texts: Understanding "prerequisites" for undergraduate research with a certain professor

texts:
I'd like to do research with one of a few professors within a certain group in my (American) university's Computer Science department. I'm having some trouble contacting them, but I'd like to understand what I can do, as an undergraduate student, to increase my chances of getting research with one of the profs I am interested in.

The group they are in teaches only a few undergrad classes, which, as of next semester, I have completed all of. Yet I was, through a series of extremely unfortunate class schedules, unable to be taught by any of the professors I want to research with, although next semester I will be taught by their colleagues in the same group. I talked to a couple TAs and other profs, who said to "just get better at the research topics in question", although this seems like altogether unhelpful advice given the gap between a first year undergrad and a professor's research.

There are no classes that really delve into the exact research that the professors I would like to research with do, although the class I am taking next semester covers the basics of what the group is about.

What can I do to understand what the "prerequisites" for being a research assistant to the professors in question would be (beyond just "get better")?


texts:
I am an international student from an Asian country. I recently emailed one PhD supervisor at a well-ranked university in London with my CV attached to see if there are any PhD opportunities for me. The supervisor replied to me very quickly and invited me to have a Skype conversation with her.
She only asked about my research interests but nothing else during the Skype chat , which I actually considered as an informal interview (she even didn’t introduce her lab to me). After the Skype chat, she asked me to write my own proposal and proceed with the formal application, which made me to think at least she was happy with my application. After that, I drafted a few research ideas and sent them to her. She finally agreed with the ideas and edited the proposal for me for a few times.
From sending her the first email to finishing the research proposal, it took me around three months. We had more than 20 emails and one more Skype chat during that time. As it was an extremely complicated and tiring process, I think the reason why she continued to help me with the proposal was because she wanted to take me as a student. Otherwise, she can say no in any stages during this process.
The requirement of the university is to have a formal interview for all prospective phd student. The interviewer was the phd supervisor. However, I was rejected by her after the formal interview, which I couldn’t understand at all. If you want to reject me, why did you spend so much time on me and give me false hope? I just think this is not very ethical, as if you said no earlier, I would have had chances of finding other supervisors in the same university (I really wanted to get into this uni, the supervisor was actually less important).
So I am wondering here how you think about this supervisor (i.e why she rejected me in the end while writing the proposal with me during the past three months) and if this is normal in Western/UK culture?


texts: How to show special respect to a famous PhD advisor?

texts:
I am about to enter a 3-year PhD. Neither my bachelor’s nor my master’s were research-oriented nor very typical for my field, and I had to find a potential supervisor on my own. Due to my background, I also do not have a good grasp of academia’s unwritten rules.
Last year, I fortuitously met a rock star professor, one of the top 5 most cited scholars in quite a large field. He got interested in my project, gave me huge support for my proposal, and wrote a wonderful LoR. We also got very well along on a personal level and would chat about things loosely related to academia. He is someone with a very casual style but with clear respect for boundaries. I admire him enormously, both as a scholar and as a person.
I was accepted under his supervision by a very laudatory committee. Academia being a very hierarchical world, I feel compelled to show "extra respect" to him, partly because he is famous and partly because my unconventional background sets me at a disadvantage compared to others. It seems likely that high-status academics would tacitly expect their students (i.e. without explicitly asking for it) to go to greater length for them, whether in terms of work output or in overall signs of deference. I know that they are "just human", but they are also around the top of a very special system.
I tried mentioning this to my now-supervisor, but he keeps blushing when I remind him of his academic status. He seemed to think that I was worried about my application "not being good enough" rather than about failing to show adequate deference to him. The obvious thing I could do for him would be to submit a paper before the start of my PhD. I have never written a paper before, as it seems uncommon in my field (but not unheard of) to do one that early. But he said a few times that he does not need me to do that right now, and I do not know if he means "don’t do that" or "I politely say no but would be happy if you did it anyway, and slightly disappointed if you didn’t".
I have a half-done paper addressing a recent debate around my supervisor’s main theoretical contribution, and I am confident that it can be a substantial paper if well-executed. Yet I am exhausted, and my supervisor is unlikely to help me on it before I start my PhD. What should I do?

EDIT: To clarify, this is a question about the "extra" that famous professors may expect from their PhD students. In my case, I went for a writing a paper on a subject of my choice, then submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal and hopefully avoiding desk-rejection. It feels like a huge task, but how to do it is not really the issue at hand. I would happily have presented at a major conference instead, but the conference I was accepted to did not manage to move online. A couple editors from reputable journals encouraged me to submit a paper as a master’s student, so I assumed it was a tough but realistic thing I could as that little "extra" for my supervisor.
For context, I studied in France and my supervisor is in/from Northern Europe. My field is in the social sciences.


texts: How to reduce a paper's size for a page limited conference?

texts:
This is a usual problem of mine, I have a page limited conference (usually 8) and my paper is 15 pages long, or in a less dramatic case 10.

How do you go about taking stuff off the paper. Do you have any rule
of thumb?
How do you know what is "irrelevant" enough for you to take it out
of the paper?


texts: How do active researchers start and solve a scientific problem?

texts:
There are different researchers working on different subjects. I was wondering how do they find out an "interesting" problem and then solve it. This question may sound very vague. I am PhD student in Theoretical Physics. I just wanted experienced researchers (preferably from science) to share their ways to solve a problem. By this I mean :

How do they start working on a particular problem?
Once they are convinced that that problem is interesting how do they go about solving it.

I understand there is no unique way and different people have different style of working. But I think the collection of answers will definitely help budding researchers, like me, who can get different ideas and choose their own ways out of those.

Edit : To summarize, suppose someone from theoretical science background wants to write a single author paper, how should he/she go about it (in your opinion)?


texts: An organizational chart to ensure central management of laboratories in a college

texts:
I was asked the other day to suggest how different labs in our college should be centrally managed, or what organizational chart would be suitable, to make all these labs abide by input from the quality assurance department in the college. We all know that charts can never improve management by themselves, but what I am looking for is a consensus or an estimate of what such an organizational structure might look like. What would be the best organization structure to facilitate better management of labs and have them follow a unified code with a view of accreditation in the future.

The college is a medical one which has several faculties with their respective labs inside: anatomy, chemistry, physiology, microbiology, pathology, pharmacology, computers, and medical research unit.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Notes: below are some key considerations:

Lab accreditation
Lab devices, equipment, materials, procurement
Lab personnel training and qualifying
IT support
Calibration and maintenance
Lab safety
Store

PS
- No need to provide a chart to illustrate the organizational structure, a structured text as lists would be fine.


texts: Importance of work experience for MS in physics

texts: I am currently enrolled in a 3-year Physics Hons. programme. I plan to pursue physics in my masters as well but from the UK or Germany(Right now, I am studying in India). I am doing a lot of freelance software work like web development and hackathons. I was wondering if they will contribute positively to my masters application or be seen as a distraction by foreign universities? Will my experience in coding and software add to my application or take away from it?


texts: What is the meaning of h-index for a journal?

texts: What is the meaning of h-index for journals, especially those recognized Journals?


texts:
In the field I work in, it is customary to use a graphical representation of some mathematical concepts. For my thesis, I have been creating a batch of figures containing these representations. These figures are very similar to those in one of my sources. I am wondering if I should cite that source in some way.

Some of my considerations:

The general form of the images is widely used in the field
I am making all figures myself, so no direct copying


texts: how to handle a problematic previous advisor?

texts:
Luckily I got in academia after having a serious conflict with my previous advisor.  The problem was that he gave my dissertation proposal to his previous student (another his previous student said that he loved her a lot).  She even got $100,000 NSF grant with the proposal.

