texts: MSc. Eng. thesis - Failed experiment - How to put it in the thesis?

texts:
I'm currently writing a thesis. I'm simulating a problem using CFD model. The model has been validated by using it to investigate similar problem with known results. The model vs. experimental results are showing good consistency.

As for my problem, I've modeled it and I've got the results.
I've spent few weeks designing, building and testing the experimental equipment but I've concluded the experimental equipment must be rebuilt using different components and I don't have time.

So, where in the paper do I report the failed experiment and how do I put it in words that it failed?

Here is the main structure of my paper.

1: Introduction

2: Literature Review

3: Method.

3:1 Model observation

3:2 Experimental observation

4: Results and discussion

4:1 Model validation

4:2 Problem Results (Here I was going to compare model vs. experiment)

4:3 Discussion

5: Conclusion and future work.


texts: Making conferences accessible for people with anxiety

texts:
I'm looking for some information about how academic conferences can or already do accommodate the needs of people with anxiety. For example, do you know of any conferences which have special measures in place to encourage people who have anxiety to attend (e.g. related to travelling to a conference, attending conferences, presenting at conferences)?
Or perhaps, are there any ways that universities themselves make conference attendance more accessible for people with anxiety?


texts: PhD interview with a very general topic (no specific topic mentioned in the job portal)

texts:
I have been invited to a PhD job interview at a German institute. In the job position description, there was not a specific topic mentioned. It was mainly general sentences about the research. Most general thing you would find in the application was something like this (this is slightly modified for the sake of confidentiality):
You will be analyzing our geological and biological data using advanced Machine Learning techniques in Python and blah-blah...
They had a few requirements and I was very well fit to the requirements. And I applied for the position because I am interested in using those techniques they mentioned, although they did not give any specific field area.
They ask me to prepare 15 minutes presentation talk about my master thesis and motivation about this specific PhD. As there was no anything special mentioned in the job post, do they expect me to come up with an idea and how and in which specific area I will be applying those techniques they require? In other words, do they want me to have a specific research question in my mind using those techniques? Honestly, I have no a specific idea what research question I want to takcle with for my PhD yet, as I am still a MSc student.
Also, I am a little surprised that they shortlisted me, as I am still a student and I mentioned in my application that I can only start when I finish my masters. Although they know this, they still want me to talk about my master thesis, which is still ongoing and I have only done 10% of it. Is it OK to give them a presentation explaining "I will be doing this and that" instead of "I have done this and that"  ?
As I am already less likely to get the position offered (due to ongoing MSc studies) compared to a similar candidate with a degree done, I want to increase my chances as much as possible.


texts: It is possible to get Arxiv article metadata from its article ID?

texts: Is there a file that gives an article's title, author, etc by article id? For instance, given archive id 1411.7990 I would like to be able to find the title "Irreducible Representations..." via a search through a document. In other words, can one search the arxiv remotely?


texts: Should I inform Grad schools about being accepted to other programs?

texts:
I applied to several Grad schools and recently got a letter of acceptance from one of them.
Should I inform the other schools about being accepted? Will it improve my chances with them or just create antagonism?


texts: Master's thesis results used to publish a new research paper?

texts:
few years ago I did my Master's thesis at University, when I worked in a lab and was performing various experiments on different materials. The thesis defense I held officially in front of commission, and the thesis is available on Internet.

As I was looking for some research papers, I discovered that there is this new publication, which uses the results I got during the experiments, as well as few other Master student who worked on their thesis. Our names are mentioned at the end, where authors are thankful for our assistance. I have two questions:

Is is possible to use and publish results which were actually already part of someones Master's thesis?
If these results of experiments were used in the new publication, is it right just to mention names of persons who performed them, and not putting them as co-authors?

Thanks!


texts: Fermi problem: How much of the published primary literature is never cited and will this number increase relatively?

texts:
I stumbled over this to me interesting Q&A solving a fermi question by estimating the right order of magnitude. In the age of publish or perish in my opinion it becomes a crucial question for young researchers/PhD students without permanent position to decide which way to go:

publishing high impact articles/letters in renowned journals and/or high-quality/effort research that can yield a lot of scientific feedback
trying to publish as much articles as possible in peer-reviewed journals

When I talk with chinese researchers (physics) more and more of them get evaluated by the bare numbers of their publication record, less by the quality of their work. Also, among professors (in germany) I see different agendas (internal incentives/charges at the university, country...) to rather go to one extreme and I already often face discussions with my professor how to split up results into papers.

For young researchers, which in the end are self-responsible for their career and cannot rely on good choices/incentives of the university/professor the question is: As long as I have no permanent position, should I try to accomplish outstanding research or publish as many short articles/letters as possible?

For me, as a physicist, I make my decisions on facts & numbers. I made some estimations based on data given here. But I don't want to bias answers and I know some researchers in bibliometrics also analyse such questions professionally.

Can you come up with the right order of magnitude for STEM, how many percent of published articles never reach a single citation?

To accept the answer I have to see which assumptions and factors went into the estimation. I know publishing outstanding research is the safest way to get permanent position, but the question is how to balance the good/many publications ratio. And for this I find the answer to my question quite interesting. If there is a saturation limit in the current exponentially growing numbe of publications and also journals and when this might be reached, whom to collaborate with because he might have very different incentives...


texts: Are there universities where authors can/must transfer their copyright to the university for negotiations with publishers?

texts:
Say you are a researcher employed by a university and publishing your work in a closed-access journal, which asks you to sign a copyright transfer agreement. To simplify, let's say you are the only author. In most cases I am aware of, the researcher owns the copyright to the article, and so end up signing the copyright transfer agreement with the publisher themself.

However, in a sense this is curious: publishing your research is part of your job, your employer may want to have a say in what you sign, and they could also provide legal assistance to understand the implications of what you are signing. Indeed, publisher agreements often contain pretty wide-sweeping language (e.g., taking responsibility for errors in the work and subsequent damages), and it's weird that researchers would sign them, especially when they are not lawyers.

So I was thinking that it could be a useful service if a university had an office for this kind of legal matters, providing standard paperwork for their researchers to transfer their copyright to the university, which would then deal directly with the publisher. It could even make sense for the university to require its researchers to only perform copyright transfers via them and never directly, so that they can keep an eye on what the agreements are about, negotiate standard conditions for the publication of their research, and maybe use them as some kind of argument, e.g., when negotiating transformative publishing agreements.

Are there universities that provide such a service, or have such a policy?

The closest thing I can think of is how some researchers, e.g., federal employees in the US, have a different publication copyright process because their work is ineligible to copyright; but this is a somewhat different situation. Another related situation is the University of California requesting permission from their researchers to archive their works, but it does not look like they are involved in the copyright transfer agreement with publishers (except to notify their policy to them).


texts: What repercussions do I risk if I exclude my postdoc advisor from list of co-authors against his will?

texts:
I am a postdoc in computer science. At the end of my first year I have submitted a paper to a reputable conference, co-authored by me, a PhD student and my adviser. It was recently rejected. Reason: it was a rushed submission at the insistence of my adviser, the project simply needed more time. Our submission was published as technical report on which he is a co-author.

At the beginning of 2nd year we have agreed that I will continue my work on this project and will turn it into a strong submission. Now, midway this project he gives me an "offer I cannot refuse": either I produce 2 papers or he fires me and expects me to finish the paper on my own.

To be short, he believes I cost him too much and is desperate to do some salami slicing. He wants to cut our planned strong paper into 2 weak halves. This could work, but could also lead to another round of rejects and wasted effort. In addition, the pace at which he expects me to work is unsustainable. Poor judgement and abuse, if you ask me. In addition, I quite disagree with his style of editing which emphasizes overstatements and "selling" over accurate technical contributions.

I expect to be fired any day now. His participation in this work, at least from my side, was financing me, supervising and editing the draft. By supervising I mean weekly meetings, listening, asking questions, mostly agreeing.

The research design and implementation is entirely mine. The original idea was proposed by some external collaborators who didn't wish to participate in this research.

My plan at this point is to remove the work of the PhD student (because it doesn't fit well the rest of the paper), add all the work I have done so far, re-write the whole paper and publish as sole author. According to ACM policy he won't have any substantial contributions left. As you can see from above, I question the quality of his contributions at all levels and am quite confident I can finish this work on my own.

He insists he still qualifies for co-authorship because he financed most of the research. However he is unwilling to finance me until the submission and expects me to finish the work on my own.

Question: What repercussions do I risk if I exclude him from co-authors?

I don't expect to get any good recommendation letters from him anyway, so this is not an issue.


texts: Is it advisable to give a handout with the slides to the jury of my PhD defense?

texts:
I am preparing for my PhD oral defense in engineering. It consists of two parts: first, a 40-minute long (public) presentation; then, Q&A with the jury.

Question: Is it advisable to give a handout with presentation slides to the jury?

In such a document, there would be 2-3 slides per page plus a large margin so that the jury could take notes, as well as the bibliography with references I cite in the slides. There are about 30 slides, which are very illustrative (i.e. without complex equations, but rather made of diagrams with little text).

The pros would be to make it easier for the jury to take notes, follow the slides (slides are  projected above my head in the amphitheater) or go back if they missed a step. Moreover, most of the jury are not native speakers, and both the slides and the talk will be given in English.

