum in the future.  Thus I submitted a paper.

As of now I've left the PhD program.  However, there is a conference/forum for this paper in the upcoming week, and there is a speaking slot for my paper.  I know that my advisor (the paper's only other author) is busy and overseas and will not attend.  This means nobody plans to attend the conference for the paper.  Thus, I feel I must attend the conference.  However, I really don't have the funds and time, and cannot easily attend.  I checked the schedule, and there is a speaking slot for my paper.

QUESTIONS

What are the consequences for not attending an academic conference (for your accepted paper) in which you are slotted to speak?  I would assume not attending (complete absence) is common due to money and air travel problems (connecting flights, weather, etc). Would one be barred from future conferences for not attending?  Is it impolite to not attend (I've already successfully submitted the paper)?


texts: What do you think of the reply and do you think he is interested in me and my application?

texts:
Recently i have been applying to various Ph.D. programs and i have approached many professors as my potential supervisors and among those, i applied to Harvard and this is what the Director of the Program in one of the Ph.d programs there replied:

" Thank you for your email and your interest in our lab.
To answer some of your questions, I do think that you would be a great fit both for ### and for our lab. Also, we will be taking new graduate students next year.
As you probably know, we do not admit students directly into any one lab, but there is an admissions committee that decides on the students.
 Once you are admitted to ###, then I would be happy to talk about a rotation in our lab, etc. "

So what do you think are my chances of getting accepted and how should i further proceed with the conversation.


texts: I had submitted a paper to a reputed Computer Science Journal. The reviewer has a lot of constructive changes, in addition to that he also suggested citing a few more papers, all by the same author. Since this is a double blind process, we don't know each other's identity. So, is it common for reviewers to suggest references in this field or any other field ?


texts: How many published papers should you have when applying to PhD programs?

texts:
I'm thinking about applying to PhD programs focused on Deep Learning and Theoretical Neuroscience this fall, and quite frankly I feel like I'm not good enough.

I just started doing research in the past 6 months, and I feel like I'm so far behind my peers its not even funny. I have a paper accepted for a small conference in the fall, but after talking to some folks at Phd programs at places like Stanford or MIT, I hear that students often come in with multiple first author publications. Is this true? I don't know how I can compete with that :/

I want to do research, I love it and have been working 80 hour weeks juggling two RAships and a research internship at a startup this summer, but I just feel like I won't be able to get into a solid background because of my non traditional background.

I'm finishing two Master's degrees, one in Biology and one in Computer science, from Harvard and Georgia Tech respectively. I previously did my undergraduate studies in Cognitive Science from UCSD. My GPA in my masters is a 4.0. I'll have theses written for each program as well.

My undergrad was non technical and weak (some family issues, I finished in 2.5 years without a strong focus on doing particularly well), and my research record is short, if a little intense. I've worked in Industry and have started a small, semi successful ML startup.

Do you have any advice for a nervous kid?


texts: Graduate in three years and then apply for Ph.D. programs?

texts:
This is a question that I've been pondering for a long time and badly needs advice and different perspectives. Background: I'm an international student attending a modestly reputable college in the US. I'm a rising junior majoring in math and minoring in chemistry and psychology, with a GPA of 4.0/4.0 and pending publications in computational chemistry and psychology. I'm interested in Ph.D. programs in computational neuroscience (since this is a inter-disciplinary field, mostly I will apply to math or neuroscience programs).

So here is the problem: I really want to graduate early in three years, but should I? There are four reasons supporting this decision. First, due to some poor financial choices of my parents, it is risky if I stay in college for the total four years (getting a degree in three years is surely better than no degree at all!) Secondly, there is no professor here who works in the field of computational neuroscience, and the lack of relevant research opportunity is disappointing to say the least. Third, I find myself under-challenged by the curriculum. I'm taking the maximum course load with a lot of "hard" classes, but I find myself getting nothing out of the classes besides more facts and techniques. Finally, from the limited internship opportunities and readings I've done in computational neuroscience, I know that I will enjoy immersing myself in this field.

