texts:
I'd like to move out of my comfort zone and do research on a topic that I know very little about, but is closely related to topics I have published papers in. Specifically, I have an idea from some of my previous papers that I think can be applied to this new area.

The trouble is, I don't know what the community in this new research area considers interesting. The literature in this new topic is vast, and I don't know anybody who works in this topic.

I have gone to Mathscinet and tried tracking down what seem to be the important papers in the area, and I have cold-emailed people whom I think are the experts in the field for help finding references related to my idea (I have gotten one response, which was very helpful).

Nevertheless, I still feel my understanding of this topic is very shallow. I think my idea, if it works, would be interesting to people in this field, but I am not confident in my ability to connect it to previous work and to explain to the community why they should find it interesting. (I am not concerned with the possibility that my idea has been worked out before, I have reasons to think this is very unlikely)

This is the first time I am venturing this far away from the topics in my PhD thesis, so I am not sure if there is more I can do to familiarize myself with this new field. What do the rest of you do when you are preparing to do work in a new, unfamiliar research topic?


texts: Can’t get a Letter Of Reference with signed seal

texts: I’m kind of in a rut right now with my admissions for a program. I’ve requested for a LOR from a professor and they had no issue to do it for me. However, they’ll be sending it to my email. The only thing is the program that I’m applying for is asking that the LOR comes in a sealed envelope with the recommenders signature on the seal or the recommender mails it themselves. My recommender is out of the county and can’t do that at the moment (not to mention the program’s deadline to apply is in 2 weeks) and the only way I can get the letter is via email and I print it and send when I mail my application. Now I’m wondering do I just leave a note  stating that I couldn’t get their sealed signature but and I did not change any of the information provided, and they can contact the recommender for verification? Or should I just withdraw my application as a whole?


texts: How to deal with poorly written and formatted papers (as a reviewer)?

texts:
From time to time I receive papers to peer review that, in my view, fail to attain an acceptable level of writing and text formatting. Examples of usual issues are: common erratum, poor use of English, bad formatted equations, inconsistent use of punctuation marks, spacings, citations, references and so on. Bonus track is when the submission has not been processed in LaTeX and it contains poorly written equations (for the record my field is Mathematics). I do not consider myself an expert in any of these points, but I think everybody know how to reach a decent level, of course if you are willing to invest some time on it.

While in certain situations there are interesting scientific contributions to present, it is certainly hard to focus on them with so many styling distractions around. What is worse, sometimes they are hard to decipher because of an inconsistent use of notation or because a misspelling introduces a key change in the meaning of a statement. In my opinion, these are issues that could have been solved by the authors with a careful revision of the manuscript prior to submission.

For the sake of argument, let's assume a paper as described before, with a legitimate scientific contribution and let's keep apart from the question the scientific part of the report. When I face the review of such a paper, I often have the next dilemma: should I point the authors to all the writing/styling/formatting issues? Or should I briefly mention that there are serious non-scientific issues and encourage the authors to fix them? The two opposite arguments supporting each approach are:

On one hand, I feel that is my responsibility as a reviewer to ensure that the paper is going to have the best scientific/presentation quality possible after the reviewing process. And that includes helping as much as I can in both points.
On the other hand, if the authors should have taken care of all the non-scientific issues, I wonder why should I invest so much time pointing towards their improvement. In some sense, I feel they are being a little disrespectful with the reviewers and readers to submit a non-polished manuscript. In addition, maybe this kind of work could be done by the people in charge of the article proofs (assuming that the journal has them and that they do a good job...)

My current approach is to ask for a major revision and reply with a very detailed list of all the non-scientific issues I found, but I wonder whether I am overdoing my referee's duties. In addition, this turns to be also quite time-consuming.

EDIT: I am looking for an answer that involves a discussion on what are the reviewer's duties and limits regarding writing/styling. This is only partially addressed in this question.


texts: Is it normal to feel that your career comes to a halt when you achieve tenure?

texts:
My question pretty much self explains what I've been feeling since four years, when I achieved tenure. As I moved up in the academic hierarchy, from undergrad to post-doc, then tenure-track Professor and finally tenured Professor, I realized that the burden of responsibility was always incremental, but I was prepared and after a short period of adjustment, found my way to dwell in the system and balance my obligations. I felt I was constantly learning, keeping up with administrative obligations, and contributing new ideas to my research field. However, I feel that after achieving tenure the administrative load broke that balance and four years later I'm seeing the consequences. The most unsettling sensation is perceiving that I stopped being up to date in my field. Now, I spend so much time writing grant proposal, dealing with committees and doing administration that I struggle to find time to read and stay abreast with the literature in my field, propose new experiments and “do science”.  Sometimes I even feel I am starting to forget concepts and abilities that were natural to me and that are at the core of my field.

