texts: How can I improve my attention and make fewer mistakes?

texts:
Throughout my life, I have always had some issues with what I, my peers and my teachers referred to colloquially as "paying attention". By this I mean a very specific ability to not make mistakes. Some very good examples are:

A mathematically competent adult getting a calculus question wrong because of a simple arithmetic mistake, such as 5+3=15.
A well-prepared student getting a multiple choice question wrong because it was asking "which of the above are not true", but he mistakenly selected the ones that are true.
A skilled roboticist damaging an expensive circuit because he accidentally wired the components incorrectly.
Mixing up two terms which refer to different things, despite understanding very well the concept that either term refers to.
Typos and simple grammar errors.

Note that I do not mean attention in the sense of being able to concentrate on and pay attention to a topic. I am specifically talking about the ability to not make mistakes (where mistakes are simple errors, which you know are wrong but do not notice at the time - not errors you committed because you lacked understanding of a key concept or because you didn't know any better).

While this "attention" obviously influences ability to do well on tests, it also affects my day-to-day work in 2 key ways:

When performing an involved experiment, things such as mixing up samples, accidentally skipping a step of the procedure, forgetting to clearly label the samples and so on may ruin the whole experiment - either because the experiment no longer works when that simple mistake is made, or because the mistake has made the results uninterpretable.
When working with a tool that does not provide much automated error checking, I can end up producing data or programs that are incorrect due to some mistakes I made. It may take me a very long time to detect these bugs - and until I do, all conclusions I draw from my results are unreliable (and I am not aware of this!). Even after I discover the bug, the work done up to that point is still wasted.

So, my question: Is "attention" in this sense (ability to make few mistakes) a skill, or innate? Is there any way for me to improve this skill? Can it be trained, or is it an invariant quality of a person that they can only accept and accommodate?

Note that, for the "making mistakes when doing something complicated" problem, there exist the solutions of

"break it down into simpler chunks which you are less likely to make mistakes with"
"restructure your complicated activity such that mistakes are rendered obvious".

I'm not very interested in these sorts of solutions, because restructuring the task is not always possible, feasible and efficient. Some things simply cannot be made any less complicated than they are.

Also, while I welcome discussions of the physiology of this problem, it is very unlikely that my problem is ADD or a similar disorder. As the saying goes, to err is human - but some humans err more than others, and I am interested in understanding why (and more precisely, what strategies are available to make oneself err less).


texts: To what extent can I use the concept of "God" in a meteorology lecture without offending anyone?

texts:
In about a week I'll be introducing the Coriolis effect to a group of about 50 undergrads.  This means I'm going to have to at least touch on fictitious forces and frames of reference.

These aren't physicists and I can't guarantee that they've taken (or paid attention during) elementary physics, so I can't just put the equations up on the board and get comprehension; I'm going to have to be a bit more visceral.

My strongest example refers, from time to time, to the inertial frame as the "God's eye view".  This means that while working through it, I would be using the word "God" a few dozen times during lecture.

I don't personally find this term offensive but I don't want the presentation to turn my students away from the content.

So my question has two parts:

Is using "God" in the way that I've detailed acceptable, or should I search for a different example?
If it is acceptable, should I have a heads-up at the beginning of lecture?

Extra information:

I'm an adjunct at a large public university in the United States.
This is an introduction to applied meteorology course.
I've been teaching for six years but this is only my second time teaching this course.


texts: Listing all papers which cite my references

texts: I would like generate a list of all papers which cite my references, sorted by most recent. In other words I want all papers which are "2 publications away" from mine, which cite the references in my papers, but which are not references of my references. This would provide an easy way to see what new research is closely related to mine, even if they do not cite my papers.  Has anyone thought of doing this?  How could it be done?


texts: Group reviewing a manuscript sent our for review. Ethical?

texts:
Is it ethical to "group review" a un-published manuscript sent out for review?

For example, you received a manuscript for review and you shared it with your lab group or group of colleagues, with the permission of the journal but not the permission of the authors. Is this ok?


texts: How do you determine whether a case study is fraudulent?

texts:
I had recently read an interesting anthropological case study composed of interviews of Iranians before and after the Iranian Revolution. But after reading the case study, I started wondering whether the interviews actually happened. The case study does not mention the city where the anthropological case study took place, nor does it give the "true name" of the interviewees (instead "nicknames" were used). However, the anthropological case study instead provided a deep description of the city's history as well as biographical information about the interviewees...so it didn't seem that protecting privacy was really important for this author.

I don't want to assume that the case study is a lie purely on gut instinct. So what would be the steps I would need to do in order to verify that the anthropological case study actually took place, and that the author didn't simply make up all the details?


texts:
How is it possible that people which are not in academia nor affiliated with a research institution can publish on ArXiv?
I know that arxiv papers are not subjected to peer review
but to publish there you still need credentials or to receive the authorization from people who already publish. My question therefore is the following: how is it possible that there are so many low quality publications on Arxiv? See for example this "proof" that P ≠ NP.


texts: Admission Chances (Non-Traditional Student)

texts:
So I'm graduating with a BS in Accounting from a not well known university and basically during my last 3 semesters I wanted to do a career change to mathematics. In short, I fell in love with the subject after teaching myself calculus 1 (basic single variable) and went right into calculus 2 at my local community college. By the time I graduate I will have Calc 2, 3, differential equations, & linear algebra (most likely A's in all). I understand this is weak and I am also coordinating an independent study with one of my professors.

Letters: 1 from a University professor who knows me well and is a phd student for data science at NJIT, 1 from a mathematics community college professor, another from an economics professor with a phd from UPENN.

Test Scores: I plan on taking the general gre and getting above a 160 on quant and am going to do my best on the subject test.

GPA: 3.8 (most likely 4.0 in math)

Schools: Please tell me if you guys think this list is realistic.

Far Reach
-Rutgers
-Stony Brook
-Penn State
-University of Maryland (College Park)
-University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)

Reach
-CUNY
-Boston University
-University of Virginia
-Northeastern University
-UMASS Amherst
-University of Connecticut

Match (Hopefully)
-University of Florida
-Florida State University
-Syracuse University
-NJIT
-Stevens Institute of Technology
-University of Rochester
-Colorado State University

I understand this is a long post and I really appreciate any advice/suggestions on this.


texts: Submit to arXiv with a different order of authors

texts:
Recently I have published a paper with my adviser and, although I was the main contributor, for some issues with our university my adviser became the first author (Seemingly, he couldn't get any credit from the paper if he was named as second author). I mean, there was no doubt or conflict between us about me being the first author.

Now, I want to submit a preprint of the paper to arXiv. I was wondering if I can name myself as the first author in the arXiv submission. My adviser is OK with this, but I wanted to know that:

Is it acceptable according to arXiv's rules?
Can I somehow show my real first authorship by doing this?


texts: Do PhD students sometimes abandon their original research idea? If so, how do they cope with it?

texts:
This might be a silly question to ask, but I initially had a great research ideas in mind during the early part of my PhD program but due to the unexpected circumstances I now think that I have to abandon them and start searching for new ideas from scratch (2 of my ideas were taken by other researchers in my field recently and I don't think I have capability to work on my other idea), which I find really depressing.
Does this normally happen for PhD students? If so, how do they cope with it? Do they just start all over again from the literature search and brainstorm for ideas?
Thank you,


texts: Is it ethical to have results in your PhD thesis that are not strictly yours?

texts:
In some disciplines (such as theoretical computer science), it is typical to have papers where you have co-authors. Especially when the set of co-authors is large, and work is being done at different universities, it is possible that person X works on one part, and person Y on one part. Thus, perhaps you wrote and came up with one result, and another result was the result of the work of someone else. Finally, you publish that paper together.

Then, in your PhD thesis, you typically have a list of publications. From what I've seen, the author usually declares what is his/her contribution was for each publication, but this is quite vague. For instance, it might say e.g., "Publication 1 is joint work with X and Y, and partly written by the author".

So consider a particular result that appears in a paper where you are a co-author as a PhD student. My question(s) are:

Is it ethical to include that result in your PhD thesis, supposing that you did not contribute to the result? Perhaps you only proof-read the theorem.
Does it make a difference if you couldn't have come up with the result, or don't deeply understand it? Maybe professor Bigshot Superstar came up with it, wrote it, and it is using advanced machinery with several technical details.

It is nice to just say "this is joint work with Bigshot Superstar" to make yourself look good. I see it being done, but it makes me feel uneasy. On the other hand, while it seems honest, it can potentially hurt you to say "the author did not contribute to Theorem X".


texts:
One of the references I use in my text is paper A.
However, I've actually read an unofficial, unpublished translation B which can be found online.
The translation uses more modern definitions/terms and corrects some errors.
How should I properly reflect the usage of the translation in my bibliography?
Currently, I use the original reference together with a note in the bibliography which explains the situation:

[reference A entry] Translated unofficially by translator as title
B, year B. Translation available online at url B.

Note that the original author did not give permission to publish the translation.
From the Translator's preface:

[author] has asked that all republication of any of his works (in original or translation) be ended.
He has not actually invoked copyright (which, as stated above, he does not believe in), but asked this as some sort of personal privilege.


texts: Would requiring students to use Twitter as an integral part of a course potentially conflict with FERPA?

texts:
I'm not planning on requiring my students to use Twitter, but it popped up on someone else's syllabus and got me thinking as to whether it's appropriate with respect to student privacy.