The cons would be that they could be tempted to 'fast-forward' and/or get distracted instead of concentrating on my talk. (Even if I do acknowledge it's hard to be fully concentrated during 40 minutes straight.) They would also not benefit from the explanations (i.e. the step by step construction of diagrams using beamer's slides).

There are no fixed rules, neither by the University, nor by common practice in my sub-field. My supervisor has no opinion on the topic.


texts: How to deal with past unintentional and unpunished plagiarism?

texts:
I am currently a master’s student and I cautiously and properly cite in my essays and works as per Harvard’s guidelines. However, I only learned how to properly cite just this year which made me go back and look at my BBAs graduation projects (I have two licenses) and, frankly, they are horrible when it comes to referencing!

To make a long story short, these projects are made up of ‘copy-and-paste’ chunks from online websites, Wikipedia pages and some books, all without putting quotation marks, however still referenced at the end with (some of them) a poor style. Back then, I never thought about it and was like, yeah I am just referencing the ideas. I was not aware of direct quoting, quotation marks (save for small definitions), proper paraphrasing and a proper style of citation. It is important to note that it was totally unintentional to plagiarize, just out of ignorance.

What to do now? Frankly, I feel so guilty about it since I am an ethical person. Although both projects were positively accepted (one of them is a technical one; a website, so the report was only to define some concepts), I, first and foremost, do blame myself for my ignorance and carelessness, however I also blame my instructors for not throwing the projects at my face and telling me to go home and correct everything! What can I do now? No instructor told me anything about it and this was four to five years ago. However and ethically, I am suffering because of this, I feel like I don’t deserve to be a graduate student (unlike what my current instructors think as I am seen as an excellent student at this part of my life and my current master’s grades are excellent and I even cite during exams!) and should just drop out and not use my bachelor degrees in life, yes I feel that way. Why to bother pursuing an MBA and even a PhD if my BBAs projects were built on academic dishonesty (even if unintentional)?

I am so glad that I learned how to properly cite this year just before my master’s thesis so that I can produce a well-written one, but again, I am not motivated due to the aforementioned reasons.


texts: Is it rude to ask via email to a professor if there are any internship opportunities?

texts:
I've worked for an university for one year after my master's degree. Now I'm searching another job. For the moment I've tried to ask to several professors via email if there is any internship opportunities but only a couple of them answered me. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or this is not the praxis or the formal manner for this type of requests. This is a general template I use:

Dear Professor Surname,
I'm a young chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage.  In my career I've studied mainly non-invasive techniques for art diagnostics and authentication, such as reflectography and Raman spectroscopy. I've also learned, on my own, to use GIS software for organizing data for Cultural Heritage management. I've seen that one of name of a Project I'm interested tasks is the maintenance of cultural heritage. Therefore, I would like to ask you if there are any internship opportunities in which my expertise could be useful to your current research? Thank you for your time.
Best regards,

How can I propose myself for an internship? Which is the most accepted praxis?


texts: What are good principles for creating figures?

texts:
This thought came into mind when I was reading Points of view: Elements of visual style.

While there are a lot of questions on software and strategies to make and edit figures, I am more curious about what are the things to consider (design rules) while laying out figures. Factors that come to mind include typography, color template, and proportion.


texts: Can I (should I) change the name of this distribution?

texts:
I am nearly finished with a paper, as well as some accompanying open-source software. We are planning on submitting this to a prominent statistics journal. One of the more promising methods that we discuss in the paper deals with the normal-inverse Gaussian distribution, commonly referred to as the NIG distribution. This is usually pronounced “en-eye-gee”, but it’s understandable that some people say it phonetically (it’s a relatively obscure distribution).
In case it is not yet clear, my concern is that NIG is somewhat reminiscent of the “N word”. I had some reservations about writing NIG so many times in the paper and in the software (by convention, there would be many functions with NIG pre-fixes, e.g. nig_foo()). I thought maybe I was overthinking things, but I’ve had a few people (including a co-author) comment about the potentially inappropriate nature of this name.
Thus I feel like it might be worthwhile to refer to this distribution by a different name. It is not uncommon for distributions in statistics to have multiple names (e.g., normal vs. Gaussian), and we would make it clear that it is the same distribution. The problem is, I feel very unqualified to just change the name of distribution that has been around for 40 years.
If we do change the name, here’s a short list of some of the things I’ve considered.

The Normal-Wald Distribution (Wald is another name for inverse-Gaussian)
The Gauss-Wald Distribution (Same idea)
The Barndorff-Nielsen distribution (Ole Barndorff-Nielsen was one of the first researchers looking into this distribution)
The Barndorff distribution (Less wordy, but I don’t want to remove a surname without asking him)

Questions
Is it a bad idea to change the name? I’m slightly uncomfortable with it, but I might be overthinking it.
If I do change the name, what’s the most reasonable choice? (I realize this is very subjective, but feedback is welcome)
I don't think that the name of the distribution is intentionally or overtly "racist". The main point is that (i) this distribution is relatively obscure and (ii) many distributions have multiple names so it might make sense to have an alternative that has no chance of being problematic.


texts: Is there a difference between a (under)graduate and honours studies - also concerning thesis?

texts:
Is there a difference between an undergraduate and an honours thesis? I came across the latter during some online research on US colleges and it seems to me that honours are only known in those institutions. Is this correct?

Moreover, it seems that some colleges offer normal undergraduate as well as undergraduate honours studies/classes/degrees. I heard that the difference is that the latter have to write a thesis while the former seemingly don't. Is this correct and are there other differences?

Does this separation also exist on the Master's level and graduate schools?


texts:
As a session chair recently, I was to introduce a talk where the title of the talk was ungrammatical (in both the abstract and talk slides), likely due to the presenter not being a native English speaker.  Two words should have been in plural when they were not, which became clear after reading the abstract.

I faced a dilemma:

read the corrected title, and possibly embarrass the speaker (possibly putting them off their talk), or
deliberately read the ungrammatical title.

I attempted a compromise: I acted casual, as if I wasn't reading the title word for word.

Question: How should the session chair introduce presentation titles which are ungrammatical?

I'm just wondering what's the best solution in this situation (or perhaps what I did "on the fly" was the best).


texts: Potential Supervisor Said She Will Contact References- No Response

texts:
So I met with a potential supervisor at an Open day and she seemed very excited at my research interest as it aligns with hers. She said she is recruiting students for Fall 2020 and she would want me on her team but wants to contact my references and will then get back to me. I know she contacted one already, and I know they gave a great feedback, but it's been more than two months now without hearing from her.
Should I contact her and ask if she needs any extra info or wait?

Thanks!


texts: I'm an international student and would like to prepare myself for a PhD which I will possibly be starting in 8 months' time. I need to improve my academic vocabulary and don't know what the roadmap is for that.


texts: How to list the second edition of a book

texts: If an author has published a second edition of a book and he is in his earlier career stage as a mathematician, how do you recommend to include this second edition into the list of publications appearing e.g. in the CV? For example, should it be mentioned at all? Should it replace the first edition? Should both editions be listed, in particular when the second edition is a massive revision and 20 pages longer?


texts: My adviser wants to use bad statistics. Help!

texts:
I am going to submit a paper in a couple of weeks. The results are good, but my adviser wants me to report the results in a particular way that makes them artificially look better. I asked a statistics professor about this method and he emphatically said it was dishonest and the wrong way to report results. I argued this with my professor and he would have none of it. I told them the results are good anyway, why report it in this inflated way, and he insists that this is simply a difference in opinions on the definition of this metric. He says he has published many papers with this metric and other (major) people in the field have used this metric too. But when I google around I can't find a single source that jibes with his definition.

Clearly I am unable to convince my adviser. I am uneasy being the first author on a paper with dishonest reporting (especially since honest reporting would not impact the worthiness of the article). Some of the other coauthors are uneasy too, but we're just grad students. I'm tempted to change the numbers to the right ones right before I submit the paper. What do you recommend I do?


texts: How to stop a researcher cutting corners in research?

texts:
Some avenues of research require time-intensive research and experimentation (e.g.m sciences). For example, in my case, each experiment took 3-12 hours and I had to perform over 30 of them.

Often, this type of research is performed as part of a group, where group cohesion and harmony are an important factor.  If you caught a member taking "short cuts" in their research: for example, doing one trial of an experiment instead of several or, as an extreme case, slightly altering the results to better fit their model.

It is always good to speak to the person in question discreetly, but what if the behavior continues? Also speaking to them can cause disunity.

How would this behavior be remedied, while maintaining group harmony?

(Please note, I am not after opinions, but practical solutions, particularly if people have confronted this issue before, and I have heard of this happening before, but was not privy to the details.)


texts: Preparing for Higher education/Self-teaching

texts:
I am currently a 2nd year undergraduate student studying Business/Finance/Information Systems at a decent, normal university.  I have amazing grades and general interests in pursuing higher education or conducting my own research in some way.

While my current standing in knowledge is still relatively minute, I'm extremely interested in certain fields -- such as econometrics, financial theory, etc -- that I learn on my own time.  Many of my peers find classes and course material frustrating but I get a tinge of excitement everytime I'm able to understand and articulate on a certain concept being taught.  This is especially true in Mathematics as I have a strong math background compared to my students in my degree but meagre in comparison to the material I am trying to learn.