Don't get me wrong, there are many things I enjoy from my position. I like teaching, tutoring the students in my research group, every now and then I'm able to put together an interesting project with a colleague and get it running. Also, considering that I'm still relatively young and have fuel for a couple more of decades, I'm concerned that eventually I won't be able to fulfill my duties and enjoy the things I mentioned out of sheer burn out.

Is it normal to feel this way? What are the causes? Does this feeling recedes with time? Could this be an indication that I should start considering a Plan B before I get to old and moving in something else becomes harder?

I want to note that I am not in an exceptional situation: I work at a good university, salary and benefits are above average, the head of the department has never complained about my job, my student are very intelligent and independent and I already sought professional counseling (no diagnostic or conclusion.)


texts: Career choice: another postdoc in a strong University, or Faculty in a weaker one?

texts:
It is probably a very "soft" question, but let me try.

It is customary to believe, that after a certain period of postdoctoral research a person should either establish him/her-self as a (permanent or tenure track) Faculty member, or leave academia for good, seeking employment elsewhere. The maximum "postdoc period" is of course not specified, and very country-- and area--dependent, but arguably it is around 8 years — for example, many fellowship programs invite applications from candidates with no more than 7-8 years of postdoc experience.

Consider a person with almost that many years of postdoc experience given a choice: either to pursue another postdoc position in a strong internationally recognized University (say, top-20 THE rating), or go for an independent Faculty position in a less recognized place (say, top-200 THE rating).

If you think that the choice here is obvious, I would very much like to hear your pro / contra arguments. The area is computational mathematics.


texts: Is organizing a thesis competition a good way to connect academia and business?

texts:
I would like to ask if you think that organizing an international thesis competition is a good way to bridge the gap between students (mostly graduates) and companies. The idea is to have jury members of industry partners and alumni, which will have access to and judge the theses and thus:

Students and graduates will be able to make hopefully valuable connections
Businesses will profit from having an insight of what young people write about.

Is organizing a thesis competition likely to be a fruitful endeavor?


texts: Is it acceptable to write several small papers that contribute to a larger paper?

texts:
To keep this brief, I have two new math ideas that are supporting a larger work. I want to write two small papers detailing these math ideas (plus some other details I figured out about them), publish them to arXiv, and then cite them in the larger work. The smaller papers do not have enough substance for a journal or conference.

I want to do this because I want to provide details for the interested reader which are irrelevant to the larger work.

I am still new to this, so I ask: Is this acceptable? This feels like it might be unethical self promotion / self citation.


texts: If a non tenure assistant professor moves to a different University inside the United States, would his two years of experience count or would it be as if he just started in terms of promotion to associate


texts: Is it possible to get a professor position without having had any fellowships in grad school?

texts:
As a deferred action for early childhood arrival (DACA) student, I found out that I am not eligible for federal fellowships from the government or through the university.

Some universities allow for fellowships to DACA students if they meet in-state requirements but being a student who attended undergrad at another state, I do not qualify. (I applied to all out-of-state graduate programs)

With the DACA status, I can still apply and work as teaching assistant or research assistant to fund my Ph.D. program.

So my question would be, if I do not have any fellowships on my CV and only RA & TA positions, how much would this negatively impact me when applying for assistant professor positions, if at all?

Do hiring committees ever place emphasis on whether the student had had fellowships or not? And would it be more worth it to go into a Ph.D. program in-state where I may qualify for some federal fellowships made through the school (from a funding perspective)?


texts: can I cite personal communication from a co-author?

texts:
I received a strong opinion statement in an email from an expert in the field who later ended up making enough suggestions that I'm including him as a co-author. Coming from me, or from the paper's general authorial voice, the statement would stick out as an unsubstantiated claim, and his papers don't tend to include opinion statements. This would also be the only place in the paper where I'm quoting an expert. Should I just give it up?