I don't think it's right since Twitter allows public viewing of messages and their sender, exposing the enrollment of the course to the wider world and the CMS the professor uses has sufficiently similar technology baked in that's FERPA safe.

I'm curious if anyone else sees it differently.

Per comments, I should note that this is not just a marketing-type class.  The syllabus I saw intended to have students comment, converse, and critique work on-line.


texts: Are "fact sheets" an acceptable reference?

texts:
There are times in my research papers that I need to cite generally accepted facts. For example, health care costs are rising. The CDC and other large organizations often create "fact sheets" with dozens of facts about a topic. Many times these are only published as a webpage. Going through the references to find and interpret the original research is time consuming and seems excessive. For example, I might introduce a paper with "here are some facts about rising healthcare costs" to lead into the main research which is a method to help address those costs.

I've used these fact sheets previously in conference papers, but I'm curious if they are generally accepted by journals or if they are considered a weak source.


texts: Does telling students to take notes in high school really help them learn better?

texts: I don't feel like it actually helped me. I now sense long after high school that taking notes and reading them probably did not help. Now I understand why it could work. In theory, somebody who thinks for themself could use their own method of trying to understand the parts of a lecture they are interested in understanding, using a complex method writing down the results of what they figured out about their method of thinking and slowly improving their own method of thinking and writing. However, when I was in high school, I didn't understand why I was told to takes notes so I used linear thinking and just copied down what ever the teacher was writing on the board and then read my notes and I'm not sure it really helped.


texts:
I am a third year PhD Student in math. I am studying abroad from my country. I need some advice.

I have three main problems that I would like to share with you.

1) It seems, I will be graduated with 1 published paper. As you know, finding postdoc position is so difficult even though I would really like to keep doing research in mathematics. Do you have any advice to me for 1 year left of my PhD so that I can get postdoc position easier than now?

2) My supervisor would not like to work with me. Moreover, he is so busy. Whenever I can ask questions from him, he thought about my questions at that moment, not anymore.

I found out I have to work by myself. Unfortunately, I do not have enough experience to work myself and I need to work with someone. I decided to work some mathematician who I met them in some conference. I had some bad experience. Would you please tell me how can I talk to some mathematician so that we make a paper together? In particular, I will meet a great mathematician that I have been following his work since 2017. I made some progress and i would like to show him and convince him to work with me.

3) How much I am good in my field, I am terrible in other branches of mathematics. Let me give an example that show that my question clear. I do high level things in mathematics but I forgot some basic things from other branches that I have learnt several years ago, such as graph, Algebra,number theory,... Is it bad things? What is your advice?


texts: How much time does it take to come up with a specific theoretical research problem?

texts:
I work in computational algebra. The last seven months, I have been reviewing literature and reading some research in computational algebra, but till now, I've not been able to come up with any specific problem. For the first two years of my PhD, I did the course work.

Question : How much time does it take to come up with a specific research problem? Is there any way to speed up this phase of the PhD?

Please note that my research supervisor is helpful, I discussed this issue with him and he told me that it takes some time to come up with a research problem, but he did not tell me how much time it will take.


texts: Tools for managing and scheduling meetings with students?

texts:
My advisor has been very busy and a lot of us hardly get quality time with him. he also acknowledges this and says it is usually very difficult to manage appointments and other commitments. He has lately been suffering from health problems, adding to crunch in time for all of us.
Me and my advisor were discussing several ways to schedule and manage meetings with his students, preferably a web based tool so as to keep us informed in case schedule changes and also to let him remember which student met him and which didn't. (He has a lot of students with him including undergrads).

Google Calendar could be one such tool, but I am wondering how do people in academia schedule and manage meetings with students ?


texts: Is it appropriate for reviewer to offer cooperation on a reviewed paper?

texts:
I am currently reviewing a paper for a journal (area of ecology, organism-environment interactions at various spatiotemporal scales, so including macroecology and evolutionary ecology). Now I am doing a second review of this paper (after resubmission). They submitted a valuable manuscript, but they ran into challenges which are quite difficult to solve. In particular, their statistical population models didn't converge properly; the models would need at least 10x, preferably 20x or 50x as much iterations to run, but they are very slow - taking 2 weeks to run already. I already investigated a bit and found an approach which would make the models run 1000x faster - this would solve the issue. I don't think this approach has been used yet (currently investigating this).
I am about to give them very detailed instructions on how to implement this approach in their models. I am not an experienced reviewer (this is my first paper to review), but (1) I think this is a bit beyond the usual work done by the reviewers? It is also possible that this work will be very challenging for them, since not every biologist is skilled with models and it's much easier for me since I am a specialist in development of new population models. So, (2) is it appropriate for me to offer them cooperation on their paper, with the possibility of becoming a co-author? (3) Should I ask for co-authorship for this? Or, is it better to just contribute and wait if they offer co-authorship to me? If this happens then the editor would probably need to find another reviewer instead of me for the next revision, because of conflicts of interest.
(The review is currently double blinded, so I don't know their names, but I signed the first review and offered my email already, so they know mine.)


texts: Why do some US universities ban first-year graduate student from working outside TA/RA?

texts:
I read an email from UCSD (CSE department) stating:

  M.S. Graduate students are not permitted to work at all during their first year (CPT or any employment) due to CSE polices instated by the faculty committee for our graduate students. Graduate students are eligible to apply for UCSD campus graduate student TAships or research positions.

Why do some US universities / departments ban first-year graduate students from working outside TA/RA?


texts: If you had a bad mentor for an REU program, should put that on my resume to get into grad school?

texts: I did an REU research program in my undergraduate college career. However, I had a bad experience because my mentor was not helpful and was very condescending person. I was told too that you worked closely with a mentor or grad student before I even started the program, which obviously did not happen. The program was disorganized that even the grad students did not know that they were suppose to help or guide the undergraduate students in their research, and they were also not helpful. So it was like me doing all the research by myself with no help or guidance. If you did not have a good experience in the REU program, would you still put on your resume in order to get into grad school?


texts: How to obtain a readable format of an article?

texts:
It became a real problem for me. I need to read some old articles for my research but these qualities are so bad that I can't even read the text. For example, this article "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012365X74901368?via%3Dihub".

Do you have any opinion on my problem?


texts: How do I change schools/advisors without making my advisor angry?

texts:
I am currently a PhD student in a program that I do not find challenging. A part of that may be due to the fact that my advisor has an EXTREMELY hands off approach. He will not return my emails for weeks on end and rarely gives me things to do, despite the fact that I am being paid as an RA.I worked with him for two years as an RA during my masters and I am currently in my first year of a PhD agree.

I also don't know if the program I am in is good for my career. I am generally unhappy with the required coursework I am taking and just weary of my future career options. Given the previous internships I have done at renowned institutions, I think I can do better.
I have been toying with the possibility of switching schools for quite some time now. Here is my problem: How do I apply to a new school without burning bridges with my current advisor? The problem is my advisor is NICE and so amiable. The hands off approach just doesn't work with me. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am not important or the least of my advisor's priorities.

I know that any program I apply to would want a recommendation from my advisor. I just don't know how to proceed! I want to apply to top tier programs in my field -- but want to retain a good relationship with my current advisor just in case I don't get accepted.

1)What is the best way to proceed without burning bridges?

2) Is it possible to apply to a new program without my previous advisor's recommendation?


texts: Can I study textbooks with exclusive rights and teach in India?

texts:
Assume a textbook T having a high cost. And T is not available anywhere for free.

Suppose I personally brought T and read and understood completely.

Am I allowed to teach using it in India? Teaching here refers to either classroom teaching, being a faculty or commercial teaching, acknowledging source.


texts: Asked to combine work with competitors, but competitors are under ethical investigation

texts:
Got a manuscript accepted and then pulled because of a similar manuscript submitted by another group to the same journal. Per the request of the editor, two groups combined the manuscripts. Now the manuscript was held up for unknown reasons.

I re-read the other group's manuscript and found a number of serious flaws. I don't think any reviewer would pass those up. Now I really regret combining the manuscripts with the other group, but it was the editor's request.

In addition, there were some ethical issues with the other group (gift authorship), which may have been reported to the journal by our research integrity officer.

Should I just ask the editor if they will reconsider publishing our data alone with addition of the new data that the journal wanted without having to take the whole mess with us? I am really frustrated now.


texts:
I've personally witnessed a talented scientist spend a lot of time writing more than one grant for pretty specific geochronology work. On the question that spawned this one, a discussion broke out on my second-hand answer, and I wonder if there is a career in designing and writing grants for focused specialties.

Like a wedding planner for the physical sciences.


texts: Is not including a letter of recommendation from all of my research advisors in grad school applications an automatic red flag?

texts:
I graduated in 2014, and my situation is that I have been out of school for three years (as of fall 2017 it will be three years). My first recommendation is from an undergraduate research advisor who I've worked with extensively, and who I published with this year, so it's current.

My second is a research advisor from 2015 when I received a fellowship to do to research abroad. He is in a subfield that I want to do my grad research in.