People currently in Academia or pursuing Academia, what are some of your recommendations in preparing for higher education or just learning more on my spare time.  Currently I am taking some online coursera courses and reading a few books I've found through the library.  What other sources should I be considering?  When is a good to start reading journal articles/papers?


texts: Will university admissions google the academics who write my references?

texts:
I'm applying for masters. Will those reading my applications actually bother looking up the people that wrote my references?

I'm considering whether I should ask prestigious academics (who don't know me well) write my references vs not-so-prestigious ones (who know me). Obviously if they wont google the names, I should go with the latter.


texts: How does funding at UK universities work?

texts: The process for obtaining funding for graduate work in the UK seems much different than it is in the US. In particular, in the UK, funding decisions often come after offers of admission. What is the process by which a good, accepted graduate application at, say, Oxford, is given funding?


texts:
Let's say we're talking about a full-time, tenure-track professor at a U.S. college. Officially I read that the primary job expectations are something like:

Research and publications
Teaching students
Service to the university

But I've heard that effectively, retention committees really only look at #1, the number of publications, in determining whether to award promotions or not. And of course this is consistent with many other signals (e.g., Steven Krantz in How to Teach Mathematics recalls a chair telling a new hire in the 60's: "Remember: Our job is proving theorems", although that is contrasted with somewhat modified expectations today [sec 6.1]).

The reason I ask this is because many times when I communicate this to non-academics (that research and publication is the priority), the response is skepticism and/or outright disbelief. So I think that having a canonical, well-formulated answer on SE might be helpful.

How can we best express the true balance of job priorities, and expectations for what kind of work is rewarded, on the part of college professors today?


texts: Why do professors ask candidates at PhD interviews what specific problems they are interested in?

texts:
I am currently interviewing in several universities across the U.S. for PhD programs in computer science. In every one of my interviews so far, there are always 1 or 2 professors that are eager to know which specific problems I am interested in researching (and it normally comes out as the most important question they are going to ask me). This question stumps me every time because I am not trying to enter a PhD program and start working on a specific problem right away. Instead, I want to do some lab rotations first and get a deeper feeling for the work of the institution's faculty (that works on my subarea of interest) and then, after these rotations, pick a specific problem (perhaps this is the wrong motivation?).

It does not seem to me that interest is a reliable determiner of success in completing a PhD. I could say that I am interested in Dr.X's research on complex manifolds because I skimmed through some of his papers. However, from my personal experience, I think there is a very big discrepancy between having read a little bit about a topic and claiming it as an interest, and actually doing research in that area. In other words, one might be interested in doing research in modelling the response of cancer patients to drug Y (because they want to defeat cancer or something similar) but a lot of times that person might realize that the actual research is far from his expectations and end up switching to different area.

I could list a few other reasons why I think interest is not a good measure of student's commitment but I might be wrong since professors like to ask this question. Why is this and what would be an honest way to answer it?


texts: Can a routine in R be published in academic journals?

texts: I have developed a routine in R for longitudinal analysis of networks. I was wondering whether it can be published on an academic journal as a dedicated article?


texts: How can I politely tell a professor that I'm too busy to do research with him this term?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate. I sent two emails to professors regarding potential research work. Both responded positively, which I didn't expect, and I started work with one of the profs last term. As for the other, I think his work is incredibly interesting but I simply don't have the time for two research projects at once. However, I would really like to work with him eventually.

How can I tell the other professor that I'm too busy this quarter but would like to work with him at some point in the future? It seems a bit awkward to mention the other professor so I'm not sure how to explain it.


texts: It is commonly accepted that professorship is the final rank of promotion in universities. I would like to study the possibility for promoting professors further. Is there any grading or ranking system for professors in universities?


texts: How to accurately check for cause of plagiarism for programming assignments with online content

texts: I heard that most of the code plagiarism checkers use MOSS for evaluation. But MOSS doesn't check for any content in GitHub or present on the internet. How do we exactly tackle the problem of checking the whole code present on the internet (eg GitHub public repos, Kaggle public notebooks, etc). If let's say we had a similar assignment from the previous years and some students just tweaked the assignment to get it done. We can have the submissions from the previous years while we send them to moss but that does not solve the problem as they are not exactly similar but with a few minor tweaks.


texts: Msc in popular field in less reputed university or not so popular field but in well recognized school

texts:
Suppose someone can decide between:

doing a Master in a university that has low rank but has one very active Prof in Machine Learning for example where there are good number of PhD positions to apply for.

or

Attending a good rank school with multiple Profs doing research in almost all fields of Computer Architecture where there are not so many PhD positions available for.

If the goal is to apply for PhD in a good school after finishing Msc (in US or Canada), which one of these choices can help applicant's application better.
Just to make a question more general, for applying PhD in computer science which factor is more important, reputation of the previously attended university Or research done (quality and number of published papers) not considering the school?


texts: Do UK students' unions remove you as a member once you finish your programme?

texts: I'm in a UK University and the students' union adds all new students automatically as their members. Will they remove me as a member once I have completed my programme?


texts: What will happen if I do not follow publisher(IEEE/Springer) format for one page?

texts:
One conference has accepted my paper, but I'm unable to follow publisher format for one page, I have to change some margins for this page.

Actually I've to insert a table and table is slightly bigger in size so I have to change margins and I've tried almost all the possible ways to fit it in that page and I've only one page I can't use more space/page.

If I do this, will they reject my final submitted copy of paper? What will be the effect of this in the printed copy?


texts: Design of "Members Page" for Academic Lab Website?

texts:
I am a Computational Biologist as part of an academic lab group working on the Immunogenomics of disease vectors (which may be relevant to the following).

I am designing part of a web-page that showcases the members of the group by:

Two portrait photographs
A personal statement (50 words)
Summary of their work (50 words)
Fun group photographs

Questions

What are the "Do"s and "Don't"s in designing a members page of a group such as ours?
Do you know of any exemplar members pages or group websites?

A template in wordpress so far: http://www.vigilab.org/


texts: A paper was published with material from my thesis without my knowledge: Correction or Retraction?

texts:
I have completed M.tech and submitted my thesis. A year later I realized my thesis was used to publish an article which was a replica of a section of the thesis. Even the values were the same. I was shocked and contacted my supervisor/Guide and the other author to which they responded that it was not a preplanned act. I requested a correction as it was my work. Still, they were unwilling and told me that they won't. I contacted the editor and requested for addition and provided proof(thesis). The journal editors withdrew the article.

I then published a book based on my thesis. Again after a year, I found out that they had published two more articles merely taken from my thesis as such! All this while they didn't even bother to add me as the author.

I feel this is highly unethical and despite the fact that it was my work they didn't add my name at all! One of the journals replied that they agree that the article was taken from my thesis and there was significant overlap, they can provide a correction in the author list or retract the article.

I am confused should I accept the correction as suggested or go for retraction? If I go for correction will they continue this? Should I retract? will it affect them badly?

SORRY for making it lengthy, please forgive and thanks for reading guys. Please advise.

edit:
 If I chose to retract but still want to publish papers (from the thesis with reference to the pre-published book) will this retraction affect my publication?

edit2:
These papers were published by a pHD student(1st author) & my supervisor/guide as the second author. Thanks for the replies, As of now the article is not yet retracted. The Journal editors suggest to either opt for correction or retraction. They told will inform Institute if I chose to retract.

edit3:
Thank you all for the answers the paper had been retracted but unfortunately, another paper had been published by the same authors with the same issue. Hoping I could get the strength to continue this fight, which is going on like forever!!
requested for plagiarism check of new one


texts: Should I add my current supervisor as the coauthor of my paper if I am going to transfer to a new university?

texts:
I am transferring to a new university. And I found a new supervisor at another university. I have told this to my current advisor. But I am still staying at the current lab as the transfer procedure would take like two or three months.
During the two months, I have been collaborating with my new supervisor on the paper and using his experimental facilities remotely. The paper is now almost finished and then we are going to publish. I will consult with my current and future supervisor. But before that, I want to ask if there is a regulation about this.


texts: My potential future PhD supervisor ask me to peer review a paper

texts:
I have been working for two years after my Master and I am now looking for a PhD. I got a PhD offer from one university, met the person who would supervise me and told them I am very interested, while making it clear that I also applied to other PhD offers and am waiting for answers. They said that that it was not an issue for them.

But now he just sent me an anonymous paper and suggested to me peer-reviewing it to help me "get a foot on the ladder". I am really confused by this proposition since:

I am still working for my company
I am still searching for PhD offers to apply, which takes me all my free time,
I never reviewed a paper before.

So, I am not really in the mood to do this now since I have more urgent concerns. However, I do not want to upset this potential supervisor, nor make them believe that I am not motivated.

So, should I do this review or not, and if I don't, how can I refuse without upsetting this potential supervisor?

Let me precise that I am likely to do my PhD there if my other applications don't get accepted.

EDIT

The paper in question is anonymous and I am asked to peer review it for a journal publication. The paper subject is in my field of research but not really in the field of my potential supervisor.


texts: Is it okay to ask a journal for review reports as they are available?

texts:
The typical review time for a 1st decision in my field is 4-6 weeks. It has been nearly 12 weeks since initial submission of a piece of work by a student who just graduated and will leave the lab in about a month. The problem now is what if the reviewers ask for additional experiments to be performed, but the student who actually knows how to perform them has already left the lab?