To clarify, I'm not even wanting to include it to bolster the paper's argument, in fact it works against the paper's argument. But the fact that an expert has this opinion is a significant piece of information that readers might want to have.


texts: Terms for an PhD grant that covers everything

texts: I am looking for the proper adjective that would carry the meaning that a grant for a PhD student covers everything (tuition fees, stipends, etc.). I believe one can use the expression "full grant", but I wonder whether there exists some more unambiguous adjective.


texts: I think my TA winked at me and have developed feelings. Should I ask her out after the semester ends?

texts:
TLDR: I have feelings for my TA, think she winked at me, and would like to ask her out after the end of the semester.

So my eyes do this weird thing sometimes when I'm sleep-deprived or stressed where it can look to an observer as if I might be winking. This can sometimes lead to problems for me for obvious reasons. However, a few weeks ago in class on a day when my eyes were particularly acting up I believe I might have received a first-- an unexpected return wink. My TA, turning around from the chalkboard momentarily, smiled and gave a very clear wink towards the direction of the room where I was sitting. I had been looking her way over the course of the class since she's the instructor, so it seems quite possible to me that she thought I was winking at her.

However, this was the final day of class before we transitioned to Zoom lectures due to coronavirus, and it's been really difficult to explore my suspicion that she's interested in me through online communication alone. I feel like the odds are low that she was winking at someone else. There were only about 15-20 students in the room, around 40-50% of whom are men. The seating arrangement meant that only about 5-7 people were seated in the direction of the room I was seated in. I wasn't really sure what to make of this when it first happened, but in recent weeks I've noticed myself developing feelings. When I contacted her with a question about an assignment, she responded by inviting me to toss some ideas around over zoom "for fun." I did a few days later, and she also made a point of asking me how I'd been doing with all that's going on and whether I'd be staying in town over the summer. I notice her tone of voice changing a bit when she talks to me, as well.

I really do enjoy talking to her and feel like I would genuinely like to get to know more about her academic passions and interests. As a 24-year-old re-entry student, I feel that the age gap isn't all that intense. In fact, I think I would probably have more in common with her than I would with most undergraduates. The area her work is focused in is also one of my intended majors.

With only two more weeks of instruction, I feel pressured to act before she loses interest. I was having trouble falling asleep most of the night last night due to my mind being so preoccupied with this, so I don't think I could feel alright with doing nothing and letting this pass. My plan was to continue to ask the occasional question during and after class and maybe schedule an office hours appointment for an assignment I genuinely have questions about, wait until the semester is over, and email her 1-2 weeks into the summer asking if she might be interested in getting coffee once social distancing restrictions begin to lift. Does this sound like a reasonable idea, or could it be that all the quarantine and social isolation is just getting to my head?


texts: Can a student be admitted to masters programme even if his/her English level is lower than the minimum requirements?

texts:
Recently, I just won a scholarship from my government for pursuing a master's degree in some Canadian universities. I checked the minimum requirements for the English level and I noticed that almost all of them are asking for at least an overall score of 93 points or 100 on the toefl ibt examination (6.5 for IELTS but only 2 or 3 are asking for this last exam).

I recently received my score from ETS and I got 85 points in overall (26 points on the writing section as my strongest point). Although I know I am still missing a few more points, I have published one paper on the IEEE computer society, I have won 3 scholarships for continuing my education (70% scholarship in my home university, 100% scholarship for doing a summer internship in Canada and 100% scholarship for studying 6 months in Sweden), and I worked as a full time employee during my last semester as a web developer and programmer.

My bachelor is Computer Systems and IT. I am trying to pursue a MCs degree in Computer Science oriented towards data mining and cloud computing. The universities I am interested are McMaster, Dalhousie, University of Alberta, UBC and Waterloo.

Despite the fact that I don't have the "minimum English requirement", should you recommend me to retake and work on my English skills or should I try to apply for any of these universities?

All comments, suggestions and proposals are welcome :)


texts: what steps to take when research result is patentable

texts:
I'm working on a nearly completed paper in CS. It deals with a memory module design, which, apart from being a novel idea, turned out to be of potentially commercial value. Now I was thinking of patenting it, of course, I doubt I will be able to make its commercial development a priority of mine until at least I finish my PhD (relatively soon) and find some "solid ground" in academia (I have some job offers, but can't specify any amount of time). However, I am under the impression that this should not prevent me from protecting my work.
As I am quite inexperienced with it, I must also ask if I'm having the right conception and approach to patenting here?
What is the procedure of patenting an idea that is to be published in a journal? Are there any consequences?


texts: How to edit the pre uploaded full text article on ResearchGate

texts:
I found my article pre uploaded on ResearchGate.
But the fact is, I updated it and republished it in the same journal and it has same DOI.
I want to delete the older version of the article from ResearchGate and upload a new one.
Is there any way to do this or ResearchGate updates it automatically?