My third is my undergraduate major advisor, who knew me well and who I worked as a TA for for two semesters. We've kept in contact over the years and he's been a real help in helping me receive scholarships/fellowships when he wrote me letters in the past.

My question is this: I had a research experience in the summer of 2014 at a national lab, but I have not asked my advisor there for a letter for most of my schools that only require 3 letters. The research was not in the subfield I'm looking to go into, but it would be the next most recent item on my CV, and more importantly, it would be a research reference. It's not a case of being on bad terms with this person. He is able to write me a strong letter, as I explicitly asked this of him for schools that required a fourth letter (and he easily agreed), but I genuinely think my third letter writer as indicated above is stronger. That professor was instrumental in designing many of the courses in my major department (and so has intimate knowledge of the curriculum and what my grades actually mean in those courses), and is known for writing excellent letters. Additionally, the national lab internship was only for three months, which is a very short amount of time.

I have read on here that omitting such a letter could in some cases be a red flag to admissions committees, especially if it is recent, but I'm wondering if perhaps this case is a bit different. I already have two referees who can speak strongly to my research experience, and they're directly in the subfield I'm interested in. I don't think the other research referee would say anything that these referees have not already touched on, but I do think having the undergraduate advisor, who I've worked for and who has known me for a very long time in an academic context (but non-research context), would be valuable.

What should I do in this case?


texts: Postdoc: established project vs your own

texts:
I am considering the pros and cons of two types of postdoc positions I have come cross:

The most common is 1-3 years of work on an established project for which a supervisor PI typically won a grant.
Some departments ask for a 'research plan' and the postdoc who wins the position works alone or with a local supervisor on the project he/she proposed.

The pros of 1 are clear:

In my field, these jobs are usually offered in stronger departments (though not always).
Likely more publishing output with a team and/or invested supervisor.
Contacts.

I was wondering about the pros of 2 and how it is perceived because the independent work is attractive to me.


texts: How to confront possible theft of ideas?

texts:
I sent a paper to a fellow PhD student in my department for feedback. In person, he gave me some comments and implied that he had already considered some of the ideas I had suggested. I recently learned that, about one week after our meeting, a blog post was published anonymously containing many of the ideas in my paper. The blog is clearly written by the student to whom I had sent the paper and contains no mention of me.

Part of why I'm concerned is that if I now try to publish these ideas (in a journal, not a blog), I'm afraid that someone will accuse me of stealing the ideas from that blog post (or dissertation or journal article, if the blog post gets developed further). And, in addition to the possibility of being scooped, there is also the possibility of him having stolen my ideas here. So I'm wondering what to do.

On the one hand, he said or at least implied that he had independently come up with these ideas, and I don't yet have any evidence to the contrary. And I suppose this person's behavior may be what you would expect if he did come up with the idea independently before reading my paper—perhaps he's trying to stake a claim to the ideas before I publish the idea myself. On the other hand, it seems to me extremely fishy that the post was published so quickly after I sent him the ideas. And it also seems wrong (even in a blog post) not to at least acknowledge that these ideas have been independently developed by someone else (namely, me).

Should I:

Email this person about it in some polite but non-confrontational
way? (But I won't really be satisfied unless he proves to me that he
came up with the ideas independently, by sending me a draft that was
clearly written before I sent him mine.)
Tell my or his advisor, or some other faculty member, about the situation and put it in their hands? (But I don't want to seem accusatory.)
Just ignore it and try to publish the idea as soon as possible?
Do something else?


texts: Trouble finding job after disappointing PhD in India

texts:
Started PhD in 2014.
Mistakes that I have committed:

I did my PhD in a topic that was not the area of expertise of my PhD supervisor.

I was doing computational work, while the past graduates on the topic were all experimentalists. So, I did not know the career prospects.

I did not take relevant courses. My committee did not tell me to take them. I am technically unsound now.

I published very late, in 2017 and that too a bad paper (just 3 citation till date) in a decent journal.

Finally graduated in 2019. Tried everything to get a postdoc or industry positions. Did not get anything. I have just 4 papers from my PhD.

Currently unemployed. Looking for positions since. I am an Indian national. Doing part-time job in call center to make ends meet.

My PhD advisor has offered me 2 years postdoc position. Topic will be little bit different and more collaborative with other research groups. Should I accept? I don't know my career prospects after that? Can I still get into academia or research industry after that?

I apply to both industry and academia. No responses. I want to be in a research field either in industry or academia.
Is every career redeemable?


texts: Whether to get different letter of recommendation when supervisor's letter is bad?

texts:
I've graduated from my previous grad school (psychology) for 2 years and now seriously considering to apply for another graduate school (or professional school at master's level), computer science in particular, for next year's entry. That was also the major of my college degree. I will be applying several Canadian schools now and hope I will be able to start a new life there.

I was extremely uncomfortable when I just got into the psychology graduate school four years ago that I didn't do well at first. Not only due to English being my second language, but also I had absolutely no background in psychology, plus the massive amount of reading filled with weird words drove me absolutely crazy. For this reason, my major advisor had me finish with a master's degree instead of PhD, which I was originally enrolled in. However, he was extremely helpful when I was doing my master's graduation project and thesis. He was helping me day and night with my work that I believe nobody else could ever help his student this much. I ended up finishing my master's level of psychology very well and left with that degree.

When I got in touch with him recently and asked him to write a letter for my next school, he said

  "I will mention that at first you didn't turn out to work very quickly that you had trouble to get what I was asking done. So I had you finish with a master's degree instead of PhD. However, later you learned to work much harder and your final project and program worked very well. If you think the above contents suit you, let me know where I should send the letter."

I don't know for sure if my feeling is correct, but I feel like I will get 100% rejection even from mediocre schools I'm going to apply, if those words appear on the LOR.

Question: should I switch letter?

Concern: I didn't ever think one day in the future I will need to go back to school when I was still doing the psychology program. Thus I was't enthusiastic at all about building my connection with professors so that two other members of my thesis defense committee really don't know me very well.

This is probably the last chance for me to change my fate, I don't want to lose it.

Suggestions please, and any help is much appreciated.


texts: Should an abstract make an argument about why an experiment is important?

texts: I am submitting my first academic paper (in computer science). It is a short paper for a conference. In my abstract, I state what my empirical research uncovers. Is it appropriate to then explain why that empirical result is important? Or does that argument belong in a different part of the paper?


texts: Does every single table in a thesis need to be numbered?

texts: In my thesis I'm analyzing the results of a linguistic survey in which a large number of words are discussed. I provide a small table with details of the statistical analysis for each word. All the tables look the same and there are as many as four of them on each page in one of the chapters. Should I also number each table and put all of them in the index of tables at the end of my thesis?


texts: For an undergrad, which is more important? LoR or publication

texts:
I'm an undergrad studying math and CS at a US college. My plan is to go for a PhD in machine learning afterwards. Currently, I have two research experiences under my belt. The first experience has finished, and I have a strong LoR and a first-author publication at a small conference (along with two second-author workshops). The second experience is on-going.
My dilemma is that my second experience has very low probability of me publishing anything. In this experience, I work closely with a professor at my college, along with several lab mates, but she is an undergrad professor so her focus is on teaching. In other words, although she can write me a strong LoR (we know each other quite well), I basically have no hope for publishing (at least she hasn't brought this up by herself).
So, my question is, should I give up this opportunity to pursue one elsewhere that might result in a publication? Or should I stay with this opportunity and keep working hard and impressing this professor?
*Context: machine learning PhD application is quite fierce nowadays and more publications should help, but LoR also helps, so I'm confused.


texts: What to say in PhD application when potential advisor is moving to another university?

texts:
I am in the process of applying to PhD programs in Computer Science. A professor with whom I'm interested in working is moving from university A to university B. While he is not super well-known, his research interests and mine align very well, and I am quite sure I would have been admitted to university A had he remained there.

He will not moving to B until latter half of 2015, which means that he will not be able to give input into PhD applications to university B for the 2015 admissions cycle.

I will be applying to university B (with the hope that I can work with him), but is there anything that I can (or should) do with regard to my application? Or just mention it in SoP?

(B is slightly more competitive than A, and both are top 15 schools)


texts: Are there good ways to approach a professor for a postdoc?

texts:
How do I approach an unknown professor before a PhD interview? My defense (viva) will be held next March and I will be seeking a postdoctoral fellowship after that.

I want to contact a Professor relevant to my research interests to discuss potential future research topics and get short-listed for an interview.

My field is Mathematics (pure maths).