I said it was unfair.  Then he did his best to kick me out of the school (he even called the police for the reason I was shown up in his office; contacted all people to say that I am not qualified for a Ph.D. and so should be kicked out).

A school dean saved me and so I graduated. However, for the conflict, I couldn't get in my field (I am in totally different field); still I need to take medicine to get in a sleep, to meet people and to control my anger.

Anyway, I'd like to go back to my own field again because it is too tough to struggle in a new field.  Any advise?  Also I'd really like to pay all back to him regarding what he did to me.  What could be the best way?

Anyway, he is a full professor in a well-known research school; also he is a big name and so about 30% of faculties in this field are his previous students & 50% of senior faculties are his good friends.


texts: How to make sure that my lecture notes do not infringe on copyrights?

texts:
I'm trying to change the numbers in problems I write for examples I use in my class as well as assignments. However the problems are still inspired by the textbook. Are the problems sufficiently different from the textbook problems to not have copyright issues? There is also an issue of theorems and definitions. Authors of the calculus textbook certainly did not come up with these things. Is it OK to just copy them down in my lecture notes?

By the way I do share my lecture notes on Piazza and the course I'm teaching is multivariable calculus.


texts: Situations where changes in advisor/lab interests makes you feel lost

texts:
I'm currently enrolled in an MS/PhD integrated program in a school in Korea. I was originally planning to study in the US, but I wasn't confident that I'd get funding and the lab/advisor that I'd met at my home school fit with me well.

After having a meet up session with the advisor, things were great for the past year or so. I was able to study and do research (mainly help PhD's with their projects while thinking about what I want to do). All was good but recently the professor has become more of a businessman than a researcher. He's hardly at school and is always attending meetings or networking events. There is barely any supervision or guidance. I read this Quora answer and it reminded me of my advisor.

I'm not here to judge another person's personal life choices, but I feel like I need some insight into what to do in these situations because it's been quite distressful as myself and many others in the lab are being forced to work on projects that bring in funding, which are usually irrelevant to our own interests.

Many of my peers have brought up how they're thinking of changing advisors to other professors within the same department, some have outright said they're thinking of dropping out and looking for a job. It was manageable before, because we would just be able to take care of tasks and do our own thing. However, the funding situation of the lab has recently become a bit more dire and hence the desperation on the professor's side.

I don't want to quit, I love the environment of a lab and school. How should a graduate student approach his advisor regarding conflicting research interests? I've tried to talk to him about it before, but it didn't go too well (he was mostly reluctant to let me do my own research). Is there any particular way that I should be approaching this issue? Thanks in advance.

Just for some background information, I'm enrolled in computer science and do research on machine learning/deep learning.


texts: What to do if cited papers are not freely available while reviewing a manuscript?

texts: Recently I was reviewing a manuscript. I found that few cited papers of this manuscript are not freely available to my institute. So what should I do? Should I ask those papers to the editor?


texts: Lectures and labs on the same day as an exam?

texts:
I'm taking a two day workshop at a technical institute, the instructor has said that all accredited courses must have final exams. Fair enough.

Since this is such a short course the exam will be on the same day that we are also being presented new material. This seems very strange to me, to be given an exam after approximately 5 hours of both lectures and labs throughout the day. That being said, I have a lack of academic experience, so I would like to hear from you.

Is this a common practice to have lectures and labs on the same day as an exam (of the same class)?


texts: Citations - when should you add the initial?

texts:
It is common practice - at least in mathematics - to refer to people one cites in the paper simply by a surname. Hence, one could see sentences like "This awesome theorem is due to Smith.".

However, occasionally the initial is added, and so the above might turn into "This awesome theorem is due to J. Smith". The obvious reason might be that there is also a A. Smith who could be mixed up with J. Smith, but the phenomenon also occurs for people with unique surnames (within the field). Why? (In particular: When should I add the initial, if ever?)


texts: How/when will I know if my conference paper will be selected for a special issue?

texts:
My paper was published at a good conference (in the field of theoretical computer science). The proceedings mention that some papers will be selected for publication in a special issue of journals X and Y.

How will I know if my paper is one of them? If it is not, I would simply submit it to some other journal later on. In general, will the conference organizers let me know of a timeline? Basically, I wonder if I should just wait for (say) a few months, and if I hear nothing, then assume my paper was not selected.


texts: How to negotiate with collaborators on adjusting procedures to interdisciplinary projects?

texts:
This is an issue I frequently face. As a biologist I like doing interdisciplinary science. In fact I believe interdisciplinarity is the key to producing any truly insightful observation, at least in my field of work.
Typically I deal with arthropod morphology, allied to some biochemistry, with some conclusions relevant for general biology, ecology, evolution. Since recently I've added some molecular biology (i.e. DNA analyses) to this.

Now my problem is that my main expertise lies in morphology and natural history – because I have seen and read a lot on my bugs. But because of my interdisciplinary approach, I have some insights into what’s happening around. I just don’t know their protocols, don’t have their reagents, lack the experience and background know-how to plan and analyse their results.

However frequently I run into (minor) conflicts over interpreting their results in face of the bigger picture. Usually they get upset when I come up with a different final conclusion, and instead of trying to logically convince me, they get all evasive repeating I am not qualified enough to discuss their work.

It will try to illustrate some typical situations:

A group of collaborators do some proteomic analysis of an organ, and come up with exciting compounds therein reported for the first time. But I do not understand why, out of a 15-lines-long list of potential candidates, the most exciting one is surely the correct identification. (I do have superficial understanding of database identification scores, but likely not as much as they [must] have, and would be delighted to learn more).
Some skilful biochemist isolates a compound as I suggested and starts on further bioassays but while using solvents and plastic labware. From my general experience around GC-MS machines and organic solvents, there will be an uncontrolled amount of phthalate esters released in the extracts which may account for significant effects. Even when alerted of this problem prior to procedures, plastic and solvents are used because “this is how we do it”. Some guy protested “ethanol isn’t exactly a solvent” when shutting his ears and going all offended.
A chemist will use antibiotics solutions which did not really solubilise, categorically stating “suspensions of medicines work”.

There are countless such cases. I try as best to be always prepared to receive their questions and skepticism around my own specialities as I feel confident enough to explain the rationale. And alas, they may be seeing something I did not. However I feel almost everyone else is unwilling to discuss and question routine protocols, and this makes doing interdisciplinary science very hard!

How can I avoid such conflicts, adjust procedures, and at the same time reach an agreement with collaborators?


texts: Translating British faculty titles into American equivalents

texts: A recent job posting at a British university has specified available openings at multiple levels: lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, and professor. However, it's not clear how to map these titles to American equivalents. For instance, where would someone who has finished up several years of an assistant professorship and is interested in moving into such a position be classified? Would it be as a senior lecturer or reader?


texts: How to treat the results of symbolic computations in a paper?

texts:
I am working with quite complicated (i.e., numerous) trigonometric functions. Let’s say one equation does not fit on an A4 sheet of paper. Rewriting the expressions by hand would be extremly tedious, but thanks to computer algebra systems, I managed to do a symbolic computation and arrive at something like f (0) = 1 (for the sake of the example) as a final and main result.

How can I explain such a thing in a scientific journal (in mechanics)?

A few possibilities, that I considered:

  The calculations yield f (0) = 1

But I feel guilty because I did not make the calculation by myself.

  Using ComputerProgram++, we showed that f (0) = 1.