texts: Is it worth doing a PhD in the area of business, management, finance?

texts:
This question is refers mainly to European students and European universities.
I would like to try doing a PhD when I finish my master's (I'm still studying for my bachelor's), but a lot of students tell me that a PhD is a loss of time and energy, and that only in some subjects it really matters.
Is it worth doing it?


texts: Letter of recommendation from REU professor

texts:
When applying to graduate programs in computer science, what are the pros/cons of having the professor who advised your project in an NSF REU in computer science write one of the required letters of recommendation?  I ask since the duration of REU programs are so short (~10 weeks).

More specifically, assuming a good letter can be written by all professors, why might I have my 3 letters consist of:

Case A: 2 CS professors from undergrad, 1 CS professor from REU

or

Case B: 1 CS professor from undergrad, 1 math professor from undergrad, 1 CS professor from REU

or

Case C: 2 CS professors from undergrad, 1 math professor from undergrad


texts: As a PhD student in Germany, would I retain student status for tax purposes?

texts:
I am currently pursuing my masters degree in computer science from TU Munich, and I would love to pursue my PhD soon after my graduation, but I am worried about the finances at the same time.

What I gather is I should be able to make a decent enough salary but what I do not understand clearly, is whether I would retain my student status during my PhD and enjoy reduced taxation?

With reduced taxation and few other student benefits, it could possibly mean I have a more stable financial situation.


texts: Paper Rejection on Molecular Biology, What should I do?

texts:
I'm a third year undergraduate right now. I submitted a review on Cell motility, waited 6 months and got a rejection. The first reviewer appointed the manuscript as "publishable with corrections" and gives recommendations. The second reviewer didn't like it at all and made harsh comments. It seems that the first reviewer went throughout a longer analysis of the manuscript (based on his careful comments), while the other discarded it quickly, without too many protocol. The Editor's comment at the end sounds a bit like "We could be friends in the future, but go somewhere else this time".

Although I agree with the majority of their points and I know most papers are rejected nowadays (so I'm not desperate with this issue), I'm confused. Is the papers worthy of revision and resubmission (to another journal) or should I tank it? I've to be careful with duties (Thesis, Assistant job, etc.) because I don't want to spend an extra semester at College due to this nuisance.


texts: Is it okay to publish your dissertation as a book and are there things that you should leave out of the book?

texts: If I have found a publisher that will publish my dissertation, is this ok, to publish your original dissertation as a book. if so are there things you should leave out of dissertation like appendix or signature page.


texts: Do you need first authorship to use a publication for your PhD thesis?

texts:
I'm a full-time staff assisting research. Not a student.
Jacob asked me to use the knowledge and skill that I learned during my Masters to help him do a meta-analysis for his Project as he has never done one. He told me that he wanted it to be on 'disease name' and 'target population' on 'phenomenon'. That was it. I ran with it - wrote up the protocol, did the search, initial title/abstract screening, looked through the full paper and extracted all data to see what outcomes we could pool. All throughout I shared with Jacob everything I had done through email. Jacob did not like the research question and outcome that I had decided upon because he wanted something more clinically practical - RCTs and intervention studies - except there were no papers and I indicated this to him. I reasoned with him to say that his outcome may not be clinically relevant, but I foresee it being cited many times as something that many people will probably refer to in the future.
I ask Jacob to do help with the screening as well. I send him instructions and he doesn't follow through saying that he's too busy to do this. I suggest asking a student to help, to which he refused to because he wants to do it himself. I tell him that the screening doesn't take much intellectual contribution and that the data analysis and interpretation is the most important aspect - his contribution will not be overshadowed. Time passed and a year goes by with no further progress. I continue to collect papers and contact authors for extra data during this period.
Now Jacob is claiming the meta-analysis to be his right to have first authorship for his PhD thesis. He says that I must hand over all materials to him and that he will be the one to decide on the authorship order. Never once throughout the process had I been told that this would be part of his PhD. I feel that there has been this imbalance of power - I do not know who his PhD supervisor is and they have never been involved in this process. Had there been a third party to oversee this, I feel that this process would have gone a lot smoother. I also know that I have put significant effort, time, intellectual contribution into this meta-analysis and it feels like all that work has been taken away from me.
I do not mind if Jacob uses the meta-analysis for his thesis but I would like to publish it as first author or, at the very least, first co-author with my name first. Can both Jacob and I get what we want or must he really be sole first author to be able to use the meta-analysis for hid PhD thesis?
Thank you!