What are the best ways to approach a professor in this field?


texts: Who can participate in international math conferences?

texts:
Who can participate in international conferences in mathematics?
Does one have to be a mathematician or affiliated as a researcher in a university to participate?
How about Independent researchers (with an undergrad diploma)?


texts: boss asked me to draft them a letter of rec?

texts:
A while ago I asked my boss to write me a letter for a specific school, and he responded asking me if I could draft it, and he showed me the edits and final draft before sending it out.
Now I asked him to send me letters for some other schools too and he agreed, I'm assuming he'll just use the same letter. But I just now realized that one of the schools explicitly states that I am to not be involved in the letter in any way. What should I do? Is this a common thing?
Should I just let it slide? How seriously do schools take this situation anyways? and from what I've seen from the letter I drafted it doesn't look like any sentences overlap with anything in my personal statement. I would also feel bad asking him to rewrite a letter thats already perfectly well written.
At the same time I just feel, well, kinda bad. Idk, not saying anything to my boss about the school letter guidelines doesn't sit right with me.


texts: Does publishing on Arxiv diminish chances of publishing in a journal/conference?

texts: If I publish a paper on Arxiv, does it diminish my chances of getting published at a reputable peer reviewed journal? Does it diminish my chances of presenting my paper at a reputable conference?


texts: Should writers give credit to reference librarians?

texts: The reference librarians at my school are often very helpful. If I tell them my topic, they will help me find many resources which I might not have otherwise found and generally tend to save me a lot of time. Is it common practice to credit them in someway, especially when publishing a paper? If so, what is the common format?


texts: My advisor has literally no idea what my research is about and I am freaking out (phd student)

texts:
I am a PhD student. This is my first month in the program. I met my advisor a while ago. Very nice guy, but as the title says, he does not know what I am writing about. I don't mean it figuratively. He literally does not know what I am writing about.
I was taken aback when I realized he is not specialized in my area of research. But not knowing what my research is about is just plainly freaking me out! (He thought that I was writing about a different subject, and he doesn't have any other PhD students besides myself)
There is only one professor who is specialized in my area of research in the school, and she is not taking students.
I thought about it, and decided that transferring to another school is on the table. The thing is that the closest school is ranked higher than mine. (Mine in the top 50, the other school in the top 15), and I am not sure if they are going to accept me.
Should I go to the other school and talk to the admission office? To the dean perhaps? For my major, it is not common for students to contact prospective supervisors. (I don't know anyone in there who I am interested in working with because I did not see this coming).
What should I do?
*This a comment that I posted below, but just because it came up many times, I'll put it here:
"Just to clarify, and this is something I clarified above, it is not a common practice in my field that we -students- contact supervisors before getting into the program. We apply and then the school itself assigns students to supervisors. Actually, some departments ask explicitly that you DON'T contact any faculty member. I did not choose my supervisor. I was not given his name until I get into the program and started"
Someone has pointed out another question about a similar case, the lonk has been useful. But, my situation is different as I have no other alternatives. (Advisors)


texts: Paper rejection due to being "correspondence": what does it mean?

texts:
My paper was rejected a few hours after submission with the following explanation:

"Regretfully, your manuscript is being Immediate Rejected without review since it is a short correspondence item while we do not publish correspondence. "

What does this mean?  Is my manuscript too short?


texts: What is actually confidential in communications in state universities?

texts:
I have been hearing things like nothing you write in an email is confidential in state universities because of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or other similar state laws.

Questions:

Can I file FOIA request to see all the emails that a professor receives including all of their unpublished research progress and interactions with their students and postdocs?
Can a postdoc request to see the recommendation letters received or sent by their advisors about them?


texts: Should an undergraduate applying for academic internships switch to a multi-page CV from a one-page resume?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student applying for internships that are frequently in academia.

Currently, I've been providing all my experience in a one-page resume format, and find myself having to continue to make the text font size smaller and smaller.

Would it be best for me to switch to a CV?


texts: I drunkenly told a professor something fundamentally wrong about a friend's thesis work. Should I clarify and/or apologize?

texts:
TL;DR: I told a professor something fundamental about a friends' work that is absolutely wrong, and I should have known, but I was drunk. Will it help the situation if I clarify and apologize via e-mail?

Yesterday evening I attended a festivity at my old university. I got drunk and talked to a professor who is working in a field related to my studies.
In particular, I told him that a friend and coworker of mine did his master thesis on a topic that is related to a project the professor is working on. However, I got it mixed up and this is not true. He appeared surprised and said he was going to look into that.

Now I regret getting drunk and I am wondering whether I should email him to clarify (and apologize). Either he did know that I was in the wrong, and did not correct me out of politeness, or he will actually ask around and several people will know that I gave the professor wrong information. The latter option would be very embarrassing to me, since I actually attended my friends' thesis defense and I know what it was about.


texts: Is it okay to begin a chapter without an "introduction section"?

texts:
I'm writing my phd thesis. In some chapters I simply begin the chapter with one or maybe two (at most) paragraphs that mostly gives the outline, and then I begin the sectioning. That is, this paragraph has no section, the sections start right afterwards. I'm wondering if this is normal and acceptable or should I put it in a separate section?

This is how it looks in latex:

\chapter{System Modeling}

A paragraph giving the outline of this chapter. Section ?? discusses this and that. ....

\section{Equation of Motion} %this is the first section of this chapter


texts: Does it make sense to translate my bachelor's thesis?

texts:
I'm currently applying to several PhD programs in the STEM sector in Europe. Some universities invite me to submit my bachelor's thesis as an optional document for my application. I would like to do that because the thesis can give some insight about my background, even if it wasn't about anything new and it wasn't published.
Problem is, my thesis was written in a language different from English. Does it make sense if I translate it into English and send both the original and the translation for the application?
The thesis is less than 30 pages long and it would be quick to translate. However, I wonder if it is common practice and if it will be considered by a potential committee.


texts:
This is my first question here, so please correct me if I'm wrong in my way of asking.

My question is suggested directly by the title. In my college institution, for each subject, half of the semester is handled by one lecturer, and the next half by another one. The reasoning is that each lecturer needs to have near equal teaching responsibility. If one lecturer only is applied, there might be some lecturers who have lower or higher workloads than others.

Another reasoning is that this way we can minimize the bias that can happen with just one lecturer. If a lecturer has bias over some students but the other does not, it will somehow even out, rather than just this first lecturer handles the whole semester.

Some negative effects are there of course, but how do you think the negative or positive effects are affecting the learning and teaching experience? My heart says the negatives are just too much.


texts: Is there a way to find review articles by the keyword?

texts:
When I search for papers using some keywords in academic databases (like Google Scholar), there are lots of papers, but I would like to read literature reviews first because I’m new in that area. (By literature reviews, I mean article-length papers that analyze existing work on a specific topic.)

So I think it would be helpful for me if there were a way to find literature reviews using the keyword or using the paper’s title. I want to categorize papers I’ve found by its document type (research, survey, review, etc).

What I've tried is using a specific academic database (ScienceDirect), which provides an advanced search, in which one can filter the paper by its type (original research article, review article, short survey, etc) – but I feel some limitations of this method.
I think I can also do this by adding the word review to my keywords for searching or by reading a paper’s abstract, number of references and guessing whether it is review article or not.

Is there a more efficient way to find review articles by the keyword?

(My research area is computer science.)

UPDATE

"feel some limitations" in my post, I'm not sure but it seems that ScienceDirect only searches for literatures that belongs to ElseVier company. I think It doesn't cover the journal articles well, comparing to e.g) Google Scholar so I said I feel some limitations of it


texts: When I was 16 I took 30 credits a quarter and my math GPA suffered will this effect my ability to go to grad school?

texts:
I took all my college level math courses when I was 16 in running start while taking 30 credits a quarter(don't ask me what was going through my head at the time). As you can imagine I got an average of about a 2.8, in most of these courses....However, when I went to a 4 year they restarted my GPA and I currently have a 3.67 and it has only been climbing the last few quarters. I am about to graduate and I would like to go to Grad school. I am an Information Systems Major e.g. business. Is it plausible to at least get into a decent business Phd program ?

I see that most schools seem to look at these grades in particular.


texts: How should I write an email asking about the status of my PhD application?

texts:
I applied for a PhD position. As part of the admission process, the professor requested two letters of recommendation, which have been sent. I was then asked to wait a week, but now two weeks have passed and I have not heard from the professor yet. So, I would like to ask about the status of my PhD application. I have no clue how to write it. Please help!!!

Thank you in advance.


texts: Application form for lecturer position provides a template for an academic resume, should I follow that?

texts:
I am trying to apply for a Lecturer job in another country; I noticed that they're asking for an academic resume and they provided a template as well. Here is what they said:

You should provide attachments, including your academic CV and details of research, publications and grants if not already covered (an Academic CV template is available here).

Here is the issue: the template has sections of stuff I didn't do or don't have. Since I completed my PhD in another country, we have different "evaluation metrics". For instance, in my country (3rd world country), it's pretty hard to find funding for your research, and most students do a PhD with no funding (my case). I do however have experience in preparing project proposals to get funding, but I never got funding. So, I don't know what to write in the "Research grants and contracts" section.
So my question is: is it a good idea to use my own template? The template they're providing is pretty detailed and they're asking for specific sections, such as contribution to the department, contribution to the faculty, contribution to the university and to enterprise. A resume is not an official document, meaning that the candidate makes his own resume and not some institution, am I right?
Update:
I want to thank all those who took the time to comment and answer my question.
I emailed the university and they said I can use my own template.
I want to clarify that the resume I have now (and I am using to apply for other opportunities) is not a representation of my lack of interest! I did re-format my resume a lot of times, in fact I used to prepare tailored resumes each time I apply (my field is cyber security and IA, so I did target vacancies that want a profile that unites the two fields, but I also applied for jobs that seeks individual skills). Before I apply, I always ask for external input from a professor in our lab about the resume I used. But I truly believe that it won't change a lot if another candidate has +5 years experience more than me and uses a generic format.
Even my supervisor noticed that and asked me to only use one, because according to her is "what's more important is the content of the resume and not how it looks". So, I prepared one standard resume that took me +3 hours!


texts: How should undergraduate student respond when the PI of their lab asks them to provide feedback on a research paper?

texts:
I worked on a research project earlier this year with a group of people. The paper has been written up (not by me) and sent to the team to review it, give feedback and approve it before it is submitted for publication. I am just an undergraduate student and this is my very first experience with this. Most other people on the research team are much older and more experienced than me; so I do not have any critical feedback to give. The paper seems great to me.