But should I provide the code in this case?


texts: Is there any way to extract keywords and keyterms of an academic field?

texts: I'm trying to do a personal research project on a field, e.g. "quantum physics" and wanted to analyse which keywords are the most important or have the most papers in a field. Is there any way to achieve this?


texts: Is it possible to support oneself as a lifelong graduate student?

texts:
I don't care much for being rich. I don't mind a modest life if I can just do research in the field I love.

Thus I am curious to know if it is possible to make a living just by studying. (Suppose I could hypothetically get funding for every Master or PhD program). Is there an age limit or a limit to the number of PhD degrees that I could get? Are there any other reasons that prevent this?


texts: Are there any recommendations from professional or academic associations on maximum class size for STEM courses?

texts:
I read here that some professional/academic organizations (Association of Departments of English, National Council of Teachers of English) have released specific recommendations regarding maximum class size for writing courses.

Are there recommendations from a professional association, accrediting body, or other group, regarding maximum class size for STEM courses? (Either STEM in general, or for specific disciplines. I am most interested in electrical engineering and computer science.)


texts: Different types of conference publications

texts: Consider a conference publishing papers related to any EC/CS engineering field. What is the exact difference between different types of papers published in such a conference, i.e., main conference paper, mini-conference paper and workshop paper? Is it inferior to have one's work published in a mini-conference or workshop as opposed to a full conference? Are there any other such sessions within usual conferences for these areas?


texts: Poster author added me as coauthor after abstract was submitted. Can I include it on CV?

texts:
Poster author added me as coauthor after its abstract has been submitted to a conference. As a result, on the conference website I'm not listed as an coauthor, but my name is on the actual poster.

Assuming that it's not possible to update poster authorship info on the conference website, should I still list this poster on my CV, or would it just create confusion or misunderstanding?


texts: What should I do if I didn't get into graduate school?

texts:
I didn't have a backup in mind if I failed. I am going to try again next year (crossing my fingers), but I genuinely don't know what to do in the meantime.
Despite graduating this year, do you think I should take another year but with more research orientated work? Do I not need to do anything and get a job? Do I have a lesser chance if I just apply next year with the same education? Do people in my similar situation reach out for research opportunities regardless? Would it be best to fully seek out my career with just a bachelor's degree in mathematics?
Edit:
-If this is irrelavant to graduate-admissions, please point me to where I may ask this question, I have no-one to talk to about this is it is important to me.
-My GPA was decent
-I want to get into graduate school, but if this is unlikely, please let me know. This isn't explicitly workplace related, as the main concern of this question is admission into graduate school (next year) just as tagged.


texts: As an international graduate applicant, I'd contacted professor that I am interested to work in his research. He replied that I should apply to school first and if I get admission, then contact him? Is he aware that I want to join as an graduate assistant? What does he really mean?


texts: So, I have emailed my professor to ask if he felt comfortable with writing me an LoR during the weekend. I got an automated response stating that he won’t be back till this  Monday, it’s currently Wednesday and Tuesday was a state holiday. I know he just got back, has young children, and his research going on, but the wait is making me anxious. What I am asking is whether or not this is a no, maybe he’s avoiding me? I only doubt his agreement to writing me one because I got a B- in his class, and only have talked to him a few times during office hours. However I will be in another’s lecture of his next semester, and he’s approved me to be a lab course intern next semester as well. What are your opinions? Could it be that I don’t have a strong enough relationship for him to write me an LoR? Thanks in advance!


texts: How do admissions committees evaluate coursework?

texts:
What steps are taken to evaluate an applicant's coursework?

Are graduate-level courses weighted higher?
Is this a significant part of the decision process (outside the major
components of research experience, personal statement, and LORs)?

I'm interested in what adcoms look for as good signs, red flags, etc.

Any information, particularly for CS PhD programs, is appreciated!


texts: What "soft-skills" does one need to succeed as a mathematician?

texts:
My question is about "soft-skills", i.e. knowing how to handle Latex, giving a speech or giving a lecture, or other knowledge that could be useful for a career in mathematics.

Skills that (all) mathematicians need, but which are not necessarily something that one learns studying the mathematics of text books or lectures.

This knowledge should therefore benefit mathematicians of varying disciplines and not only the algebraic topologists or the number theorists.


texts: My Professor is pushing me in a problem that isn't solvable for the deadline

texts:
I have a month to finish an undergraduate research project required to receive my diploma and I am facing the situation when an undergraduate is too low in the academic scale to fight his/her professor, a very stubborn one indeed. Just to say that in a previous situation I warned him/her about certain approach that I knew was not going to work (because I checked) and, besides being scolded, was obliged to loose an entire month of my project doing menial things.

Yes, I made mistakes too. This is my first research project in his/her field and some scripts needed corrections. I don't want to sound that harsh. The professor went discontented and very stressed for a couple of weeks due to finals and similar stuff and, during that time, the amount of data exploded.  Furthermore, He/She is an excellent Human, willing to support you in every possible situation, but, when it comes to work, I have been feeling like Sisyphus, pushing a stone that goes nowhere for most of the project and then obliged to fix up everything that went wrong (and made responsible of it).

I put sweat and tears in the project expecting, after all the ordeal, something good will come out, but this definitely won't happen. The project involves funding and my professor wants the most accurate results, but I have to think about myself and my graduation too. This is Computer Science and, although we have lots of machine power, there are always amounts of data beyond our capacities. Did anyone in computer science had a similar problem with his/her advisor? What did you do?


texts: May I upload the preprint version of my article to ResearchGate before publication?

texts:
Recently, I got an acceptance of a journal paper, where I am allowed to self-archive its preprint version in my own repository/website.

My question is whether I am allowed to upload it to RG before publication, assuming that my RG page is a personal web page. If 'yes', what should I mention in the publication date entry, knowing that it is compulsory?


texts: Standing/sitting practices of an instructor

texts:
A question on this site deals with health aspects related to the posture while delivering a lecture.
My question is about the statistics regarding the same practice and its effect on students.
In general, the success of a lecture may depends on several factors like lecture notes, interactivity etc. Is standing/sitting (of an instructor) in classroom one among them? Does it effect teaching success in any way? Are there any stats related to it?
I know about some institutes having an explicit rule that an instructor should not sit while delivering a lecture and they provide neither chairs nor tables. Is this rule implemented in the institutes of many countries?
Note that sitting or standing by an instructor in this question refers to the instructor who either sits or stands throughout the lecture or at least 90% of the lecture.


texts: Can I use figures from papers published by other authors in (the literature survey part) my thesis defense presentation?

texts:
Scholarly work usually requires comparing methods in the recent literature. Such work can be explained elaborately in words for an article but not so easily in a presentation. I would like to illustrate the existing methods in my thesis defence. It would make sense to use the figures as published in the papers themselves (with appropriate citation, of course).

My question is that would it be enough to just cite the papers along with the figures reproduced or do I require any prior permission from the authors or publisher before doing so?

It is well known that the act of copy-pasting previously published figures for publishing in another paper without prior permission is unacceptable even with relevant citation. How would this be in the case of a thesis defence (or any other public presentation)?


texts: Not sure if grad school was the right choice

texts:
I went to a tiny undergrad school and majored in math.  I had absolutely no idea what to do with my major, so I went to grad school (I've been here for two months now).  Now that I'm here, I'm leaps and bounds behind everyone else, and I don't understand anything in any of my classes.  In my undergrad classes I was always one of the top few students, but now I can't figure out anything by myself.  Is this kind of thing normal?  Should I even be here?

And if not, what am I going to do with my life?


texts: Are there any organisations which approve or manage open science projects?

texts:
Are there any organisations/foundations/hubs which manages/approve independent open science projects which are accepted and well recognised within mainstream scientific circles?

For instance, what if the published project doesn't make any sense and its calling it-self the open science project?