texts: Can I scan data from a paper for my own research?

texts:
I am a PhD student working in mechanical properties of materials and will be finishing soon. My PhD is in numerical modelling, so I need experimental data (stress-strain curves) to validate my programs. And this is where the situation starts to tangle:

There is a set of data published by a group from another university that I would like to test in my model. This data comes from lab experiments and they also did some numerical modelling trying to replicate it.
Some data is published in a paper and some other is published in a PhD thesis.
The PhD thesis is not available online, but can be accessed publicly (physically) in the library of the other university.
I have asked for the raw data and a copy of the PhD thesis to the other group and the response I got was: we are not going to send it to you, and we prohibit you to use any of our data in your research.
I then learned that there is a bad relationship between our group and their group because of historical competition.

Furthermore:

I have scanned the data in the paper (I created a program to fit the curves in the image and get an analytical expression for it) and run my simulations.
I happen to have a copy of the thesis (a third person gave me a scanned copy), so I did the same.
In both cases my numerical results are significantly better than those from the other group, which is why we think that my research would have a high impact.
Since I scanned their data I can generate my own figures, so I guess image copyright is left out of the equation.
I will, of course, cite where the data comes from.

I believe in open science, so I would never do what they did. However, I get their point on not wanting me to have the data, since they did the experiments. What I believe is not ethical/appropriate is banning me from using any of their data sets.

Finally, we could prepare these experiments in our lab, but it will take a couple of years, resources and expertise (which I don't have), so this is not viable.

So my questions are:

What are the implications of publishing my comparison with their data?
Is it ethical, given that I have been denied the use of the data?
Would there be any additional problems if we decided to publish a paper or publish the thesis as a book?


texts: In American universities, do teaching assistants and adjuncts get paid for holding office hours?

texts:
I'm reading a contract for my teaching assignments this semester, and it seems that my office hours weren't counted as "contact hours".

Should I be getting paid for the hours that I hold office hours for students?


texts: Do reviewers review the code submitted with papers?

texts:
In computer science, when submitting a paper, it is common to submit some code to reproduce the experiments performed in the paper.

Is it common for the reviewers to review that code?


texts: How to fix a mistake in an accepted paper?

texts:
I submitted a joint paper and it is accepted by a journal after two minor revisions.
In the last revision, there is a misunderstanding between my coauthor and me, so the last revisions still contained several mistakes.
The manuscript has gone into production and the journal will send the proofs.

How do I fix the mistake?

(1) Should I contact the journal immediately and send revised manuscript?

Or

(2) should I wait the proof-reading version and ask the journal to fix my mistakes?

I prefer the first option, since this is faster and pointing out the mistake in the proof-reading version is more difficult than fixing the original manuscript.
The manuscript is written in LATEX.
However, I also understand that the first option will be a problem to the journal.


texts: How do I credit someone who made the trajectory file used for my thesis?

texts:
There's a trajectory file which I included a sample of in my Appendix. Here's a screenshot:

Aside from stating in the Appendix text the name of the creator of the file, is there anything more I could do (like what they do for borrowed code: they insert the name of the creator in the code itself) ?


texts: Disorganized and overworked professor causing disappoinment and headache

texts:
About two years ago I finished my master thesis. At our university we can only choose the topic to work on and mostly it is part of a Phd program.

My topic was a mess because the faulty study design did not allow me to draw any firm conclusions, i.e. I could not answer the research questions directly.

However I discovered other interesting facts which are directly related to these questions.

Two things happened:
My advisor did not want me to include these other interesting facts, presumably because one finding was a critic of a method he often used, and probably because I openly criticized the study design.
My advisor gave me the lowest grade which still passes for the thesis even though I incorporated all of the advice he gave me -- with the exception that I did not want to exclude the critique of the method he suggested.
He told me that I focused too much on the details and he had a hard time seeing the big picture. However I could not answer the research questions directly (i.e. the big picture) because of the faulty design. (Which I told him repetitively.)

A Phd colleague of mine read my thesis and thought it was great. Other students also had problems with this advisor and one phd student even quit partly due to this advisor.

I personally do not dislike this professor but he is grossly overworked to the point where he is not even able to thoroughly plan a scientific study, causing much disappointment and headache.