Anyways, I am wondering how to state my approval when I email the PI? Replying with “I approve of this paper” seems too entitled for me since I am so inexperienced. So what would be the best way to reply back with my approval?


texts: Transfer Over of EPSRC Funding When Changing Universities

texts:
This situation I'm in currently is the following. This is all based in the UK (England, more precisely). I'm at university A with full EPSRC for a maths PhD. However, I'm not getting on well with the university, and would like to change to university B. (The particular reasons for this aren't pertinent to this question.) I've looked on the EPSRC website and I can't see anything that says this isn't an issue. Ideally I'd like to move to university B at the start of next year (so not wait until the new academic year).

I've spoken with university B about this, and they are happy to have me, subject to being able to be funded. The person I spoke to said they were unsure if I could get funding, as they'd heard that EPSRC will only fund someone once, and so since I've already had a term of funding, they wouldn't fund me again. They aren't sure on this though.

Does anyone have any knowledge of such things? Surely while changing university during a PhD wouldn't be common, it can't be that uncommon?

Note the close relation to this question "Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?", but that mine is slightly different. The university to which I would transfer have said that they would have me, subject to getting funding, so this is not an issue.


texts: Editor's mail with no reviewer's comment

texts:
Recently I submitted second revision of my manuscript in a highly reputed mathematics journal. My first revision was a major revision while the second one was a minor (with some terms like paper is ready to be published). After submitting my second revision I got an email from the editorial board which asked for further revisions of my manuscript. But, what is troubling me is that there were not reviewer comments in the mail. Also there were no attached files with reviewers comments.

Edit: I took only three days to resubmit my second minor revision and after another five days I got this mail with  no reviewers comment.
Also, there is only one reviewer for this manuscript.

Edit: At the end of the mail that I received it is written that "Reviewer's comment"  but it is showing blank. Submission status is "submission needing revision" (Revise). But I am not able to find the reviewers comments.

I am worried. How come this is possible?


texts: How to efficiently use time while preparing for a class?

texts:
I am a teaching assistant for multivariable calculus this semester. As an undergraduate, I took the course but we learned few. To add, it has been more than 5 years since I took the class. So, every week I have to solve about a dozen question from one chapter. Even though I have got the solutions, I study enough to perform well and be able to answer questions from class. However, the problem is, this is not my only job as a graduate student and I should not spend hours and hours on it.

For example, this week I have to solve questions from parametrization of curves, curvature, torsion and some additional subjects. I want to understand every bit of the work. So, how can I study enough to solve questions and answer questions from students without spending too much time?


texts: Should I change my proposed solution for paper rejected because of lack of novelty or originality?

texts:
From my understanding of the reviewers' comments, it means our proposed solution adds nothing new to the body of knowledge even if we get better results than the state-of-the-art work.

The reviewers believe our work is just an application of existing literature. While many published works do integration + per-existence method to enhance the result, we use pre-processing + per-existence method to do the same. We were rejected, while others were accepted.

Any advice is appreciated.


texts:
Firstly, I do not believe this to be a duplicate of the related recently posted question due to the key fact that that user was anonymous to his class and I am not.

This has happened 3 times now. While taking standardized tests, someone cheats. These aren't just classroom tests, but rather officially proctored, nation-wide tests. The first time, some students had significantly more time, both starting before the official call to start, and ending after the official end. The Proctor was pretty relaxed, and either didn't notice / didn't care. The second time, someone's phone went off twice, and on full volume (the student in question had to stand up and manually turn the phone off). The Proctor did not alert his superiors, although many students had lost a significant amount of time and the incident negatively impacted our scores. We were told beforehand that any distractions during would be an immediate invalidation of the test (we even had to keep our phones in a box), but this seemed to go unnoticed. The third time was similar.

I complained to my peers afterward, and they all told me not to tell anyone or do anything for fear that it would cancel or negatively impact our scores (most of them did well). I didn't feel comfortable with this, but I didn't report anything both for fear of both my reputation being impacted, and for fear of my scores being cancelled on a test that I studied significantly for and potentially did well on. If I were to report any of these incidents, most people would immediately know that it was me who had filed the report, and I would be severely socially ostracised. I did/do not desire this at all. In hindsight, I should have kept it to myself, not expressed my worries to my friends / acquaintances, but unfortunately this did not happen.

In a situation like this, what is the appropriate course of action post-disclosure? Report the student in question and risk negative reputation, a cancellation of scores, and hard work put in (but do the right thing and have fairness reign), or keep the cheating to oneself (and preserve reputation but carry a dishonest weight)?


texts: Human-Computer Interaction PhD in Computer Science vs Information Systems: Does the department title matter?

texts:
I've been offered a PhD position in Human-Computer Interaction, but it bothers me that it's within the Business/Economics department, so it would yield me an Information Systems degree instead of a Computer Science degree. I'm afraid that this would close some doors of HCI jobs that list CS degrees as requirements. I will be doing CS work, and I believe it would be important to get such recognition.

Do you guys the title of my PhD in this case is something important, or I shouldn't be worried about it?

Thanks!


texts: Can I be a researcher at a UK university without having teaching duties?

texts:
I have looked at Geology jobs but only oil and gas or engineering comes up which I have no interest in. I'd rather do something more academic.

I'm currently a student in a UK university and am hoping to become a researcher at a UK university in the future. Do the universities employ researchers who don't need to fulfil a teaching post?


texts: Should I explain a bad grade that is not directly related to the program?

texts:
I am applying for a M.S in Statistics in North America. I received a "C+" for my undergraduate topology course.

I am not sure whether I should explain that or not for two reasons. First, topology does not seem to be related to statistics anyway. Second, even if I explain that I was not feeling well, I have no evidence (since it takes forever to see the doctor here), so explaining it might actually make admission officers think I am lying. What should I do?

Explain even though I do not have proof from doctor
"Explain" but not mentioning the cold, just say something like "I will grow" (which I think it's technically lying?)
Say nothing


texts: Include reference strictly at first occurrence, or in detailed discussion?

texts:
I'm writing a paper detailing a workflow which makes use of some software tools.

I have a sentence very early on in the introduction, which says something like the following.

  The tools to use include: Tool One, Tool Two, and Tool Three.

At the moment, this is where the references to the respective papers are, like the following.

  The tools to use include: Tool One (Lorem, 2014), Tool Two (Ipsum, 2011), and Tool Three (Ipsum et al., 2015).

Each tool has "its own" section in the paper, where it is discussed in detail. I've a gut feeling that it'd make more sense to include the reference there, although I think that including the reference where the respective tool is first mentioned is the "correct" thing to do.

The editors don't give any preferences, and I think that something like this is assumed to be common knowledge (which unfortunately I don't seem to have).

Is there a documented "best practice" for when a reference needs to be included, i.e., whether it should rigorously follow the first occurrence of the referenced?

The domain is CS/linguistics, in case there are some specific practices I'm not aware of...


texts: What is the average salary of Assistant Professor in South Korea? How tough it is for a foreign faculty member to get public and private sector funded projects for his/her lab?


texts: How can I encourage my advisor to adopt better work practices?

texts:
I'm a second year PhD student.  In general I love my advisor, but recently we've run into some small bumps in the road while working on a paper together.  He's controlling the "master" copy and I send most of my contributions and comments through email for him to incorporate.

A few days into the process, we had a conversation that went something like this...

  Me: "Hey, so I cited a few papers you might not have seen.  How do you
  keep track of your references?  I use JabRef to keep up with BibTex
  entries, but I can export those citations to a bunch of different
  formats..."

  Advisor: "What are you talking about?"

  Me: "Like, when you need to
  make your references section... how do you keep track of all the
  papers you've cited in the text? Refworks? Endnote? Zotero?"

  Advisor: "What?  ...I use
  the 'copy/paste' method."

I was baffled by that answer.  I know he's been doing this for a long time with good success, but I cannot fathom someone who has been collaborating with so many people for so many years is still at the level of manually formatting each entry in a Microsoft Word document and then copying/pasting over whenever that reference is needed elsewhere.

Any suggestions on how I can help bring this faculty member into the 21st century without seeming presumptuous?


texts: Is consent required to record audio of a conference talk in the US?

texts:
Do I need a consent to record audio of a presentation at a scientific conference in USA (provided that the conference does not explicitly prohibit such recording)? I'm guessing since it is not a private conversation, it's okay to record it.