On the other hand, I can see how graduating in three years can put me in a huge disadvantage for Ph.D. application, and this is why I'm hesitant to make the final decision. One more year means more higher-level classes to take, more time to do better research, more time to prepare for GRE general and subject tests, and more time to grow as a person in general. I feel like even though I'm one of the best student in my college, but I'm certainly far from being one of the best in the country (which means diminished probability of being accepted by one of the better programs). I just want some more time to further challenge myself before I leave the college for good.

I would really appreciate some different opinion on this matter, and I thank you for reading through this long question.


texts:
I have made an edition of handwritten notes of a physicist X (of the past century). What's the best way to submit it to arXiv?

I have seen two examples of editorial work in arXiv:

On one hand, the submission is made by the editor and also as author (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.02601)
On the other hand the submission is made by the editor but he puts the original author (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0206203).

I think the two are founded. But I would like to know what is the best way to do this.


texts: Priority of application materials for admission decision

texts:
As I've already saw, many people here are related to admission process. And I want to ask their opinion on what is priority of all stuff from application: what is the most important (letters of recommendation or personal statement, GPA or maybe test scores), what is less important for admission and what is the least important? Would admission committee prefer applicant with good scores, high GPA, but with not outstanding personal statement and without letters from famous or well-known professors (for example, my scientific advisor in undergraduate school get his PhD only a couple years ago), or student with less GPA, test scores, but with letter from university's prof?

Some graduate schools require General GRE (Graduate Record Examinations). Would it better to send GRE scores (general or subject or both) even if it's not required (in case of relatively good result), or them wouldn't be considered at all?


texts: In which kind of Journal should i publish my math applied based paper regarding a political problem?

texts:
I'm currently working on a voting analysis paper, most of the theory is about, "math", i'm talking about linear algebra, programming, big data, and that specific knowledge area, however the paper is all oriented into  a specific problem regarding politics as it's entirely related to voting analysis and stablishing political networks based on it, so to which kind of journal would be better to send it in order to get published, one of applied math, or one of political science. i've check and it meets requirements of both journals.

Which are the advantages of publishing on one instead of the other?


texts: How to communicate with research advisor politely?

texts:
Which way is good to communicate or deal with my advisor about research issues? writing an email or talking directly with my professor? What would you do if your professor is busy to check your email and also to talk with you in person? Is there any other option to communicate with my professor about the problem easily and politely?

I am a new PhD student and have some issues to deal with my advisor. So my advisor do not respond to my emails I sent him previously till today. I tried also to talk with him in person but he said that he doesn't have time to talk now. What should I do? how long do I have to wait for his respond? What does it mean when a professor is not willing to respond to his student email?


texts: Uploading a 7 years old published conference paper on arXiv

texts: I have 3 conference papers which were published around 7 years ago. However, the conference proceedings are not well indexed. If I upload a 7 year old published work on arXiv to increase the audiences, will the research community take this action positively or negatively?


texts: Is it acceptable to ask the editor for feedback about a review I wrote?

texts:
I am a graduate student. I recently completed the review of a submission and its subsequent revision for a journal in my field, in the peer review process. My comments were taken into account by the authors, and the entire process went fine.

Since it was my first time, I'd like to get some feedback on my reviews. I had a professor read over them before turning them in for tone and content, but am thinking of contacting the editor who asked me to review to ask for feedback as they are more involved in the process and have spent time on the paper and the reviews.

Is this acceptable? Recommended? What other avenues are there for getting such feedback?

Edit: I can and have looked at the other reviewers' reviews. They are pretty similar to mine, perhaps a bit more aggressive and to the point.


texts: Couldn't attend IEEE Conference and unable to present my paper

texts:
My paper was accepted at an IEEE conference. I paid my registration fees even registered for doing a physical presentation( there was an option for video presentation). But when I will enter the country, immigration office restricted my entry due to some visa issues. I had to go back. Thus, I couldn't attend the conference.

Now, will my paper in the end counted as an accepted paper and will add in IEEE Xplore?


texts: How active should professors be in writing papers with their students?

texts:
In recent months, I have found myself getting involved in varying degrees with the papers being written with members of my group. Some of the papers—by the more senior and experienced members of the group (primarily the postdoc) have needed little real effort on my part, except suggestions for improvements.