Would it be okay to ask the editor to release any referee reports already completed while they wait for a final decision? This could help us get a jump start on any required additional experiments and complete the work before the student leaves for good. Obviously it's unusual, but my thinking is that we'll see the referee reports eventually anyways, so would there be any harm in seeing them a few weeks in advance?


texts: Are technical questions common in post-doc interviews?

texts:
I have in the next few days an interview for a post doc with a top UK university. The interview is on Skype, directly with the PI, in applied computer science.

I am preparing for that interview and I have a question. In your experience, how common are technical topic-related questions, like the description of a well-known family of methods, or of certain papers?


texts: Submitting An Extended Abstract To Conference, But Later Changing The Methodology and Research Question

texts:
Context: MSc student, first time having a paper accepted to a conference.

I submitted an extended abstract to two conferences which were ultimately accepted. In the original extended abstract, I did not yet have results. The original extended abstract was also based on a particular methodology (optimization), but I ran into some computational complications solving my problem, so I had to change my methodology to 'simulation', and ultimately, my research question had to be adapted to the new methodology.

So now I am in a position where my original extended abstract was accepted on the premise of the original methodology and research question, but now when I present at the conference I will have to present on a new question based on a different methodology.

I feel like this 'bait-and-switch' is a bit of a slippery thing to do and my inexperience in publishing research and being involved with conferences probably influences that feeling, but my advisor said it isn't a big deal and now I find myself conflicted. From the perspective of my supervisor, they said that most conferences are understanding that research can change on the fly, which is why I should not be overly concerned that i'm presenting on something adjacent (but still very much related) to my original question and methodology. Additionally, the current title of my work is based on the original submission and uses a key-word in my field that signals to the readership that an 'optimization' methodology is going to be used (key word is "optimal").

I am wondering if I should reach out to the conference organizers and inform them of this change, particularly in regards to changing the title of the original paper. Or, perhaps this really isn't much of a big deal at all and this situation that I have described above is more common than I currently understand, in which case I can just leave it alone.


texts:
There exist some guidelines on which colors should be used in the figures to ensure that they can be read by as many people as possible, such as color blind people (example  (mirror)).

Are there any guidelines regarding the choice of the markers in a graph?

Example of markers
 (mirror):

Code in python to generate the plot (in case the link gets broken):

#!/usr/bin/env python

import matplotlib.pyplot as pyplot

mark_dict = {
".":"point",
",":"pixel",
"o":"circle",
"v":"triangle_down",
"^":"triangle_up",
"<":"triangle_left",
">":"triangle_right",
"1":"tri_down",
"2":"tri_up",
"3":"tri_left",
"4":"tri_right",
"8":"octagon",
"s":"square",
"p":"pentagon",
"*":"star",
"h":"hexagon1",
"H":"hexagon2",
"+":"plus",
"D":"diamond",
"d":"thin_diamond",
"|":"vline",
"_":"hline"
}

def line_plot():

    x_list = [1, 10, 30, 70]
    y_list = [10, 20, 30, 40]

    pyplot.clf()
    for mark in mark_dict:
        y_list = [y_val + 10 for y_val in y_list]
        pyplot.plot(x_list, y_list, label=mark_dict[mark], marker=mark)

    pyplot.legend(loc="best", prop={'size':11})
    pyplot.savefig("markers.png")

def main():
    line_plot()

if "__main__" == __name__:
    main()


texts: Considering a second degree to be a patent bar eligible lawyer--masters or bachelor?

texts:
I've always had an interest in math/physics, but ended up pursuing classics instead in undegrad (not remotely related I know). After undergrad I got my J.D., and have spent the last 3 years practicing law. I recently shifted into patent litigation (lawsuits about if someone stole your patent), but in talking with the patent attorneys I am very, very interested in patent prosecution (filing patents) for personal and professional reasons.

However, to prosecute patents you have to be registered before the patent board, which generally means you need a bachelors in a hard science or engineering, though with the right credit distribution a Masters is also fine. Technically you can take the exam without a degree, just the requisite credits, but most firms I've spoken to are not interested in hiring a patent bar certified attorney without a degree they can show to clients, so SOME form of degree would basically be required. However the firms I've spoken to have all indicated that a Masters instead of a Bachelors would be fine.

I'm seriously considering going for a second degree, either a second bachelors or a masters, in order to shift into patent prosecution. However, I'm not sure which would be better to pursue at this point in my life (the Masters would be patent bar eligible as long as I have enough total credits in specific fields... they have a whole guide sheet on this on the USPTO website).

I took through multi-variable calc and gen chem/gen physics in undergrad, so I might be able to get enough classes for admission to a Masters in physics (as much as I love astronautics at this point I'm assuming engineering is out of the question, so Physics seems my best bet). However, I know that programs that take non-science undergrad degrees aren't as common, and probably would be harder to get into. Alternatively I could see about just getting a second undergraduate, though it seems that may take longer, I think?  A shorter or part time is better, obviously, though financially I could take a few years off to chase the degree if needed, esp as studying for it might be hard to do while practicing. Basically I'm not sure which degree direction to start looking.

EDIT: I should add that while this isn't a career in academia immediately, my long term goal is to teach in law, for which one of the common routes is to practice for a while. Probably would get an SJD some time in the future. Law is weird.

Thanks for any insight.


texts: How can I create a DOI for a paper that was uploaded to arXiv but not published somewhere else?

texts: I wonder whether there is any way to create a DOI for a paper that was uploaded to arXiv but not published somewhere else, and have the DOI points to the arXiv URL (e.g., not pointing to some researchgate page). While there are reasons that arXiv does not provide DOIs (Why does arxiv.org not assign DOIs?), I prefer to use the same identifiers for all my research papers.


texts:
I'm submitting my paper to Quantitative Finance (instruction to authors here). The structure of the paper should be:

Manuscripts should be compiled in the following order: title page (including Acknowledgements as well as Funding and grant-awarding bodies); abstract; keywords; main text; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figure caption(s) (as a list).

I'm a bit confused by this requirement. Does anyone know how a title page is meant to look like? All the papers I've seen simply have Title up top, followed by authors, keywords and abstract. The same goes for figure captions as a list. Did they mean itemize all the captions?!


texts: Will PhD rejection return to haunt later?

texts:
Suppose a student applies for PhD at a university and his application is replete with problems: average academic record, poor SOP, so-so recommendations, etc and he is rejected outright. He gets an admit at another university, does very good work and completes his doctorate successfully. Now he deems himself to be a fit for a faculty position at the university which rejected his PhD candidature.

Will his past mistakes come back to haunt him? Will the university dig up his PhD application and count this against his faculty application? Or will he be judged by his work during the course of the doctorate alone?


texts: Should supervisors read acknowledgments before the printed version of the thesis?

texts:
I'm finishing my M.Sc. thesis and I sent it to my supervisors so that they can read it.

In the final version, I would like to insert an acknowledgements page where I thank them. Should I include it in the last draft that I will send them, so they can read it? Or should it be included in only the final version, without their knowledge?


texts: May I discuss a paper I have only seen as a referee?

texts:
Recently I refereed a paper in pure mathematics. Although I recommended a "major revision", I was quite impressed with the paper, and indeed I would like to: (1) describe his results in a grant proposal I am writing, and (2) eventually apply the author's techniques in my own work.

The author has not yet made his paper publicly available (e.g. on the arXiv or on his personal website). Ethically speaking, may I now freely refer to his paper in my proposal, and later in my work? Or am I bound to wait until the paper is published or until the author has otherwise made it available to the public?

I e-mailed him recently, let him know that I was a referee for his paper, and asked his permission to do this. If he writes back to offer (or deny) me permission, then that settles the issue. But what if I do not hear back?


texts: What to do when the organizers close the submission portal earlier than what was announced?

texts:
I was submitting the camera-ready version of my paper to a conference in China, and its deadline was by the end of Sept. 7th based on Pacific daylight time. But, they closed the submission portal at 16:00 (PT) Sept. 7th.

I already contacted the program chairs (which are Professors of Chinese Universities), but I have not heard anything back from them. I imagined they have closed the webpage (maybe by automatic settings) according to their local time in China which is more than half a day ahead of PT. But the conference website (keydates) clearly says that all the deadlines are at 11:59PM Pacific Daylight Time.