This question is out of curiosity. I do not actually have clear intentions of recording talks.


texts: How to get feedback on a paper most effectively

texts: Suppose that a PhD student is writing a paper by themself. A person who is an expert in the area offers to read the paper and give feedback. The expert explicitly mentions he is fine with getting unpolished paper for feedback. When should the student send the draft for feedback. Specifically, is it better to get it relatively polished before sending it, or should I send it earlier? Or when it is completely finished? The expert is only going to read it and give advice once, so it's not possible to do multiple iterations.


texts: Special (non-english) character in name. What to do as author? Internationalize or not?

texts:
In German, as well as in other languages, people have Non-English characters in their names. e.g. ß, the umlauts etc..

I frequently face problems when flying, opening bank accounts, etc., particularly abroad, since replacing the ß with ss changes more more than 25% of my family name as compared to how it's written in my passport.

Obviously it is desirable to write one's name for submissions, the way one's name is written correctly. Can one expect to run into problems, and will sooner or later end up with different publications being published under different spellings of the name, or is it safe to go for the correct spelling?


texts: Young engineer not wanting to work in academia: is PhD worth it?

texts:
I'll soon get my engineering diploma (~MSc, from a "renowned-but-not-in-the-top-3" so-called french grande école).
The degree itself is not specialized, but I mainly studied mechanical and industrial engineering.
I aim to work in the industry – or, in other words, I don't want to make an academic career.

So I'm now wondering if doing a PhD in France (i.e. during 3 years) would be worth it, regarding my estimated career plan.
Question: What would then be pros and cons I should consider before choosing to do (or not) a PhD?

Here are some questions I've already consulted, but did not fully answered my questions:

Is PhD worth it when considering your career in industry
What skills can I get during a PhD to be competitive on the job market against non-PhD holders?


texts: How to work in academic research as an outsider/experienced software engineer?

texts:
I would like to have advice on how a software engineer with a decent (>10 years) of industry experience can join a team doing academic research in the areas of physics, chemistry, biology or climate science. I am curious if there exists software engineer positions in these types of projects without having domain-specific knowledge or an advanced degree.

Is it necessary to be pursuing an academic degree such as a Masters/PhD or to have one already?

As I have never worked in academia before, I am looking for an insider perspective on this.


texts: Can I upload a pre-print during peer review that includes changes suggested by reviewers?

texts:
My paper is in the late stage of peer-review and probably will be accepted once I complete the last minor revisions, but it is not formally accepted yet.
During peer-review the manuscript changed quite a lot because of the helpful comments by the reviewers.

The journal is not open access and therefore I want to upload the manuscript to a public repository like arxiv to make it more accessible.
The last version of my manuscript that I plan to upload is probably close to the final published version once it is accepted.

The publisher of the journal is Wiley-Blackwell, according to the sherpa/romeo database it is in the yellow category:
http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php?id=2050&la=en&fIDnum=|&mode=simple&format=full

They allow pre-prints, but it says 'pre-refereeing', so I am not completely sure if it is allowed to upload a pre-print at this stage.


texts: How detailed should I be when describing what material was covered in prereqs on a masters application?

texts:
I am applying to a good quantitative program and they have a section where they want me to list what textbooks I used and what material was covered in certain prereqs for the program.  How detailed should I be with these?  Right now I have the name of the book and every chapter heading that we covered.  I also have topics listed from supplementary slides and more advanced versions of the same courses that I'm taking now listed underneath them along with those topics.

Is that too much?


texts: What should I do if I find two suspiciously similar conference publications by different authors?

texts:
In my research, I've found two articles that are completely identical, except the abstract and authors names. They are published on different conferences, with one year between.

What should (must) I do in this case?


texts: After a postdoc period, how to understand if you should go for a second postdoc or apply for a permanent position?

texts:
I'm a postdoctoral fellow working on computer science. I've been a postdoc for one year and three months so far, and I think my job will last for three years in total.

Thinking about the future, I suppose I'll apply for a second postdoc position after this, in another university or scientific research institute. But some days ago I met a colleague of mine who is in her third postdoc year, and she said that at the end of the year she will start to apply for some permanent position, such as research associate or principal investigator.
I was quite surprised because I always thought that a second postdoc position was normal in our computer science field.

So my question is: after a first postdoc period of three years, should you apply for a second postdoc position or for a permanent position?

What is the best choice for you?

And how do you understand if you should apply for a second postdoc position or a permanent position?


texts: What can be done if a former supervisor is giving a bad review?

texts: If one suspects that their former grad studies supervisor is giving them a bad review for prospective employers or research opportunities, is there anything that can be done about it? In a country where negative recommendation letters are not legal (though they can refuse to give one).


texts: Is there a setting to prevent Google Scholar from only showing the best matching result?

texts:
Often, when searching Google Scholar, I get a single result with a bit of text "Showing the best result for this search. See all results" and I have to click on that hyperlink at the end to actually see a full set of results. Is there any setting to automatically have that clicked so that Google Scholar displays a full set of results automatically, instead of only showing one?

Example:

I've already gone in to Google Scholar Settings and Results Per Page is set to 10; making it 20 doesn't help.  Neither of those values are "1," which is what actually gets displayed.


texts:
When you look at a paper, what order to you assume the authors are in? Most important/most work done first or alphabetical? In my group we usually use alphabetic order, but I've been wondering if that might create a misleading impression with lots of people.

On a related note, would you expect the name of a PhD student to be always first on publications related to her/his work?


texts: A paper I received to review has (independently) duplicated work that we are writing up. How to proceed in light of peer-review confidentiality?

texts:
I did some research with some collaborators, and we have been writing an article ("paper A") describing the work.

A few days ago I received a request to review an article ("paper B") that covers most of our work. The authors of paper B have clearly worked independently on the same topic and beaten us to submission. (And fair play to them.)

This leads me to a number of related dilemmas:

The first, and I think easiest to resolve, is whether I have a conflict of interest in reviewing paper B. I think I can write a fair review, but I intend to tell the editor and allow them to decide whether I should proceed.

The other dilemmas arise mainly because I am bound by peer-review confidentiality. I should note that paper B is not available as a preprint.

Can tell my co-authors about paper B? I am convinced that confidentiality forbids me from showing paper B to them, but can I tell them that it exists and what it covers? My feeling is that the answer is 'no'.

But then, if I cannot tell my co-authors about paper B, then it seems I have to allow our paper A to proceed to submission even although I know of the overlap with paper B.

I am extremely uncomfortable with this, although one can take the view that since our work was independent, our paper A could still be published.

Furthermore, my first impression is that paper B is not suitable for the general journal to which it was submitted, but that I would recommend acceptance to a high-quality specialist journal, such as the one to which we intended to submit our paper A. This raises an unpleasant prospect: if our paper A proceeds to submission and publication, the authors of paper B might believe that I had rejected their paper and plagarized their work (a situation discussed in this question). This situation could arise even if I turn down the review request. Naturally, I want to avoid this.

How should I proceed? Could I ask the editor for permission to inform my co-authors about paper B?


texts: When applying for a PhD is it worth mentioning awards received for achievement in final year high school exams?

texts:
I am in the process of applying for a PhD at the univerity where I am currently completing my undergraduate.

The application has a section for awards.
I don't have anything to show for my time as a undergraduate (my university doesn't really acknowledge achievements in coursework).

I have several awards from my tertairy entrance exams/subjects completed in highschool.
Such as:

Award from my current univerity for being the highest ranking disabled applicant for undergraduate.
Award for being one of the highest scoring in my state for a particular tertiary entrance subjects
Several awards from my highschool for topping the school in particular tertiary entrances subjects

Are achievements/awards gained as a result of actions I undertook in highschool relevant to my application now?

I'm not talking about things like merit certificates in lower years of highschool (Its not impressive to piles of those), just things relating to my tertiary entrance exams/subjects, particularly the first two which are awarded by the university and the state, for achievement in final year of highschool.


texts: Minor Error in Submitted Elsevier Journal Paper

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I have recently submitted a paper. I feel the paper is good quality but I have found several mistakes. They are minor editorial mistakes that do not affect the science but could cause confusion.

I am repeating some well-known algorithms. However when I say algorithm X is represented by equation Y I have found that there is a mismatch. If one were to look at the well-known equations with knowledge of them it will be clear they are mismatched. This is due to us adding another algorithm in a list and not updating the numbers.

What is likely to happen? I would be very disappointed if they were to reject the paper on these grounds. I hope they wouldn't assume I don't know the content of my area because of this mismatch. It's an Elsevier journal. Is there a "most likely" outcome here?


texts: Can you do an AND on Google Scholar alerts?

texts: In Google Scholar, you can create an alert, such as "neural networks", which will inform you any time there is an article related to "neural networks". However, suppose I am interested in neural networks applied to robot navigation. Is there a way to create an alert that will only inform you when both "neural networks" and "robot navigation" appear in the paper? Essentially, I want to do a logical AND on the search terms.


texts: How to maximize the chances to get a good PhD position in algorithms

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I have a master in CS from a not too well ranked French university. I have excellent grade in algorithms and did a good master thesis (although I haven't tried publishing the results in it). my overall grades are good as well. What can I do to further maximize my chances of getting a good PhD position in algorithms? I am confident in my skills but do not have much to prove that.