In other words, what kind of organisations/community ensure quality of the published data so it's accepted as reliable 'open science' project or anybody can publish anything and call it 'open science project' (for instance publishing open data of correlation of the number of pirates with global temperature)?


texts: How to avoid using "I" in a research paper in case of referring to my previous work?

texts:
As I know, using "I" and "we" should be avoided in research paper writing.

But in one of my paper, I am the only one author.

And in the introduction I wrote something like AA et al. proved that ..., BB et al. found that ..., CC et al. stated that ....

Then the problem is that I want to refer to one of my previous research that I had conducted with Mr.CC. I and Mr.CC are the only two authors in those researches.

In this case, which one should I write?
(1) I and CC confirmed that ....
(2) My name and CC confirmed that ....
(3) The author and CC confirmed that ....
(4) Our group confirmed that ....

For me, I think the (2) sounds awkward. (4) may not be able to use because I am not in his group in "CC et al. stated that ....". But I am not sure whether the (1) and (3) are suitable.
Thank you very much in advanced.

For more information : I did not involve in "CC et al. stated that ....". This is the result of his team. But I involve in "I and CC confirmed that ...." which is the work that only I and CC did it. So CC will be referred two times in this paper.


texts: How to initiate an application of a research attachment fellowship directly with the potential advisor?

texts:
I am currently trying to seek a summer research attachment in the US institutions. CalTech offers a really attractive program, SURF, to the undergraduates.

However, in order to apply for the attachment fellowship, CalTech requires the applicants to contact a faculty member first and proceed with other admin stuff only after receiving the endorsement from the faculty.

As a non-CalTech student, I have no academic network that spreads to any professor in CalTech. In such a situation, can I directly email the professors that I am interested in working with?

Of course, I can do it, but my concern is that a professor will normally ignore this type of email, especially when he/she is currently not short of people in the lab.

How to initiate such a research proposal effectively so that the professor will not overlook my email and actually think about taking me in?


texts:
I am working on a research project whose eventual conclusion is probably several years away.  However, I have some intermediate results that are:

a) Useful for practitioners in the field
b) Useful as stepping stones towards the eventual complete solution

I'm thinking of writing up these results in a paper with the title: "Towards a closed-form solution of grasp statics".  My question is, is it correct to use "towards" here to indicate that the paper is presenting a piece of an as-yet incomplete solution?


texts: What are the responsibilities of a Program vs. General Conference Chair?

texts:
What are the responsibilities of a conference's program chair versus its general chair? Computer science conferences like STOC and FOCS list separate program and general chairs.

A guess would be that the program chair is in charge of the technical content (which papers are accepted, etc.) whereas the general chair is in charge of administrative aspects. However, some conferences, like FOCS, list a third group of local arrangements chairs who sound like they are in charge of the administrative side of the conference. Others only have one group of undifferentiated "chairs".

What do each of these jobs entail? Are they considered "equal" in terms of service to the community?


texts: How to turn down a MSc supervisor after we had already agreed to work together?

texts:
I applied to a university in Canada for a MSc. As part of their requirements, I needed to have a supervisor in order to be granted admission to the program. So I did contact a supervisor and he took me in as his student with the condition that I brought my own funding. I said yes. However, the university has not yet offered me admission, I am still waiting for their decision.

This was not my only option of course and last week I got accepted to a MSc/PhD program in a Max Planck university in Germany. Because it is much better ranked and students are given a monthly stipend, I took the offer because I thought it was a better option for me.

How do I reject now the professor who accepted me on Canada? Should I tell him the truth? Is this a very bad move on my side?


texts: Can I look for a new post-doc without informing my current PI?

texts:
I'm thinking about leaving my current lab, since it's moving to a field that I'm not really interested in.
I am thinking of contacting other PIs that work on topics that are a closer match to my research interests, to see if they are interested in starting a project together.

I am concerned that if I talk to my current PI before taking any steps, she could bad mouth me to prolong my staying in the lab, and to prevent leakage of the lab's knowledge. So from this point of view it would be my best interest to inform her as a fait accompli when I find a new lab (while still giving proper notice).

I still have some reservations about doing things behind her back though. I would like to leave on good terms, and since academia is such a small community doing this could affect my reputation.


texts: Development Economics Minor for CS Major

texts: I am an undergrad CS Major and am looking to minor in Development Economics, basically economics for understanding challenges created by world poverty (this is the only form of an economics minor that my school offers). I have seen several posts here regarding what a good minor for CS majors is and most of the of responses say to take what you are genuinely interested in that has a good chance of helping you career-wise in the future. I plan on to going to grad school probably for ML and I wanted to know if I should pick a different minor knowing this. My school doesn't offer a statistics minor (for grad school ML) and I also want to minor in something I am genuinely interested in - the last thing I want to do is get stuck doing a minor I hate for the possibility of grad school. Also, I am also doing undergrad research this upcoming semester; would undergrad research or a specific minor be more valuable to a grad school?


texts: How can a prospective PhD student assess whether a potential PhD advisor is hands-on or hands-off?

texts:
Different ways I thought of:

Looking at the size of the potential PhD advisor's lab: e.g., if many (>10) PhD students or post-doc, then likely to be quite hands-off.
Asking current or former members of the potential PhD advisor's lab. (but sometimes it is difficult to establish contact with them and obtain a frank answer, plus that's a bit tedious to do for each potential PhD advisor's lab).
Directly asking the potential PhD advisor but I am unsure whether this is a wise approach as for example if the prospective PhD student is asking the potential PhD advisor whether they are hands-on or hands-off, this could be construed as being too much dependent or independent from the PhD advisor (e.g., a hands-off PhD advisor would typically prefer independent PhD students), which might reduce the chance of being accepted in the PhD program in case of mismatch between the PhD advisor and prospective PhD student.

What could be other techniques for a prospective PhD student assess whether a potential PhD advisor is hands-on or hands-off, preferably without impacting that chance is to be accepted in the PhD program?


texts: Recent PhD graduate, can I change fields and get back into it?

texts:
I'm a recent PhD student who specialized in field X and have a couple options open in this field for my work. I like the field and it is field with opportunities in academia and industry.

That said, field Y is a passion of mine, it's very different and wouldn't have many skill crossovers. There is a job that has opened up for it that seems perfect for me. I'd love to contribute in the field and I could live off of it, but it wouldn't fit my field. I don't think I could easily find a another job in that field or move up really down the line.

My question is, can I have my cake and eat it too? Is it reasonable to take a job in new field Y and ask the employer if I can collaborate and contribute to field X still? If I have a break in my history of working at it can I get back into it without many (any?) publications?


texts: I still don't know my exact research question but I know I don't like the ideas my advisor pushes me to work on an publish asap. What are my options?

texts:
I'm three months into a fully-funded PhD programme, following on from an integrated Masters and two years in industry. I should also say upfront that after seeing more what academic research is around, I feel lukewarm at most about academia in general - which definitely contributes to any dissatisfaction I feel.

While I'm broadly interested in the subject matter of my advisor's field (I switched to work with him after my Masters), I don't feel too keen on exploring the exact research directions he pointed me towards. That being said I still haven't clarified to myself what my dream research question would be. I know what themes I'm interested in, but even though they reside in the same general field as my advisor's work, they don't match his desired themes (It's like we are both interested in cooking but I'm a vegetarian and he is keen on catering for this new hot bbq rib joint.)

So on one hand I have an advisor urging me to jump into this idea I'm not interested in, and putting pressure to find a conference to publish anything ASAP (because the idea involves a recently hot buzzword). On the other hand I'm three months into this and I still don't know what it is that I would like to research really and I'm questioning whether doing a PhD makes sense at all. Both of this sides of the problem are incredibly stressful and exert really negative effect on my mental health.