Should I inform the department administration on this matter even If I am not at this university anymore?


texts: How to avoid theft of potentially patentable IP when trying to obtain a Ph.D?

texts:
When I was fresh out of college, I worked with someone who had their Ph.D who I'll call X.  They told me that they had lunch with a person from Facebook who had told them about a Novel Algorithm Facebook had created.  X decided to do a patent search on this algorithm, and it did not exist. Therefore, X decided to patent it himself as a System and Method.

My researched solution to a problem could potentially be worth millions of dollars.  I don't mean to sound braggadocious or grandiose, but I have experience in the industry, and I'm aware of how potentially valuable it could be.  I was thinking about doing a Ph.D on it. How do I prevent professors such as X from patenting my solution, or presenting it as their own idea in a publication? Since my solution could potentially be worth so much money, should I just patent it myself? The only caveat is that it is super expensive to do that.  Should I apply for a grant on grant.gov?  Should I write a manuscript in arXiv.org?  Should I try to write a business plan and try to get funding?


texts: Is Google Scholar reliable for reporting citations?

texts:
When quoting the number of citations for each paper you have published, different sources can be used, Google Scholar, ResearcherID, Scopus.
Google Scholar covers a larger range of literature.

Is it acceptable to use Google Scholar? Or it is not a professional resource, and we necessarily should use ISI Web of Knowledge for counting citations?


texts: What is the difference between keynote, invited, and oral conference presentations?

texts: I'm a PhD student, and I'll soon be presenting some of my work at a conference. In the program, my presentation is labeled "invited" while others have "oral" and others "Keynote". I am a bit confused, as I was never invited (maybe one of my professors was) and would like to know the difference between these kind of presentations.


texts: What is the difference between “FachHochschule” and “Universität/Technische Universität”, especially for master degrees?

texts: I want to enter Germany for my master's and want to do Job there. I don't want to do a Ph.D. I am having a hard time choosing between FH and TU. My main goal is to do Job after my master's so which type of Institution I should choose. I have heard FH helps to give practical exposure according to Industry (mine is IT) and TU gives deep and thorough Knowledge(Bookish knowledge) about the same. Please help me out I will be applying for the Winter semester this year.


texts: How to send end-of-the-year wishes in academic environment?

texts:
Currently I am working in a research group where there is much emphasis on the interpersonal relations.

I want to write an email and send it to my direct supervisor, with whom I have closer relations compared to the others. But, I also want to send my wishes to the whole group included the head of the group, but I want to do it in a fashion which will sound mildly formal but with a sense of respect and hierarchy in it, and not friendly and too informal.

Any suggestions, or nice emails that you have received?


texts: Should I review a paper that violates the maximum length limitation?

texts:
I am reviewing a conference paper that violates the maximum number of pages by more than 10%. I believe that this is enough reason to outright reject the paper.

However, maybe the authors would welcome reviewer comments anyway. But I do not want to waste a day's work, in case nobody cares about my comments. What is customary and ethical in such a situation?


texts: How can I make my papers available on Sci-Hub?

texts:
An essential assumption of this question is that I own, without restriction, the copyright of my papers.  I am a novice Sci-Hub user.  How do I make my papers available to other Sci-Hub users?
Edit:  If your answer is to post the paper somewhere other than Sci-Hub, please explain how that leads to the paper being available in Sci-Hub.  I want to target people who only look at Sci-Hub for papers.


texts: How to automatically import APA references into reference manager?

texts:
Related to this question on cross-checking APA citations and references, I often have an existing list of APA formatted references. This might come from a document from a collaborator or it might just be a published article.

I often want to take this list of APA references (e.g., one reference per line) and import them into my bibliographic software in such a way that the reference manager is able to discern what aspects of the reference correspond to author, year, title, journal, issue, pages, etc.
I'm often working with Endnote to do this, but I imagine that once you get the data into any reference manager (e.g., Mendeley, Zotero, etc.), it would be relatively easy to export and import into a preferred reference manager.

I'd also be happy with a system that was pretty good but not perfect. In psychology at least, most references are journal articles, book chapters, and books. So a system that imported these and flagged the rest would still be useful.

Question

How can an existing list of APA references be automatically imported into a reference manager?


texts: What to include in a motivational letter for research grant?

texts:
I was thinking of what would one include in a motivational letter for a Phd grant/scholarship at the cross-section between mathematics and economics?