I am guessing that trying to do some publishable research with my former master adviser is a good thing, but since his area of research is really not my cup of tea, is it reasonable to try to publish something alone?

How can I find problems to work on that are feasible and publishable?

Any other advices are welcome.


texts: Is it better to go for a postdoc in the US or Europe?

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I've recently got my PhD in Europe and I am doing applications for the postdoc positions in Europe and in the US. I've got two possible offers and I am a bit confused to decide which position would be better for my future. One of the offers is from the US and the other one is in Europe. My initial plan was to choose the position in Europe and to spend some more time to expand my academic network by staying close to home. Meanwhile, I am almost sure that I eventually need to go to the US either I decide to stay in academia or go into the industry in the future, since it is very difficult to settle in the Northern European countries as an expat or a foreigner researcher due to different reasons (mostly because of the social life, language and funding options etc.), at least I need to spend some time there to be not seen as only moving inside of Europe. I am also not planning to go back my country at the junior research level since it is too challenging to secure a job as well (Mediterranean country).

I still would like to take the position in Europe and then try to find a better position ( as research associate, Assistant prof or instructor/ senior postdoc) in the US later. Do you think would it be better to go there directly after my PhD? Would it reduce my chance to find a position in the US if I do a postdoc in  Europe first?

PS : The position in the US is so close to my current field, it is very similar to my PhD topic. I will still learn different methods and expand my skills technically but the scientific approach is not so different what I have done in my PhD. It has good job benefits for two years (e.g. health, pension etc.) except the visa (J1) though.


texts: UK PhD admissions - Does partial industry funding improve my chances?

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I am in a situation where my employer is willing to put up a significant portion of the cost of a physics PhD in the UK. I have spoken to a supervisor at a top university and we've broadly agreed on a project and he says there will be ways to top up the remaining funds from other sources. He is happy with my grades and research experience as well as my research proposal. He wants me to apply right away and not wait for the usual funded application season later.

I'm wondering whether the fact that I am applying with partial industry funding makes admission easier? I have a gut feeling that the university is above my league but I'm being encouraged to apply by an employer and my would-be supervisor.

TL;DR is it because of my employer funding that I stand a better chance of admission?


texts: Why say source code is available with an ArXiv paper when it is not?

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I sometimes come across ArXiv papers where the authors claim the source code for the project discussed can be obtained, but on checking the link provided the source code comprises no more than a place holder. So the code is not available, and on subsequent checking months later (in case the authors were in a rush to publish the paper before the code was quite ready to release) the code is still unavailable.
Now I understand there is no obligation to provide source code with commercial potential, unless maybe the project was subsidized with public funds. But what do authors have to gain by claiming it is available when it is not actually available?


texts: If I don't participate in research in first couple of years of PhD , how much am I losing?

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I completed my MS in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and was planning to do an PhD in Operations Research. But after first few weeks in program , I decided it was not what I wanted to do in long term and dropped out.

There is a background to this- my untenured MS advisor refused to sponsor my PhD . Another well known professor in the department came forward and offered me a good stipend but I dropped out from his lab after couple of weeks.

Things had become too caustic even before I joined his lab. The PhD professor wanted me to help him with some algorithms in the final month of my MS, but my MS advisor shooed him multiple times saying that I was very busy, when in fact I was free all the time. My MS advisor wanted me to make her a co advisor and get her a piece of the tenured professor's project, it didn't work out and since then she has become pretty vengeful towards me. She rejected job offers from our research sponsors after MS saying I was doing PhD and was not interested in working for them.

I think at this point I have lot of ill will against me in my department mainly due to active efforts to undermine me by my MS advisor.

In my university ,we need to take around 30-40 credit hours of subjects and pass candidacy and continue the dissertation.

I am taking an completely different route to PhD. I am taking 9 credit hours every semester (full time course load is 6 credit hours) and at same time working full time as Data warehouse SW developer.

It's very strenuous(My long commute, job and courses and assignments occupy at least 17-18 hours of my day) but I am able to manage them and it's working pretty well as I get paid around 135K at my job.

Is this is an ideal approach until I finish my subjects and then see if any HCI lab in my department can take me in? Can I expect things to calm down in 2 years time.or what can i do right now to improve on this situation?

Or am I really hurting myself here. My concern at this point is after my candidacy, no lab will take me back because of no recent research work. By the way, I don't need to finalize an advisor for the dissertation right now, I can take candidacy exam in dept. by forming a temporary committee .

One advantage I may have is I will have enough money by that time to volunteer in a lab for around an year to prove my worth. But again I am afraid my MS advisor may actively sabotage any of those efforts. I have been afraid and tensed for past few days thinking about this.

Edit : I am from Midwest US


texts: Recommender used an online template for my recommendation

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I've contacted a professor who I have taken 2 courses from and who has known me for over a year. I asked him for a recommendation letter and he agreed to write one. The moment I got his letter, I knew it wasn't entirely his words since he doesn't have a good command over English. So I ran a plagiarism check and found he took paragraphs out of this letter that is freely available online: https://www.eduers.com/reference/template/

Now, I'm a bit concerned about this. If the graduate admissions run some plagiarism test on this letter, this would almost certainly be flagged and that might void this letter entirely and reflect poorly on my entire application.

The way I see it, I have 2 options:

Contact another recommender
Somehow let my professor know about his plagiarism and request a new letter. (Not sure how I could address this via email appropriately!)

To address the first point, unfortunately, he is my 3rd (last) recommender so I have no one else to go to. Regarding the second point, he does not have a good command of English, so I'm not sure if he would be able to express his thoughts concise and precisely. And finally, I cannot have a face to face discussion since I'm not in the same country as him now, so the only practical interaction is via email.

That's my current situation, any ideas or suggestions are greatly appreciated!


texts: How to negotiate multiple tenure-track offers

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I'm in the lucky situation that I received 2 offers for tenure-track positions within days of each other from institutions A and B. Either one of the institutions would be a good fit. So far, neither A nor B know about my application at the respective other institution.

How do I go about negotiating these offers? Should I mention the details of the offer of A to institution B and vice versa? If no, what if they explicitly ask?

Related: How do people get simultaneous offers?


texts: Is it proper to use google map image in scientific paper?

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I have used a google map image as an illustration of street map within my study area. And I have submitted the paper containing this figure to a journal owned by Elsevier.

Meanwhile, the reviewer questioned about the copy right of the basemap which I have also concerned on.

Is it proper to use those maps from Google maps or Google Earth. I'm not familiar with the legal issues of the terms of use for Google Map/Earth.


texts: Should I put a "technician" pseudo-internship on my resume for biology grad school?

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I completed a pseudo-internship-like experience offered by one of my undergraduate professors this semester. The job title was "biology technician," but my jobs were more geared towards learning than actual work.

Tasks I learned were: cleaning glassware in the biology department, organizing microscopes slides, cleaning microscopes, calibrating digital pipettes, and basic autoclave operations.

There were many other tasks, but I fail to remember them now, but would these skills be a boon to a grad school application, and if so, how would I incorporate them into a 1 page resume? I even filmed a video on autoclave use for instructional purpose.


texts: More than one corresponding author for a paper?

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Is it possible to have more than one corresponding author for a conference or journal paper?

Useful question about corresponding authors:

who should be the corresponding author
corresponding author implied meaning


texts: Will it improve my PhD applications if I take a gap year to work on research?

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I was a philosophy major who took a bunch of graduate-level classes in linguistics and I wanted to apply to PhD programs in linguistics (in the United States). I had a writing sample in the philosophy of language, and I found out later from other professors that PhD programs in linguistics are mostly only interested in BAs and MAs in linguistics (unless they have a very strong linguistics writing sample), regardless of what courses they took. So I ended up getting waitlisted to a couple of schools (one top-ranked) and rejected everywhere else, and turned down at both places I got waitlisted. I informally applied to a bunch of MAs in linguistics in May, just by sending emails, and I got accepted to many but without any kind of funding, so I wasn't able to go anywhere this year.

I have no plans or anything whatsoever this year, and to be honest, it's depressing and boring. I'm also unable to get a job.  I'm doing my best to do research and work on two new writing samples for linguistics, which I hope will make me seem like a more serious applicant.

I was just wondering: will this situation look bad on my application? Should I describe what I went through in my statement of purpose? I want to reapply to a school I got rejected from and another school I got waitlisted from. Would that be all right if I really improved my application?


texts: Do professors discuss about grad students (not necessarily their students)?

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Do professors discuss about their PhD students or other PhD students and their performance or likelihood of being successful? Grad student community is much smaller than undergraduate community and often a professor has just handful of PhD students under them. So, it is possible the other professors might know about an underperforming or overachieving student from a different group.

If yes, what is the nature of discussions that they have? How often do they feel the need to advise or provide assistance to a student that might have caught their eye?


texts: What should I do to prepare to apply to a math PhD program?