Is it abnormal / bad / embarrassing to still not know one's research question this far into the PhD programme? Would it be bad / embarrassing / disrespectful to turn down my advisor's idea even though I don't have my own to offer in exchange, and ask for more time for 'reading around'?


texts: Is there a difference between simplification and spoon feeding in education?

texts:
I had been researching about what students dislike about studying, and found out two contradictory piece of reasons:

students cannot understand the concepts taught to them by the teachers;
they hate spoon feeding.

Most articles on the internet (I think almost all of them) talk about how spoon feeding is harmful in education. But if 1 were the reason why students dislike learning, isn't it an imperative to make acquiring knowledge easier? I know lots of sites on the internet which simplify and explain topics carefully. Is that a form of spoon feeding? Or is that of simplification? Are there differences between them?
Should spoon feeding be stopped? Or should sources be more simplified?


texts: How do I cite an equation that has a typo in the source?

texts: I want to cite an equation in my thesis that has a minor typo in the cited source (the wrong letter is used for an index). How should I do that? Can I simply correct the typo in my paper without commenting on it, or should I indicate somehow that the equation has been altered? I’m supposed to use APA style.


texts:
I am currently PhD student, just finished 3rd semester. But it is just 5 months that I defended my proposal, and due to university rules, you are considered an official PhD student just when you defend your proposal. I would like to change my group, due to different reasons, one is financial matters. As my one year financial support from an external fund ( not offered by my current supervisor) is finished and my supervisor also said he has no money!

I already applied for a new open PhD position (not in the same university but in the same city). The new Professor invited me to his office for interview. Should I tell him that I am already PhD student? What if I say nothing?


texts:
I'm in a biology PhD program, and I'm three years into the process. However, my mentor is small minded, unsupportive, and borderline emotionally abusive. I found this out almost a year into my project after TAing his class for him, where he treated the other TA with a lot of deference and respect but was really aggressive and unkind towards me. When I spoke with him about realizing that microbiology wasn't my passion, he told me that I should switch labs because this really wasn't the place for me. At the end of that discussion he said I shouldn't hold him to the mean things he'd said (which is exactly the kind of emotional abuse I'm talking about).

For a long time I've considered switching from wet lab benchwork to computational biology, but am worried that the problem lies within me, and not with the work. Now that I've realized that my mentor isn't going to be of any help, I'm turning towards the internet hivemind. In short, my questions are:

A) What criteria have people used to decide to switch the scope and focus of their PhD projects when faced with an emotionally abusive mentor who has led to the emotional breakdown of at least two, if not more, of his students?

B) what is a good way I can assess if computational work is something I would like/be good at?

This also isn't something I can easily go to the department with, because the last time I tried to speak with someone they launched an investigation into the lab and so it ended up making my experience much, much harder.


texts: Are there any legal issues in having someone's book as the basis and as a textbook for an online course?

texts:
I want to create an online course and use someone's book as the basis (follow the structure, topics) and as a textbook (use exercises, examples, etc). Note that I'm not going to distribute any parts of the book to my students.

What might be the legal issues here?
How do physical universities deal with them?


texts: PhD: Find the problem to solve or use tool to solve a problem?

texts:
So let's say I have a problem (X) that needs to be solved. Most people in research use several approaches around a sub-topic Y. Most of these algorithms have performance of 80-95% accuracy so there is a space for improvement. I understand that a proper PhD topic would be to find a better solution here.

But what if I just use a new technique (K) to solve this problem? It hasn't been addressed yet in literature. I expect the performance of it to be lower or near the conventional methods. I justify using it because it's outperforming in imagery tasks and it would open up the literature to a new method.

If I use K to solve this problem and get lower performance than conventional solutions Y, does that count as a proper PhD thesis?

In other words, to define a PhD topic, should I find the problem to solve or use a tool and see how it solves a problem?


texts: Value of unpublished (i.e. submitted) papers?

texts: It's a normal case for researchers to have some manuscripts under reviewing. So, can such only-submitted and currently-unpublished papers add some value to CV of whom apply for a PhD program? Should they be included in CV at all?


texts: Medically undiagnosed condition: how to inform?

texts:
I am currently a final year grad student. Sometime last year, I developed severe pain in one of my hands which led to a lot of time lost. I have seen some of the best doctors in the country for my condition (I am doing my PhD at a hospital so that helped) but we have not been able to narrow down on any diagnosis. Through out this time my supervisor has been super supportive and helpful; he even helped me arrange a few consultations. My PhD committee (which monitors my progress among other things) has also been mostly supportive. A few months ago, the pain began to subside (could be on its own, could be medicines helping). I communicated this to the committee members last month (who have usually been concerned and periodically checking up on me).

A couple of weeks ago the pain is back suddenly and this time it is in both my hands. This has put me in a difficult spot work-wise and I feel that I might end up losing some more time if the pain persists.

Therefore, the premise of my question is: I have medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). In general people really have low tolerance for such conditions and often think "its all in the head".

My questions are:

1) How do I deal with telling my committee members that I am in severe pain once again? Given that I just told them last month that I was doing fine and that I do not have a diagnosis, I am afraid I might come across as someone using my illness as an excuse for reduced productivity.

2) I am due to submit my thesis in June. I am interested in applying for post-doctoral positions (most likely in Europe). Should I let my future boss know about my condition? I feel that it would be unfair to not let them know given that my pain can lead to (significant) loss of work time; however, since I do not even have a diagnosis I don't even know how should I go about disclosing it to them.

3) At this stage it looks like I might have to deal with pain on a long term basis. Should I expect discrimination (not legally, of course) in academia simply because I might not be as productive as other people? Any advise on how to deal with this kind of situation?

I have read some other related questions (for example, this) but I feel that my situation is slightly different given MUS.

Edit: I am currently doing my PhD in India


texts: Policy regarding grouping of papers in Google Scholar

texts:
Using Google scholar, a researcher can generate a public webpage where all his papers and citations are presented.
Because Google is far from perfect, it is possible to group some papers. For instance if the same paper is (wrongly) seen as two papers by Google scholar, it is possible to make a fusion : the two papers are now a unique one, and the citation are recomputed accordingly.

My question : when there is a conference version, an extended journal version and possibly a invited conference version of the same work, is it best to merge all the versions or all the papers are to be considered different ?


texts: How common is it for a paper to be wrong?

texts:
I am a student in computer science and I recently started working on my M.Sc. thesis. Now I am reading a 2011 paper with about 170 citations that was published in a well-known conference.

In part of the paper, the author briefly states the complexity of their algorithm (in just one line) and claims a complexity order that I believe is false. But I am really in doubt because I think if there was a problem with that paper, that should have been caught earlier by the editorial board.

I want to know, actually how common is it for such errors to be found in papers published in a well-known conferences?


texts:
Most universities around the world are now requesting their lecturers to record lectures and post them on a repository. In my university, we use Moodle to store and share video recordings.
My question is: what are the copyirights of my uploaded videos (say in UK and/or USA)? Do I have any rights once I upload my videos to the system?
My question is motivated by a big discussion we are currently having in our Faculty (where Faculty means a group of Science Departments) on whether the University has total rights on our uploaded videos. If so, they want to recycle lectures even after lecturers leave (say, for another university) or die.
I understand this can be seen as one of those questions whose answer is: check your contract, ask your manager, read the entire Constitution, ... My question relates to a general understanding of copyrights of video lectures. Thanks.


texts:
I've found interesting sounding reference written in Czech.
If wanting to read non-English references, then are there translators that work well for science papers?


texts: In physics, does the order of authors on a paper matter?

texts:
I'm writing to inquire whether or not the order in which the names of the authors is mentioned has any bearing? Here's my case:

I started working on a project with a professor in the physics department last summer. The project is almost finalized and we're in the stage of finalizing the final draft for submission. Since I'm an undergraduate, I'm not the one who came up with the problem. The instructor suggested the problem to me (and now that I think of it, the problem seems like a very natural question to ask based on a work the said professor published last summer). He has been available for feedback all throughout the duration of the project. For instance, he helped me derive the first closed form result of the paper; he also guided me through every stage of the project -- from guiding how to approach to the problem to helping debug the code when I couldn't make it work in the initial stages.