Update: After exchanging a couple of emails they noticed it was a technical problem from the web service they were using for submission management. They solved it eventually and now everyone is happy! :D

So, what can I do instead of giving up on my paper?


texts: How common is it for a student to finish a Master's degree at a school and to be rejected for a PhD at the same school?

texts:
This question likely doesn't make much sense in the US and other countries where separate Master's degrees are uncommon. However, here in Canada, the vast majority of graduate students must first apply for a Master's degree, and then apply for a PhD program (usually filling out applications during their Master's degree, as the deadlines fall).
Students are highly discouraged from completing their undergrad, Master's, and PhD all at the same school for many reasons. But it seems quite common to do one's undergrad at one school, then both grad degrees at the same school.
My question is: how common is it for students in this situation to be rejected from a PhD program at the school where they are currently doing their Master's? And what might be reasons for such a rejection? I imagine that some reasons would be lack of willing supervisors (which begs the question of how they were accepted for the Master's anyway), unsatisfactory work during the Master's degree, or some extreme situation such as academic dishonesty.
My field is math, so I guess we can restrict the question to that discipline, but I'm curious about answers from all fields.


texts: How do I specify my affiliation/contact information when I changed institutions and fields?

texts:
I am in a situation similar to that of this question where I did some work with a former employer, I changed fields, and now something related to that work is in the process of being published.  Initial submission of the work was during my time with my former employer, but revisions are happening after leaving.  The paper is a single author paper.  Based on the responses to that question, it seems like I should be using my former employer as my affiliation, but I have a few difference in my situation that I would like to clarify.

The work in question is a discussion paper which was solicited from me by a journal.  As such, I gained the expertise necessary to write the paper working for my former employer, but the paper itself was written in my personal time so neither organization directly funded any of the work in the paper.  However I would not have been requested to write the paper if not for my work with my former employer.
If I do decide to use my former employer as my affiliation, what should my contact email be?  I would rather not use a personal email, but I don't have access to the work email from my former employer, and it seems weird for my affiliation to be Company A, but my email to be me@CompanyB.com.

In case it affects your response, the paper is in the field of quantitative forecasting and specifically on the use of machine learning for forecasting, which is what I did for my former employer.  I now work using machine learning for video processing on medical devices.


texts: Going to academia after research job in industry

texts:
I have received an offer for an R&D position in a private company. I see that they do quality science, not differently from universities in my field, and they have awesome labs. Plus it’s a fixed term position, I would directly skip the postdoc.
Would such a path allow me to go back to academia in the future, if I will want to? Or would I have to do a postdoc?
This company publishes a lot, so assume that my publication record will be fine.


texts: How to find host institution - Marie-Curie individual fellowship

texts:
How to find the list of host institution for Marie-Curie individual fellowship? Does it mean that the host institution must have already received or get approved for Marie-Curie individual fellowship?

Another post on host institution MSCA IF


texts: How best to email a professor to set up a meeting after a long time?

texts:
My path to get my MA was delayed following a family tragedy, and I'm finally in a position where I can get back on track, so I would like to reach out to a professor I previously did lab work for a couple years ago. I have some general questions for him, but I also would like to see if maybe he has a Research Assistant position available, or maybe knows other professors that might, to try to build up my experience again. I was wondering if anyone might know the best way to approach an email like this? I was thinking maybe starting by formally asking if he remembered me and maybe giving some details about the work I did for him, but then I don't know where to go from there. I'd prefer to meet in person, but is that okay to ask after such a long time?

Thanks in advance.


texts: Will I be penalized if i give someone who hasn't taken a test my test so he could study for his?

texts: I took this Mathematics class and this student asked me if I could ask the teacher to send my test so I could send to him so he can study for the test. It's not that I don't want to be a good person but thinking about doing it is eating me and  I feel if I do it so many things can go wrong for and ruin my future. What should I do?


texts: How does one approach reverse-plagiarism -- being attributed authorship without contribution or consent?

texts:
For reasons I am not going to delve into, I was given second authorship outside my consent on a couple of conference papers I have absolutely no contributions on.
To resolve this, I have been repeatedly going back-and-forth with ACM to remove me from those, which keeps ending up with the head author very strongly insisting I did contribute, and ACM responding with the written equivalent of shrugging and walking away.
This whole situation is very bizarre and I am sincerely at a loss as to how to even begin approaching this. Plagiarism is complicated enough despite it basically being the most studied academic subject of all times. But how does one even begin to approach it happening in reverse?


texts: Can I use purchased graphics in an academic paper/poster?

texts:
I've purchased a bundle of infographic element sets (templates for charts, graphs etc) which are licensed for personal and commercial use.

Would it be generally acceptable to use a template I've purchased to display data in an academic paper/poster, and would I need to reference the original source of the template?

Many thanks.


texts: My student in one course asks for paid tutoring in another course. Appropriate?

texts:
I'm a teaching assistant for an introductory programming course. A student in the course approached me and asked if I would tutor them for a different discrete mathematics course in return for payment.

I grade all of the material for the programming course, and so I feel like there's a conflict of interest in receiving any payment from the student, even if its unrelated to the programming course.

Am I overthinking it or is it right to think there's an issue here?


texts: Declining funded MA offer A (after accepting) and accepting funded MA offer B after April 15th?

texts:
I am an international student and I obtained funding from two sources (both homeland and US government) for one academic year to obtain a MA degree in interdisciplinary studies.

I applied to several programs, and was accepted into University A around April 12. I had two weeks to reply, and during these two weeks I tried expediting the review for my application for University B, my first choice. Both universities are in the US top 25, were A would be around 20-25 and B 1-8.

Because I was unsure about my acceptance into University B I accepted the University A offer, which came with 30% tuition refund.

Just two days after accepting offer A, I was admitted into University B for another MA program. This University is and has always been my first choice and they offer a 66% tuition refund.

I would really like to accept offer B, but I am worried about the Council of Graduate Schools Resolution. I do however wonder:

one offer was made after April 15th, and both deadlines were after
April 15th: does the CGS still apply?
it says I need a written
release: how and who do I ask for this release?
how likely is it to get such a release?

So far, I have not accepted B, but I really really want to. I know there is a serious ethical issue with accepting and later declining, thus taking another students' spot, but I saw no other way because of the university A reply deadline.
I must also admit: it did not occur to me to ask A for an extension on the reply deadline. I feel stupid not having asked, but it just seemed so impossible at the time.

Thanks


texts: Letters of recommendation -- from postdoc or professor? Both?

texts:
I am an undergraduate studying pure mathematics in an American university with a top-10 graduate program.
I am applying to PhD programs and graduate fellowships this year, and I have a dilemma about who to ask for letters. Maybe this question is too specific for academia stackexchange, but actually I think it is abstractly a somewhat common issue.
I have four potential letter writers. Two are very solid (very famous professors who know me well from reading courses / research) as far as I know, and I will ask them. Call the other two potential letter-writers "Prof." and "Postdoc"
"Postdoc" is a postdoc whose graduate-level course I TAed; I also took a graduate topics course with her and produced something semi-original (a new proof of an already-known result) for the final project. She is originally from Europe and did her PhD in the United States at a top-10 graduate program.
"Professor" is a very famous professor, though not in the same field as the other three (who are in the field that I will apply to graduate school in). I took an undergraduate course and a graduate course with her; I did very well in both courses and produced a very thorough (and long if that counts for anything) expository final project for her graduate course. I also know she is very serious and enthusiastic in general about writing letters for undergraduates, though I do not know if she actually read what I wrote in my expository final project.
For graduate programs, I have the option of including 4 letters. Should I include all 4, or just choose one of {Postdoc, Prof.}? Should I expect one of those letters to dilute my application and make it less strong? In my view, there are reasons why either letter could do that: for the postdoc, either because she is a postdoc (so some people might completely disregard her letter), or because she is very young and European (so might not be very good at writing letters yet, especially in the American style). For the professor, there is the potential downside that she is not in my field (though could it be a strength to have some diversity?), and that I didn't do anything even semi-original in her graduate course (though my understanding is that for pure mathematics this can be OK?).
For some graduate fellowships (e.g. the NSF GRFP), it seems like I can only submit three letters, so I must choose one of the postdoc or the professor to exclude (regardless of whether I ask both for PhD programs). Given this information, is there a clear choice of which one to exclude?
Apologies again if the question is too specific. However, I think there are some general themes in letter-asking embedded in my question: (1) asking postdocs vs. professors, (2) asking professors who I haven't done anything original for, (3) "dilution" of letters and whether to ask for 3 or 4 of them, (4) asking a professor whose research area in pure mathematics is different from the one I am applying for


texts:
I am applying for a PhD position in computer science in Europe. They specify a start date but say that it can be negotiated. Due to other circumstances, it is not possible for me to start until a month and a half after their given start date.
I see two options on what to do now. Either I say so at the end of the motivation letter potentially putting myself at a disadvantage, or I start negotiating once (/if) I get an offer, risking that someone will be annoyed at me because "I was supposed to tell them earlier" (which would clearly not be a good way to start a PhD if that someone would be the supervisor).
Which option should I choose? Would it be advisable to wait until I have an offer?


texts: From computational mathematics to abstract mathematics

texts:
I graduated with a bachelor in math/physics with a cgpa of 2.74/4.00
but didn't study many courses of abstract mathematics mostly computational math . I applied for a master's in the same Uni. and about to graduate. I had a little exposure to abstract math (some real analysis, measure theory and functional analysis) during the pre-master courses (seven courses) I scored 3.8/4 as a cgpa

I want to shift towards abstract mathematics. How can I make the shift?
I'm trying to apply for good schools abroad in the UK and the US. I'm trying to apply for a master's in abstract mathematics but some of the courses in the programs I'm applying for requires a pre-requisite that I don't have so how can I do it right?


texts: What should a student do if a professor agrees to write recommendation, then retracts offer upon realizing he confused the student with someone else?

texts:
Prof. Z has taught thousands of students in my former school since 2010. In the Biology course that he taught, there were two students (A and B) with similar full names and nicknames, but their academic results were totally different.
Prof. Z liked student A but hated student B because student B used to be very naughty in Prof. Z's courses and got very bad grades.