I have no experience in processes of this kind, even though I'm getting a bit old for this. =D

Any help would be appreciated.


texts: What if your advisor excludes you from lunch with students during conference?

texts:
I am attending conference with advisor and the other student from our research group.
I saw my advisor and the other student went to lunch together. They didn't offer me to go together. There were also the her (other student) husband, the graduated student from our group, his (graduated) wife. People going lunch together are all chineses, and they know each other very well. I am an international student from another country). Does it mean that advisor want to avoid me? Does he hate me? Can I proceed my ph.d. In this group?


texts: What is importance of author listings when resumé/CV differs from actual publication?

texts: In examining published papers of employment applicants, I am noticing that authorship position shown on the resumé/CV (first, second, third authors, etc.) do not match those shown in the published papers. Is this significant? The field is cognitive neuroscience. My applicants are often shown as First Author on their CV, but not on the published papers. Is this significant in any way?


texts: For MathJobs does it matter what you put down for Primary Interest?

texts: Is it better to indicate 3 interests rather than one? Does it affect who looks at my file or affect my chances of acceptance in any way? For example, suppose I'm mainly interested in combinatorics but also am interested in algebraic topology. If I just put down combinatorics as my primary interest and nobody in the department does combinatorics, will that make the file worse than if I had put down 2 interests?


texts: Discrimination against theists by atheists in academia

texts:
Several times I read or heard about the claim that there is a discrimination against theists in academia by atheists. For example the german newspaper ZEIT Campus ONLINE cites an anthropologist Robert J. Priest:

  Für Akademiker ist es ganz einfach, sich zu diskreditieren. Sie müssen nur sagen, dass sie religiös sind

  For academics it's easy to discredit oneself. You just have to say you are religious.

(Source; translation by myself, I could not find the original citation)

I searched for surveys about that claim but could not find much, except creationists arguing against evolution theory.

So my question:

Are there surveys about discrimination of theist people by atheists in academia?

EDIT

I deletet the follow-up question "Is there discrimination against theists by atheists in academia?" because it is too opinion based and is probably answered within the survey(s) I am searching for.


texts: "Everything in an encyclopedia is Common Knowledge" - actually true?

texts:
One "rule of thumb" that is often given out by writing centers and tutors (for example, see the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning) is that anything in a general-reference print encyclopedia (e.g. World Book, Encyclopaedia Britannica, etc.) is "Common Knowledge" and never (or, at least, hardly ever) needs a citation in academic writing as facts do not get added to encyclopedias until they become generally recognized in the scientific community as true. The major exception to this is that one must cite if one quotes the exact text of an encyclopedia.

The Yale link above explains that Common Knowledge "...is knowledge that most educated people know or can find out easily in an encyclopedia or dictionary."

To what extent is this actually true?

Is this mostly true with a few exceptions?
Is it partially true and partially false?
Is it almost entirely false?

To be clear, I am asking about general principles and best practices in citation, not any specific context. Contact your editor or instructor.

The statement can be true even if there are minor exceptions. For example, "This is true, except that orbital periods of celestial bodies must always be cited because SCIENCE!!!11!111!one, even if they were first measured hundreds of years ago and verified hundreds of times to within 0.1% of their accepted value today" or "This is really true 99.9% of the time, but there was that old case where an editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1990 had a momentary lapse of professional judgment and allowed a controversial statement on the mating habits of Bactrian camels to be printed despite the fact that it had been first published in 1988 and lacked consensus in the scientific community at that time" (I'm not saying that this actually happened, it's just a hypothetical example).

This question is about general knowledge that constitutes Common Knowledge across fields. There is a concept of field-specific Common Knowledge, e.g. where Boyle's Law is considered common knowledge in Chemistry and Physics and needs no citation but might require a citation if used, for example, in a Gender Studies paper. This question is not about such domain-specific Common Knowledge.

In response to comments, I am using the term "Common Knowledge" in its sense as a term of art in Academia for knowledge that need not be cited because it is sufficiently old, sufficiently well-reproduced, and/or sufficiently non-controversial that a citation would serve little, if any, practical purpose, not the sense of knowledge that most people on the street have memorized. For example, the fact that the typical habitat for the Venus' Flytrap consists of subtropical marshes of the US East Coast is Common Knowledge - the average person you meet on the subway or at the bar might or might not know this, but any decent encyclopedia will explain it to you, and you would be hard-pressed to find a botanist (or any scientist, for that matter) who would seriously challenge it.


texts: How can I fill in the missing background I need to be a good computer scientist?

texts:
I'm doing my PhD in computer science and I'm almost finished (maybe one more year).