Having said that, the professor didn't contribute directly to the project, in addition to helping and guiding me throughout the project. I'm the one who worked through most of the results and went through all the computational tasks. In addition, I'm the one has written the final draft that we have uptil now; he simply helped me edit the template once.

When I met the professor the last time around, he was editing the template and he listed his name as the first name, and my name as the second name on the paper. Naturally, I didn't say anything.

My question is: does the order in which the names are mentioned matter? Does the answer to this question vary from discipline to discipline, even from one area of research to another area of research within the same discipline.

Here's some information that may help answer the question:

The nature of the physics-related paper can be classified using the keywords: "Quantum Dynamics," "Quantum Mechnaics," "Quantum Information" and "Open Quantum Systems." We're trying to get the paper published in Scientific Reports.

Side note: I'm an undergraduate student. Since I'm not technically affiliated with a university (I pay to attend the university, the professor is paid to be there), does this have any bearing on the answer to the question.


texts: "You are paid to answer my questions!" - how to handle silly questions?

texts:
How do I handle silly questions? By silly, I mean questions that are unrelated to the material of the course.

First, I am a TA. Recently, a student asked me a very silly question at the end of a lab session. I say silly because:

it was not related to the lecture,
it was asked at the end of a lecture - and the classroom was already full with the students of the next class, and
I have previously talked about this issue.

The student insisted that I answer his question many times. So, I told him: "It is already late, but let me know about your question" .. when he asked it, I told him: "You can't be serious, this is not a question!"

He got upset, and he told me: "You are paid to answer my questions!"

I got angry, but how should I handle similar situations?

"I have previously talked about this issue." -- Yes, I talked about this issue even though it is not part of the course and the lecture. I talked about it to add more applications to the course material.


texts: What is the backup strategy of online-only journals/repositories on the very long term?

texts:
Disseminating printed documents in many places on the planet is a very robust "backup" strategy for scientific literature. Printed documents (and other forms of ink-on-paper documents), or fragments of them, are known to last for millennia and with a high redundancy (many copies spread in many geographic locations), the chances of being able to reconstruct the original content is high.

All current electronic data storage require continuous catering (electrical power and servers maintenance) or frequent re-copying (i.e. of laser discs, magnetic hard drives, etc.) to last more than a few decades.

How do online-only journals and articles repositories intend to ensure very long-term archival of their content?


texts: Addressing Background Deficiencies In Statement of Purpose: An Initial Solution

texts:
Background: Did an economics major after switching out of physics and I did a math minor in university with somewhat inconsistent math grades (A+, A-, D, C+, ... ). The reason behind my grade spread is, quite simply, a lack of consistent, deliberate, and persistent effort as an immature student. I am now very close to defending my MSc in resource and environmental economics with a 3.83 gpa in coursework, graduate awards, academic teaching & learning courses, conference proceedings, and hopefully a submitted paper for review by the time of my application , so there's been much growth for whatever that's worth.
Current Situation: I am trying to switch into mathematical biology to study similar natural resource problems I would in resource economics, but from a different perspective I find myself more drawn to. I have reached out to a potential advisor, they have my transcripts and CV, we are set for a video call to talk about me coming on as a PhD student.
Statement of Purpose: There are some math courses that I do not have as a result of not being a math major, and there are some courses I am planning to retake this academic year to boost the grades of the courses I did poorly in. In my statement of purpose, I am wondering how I can address the background gaps.
Initial Solution: After my chat with the potential advisor, I was thinking of writing out a concrete action plan (including MIT OpenCourseware, References to texts I would study from, and subject matter I would cover) to address the background gaps which would include a combination of taking courses and self-studying courses that are not being offered at my local institutions. This plan could then be submitted (appended?) to the Statement of Purpose.
The Final Problem: Given some deficiencies in background, how can one, or how should one, adequately address those deficiencies in a Statement of Purpose to communicate that by the time they enter the program, they would have a sufficient background to be successful in a program?
Many answers around Statement of Purpose tags have suggested that the statement be forward looking, and so I intend to not spend an inordinate amount of time talking about my history, and instead in the spirit of those answers, focus on the path forward.


texts: Is it reasonable for authors and editor to ignore review comments without explanation?

texts:
I recently reviewed an experimental molecular biology paper for a mid-tier journal. I found the work valuable but missing some important controls, and recommended a list of major and minor revisions. A few weeks after submitting my review, I received an e-mail from the journal notifying me that the manuscript has been accepted for publication without any details or explanation.

Given the very short time between submitting my revision and the acceptance, the manuscript was either accepted without any change or accepted with very minor changes. So essentially most or all of my review was ignored, and I did not get any information from the editor or authors.

I find this to be very annoying and will probably not review for this journal again. My feeling is that if I invest my time in reviewing for a journal, the editor can of course decide as they wish but if they decide to ignore my review they should offer some explanation. Otherwise I am just a "rubber stamp" used to say the manuscript was peer reviewed.

My question is whether this kind of behavior by the editor is reasonable in your view, and whether you would ask the editor for clarifications (I probably won't, as it seems a waste of time)?


texts: What guidelines exist for volume of evidence in an undergraduate business assignment?

texts:
When teaching undergraduate students, I find freshmen students to be mostly unaware with the idea of including evidence to support the author's opinion. That is, they write something like:

  Leaders should be friendly and support those in lower positions in the organization. Being friendly makes others like you and that makes them work harder.

Where it should be more like:

  Goleman (2000) wrote about affiliative leadership in which the leader focuses on the emotional connection with the followers. In the ABC case, the leader is likely to be well served by using affiliative leadership due to the fact that workers who feel a strong emotional connection with their manager are known to push themselves harder in order to gain the approval of the manager (Jones, 2008). This implies that the leader should not only be affiliative but should also withhold compliments from the subordinates in order to maximize output.

I remember my teachers telling me the guidelines was 80/20. 80% of the writing should be from the student and 20% should be from external sources, which support the student's opinion.

Meanwhile, I have read quite a few papers from students where they basically have a citation for every sentence. This makes me wonder if they actually know much. After all, if 80% of the writing is from academic sources, it shows that the authors of those papers understand, not that the student understands. However, I also consider that the fact that the student knew which text to include should count for something.

Then I start thinking about plagiarism. If the student has simply quoted their way through a paper (with proper citations) then someone else could submit the same paper and it would not count as plagiarism because everything is cited.

Is there any generally accepted guideline on the percentage of writing in a student's written assignment which should be from the student and what percentage should be from other (hopefully academic) sources?

I realize that this might vary by field. My field is business management.


texts: I've just published a paper on arxiv and then manually added this article to my google scholar profile. Which is fine, and shows the article in my google scholar profile. But when I search for my paper in the google scholar (the search link) and click on my name (A Rezaei) it shows someone else's profile. Will google automatically fix this or should I do something?


texts: Is it formal to inform readers that a point will be discussed later in the chapter?

texts:
I mentioned an important idea in a section without developing it.