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A little background information first. I am about a year out of my undergraduate program where I double majored in Computer Science and Mathematics. My main focus was computer science and the math major was mostly for fun. Since I wasn't considering grad school during undergrad I never partook in any REU programs as I was planning on working in the computer science field long term. However after about a year working as a software engineer I miss studying Mathematics and am not loving my work as much as I thought I would. So now I am looking into applying for a PhD program not just because I am not loving my job but because of my love of Math. My love of Math is what led me to study Computer Science in the first place. The earliest would be starting in Fall 2020 but I think Fall 2021 might be more reasonable given the timeline.

This is where the bulk of my question comes in. Since I double majored, I didn't get to take as many math courses and so I have holes in my education such as Differential Equations and Analysis. I do have textbooks on these subjects that I have begun studying with but how can I show programs I apply to that I have the knowledge in these areas? Will not taking these classes affect my chances to get accepted? I should mention that I did take courses in Stats, Abstract Algebra, Number Theory, Combinatorics and Linear Algebra. My overall GPA was a 3.5 and I did well in most of my classes except for Abstract Algebra and Number Theory where I struggled more in, but I do have a reason for that as I was taking three Upper Level Computer Science classes at the same time as Abstract Algebra and then that led to struggling in Number Theory due to lack of understanding of some of the basics. Are there any other tips that you could give me to help improve my attractiveness to a program?


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I am looking to apply for a PhD in the CS realm in the next cycle, particularly something with an AI flavor like Machine Learning or NLP. I am a bit of an anomaly in CS as I have undergraduate majors in a very different area (one was history...). I am finishing up a Masters focusing in signal processing at a well-renowned school and have a good GPA and top GREs. I was a CS minor undergrad, but started too late into college so I couldn't have gotten the major, although I took the core courses.

Although I finished undergrad with plenty of accolades (and I TAed in CS for 3 semesters), and I have excelled in the engineering courses at the Masters level, I am really concerned about my chances to get into a great PhD program. (There are a number of reasons why I want to pursue PhD, but at the same time, *for  me*, the time commitment doesn't feel warranted if I'm not working with great faculty at a great institution.)

I have some research experience (an undergrad honor thesis in my majors--I know it's not exactly related--and I'm a co-author on a couple non-CS papers published in IEEE journals from some summer work), but nothing really in depth I've done on my own. My Masters is a non-thesis program so I've had trouble finding an adviser who'll take me on (I want to do a thesis anyway). I've also had trouble finding (and being accepted) to worthwhile summer research opportunities (academic settings related to my interests). I have actually really enjoyed my previous research opportunities, and I know that for PhD admissions it's research, research, research (and some recs). So here are my questions:

How do I find my way into substantive research endeavors?
With my eclectic background, how can I rise above the thousands of CS undergrads with plenty of relevant research during the admission process?
Any suggestions how to sell my academic background as a positive?

NOTE: Of course I think I'm qualified (every applicant does or else they wouldn't apply). I also think that my unique background is a bonus. I'm concerned that those making hiring/admission decisions will feel differently. (edited since first posting)

Thanks in advance for the advice!


texts: What's the "proof" of having presented a project results in a conference?

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I am a Physics master's student trying for PhD. During my summer internship I worked on a project in a research lab. During the work I found a a few inconsistencies with work done by the Post-Doc and I also redid the analysis with new data. Because of this I was included as second author in a presentation given by the Post-Doc in a conference (our common guide was the third author). I do not have any "proof" as such for this, except for the keynote presentation. How am I supposed to mention this in my CV? I mean, if it was an actual paper I can give a link to the paper, however the conference presentations do not have  any such things I think. Is there any official way to do this or should I just give my guide as a referee so that admission committee will contact the guide in case they need to verify this?

Because it was presented in a conference I am hoping it'll be published at some point in the future(we are still working on the project), but I have to apply for few institutes with next few months, and the project won't be completed by then.


texts: Why am I getting rejection in PhD admission after interview?

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When I was in my bachelor's program, I applied to three universities in Europe for masters. My two first choices accepted me and offered me funding for my masters studies which is competitive (2 students in my field got it). The third university which is not as well known as the others in my field, but still very good, accepted me but did not offer me funding. They interviewed me in this university and then rejected me. For the other two universities, I also had interviews and they both accepted me.
Now I am applying to PhD programs again in Europe. I did my masters in one of those universities in which I was accepted. Again, I have applied to three universities. This morning, the one that was not my first choice and again is not as well-known as the other two, after an interview, rejected me. This position had 5-6 vacancies.
I am confused about this, to be honest. Because I do not know if I should interpret it as that I will be rejected in the other two as well, or just assume it depends on my match with their programs. If the latter is the case, why did they even interview me? The thing that confuses me is this: if they shortlisted me, it means they were considering me. After the interview, they rejected me. I did not have the impression that I could not answer their technical questions. My question is this: should I interpret that the same thing will happen with those well-known universities? Why do you think that they rejected me while I feel I am qualified enough to the other two as well?


texts: I had a doubt regarding research. I want to pursue a masters degree. I have a few topics I want to do research in.  In my case its advanced materials like polymers, macromolecules and also in energy storage applications. For my masters thesis work I am getting to work in the field of polymers and self-assembly. However, I am not sure which field I would like to pursue over long term, but surely it would be in between these topics. Can I shift my topic of research when I apply for a Phd or does my research has to be connected and aligned in order for a professor to accept me for a Phd. If anyone can help then it will help me make an informed decision.


texts: How to ask for feedback from research students on my supervision abilities?

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As the lone experimentalist in my group, I end up supervising most of the students (M.S., B.S. and high school) who do experimentation-focused research in my lab.

I am always trying to improve my mentoring and supervision skills. So I would like to ask my current students for some feedback at the end of the summer.

However, I want to make sure they don't feel pressured in any way by this request, that they are assured there will be no negative or positive consequences to them, and that they understand that I really want honest answers. (I'm not fishing for compliments.)

And, I am looking for specific feedback that I can use to improve or build on, not just general complaints or reassurances that everything was fine.

Given the goals stated above, what's the best way to ask for this kind of feedback? Should we speak face to face in an "exit interview" kind of thing, or should I ask them to write something in an anonymous form online, or something else entirely?

What specific questions can I ask to get focused, helpful feedback on my supervision and mentoring abilities?

Does anybody here have experience (as either supervisor or supervisee) with this kind of assessment, and have useful techniques to share?


texts: How long after graduating can I use my former professor as a reference?

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A few years ago I graduated from a master program at a university. Since I since then has been working mainly in my own company and with granted projects, I don't have so many references from work life or post university activities, even though it's four years since I graduated.

When I apply for grants and jobs I am often asked for a reference, preferably a professor (which I have in my former professor) or a supervisor (which I don't have, since I'm not employed at a company).

How long is it "normal" to use your former professor as a reference when applying for grants and jobs?


texts: Where to find literature on Cosmology, Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics?

texts: Where can I find archived, as well as updated literature on Cosmology, Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics?


texts:
How is the H-Index of a journal related to its grouping in SJR?

I was searching for journals for submitting my first manuscript.

I came across this site https://www.scimagojr.com which very well lists the journals and also groups them into four groups Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4.

I have the following two questions:

I found instances where a journal with low H-Index got grouped in Q2 and a journal with higher H-Index got grouped in Q4.How is this possible?
Is this grouping of SJR well-defined?Is it more prestigious to publish in Q1 than in Q2?Is Q1 journal considered to be of higher value than Q2?

This is somewhat related to my previous question How are journals evaluated?


texts: Work History / Professional Experience Section of US Grad School Application - Listing Research Internships

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I'm applying to biomedical sciences Ph.D. programs, and the applications typically allow me to type in my "Work History / Professional Experience."

I know that undergraduate research would not fall under this category, and technically internships would. However, my internships were both in research (over the past 2 summers). They were full-time positions. One took place at a hospital while the other took place at a medical school. Should I bother listing them in the work/professional experience section, especially if the application does not allow me to submit a CV/resume? I don't know if the schools want me to list any type of research here, even though both were work experiences outside of my undergraduate university.


texts:
I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the Industrial Engineering department and my supervisor owns a company based on the technology which I initially intended to work on under his supervision. I am mostly interested in the technical aspects of his work, for example, modifying software and hardware to enhance the capability of the existing method. But my supervisor wants me to work on validation of his product to be clinically approved.

I have already submitted a paper (under review) based on validation of his product and now he wants my whole Ph.D. to be based on validation by preparing more validation papers. I am good with programming and software (my initial interest) but he thinks I am not capable of doing that for the product development. More importantly, he wants me to publish papers on behalf of his product for FDR approval which later I found out his primary purpose.

With this topic neither can I publish original scientific research work since all my papers will be based on validation of an existing product nor can I gain expertise about any tools or software. Will it worth later if I stick to it and manage to get a Ph.D.?


texts: How should you refer to yourself in a paper?

texts:
When writing a paper that discusses previous work by the same set of authors, what is the correct way to refer to it?

For example,

  "In 2012 Fred et al. introduced a third way of resolving the washing crisis [1234]."

Should this be written

  "In 2012 we introduced a  third way of resolving the washing crisis [1234]."

or perhaps

  "In 2012 the current authors introduced a third way of resolving the washing crisis [1234]."

or even

  "In 2012 Fred et al. (the current authors) introduced a third way of resolving the washing crisis [1234]."

Note that in this style the reference is [1234], in case that wasn't clear.