On January 4th, Prof. Z received student B's email for a letter of recommendation. Prof. Z agreed to do so and arranged a time to meet student B. On the day when they met, Prof. Z knew he had made a big mistake, and he refused to do anything for student B.
Given that situation, what would you do if this happened to you (as student B)? This really happened recently in my former school, and student B was very angry and made a complaint to the head of Prof. Z's department.


texts: BSc thesis proposal: how detailed is the norm

texts:
I'm in my last semester of a computer science BSc and need to write my thesis. Highly competitive environment, apparently it's the norm here that BSc theses should try for a publication. In Europe. I have gotten informal (but written) confirmation from a professor that the topic I suggested is ok, they even assigned some additional mentors. But none of them is very responsive, the thesis is not formally registered yet (it's mandated by university policy that registration needs to happen quickly/before substantial work) and I'm supposed to write a proposal.
I'd like to get an idea of what the norm is for such a proposal (to tide me over while I wait for feedback on the one I wrote). I think for a good research proposal I would need to do a literature review (even if just condensed into the introduction), but that would be a substantial amount of work (read multiple dozens of papers I guess). That can't be the usual expectation (before starting the thesis, while applying for a topic), can it?


texts: Is it ethical to post (part of) my research question on the internet?

texts:
I do research in math. A lot of times, I get stuck. I wonder if it's considered ethical to post questions on which I get stuck on internet sites, for example Math Overflow or Math Stackexchange.

If the question is just a small step or something already well-known, it is probably a waste of time to reinvent the wheel myself (and I don't get credit for doing so.) On the other hand, if it turns out to be a crucial step, then I could potentially be dishonest if someone on the internet solves it and I claim it's my own work. Sometimes it's not easy to tell beforehand which case the question will fall into.


texts:
I am a second year under-graduate student studying mathematics, but also taking courses in economics. I am not sure at this stage if I will continue with maths in my graduate school. My option B is economics. Roughly, I would give 60-40 in favour of math as far as my graduate study is concerned. My question is this:
Which major should I focus for doing internship and research while I am doing my under-graduate  before applying to grad school?


texts: What do people understand by Masters in Chinese Studies

texts:
I'm keen to find out what people understand by a Masters in "Chinese Studies" Is it China Studies? I.e. is it a catch-all social sciences area studies? Is it language? Is it culture?
I ask because I am setting up a new Masters at the University St Andrews in "Chinese Cultural Studies". It's a novel concept since it focuses on the Chinese-speaking world as a whole and not just China, and it is not multidisciplinary since it focuses on a cultural studies approach.
But I just wonder how people would go about searching for a Masters like that on the Internet?


texts: Advice for choosing PhD advisor and university

texts:
I am confused about choosing my PhD advisor and university. I have got two offer from professors in A and B universities.
the rank of University A is around 45 and the advisor is very nice, flexible, helpful and available to meet his students but the students work almost individually (no teamwork) which will affect the number of their publications. he usually agrees with his students on the research point after a discussion. The laboratory in university A is very occupied as it's shared between 5 well-known professors.

On the other hand, university B has lower rank (below 400), but the advisor is a famous professor in my field, has a good reputation and all his graduate students work in top companies. the advisor is very friendly and he wants me to work on a funded project. The laboratory in university B is larger and students can collaborate with each other.

I am confused as I only get an outline about the research topic and none of the two professors give me more details but I think it's normal


texts: Will graduating a semester early hurt applications to grad schools?

texts:
I am a math major who will be a senior next year and hope to graduate a semester early for financial reasons. During my semester off, I plan to continue my (mostly trivial) research in algebra and independently work through three graduate level texts. However, I am going to apply to grad schools for pure mathematics in the fall and worry this may ultimately hurt my graduate school applications.

Will this have a negative effect on my math grad school applications? How can I best communicate that I will not slack off in the spring semester, but will continue working?


texts: What are the best tips for developing a framework to write a (systematic) review paper?

texts: Perhaps, this is a meta-level question. Most review papers narrate the story of the field/problem or summarize a large but focused body of literature. The authors are usually senior level faculties with years of experience in the field. How these papers are being reviewed and what is the formalism behind accepting or rejecting them? Many such papers fail to present a framework/criteria/dimension for the field (maybe due to complexity), but is there any effort targeted to develop reviewing skills for young researchers to follow?


texts: Is it possible to get hired without post-doctorate experience in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry?

texts:
I recently completed my PhD and I'm now looking for a job in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. Either in production or in research.

From somebody on the inside (senior position in research in a major pharma company), I was told that actually nobody gets hired without PostDoc experience. However, PostDoc is no guarantee, I was also told, for a position. My feeling is that I rather spend the time on the job, learning what is important for the company. Simply put, I don't want to do PostDoc because I don't feel like that (but that's another story).

Here the question is: Has anybody gotten into chemical/pharma industry without PostDoc and without using inter-personal connections (that means only by directly applying for positions stated on the website of the company)?


texts: Do I need a PhD in mathematics if my goal is to teach at the undergraduate level?

texts:
My ultimate goal is to teach undergraduate level mathematics, that is, classes such as calculus and differential equations, as well as introductory proof-based courses like linear algebra, abstract algebra, and real and complex analysis. Why? I just love to teach people who are interested in learning math, and I have the strong belief (it's more of a certainty) that all interested mathematics students can appreciate and find the joy to learn any of these core classes if they receive the right approach. I am willing to teach like this patiently because I like it and I'm willing to devote to it. I feel very comfortable teaching math.

I am receiving a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UC Berkeley in May 2016. Needless to say, I like math a lot and I am excited to learn math at a higher level in grad school.

My question is, given that my goal is to become a math educator and obtain a secured job, do I need to pursue a PhD in mathematics?

I know that the whole idea in getting a PhD is to do original research, but to be honest, this is not the exciting part for me to go to grad school. This is merely secondary for me. I would even say it is tertiary since I am more enthusiastic about studying more math and being a graduate instructor. I know community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and even some universities hire lecturers (whose only job is to teach). Should I get into a master's program to achieve my dream job instead?


texts: I have two papers in an up-coming conference. Is it appropriate to cite one in another?

texts:
I had two papers approved for a workshop in a IEEE conference and I'm going to send the camera-ready version soon.

Is it OK to have one paper cite the other? If it's OK, do I have to reference the other paper as "to appear"?


texts: How to find the most related publications for a batch?

texts:
On Google Scholar, I can explore the related articles or books individually - clicking on the "related articles" gives you the related articles for that specific publication.

How will I find the most related publications for a batch of articles/books?


texts: How is the Journal for an Annual Review Chosen

texts:
The review in question that got me thinking about this is the The Review of Particle Physics by the Particle Data Group. It's a biannual review of all particle physics results and is meant to be the central reference for experimental particle physics results. It is highly regarded as the "bible" of particle physicists.

I'm mentioning this, because I think this working group is an institution in and of itself that could hardly depend on the prestige of a journal to make its claims credible. Obviosly it still has to go through a thorough peer review process, but still I think it kind of does have a standing of its own.

Since this review is quoted by virtually every paper that depends on experimental particle physics data, publishing it in a specific journal seems to me as to give this specific journal a citation/creditiblity boost (as opposed to it being the other way round as usual). Is this impression correct?

I recently noticed that they swiched from publishing in Chinese Physics C in 2014 and 2016 to Physical Review D in 2018 (which is a very prestigous journal in particle physics, I don't know the reputation of Chinese Physics). Looking through the history of the review,

I noticed that it has historically mostly been published in Physical Review or Review of Modern Physics with a couple of other journals intersparsed. How is the journal for publishing a review like this chosen? It seems to me that with a longstanding review like this, they gave some credibility to a journal like Chinese Physics which I had never heard of before.


texts: Why do professors give talks on published work without their coauthors present at the seminars?

texts:
They simply say that it is joint work with somebody.

Is it primarily because one is a better speaker than the other?  Like, do some professors publish a lot but choose to stay behind the scenes and let their coauthors present the work?


texts: How do industry funded theses differ from purely academic ones?

texts: I am at a Canadian university about to choose the topic of my thesis in Electrical Engineering. I have the freedom to choose between different projects at the university. Some projects are purely academic and only funded by the university, while some are funded by large corporation's R&D departments. What differences would I experience while writing a thesis for industry vs. writing one for pure academia?


texts:
I am writing a Motivation letter to be used in applying for masters from German or Finland Universities. I have following points explained in my motivation letter:

How I see this technical world
Why I chose Computer Science in my under-gradute
What I learned in under-gradute
What are my interests
Why I want to pursue Masters
Why I chose their University

What could be the format of a good motivation letter?

What other points could be included to make it more explaining about myself? And how to arrange those points? How to connect a motivation letter to your CV?


texts: Received comments from reviewers with major revision. Is it worth pursuing?

texts:
I recently received the reviewer comments for the work submitted to a decent journal. In the comments, the reviewers advised me to revise the manuscript. The editor noted that "If you are prepared to undertake the work required, I would be pleased to reconsider my decision."