Is it formal to inform readers that the point will be discussed later in the chapter?

For example:
This idea will be discussed in detail in a subsequent section.

If yes, should it be presented just like any sentence, maybe next to the idea? Or Does it require special treatment?

Thank you


texts: Can someone requests further modification after the revised deadline in an IEEE conference?

texts:
If one has an accepted paper in the conference and he already submitted the revised version. Suppose that the deadline for submitting the revised papers has been finished last week for example. Is it possible to send a mail to the conference in order to request some further changes? In other words, can this be acceptable by the IEEE conference?

Any help will be very appreciated!


texts: What is the highest post-doctoral salary one should ask for (immunology)

texts:
I know the average salary is generally 45K USD for science post-docs. However, I received an email from a team of researchers who I had an excellent interview with and basically asked, "How much do you want?"

I have no idea what is the maximum amount of money I should ask for without being insulting. I'll be honest, although I don't do science for the money, this would definitely help make a decision for this particular posting.


texts: Why is having multiple PhDs frowned upon?

texts:
I've often read that having more than one PhD is badly seen. Is there a good reason for this? Good obviously means with some kind of evidence to back it up beyond plain and simple "personal experience" and opinion.

I've seen many comments about this matter, but often rely on a kind of judgment that sounds highly personal and by no means endowed with the academic objectity that I would expect.


texts: Restart a degree program with a fresh GPA

texts:
There is a hypothetical situation I've wondered about. When an undergraduate student receives an undesirable class grade, that grade is typically left on their transcript (with the exception of sparing "grade forgiveness" allowances) for the rest of their academic endeavors. Naturally, this allows the student's Grade Point Average to be viewed as a decent reflection of the student's academic aptitude.

It is my understanding that if an undergraduate student leaves a university for some years before finishing their degree program, but returns at a later date, the old class grades will still be on the student's transcript and factored in with the new grades to derive the new GPA for the student. However, this new GPA does not appear to reflect the student's current academic aptitude to me; the student may now have far more experience and skill now than the years before when those old grades were given.

Although I understand that universities typically do not remove select class grades from a transcript, is it common for a university to allow an undergraduate student to simply restart a degree program tabula rasa, with a new blank GPA and no previous class credits?


texts: What if I can make a profit for an assignment/project I did similar to "Google"?

texts:
This is kind of like the google story. We are currently doing an project individually. The idea I came up with can be used as a website that can make profit. My question is, let's say I was able to make money with the code I am writing, since this is a university project that I will submit for marks, do they own a piece of that profit. I know that the Google guys had to pay about $300 million to Standford but it seemed to me like the "patent issue". And they dropped out so I really can't say much about their case. The facebook story is different.

So am I obligated to share the profit with the university or does this differ from institution to institution? After all, even if they take my code, since I wrote it, I can rewrite it with ease.

Edit: It's kind of like inventing something that can be sold or used as a service. Does the institution own a piece of it.


texts: What do you think about a part time PhD vs full time PhD, when the part time PhD involves working on my master's thesis research full time?

texts:
I am working on my masters thesis. If my full time job involves working on the same research project, will it be worthwhile to do a part time PhD?

Are there any things I am going to lose on? Is there any way i can make up for that? If I want to have a career in academia 3-4 years down the line, will it hurt me?


texts: Top 10 largest private physics research centers in U.S.?

texts:
What are the top 10 private companies with the largest (in terms of number of researchers) R&D departments that do research in physics similar to what could be found at a Research 1 university?

For example, IBM has a Physical Sciences Department of their Research Division, located at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center.


texts: Is there an established way to lobby arXiv to expand the paper subjects it covers?

texts:
A couple of days ago, it was announced that SSRN—a popular working paper archive in the social sciences—was purchased by Elsevier. As Elsevier is one of the most reviled of publishers, many scholars are now looking elsewhere for places to store working papers, and arXiv is an obvious candidate, but arXiv focuses nearly exclusively on technology and the natural sciences.

Is there an established procedure to petition arXiv to expand its coverage to include other disciplines, or do we just have to hope they notice and make the change?


texts: Why conference chair asks for accepted papers sources?

texts:
I got my paper accepted to a conference, whose proceedings will be published in IEEE digital library (Xplore). The General chair asked me for the paper source, I was astonished when she insisted on me submitting a Word version even though the conference offered LaTeX template which I used.
My question is twofold:
Why would the conference chair need the source of my paper?
Knowing that I couldn't convert my pdf paper to a decent Word file,
is it my problem at all to do that since the conference allowed using a
LaTex template for paper writing but did not alert that a Word source would be required in case of acceptance?


texts: What to do when your idea turns out to be an old one

texts:
I learned yesterday that an idea (let's call it Idea A) I came up with on my own and that will appear in a paper I'm writing actually appeared in a paper 15 years ago.  (My field is math, I'm a PhD student, for context.)
The paper has other ideas that I think are significant on their own so I could remove the section where Idea A is used crucially.  However, that section helps put the overall results into perspective.  One way or another, that part of the paper should stay put, I think, even at the risk of proving results that some might claim are not really new.  (At the risk of flattering myself, I think the value of the paper will be greater than the sum of its parts: even if you might claim that many of the arguments, like Idea A, aren't hard or appeared previously, I seem to be the first one to see that they could all be combined into a considerable collection of interesting results.)
My question is how to address this in the paper.  Certainly, there's no question the older paper  will be cited and I'll mention it somewhere in the introduction.  It's just a matter of how much credit to give and to what extent it is appropriate to mention that I stumbled upon the idea "independently" of the older paper.  (I understand that "independently" usually refers to results that appear within a few months of each other rather than a decade and a half later.)
To make it slightly more concrete, in the introduction, I was planning to write: "The analysis here is based on the approach in Paper 1 and Paper 2.  However, some additional arguments are necessary to deal with additional difficulties that arise in our setting."  Those additional arguments include Idea A, which I had planned to sketch immediately afterward.  I could then say later, when I give a literature review, that "The idea sketched above appeared previously in Paper 3."  A difficulty with that, though, is Paper 2 cites Paper 3.  While the way I conceptualized the issues involved, Papers 1 and 2 were the starting point, it may be that Paper 3 influenced Paper 2.  One way to fix that would be to say, immediately after "However, some additional arguments...," the following: "(Actually, one of the key ideas here appeared previously in Paper 3.)"  If I write "it appeared previously," is the implication that I came on the idea on my own clear?  (Usually, in cases where other work informed my approach, I would say outright, "this idea was inspired by..." or "it's an adaptation of arguments appearing in..." or even "this result relies crucially on previous work of...")  Another phrasing I have in mind is: "One of the key ideas here, which was new to the author, actually appeared some time ago in Paper 3."
Similarly, I will probably mention Idea A in a conference talk next year.  Is saying something like "This is an idea I stumbled upon and really like.  It turns out that the authors of Paper 3 had the same idea in mind." appropriate?  I would prefer not to think about questions like this, but it's much easier to navigate this kind of issue when you build on others' work knowingly.
Of course, all of this is actually irrelevant as far as the content of the paper is concerned.


texts: What to do when wrongfully accused of cheating?

texts:
For a couple of days ago I had an in class online quiz consisting of multiple choices. I had read and prepared for the quiz and got a 80%, not too well but not bad either.

Several days after the exam I got a email from my professor saying that two different persons had come to him and told I was observed cheating by searching the web for answers. I met up with the professor and he blamed me straight away for cheating. I never talked with him before but he sided immediately with the other side rather than me, even though he had no "past impression" of me. He tried to scare me to admit to something I did not do while I repeatedly told him I did not do it. He made me very uncomfortable, saying I should drop the class and so on...