In fact, my background was engineering, but in my MS study I got interested in CS and took courses about "pattern recognition", and "distributed AI" and "robotics" so I tried to continue that line in my PhD which is about machine learning and data analysis.

I tried to become an expert (in a PhD level) in my topic of PhD as I read a lot of papers and got focused on one topic, but here and there I see my colleagues (same discipline) are talking about methods and principles that I'm not familiar with.

The fact is that I want to continue in this field as a post-doc and even more, but I feel a gap in my background, and I'm wondering how I can fill it? For example, should I take online courses related to commonly taught materials in a bachelor/master CS program?


texts: Transitioning from experimental to theoretical research after masters

texts:
I just graduated last summer and currently have a chance to do a research masters in applied physics in North America. The proposed project is very experimental in nature. My ultimate goal is to earn a PhD (preferably in the US) afterwards and continue in academia (postdoc, etc.).

While I don't mind the experimental aspect, I am not sure however if I would like to stay on the experimental side of things 'forever'. I worry that by joining this project, I will pigeonhole myself as an experimentalist and not be able to find a PhD position on the more theoretical side of things later on. I'm afraid that I won't be able to convince a future professor to take me on as his/her PhD student if I spend 1-2 years doing purely experimental work.

Is this a valid concern? Will an 'experimental' masters project hinder my chances of acceptance in a more theoretical PhD project at a US university?


texts: I am part of a “study team” that authored a paper. How do I list in in my CV?

texts:
I was a member of a study team that produced a couple of research papers.
The authors of the paper are, for example:

  Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, John Smith and The ABC Study Investigators

In the acknowledgements, it reads:

  The ABC Study team consists of members from Harvard University (James Bond, Thomas Harper, David Price, and Jason Jolly)

(Suppose that my name is David Price.)

Can I list such papers in the publication list of my CV?
If not, how can I show that I participated in these research papers?

In PubMed, my name was listed as one of 'collaborators.'


texts: Reasonable to exclude a specific professor from a thesis defense for personal reasons?

texts:
When I started my Master's program, my supervisor was Professor X. However, I had to leave their group after a few months, partly because we didn't get along, but also because the research topic wasn't a good fit.
Presently, my supervisor is Professor Y (who is awesome, and with whom I performed research work that really interested me). Now, I am getting ready to defend my thesis and need to select professors for the defense committee.
It so happens that my current thesis research deals tangentially with Professor X's research focus from about 5 years ago (and by the way, there aren't many professors whose research directly relates to my thesis). Under normal circumstances, Professor X would have been a decent choice for my defense committee.
Here is where I need a gut-check: I personally do not want Professor X on my defense committee. It is unlikely that they would try to sabotage my defense, but I have always found it distressing to be in Professor X's presence. Yes, I could grin and bear it, but I would simply rather not do that. Is it reasonable to request that Professor X be excluded?


texts: Do LOR writers need to be someone who's taught you a class?

texts:
Background: (Undergrad applying For PhD in the US)
I need to submit 3 LOR's. I have one in mind from my personal university and 2 from other universities (with whom I have done extensive research with).
The one prof I plan to ask for an LOR from my personal university has not taught me in any class but I have done good amount of research with them (6-8 months). (This person has a professor grade with a doctorate and an extensive research portfolio and leads their own lab.)
I have another prof who has taught me several classes and I have done some research with them but have recently come in bad terms and I fear they might give me negative reviews. So I am quite skeptical of asking them now. (This person has a assistant-professor grade and no doctorate.)
Another reason why I ask this is because I am not a department topper and my courses at my university are quite mediocre, no stress upon lab components and no major project for any course. I even have mediocre attendance.
Question:
Is it okay if all 3 of my Letter writers did not teach me any class during my university tenure? Will it hamper my chances in any way?


texts: Legality of collecting/distributing a dataset of screenshots of websites

texts:
I'm doing a research project where I want to collect thousands of screenshots of different websites, for training/testing of image models. Ultimately, I am trying to create a dataset that I can present and distribute to the community at various conferences/symposia.

My primary concern is how legal this might be. My assumption would be that taking a screenshot of websites of private companies like newyorktimes.com would be some sort of copyright violation, but that may be a faulty assumption.

I'm also unclear as to grey areas like:

reddit:  user provided content
twitter: user provided content
wikipedia:   open source knowledge base
google:  content scraped/sourced from other providers

Essentially, what copyright considerations, if any, would I have to keep in mind when collecting, annotating and distributing screenshots? How might licensing/attribution work when making this data publically available to others for use?