One of the three reviewers commented that a stronger experimental validation is required before the paper could be considered for publication. My thesis is only related to modeling of an experimental process and the requested experiments cannot be carried out at this stage. I have validated my simulation results with published experiments, so I am not sure why the reviewer has asked me to do experiments.

Other two reviewers have given major revisions pertaining to my modeling which I can confidently respond through some additional simulations.

My question is that if I don't carry out the work asked by the first reviewer and address the comments of the other two, will my paper be rejected for not addressing all the reviewers? In that case, is it even worth pursuing?


texts: How can I get all my papers under the same Scopus profile?

texts:
I have recently searched my publications in Scopus and I have found that they are all scattered around. The reason behind that maybe is because I have a compound last name. The situation has gone pretty weird also in one of my papers, where they have put one of my last names to another author that I do not even know.

The question that I have is how I can make to put all my papers under a same profile, and also delete that "ghost" author from one of my papers.


texts: How to properly claim credit for peer review?

texts:
I acted as a reviewer for a paper this year and would like to mention this in my CV. However, I would like the authors not to know that I was the reviewer before some time.

At the moment, I have remained intentionally vague in my CV, mentioning only the journal name and the topic of the article. Is there a way to do better, namely:

Is it possible to make this review work verifiable? (perhaps by giving the email of the editor?)
Is it ethical to point to the full published paper in a CV that I don’t intend to distribute widely?


texts: Are there ranking for Master's programs (sciences, subject specific)

texts:
There are rankings of US universities and colleges:

overall,
for undergrad programs,
and for doctoral programs

But, I find nothing for rankings of Masters programs in specific subjects (like physics, math, etc).

Does my observation ring true with others, and if so, why is this? It would seem curious to me if undergrad and PhD programs were ranked but Masters were not.

Thank you,
Matt


texts: Reputation of Frontiers Journals (Received Invitation Chemistry)

texts:
A few years ago, the Frontiers family was listed in  Beall’s List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers. At the time, there was a lot of backlash by them and a number of publishers about this addition. Since then, Beall's List has been taken down.

Recently, I received an invitation to contribute in one of Fronters in Chemistry's research topics - the journal currently has a decent JIF of 3.994. I was wondering what the community currently thinks of this journal family?

I am used to receiving spam invitations but this is the first where I have received one where I feel it is more legit, however, I would not want this to damage my record if there is a bad reputation. I am an early career researcher so this makes me more tempted.

A similar question was asked back in 2014 with some negative responses, but I would like to see how the times have changed:
An invitation from Frontiers (Frontiers Research Topics)


texts: Can you switch the co-first author position after the article is published?

texts:
Can you switch the position of the first co-first author with the second co-first author of an article after it is published?

Full story: During my PhD, I published two articles, both as the first of the two co-first author. In both articles, the second co-first author is my colleague. My colleague is highly career-driven and ambitious. Although he did not do much work to contribute to either paper (I did 90% of the experiments and analysis and writing, since these are my main projects for my PhD), but he has a good relationship with our supervisor, and managed to convince our supervisor that he did a lot. Our supervisor then spoke to me and insisted that I included him as the second co-first author. I am ok with this, since my name still appears first.

Now, I have finished my PhD and is going to leave this research group soon. I am worried that my colleague, being career-driven and has a good relationship with our supervisor, may try some means to switch his name on these articles with me, and becomes from the second co-first author to the first co-first author.


texts: Using research paper as guidance vs research plagiarism?

texts:
I am an high school senior who has recently started getting into research in Electrical Engineering and CS. One thing that I have trouble in understanding sometimes is determining the difference between using an already-publish research paper as guidance vs going so far as to copy a lot of the ideas and methodology. Let me explain what I mean.
Let's assume there is a paper on building an autonomous drone which explains the drone hardware design, software design, autonomous flight algorithms, etc. If I read the paper, understand the methodology, and implement the methodology using my own code and effort, perhaps making a few small improvements, is that ethical?
If I don't copy any of the actual code or any verbatim phrases from the research paper, does it ever count as plagiarism? What happens if parts of the research/presentations/papers are very similar by accident?
I know that with high school science and engineering fairs this is sort of looked down upon by students but that might just be because it is high school.
Thanks
~ An aspiring EECS engineer


texts: What to do when bosses want me to publish for a legit journal of a predatory publisher?

texts:
Since a year ago my lab group is invested in producing a special issue for a journal of a controversial publisher that is listed as a predatory one in its open access branch. But my compliances about the doubtful ethics of the publisher were not heard on the bases that the Journal is not in the open-access actually publishes some reputable journals, one of them the journal where the special issue is going to be published.

Now they inform me that as all the laboratory is into the publication, I have to participate of it. As I am strongly against doing so, I'm also not in the best situation with them, as I posed as a problem in several ethical and organizational aspects before. So now I don't know how to proceed in a manner that won't suppose bringing more troubles into our already deteriorated relationship.

I'm afraid that keeping my position against participating in such endeavor will put me as the only one who doesn't want to work, as well as the only one always complaining and therefor damaging my already difficult track in trying to finish my PhD.

I have no idea of how to proceed, or if I should do it at all, as the actual journal in question is not one of the listed as predatory. Should I follow the reputation of the publisher and keep opposing? or should I follow the reputation of the journal and avoid more troubles to our already tense relationship?


texts: What kind of science jobs are there at the European level?

texts:
I'm thinking about opportunities for PhDs beyond the traditional academic route, for example in policy. I'm curious then, to hear about what kind of work there is at the level of the European Commission. Googling the keywords just brings me an endless stream of commission webpages, plenty of jobs in the massive associated bureaucracy, but little idea of what kind of opportunities there may be, or what kinds of profiles are optimal.

Any input you guys may have would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.


texts: When the time has passed (5 years I think) and a faculty is being evaluated for tenure what aspects play a role for anyone getting tenure or not? do comments from current students play a role in it?


texts: What is the English term for a Belgian non-university higher education institution?

texts:
I graduated from what is known as a "Hogeschool" in Belgium. When trying to explain this term on English websites, I've always used the term "University College" or "College", However, I'm not sure what terminology to use. Wikipedia doesn't have a Dutch article that's linked from "College", and "Hogeschool" is referred to "HochSchule" or something like that. Google on the other hand just translates "College" as "College" and "Hogeschool" as "University".

However, Hogeschool and University are not the same: University is a step above Hogeschool, and I want to avoid ambiguity with people thinking I graduated from a more prestigious kind of higher education than I actually am.

What is the proper English term for a "Hogeschool"?


texts: Are there any metrics considering how heavily cited a paper is within another paper?

texts:
There are of course, a plethora of citation metrics. Are there any that consider how heavily cited a paper is within the papers that cite it?

Let's consider paper X.

One paper may casually cite paper X along with a bunch of other citations and never interact with it again.

e.g. "Much work has been done in this area of research (A, B, C, D, E, F, X)."

On the other hand, another paper may depend heavily on paper X: adapting paper X's methodologies for its own, utilizing the theory proposed by paper X, and directly comparing its own results to those of paper X.

To my understanding, a typical citation metric would pick both of these papers up as equivalent citations. Thus, paper X has 2 citations.

But that method misses so much of what paper X has contributed towards the 2nd paper.

Are there any metrics that consider this? Perhaps counting the number of times paper X is cited within the papers that cite it?


texts: Is it appropriate to rewrite and republish another author's useful but very badly written paper?

texts:
I found an engineering-related academic paper from a number of years ago that was published in an obscure journal, likely not peer-reviewed. The English writing is very bad, like it went through three languages in google translate, and many key parts are nearly incomprehensible with awful grammar and incorrect word usage all over. Organizationally it's rather a mess too.  While it took me quite a long time to decipher it all, I recognized the value and importance in it, and I think should be more widely seen, as there is really nothing else published on this specific topic.

I was interested in potentially redoing the paper to better present and explain the ideas in it. I would want to add my own ideas of interpretation and application too.  I wrote to the original author and they responded, and I think they'd be ok with the project? I couldn't discern a clear answer from them yet.

In the sense of academic standards, what is appropriate in this situation? Is it acceptable in the first place to redo and republish someone else's full work? Do I become a new co-author, or simply an "editor", or new main author while at the start somehow noting it's a rewrite?  Or where is the threshold between plagiarism and a newly written paper if I redo it from scratch, but following and using all the original author's ideas and data, and then add my own thoughts?  I really can't maintain any of the original written content as-is, because it's just so badly done.


texts: Applying for a PhD after taking a year off

texts:
I completed my Master's in biotechnology exactly a year ago, and after failing to find a job in science took an office job to pay the bills. Now I'm thinking of applying to a bio PhD, but I'm worried my year away from science will be a disadvantage to me on an application.

How much will this affect my chances, and is there anything I can do to counteract it?


texts: An interviewer has asked for a copy of an unpublished manuscript I'm writing, is it safe to do this?

texts:
The paper is one I'm working on as part of my current role for which I'm not the PI. Is it safe/sensible to share this with my interviewer? I don't have any published articles at present, so I assume they are just interested in seeing writing samples and such. Should I offer them a copy of my PhD thesis instead?

The interview was for a job in academia I am applying for.


texts: How can I document depression for later reference in grad school applications?

texts:
I am currently a third year undergraduate at a good university studying computer science. I am planning to apply to top graduate schools when I finish my undergrad and I need a bit of advice.