On the other hand, some of the more junior members of the group have been struggling significantly in writing papers that I believe can pass muster in getting into good peer-reviewed journals. My question is: how involved should I be in the writing process?

While I am ultimately equally responsible for the contents of the paper, it is not clear how strong a role I should play. Is it better for me to keep hounding the student through draft after draft until things are fixed to a satisfactory level, or do I need to step in at some point? Does the decision calculus change when an important deadline is on the horizon?


texts:
TLDR: I am being targeted by an institution where I previously studied/worked and would like to leave academia entirely without giving anyone the knowledge of where I'm going next.

Backstory:

I  finished my master's at a lab where I was one of targets of bullying. I mean, my advisor threatened to lock me up in a room with this other person until an analysis was done his way; I was called all sort of labels by supervisor ; constant rummaging through my personal notebooks and one time journal; gossipping; intentional mischaracterization/relay of information. I asked the supervisor several times for feedback and all I get are positive remarks, which kind of put me in the twilight zone. I was also not allowed to do anything in the lab without the approval of the lab manager, a PhD student, and him. Any suggestions I made were shot down, and some were implemented later without acknowledgement that I had contributed to them. At one point, I asked him why he accepted me because it doesn't look like he needs or wants me here. He said that I'm here to do experiment X and leave. It sounded to me that my role is to be a technician's assistant and not a master's candidate. It also sounded like neither he nor anyone wanted to be my mentor.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when previous supervisor made a racist remark about a group of which I am a member. That emboldened even one of his undergrads to use a racial slur around me. I decided to leave and in retrospect if it weren't for the support of my family and the lab manager, I wouldn't have had the ability to show up to my defense.

The problem is that me leaving triggered a whole other set of events. From my observations, my previous supervisor likes to not allow his students to be independent scientists. That way he can keep them under his control and influence.

He has already sabotaged my application to PhD program at a different school. So I went back to undergrad to change fields. I still missed lab work and needed the money so I applied to work as a technician at a lab there. The head of that lab ended up calling my previous supervisor probably because I left the latter out of the list of references. Since then I have dealt with assumptions from people, cryptic references, dismissive testimonials, outright rudeness from people. In one of my classes, we had to analyze the behaviour of people in a scenario that is verbatim one of my encounters with my previous supervisor. If it were more generic I could have dismissed as coincidence, but really the scenario itself was so nonsensical that I have no confidence asserting that it is common.

I left the second lab after 2 years because I could not trust the people there anymore. Now, I am at a third lab to finish a thesis project for my degree. I thought that this lab would not be connected but recently they had been forging new relationships with close collaborators of previous supervisor. Things were going well at first in the sense there weren't any referential or odd remarks. Recently, however, I'm not so sure I can trust them either.

So here I am. I am jaded and distrustful of anyone who asks me anything personal. I plan to leave academia for good now. But I don't want to leave to live yet the same patterns in industry, and to do that I have to make sure no one can relay where I'm going next. The problem is I don't have a fraction of the manipulation and influence prowess of these professors so I can't convince someone to not disclose  or share that information to protect me. Moreover, since it looks like more and more people are being recruited into helping said supervisor, I feel like I'm trapped without references unless I submit to his will.

Has anyone successfully dealt with people like previous supervisor and gotten away from them? Any advice is greatly appreciated.


texts: Mentioning unpublished research paper in Statement of Purpose/Resume

texts:
I graduated two years ago with a BE degree. At that time, I did not have any plans for Ph.D./higher education, so I did not put any effort to publish my undergrad research work in any conference.

Now things have changed a lot, and I am applying to Ph.D. programs. To strengthen my research profile, I have entirely reviewed my undergrad dissertation, and manage to come up with a research paper out of it.

The problem is that there is no time to publish this paper as the paper submission date of a potential conference will open up next year, and my grad applications are due next month.

I wanted to know how I can mention my unpublished research paper in my Statement of Purpose, Resume? Considering that the research paper is highly relevant to the Ph.D. program I am applying to.

(Do I also need to mention the reason behind publishing my research work so late? like after two years)


texts: What does a Doctoral program mean: MS, PhD or both?

texts:
If I understand it right, Graduate school means MS, PhD, or both, but a
Doctoral program means just PhD. Is this correct?