In the first two and half (5 semesters) of my studies, I took the most challenging CS/Math courses in my university and did very well in them (GPA 4.11/4.30). I also joined two research groups and have 2 publications where I am the first author, published in reputable journals. I also have a very good relationship with my 2 research advisors.

Now in my sixth semester, I decided to go on an exchange semester and things just started crumbling. First of all, I couldn't integrate well in the culture and I was left very lonely with no new friends in the area. My Girlfriend of 5 years broke up with me, my mother got into a car accident which affected her health, and I started taking depression medication due to that. I also gained a lot of weight which lead to some health problems. Needless to say, this term is coming to an end and I can't wait to leave this place. I am going to probably fail 2/4 courses, and in the remaining ones, I will barely pass. I am expecting a 2.0 GPA at best.

Now I know this won't go unnoticed by graduate school admissions. I am just wondering what steps can I take as of now to document all of this so that I can justify the poor performance in the exchange semester during my graduate application?


texts: ARC DECRA eligibility exemption: how to demonstrate unemployment?

texts:
For me to apply for an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA grant in the next round, I will need to include an application for an Eligibility Exemption.  The last round DECRA rules are below, and presumably next year's rules will be the same but +1 to each year.

  D7.4.4 The ARC may grant an Eligibility Exemption for the DECRA Candidate who has been awarded a PhD on or after 1 March 2006, together with periods of significant career interruption (between the PhD award date and the closing time of submission of Proposals) which if taken into account would be commensurate with a PhD being awarded on or after 1 March 2010. Career interruptions of less than one month will not be considered.  The following types of interruption will be considered:

  carer's responsibility;
  disruption due to international relocation for post-doctoral studies or other research employment not exceeding three months per international relocation;
  illness;
  maternity or parental leave;
  unemployment and/or
  non-research employment not concurrent with research employment.

I was unemployed for 2014 for personal reasons I'd prefer not to go into on a grant application.  This means I will be eligible if any only if the eligibility exception is accepted.  I'm wondering if just asserting unemployment is acceptable, or do I somehow need to demonstrate it in some way?

Question: How would I demonstrate unemployment for an ARC DECRA eligibility exemption?  Do I need to explain my personal reasons for being unemployed?

If possible, I'd like to hear from others who have applied for this particular exemption.

(And, if you happen to know the answer to a related question: Do I have to write the whole DECRA grant application before knowing whether or not I'm even eligible?)


texts: Is it ethical to do paid literature searches of research journals for other students?

texts:
Is it unethical to research journals for other students?

For example, a student is researching gifted students and their subsequent ACT/SAT scores.  Then:

Would it be unethical for me to research educational journals and give the student the title of articles that pertain to their research?
Would it be unethical for me to charge for this?


texts: If the Professor who recommends me somewhere has coauthored papers with professors there, would the LORs hold tremendous value?

texts:
I heard somewhere a few days ago that while selecting a college for an M.Sc., it would be great for me to look up with whom the professors there have coauthored papers. This would mean that the two professors know each other and it would lead to a more trustworthy recommendation letter if written for a PhD.
How true is that? My guess is that it could make a difference but in the end it is mostly about the quality of research work that I have done.
I am from India thinking of applying to the US or UK in the future.


texts: Is there any system that enables online office hours?

texts:
Can anyone comment on their own implementation of online office hours, ideally with the following characteristics:

Free.  (I'm happy to install software on my own server if needed)
Allows for live text conversations, but, ideally, some sort of white-board as well.
Suitable for around 20 students (although a solution allowing 100 would be better).


texts: How to find a good match for a PhD program based on possible advisors?

texts:
After extensive research online, it's clear that possibly the best way to choose a PhD program is to find an advisor first, and worry about the program later.  In other words: find someone with whom you would love to work and who researches a topic that is close to your own interest (or one where you'd fit); then consider their program as a good possible alternative, as long as it provides good coursework for your area. You'll have to learn most of the stuff you need to learn for your thesis on your own anyway.

This sounds like a great idea.  After all, a major part of the PhD will be spent doing research and the team where you fit in is a very significant part of that.  So far so good.

However, it's hard to know how to actually do that.  How do I find out whether a specific faculty member is doing something that fits my interests?  I have a clear idea of what I would like to do, but it's not very clear how I can reconcile that with the interests of specific programs, let alone people.

Reading articles seems like it's a possibility (which I've started doing), but some of the subjects are quite specific and advanced. I feel like getting a good, overall picture of the research will take a significant amount of effort and time - which would be fine for a more in-detail filter of candidates (say, a dozen), not as a starting point (more than two dozen).

So, to recap:

How do I find a good fit for a possible PhD advisor in order to choose a good PhD program for me?

Additional details:
I'm looking to apply to a PhD:

in Computer Science (specifically AI, knowledge representation and reasoning)
in the United States
with my own funding (I've been selected for a scholarship which should take care of most of the money issues)

Thanks so much!


texts: What are my chances of getting into an REU program?

texts:
I am currently trying to apply to 7 different environmental REU programs and was wondering what my chances of getting into one would be.

I am a current senior pursuing a B.S. in Environmental Science with minors in French and Environmental Toxicology and will be continuing my 5th year next year (I switched majors in Sophomore year). I go to North Carolina State University, a R1 university, my GPA is 3.92, and I am a female, Asian-American first-generation college student who comes from a low-income middle class family (close to my state's qualifications for the "poverty" line). I have experience as a research assistant who assisted with research on aquatic stressors on aquatic macroinvertebrates, and I won a research grant from my university to conduct environmental engineering research last year.

I am seeking to participate in an REU because I would like to pursue a PhD and would like to learn as much as I can through research experiences in preparation for grad school. Right now, I would like to experience research outside of my home institution since I would like to explore graduate school options and other kinds of environmental/aquatic research, and the living expenses being covered would be incredibly helpful for me since I nor my family would have no way of paying for my living expenses.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), being at a R1 university and having had other previous research experiences, I am unsure as to how likely it would be for me to get accepted into an REU program. I understand that most of these programs seek underrepresented minorities from liberal arts or community colleges with little research experience, therefore I am seeking a realistic analysis on whether or not I can get accepted into an REU program. I was told by others that I should exclude the fact that I got a research grant, but I am unsure as to how to feel about fabricating the truth to make it seem as if I have had little research experience. I am at a loss for what to do, but I have to complete my personal statements by next Friday, and I am rather stressed about my odds of acceptance.

Any advice would be greatly greatly appreciated. Just as a heads up: there are unfortunately not many other REUs with research/themes specific to the field I am going into (Non-marine Aquatic chemistry/ecology), so that is why I am only applying to 7 programs. Most other environmental REU programs are focused on forestry, climate change, or marine & coastal sciences as far as I can tell.


texts: PhD: Should I choose a topic out of a comfort zone?

texts:
I am accepted to a math PhD program and have a visit in a few weeks. I only have a few days to tell the university which professors I would like to meet.

Problem: I also still don't know what I would like to work on (which I stated explicitly in my SOP) and the departments has ~100 faculty members. I started to go one by one and see if I like what they do but what would make a good topic?

Reading the papers from professor A things look "easy", I don't know the solution to the problems but I'm in familiar territory: it is number theory, a junior high school could understand the problem, and maybe high school could understand some solutions.

The vast majority of the time, for other professors, I don't understand anything at all. Sometimes I have a clear disgust (seeing lots of integrals/computations), sometimes I feel it is too hard (Langland related algebra), ...

I wonder how discomfortable I should be with a subject? I would be sad to end a PhD with seemingly "no additional knowledge" (if I choose prof. A) but conversely I would also be sad if I struggle on something too hard for me or for which I have no appetite even after spending time understanding it. Finally I don't have enough time to spend hours on each professor's topic to see if I would like it.

What is a good way to approach this?


texts: How can we find out who was nominated for Nobel Prizes?

texts:
While the Nobel laureates are announced each year, are there any online resources that list who was nominated?

In particular, I am asking the Academic side of Nobel prizes, especially in Chemistry, Economics, Literature, Physics, or Physiology-Medicine.

For example, Wikipedia says that Kazuhiko Nishijima (西島 和彦) was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1960 and 1961, but it is not clear where can we find the official/secondary information about other "short-list" nominees.


texts: Is it a good idea to name some mathematical objects after my thesis advisor?

texts:
I am doing my Ph.D. thesis in mathematics. I am wondering if it is a good idea to name some mathematical objects after my thesis advisor. The two objects I have in my mind are:

A representation, whose existence and faithfulness is a main result of my thesis. This representation has not be studied before and thus unnamed.
A collection of subgroups of a certain group, which have been studied by others but with no specific name assigned to those subgroups.

I did not ask this question directly to my thesis advisor since I believe that out of humility he would decline this request. Have asked this question to a mathematics professor from another university, who personally knows my advisor well and he says that it was a very good idea. But he was somewhat drunk when answering my question and I am wondering if I should take his answer seriously.

Edit: The representation I have mentioned is similar but different from a classical representation, which is named after the mathematician Emil Artin. In this case, should I still call it "Artin's representation", or "(my advisor's surname)'s representation", or leave it unnamed?