He was being very childish and immature, I told him it was unfair to take someone’s word over mine when there was no prior relationship, he just started working here. He kept threatening me and I told him I would never admit to something I did not do and it is wrong to accuse someone based on a rumor, this means that I could potentially wrongfully accuse someone of cheating and they would be in trouble.

I am very scared now and I suffer from social anxiety, I have been scared to show up to class as I feel the professor is out after getting me. After this incident, he has also given me very bad grades, borderline failing me, even though I am a student with a 3.5 GPA and very hard working. Also he has been talking about me "cheating" to other students, started a rumor about me that has spread among several classmates, which makes me very uncomfortable being around people.

I have gotten several reports from classmates that he has shared this private matter with them. Whatever I do in class now is not good enough; he keeps on punishing me with bad grades and gave me a zero on the quizzes, making the class hard to even pass. I have no clue what to do in such a situation, and as mentioned before I suffer from heavy social anxiety and I am scared of going to class.

We had a quiz with the same format as the other one shortly after with same amount of questions from a different chapter, I had to finish that quiz while he was looking at me and I got the same exact result as the previous one. I thought that would be proof enough, but he told me that he believes the other person more than me, without giving any reason for why.

I don't want to be labeled for something I am not or punished for something I have not done. Is he allowed to talk to other students about such a private thing? What about my rights? What can I do?


texts: Do research/teaching assistantships count toward financial requirements of visa applications?

texts:
This answer says most PhD students in US universities are funded through research or teaching assistantships.

So research or teaching assistantships count toward any financial requirements in terms of applying for a visa to study in the US? What about other countries? If a certain country does not count research or teaching assistantships toward financial requirements, how are students in those countries funded?

I heard that in the UK or for some places in Europe, research or teaching assistantships do not count toward financial requirements. Is this true?


texts: Fee to publish comment paper in open access journal

texts:
We noticed a mistake in a previously published paper in an IEEE photonics journal. We wrote a correction and submitted it to the journal, and they accepted and published it.  Afterwords, I received an email that I have to pay $1,220, which is more than I can afford. Nor can I get funding for it, because it’s just a two page note.

My question is whether this is normal or not in IEEE paid journals.
If I have to pay the fee, is there any legal procedure to withdraw the published comment paper?


texts: The editor of a jounal asked me to withdraw the ArXiv version of a paper and only upload it after acceptance. Is it possible to do that?

texts:
I submitted a paper to Elsevier recently. The editor told me that its similarity tool found more than 80% of word coincidence and sent me the report. I realized that the test actually referred to the same paper, specifically the version posted in Arxiv. I thought this was very odd because the Elsevier recommends uploading the manuscript by retrieving the sources directly from Arxiv, which is what I did. After explaining to the editor what happened, he asked me to withdraw the paper from Arxiv and only submit it again after acceptance.

I would like to know if it is possible to upload a new version of the paper on Arxiv after having withdrawn it. Has anyone ever had a similar situation before?


texts:
In certain situations, fundamentals may not matter, but very often, especially for long term learning, they really matter. Since this is a deeply held belief, perhaps moulded by experience, I find it tricky to articulate to an intelligent skeptic why they should bother learning fundamentals. They often have surprisingly strong rebuttals, including:

experts do not find such basic material interesting

I empathise: if someone in a specific niche is getting along just fine without understanding fundamentals, they may have no motivation to learn fundamentals, especially if they're already recognised as an expert (not necessarily by peers, but perhaps by students, clients, or consumers of their research).
Question
What lines of reasoning or resources (preferably canonical ones) do you use to demonstrate the value of fundamentals to those who may be sceptical of the value in learning them?
One Example
This happens to be from a physicist, Richard Feynman:

In physics, when you discover new things, it looks more simple

(when) We learn about a greater experience .. the laws look complicated ... but .. every now and then we have these integrations .. (and) it turns out to be simpler that it looked before

The corollary being that when we understand something on a fundamental level, it's actually much easier to communicate, understand, model and predict.


texts: Writing advice for a junior PhD student writing a single-author paper

texts:
I am a second year theoretical physics PhD student authoring a paper on my own in a subfield completely different from my advisor's (in my free time, with his blessing).
My question is specifically about writing advice. In all my previous papers, I have always had experienced senior co-authors looking over my writing, telling me what's appropriate and what isn't, how to handle specific things, how to best present results to appease reviewers and editors and, of course, significantly polishing my manuscripts. Now I have completely lost this advantage, and while I have improved a lot, I am afraid it is not enough.
How do I make up for the lack of experienced collaborators with my writing? Are there specific writing tips that can help with single author papers? What are some common mistakes junior PhD students make while writing, that my coauthors might catch (if they existed)?


texts: Checking whether you have cited some other researcher

texts:
Sometimes you need to find out quickly whether one of your papers has cited a particular researcher given only the name of that researcher. Is there a tool for that? Assume you have used the bibtex format so far to manage your references, but your bibtex files contain much more than what you've actually cited.  You have no Zotero or Mendely and don't want to mess with them unless really necessary. You have your own webpage with lots of paper copies, and you have profiles at Google Scholar, ResearcherId, and Orcid.

Google Scholar and ResearcherID can tell you who cites you. As opposed to that, you wish to determine whether you cite someone else (or not).  To start with, a binary answer (yes/no) would do.  You would like to run such a query several times, one researcher at a time. Ideally, the query would give you some (or even all) of your papers which cite the given researcher, but it's not a must.

Surely you can do that by putting all your texts together, converting them all to text or html, and then searching there. This is tedious and error-prone, though. Is there any online (or offline) service for that, perhaps? The database in which the search is done must be a (possibly large) underapproximation of the papers you have written so far.


texts: I can no longer trust my PI after his handling of authorship. What are my options?

texts:
I am experiencing a very difficult time in the lab where I'm doing my postdoc (biomedical sciences).

This is a lab with lots of funding and a good scientific reputation. I joined 3 years ago and have been working on a technically  challenging project. Finally, after 3 years of solving technical sides of things, I started getting some interesting data and was planning to expand my findings to publish a full story out of it. Meanwhile, another postdoc in the lab was preparing a ms on an interrelated topic that could significantly benefit from this data.

My PI told me that I have the option of a) going ahead with my own experiments and story, but bearing in mind that I can be partially scooped by that other paper from our own lab(!), or b) contributing my work to this other manuscript, which could then be sent to a top journal and could be good for the lab. He also explicitly said that he doesn't care if I will be scooped because he has to think about the lab and not individuals who sometimes will have to suffer for the collective good. I argued that this meant I will lose major part of my project and will have to start from scratch, to which he responded that I will still have time to do something else.

My contract ends in less than 2 years. It's possible it'll be extended but there's no official guarantee. I also don't want to be postdoc for ever and prefer to at least get my own fellowship. After I insisted that this could only make sense (and yet reluctantly and as a compromise) if I will be a co-first author on that paper, he said that it's only him who will decide on authorship and that he hasn't made up his mind yet. He also questioned me, in a condescending tone, whether I think this paper will give me a job and said that he knows the answer is "No".

A week after this unpleasant conversation he called me on my phone to say that he has decided my data should go in that paper and that I can be co-first author. This was far from ideal but not the worst scenario, so I prepared the results and the figure. When I asked to see the manuscript, he responded that he'll send it to me only after I finish my part of the method section and the figure legend, because he doesn't want people getting "distracted" correcting other bits yet. I finally received the ms 3 days ago to write my part of results section, only to find out for the first time that there will be 4 co-first authors on the paper and that I'm number 3. His argument was that the first-listed has put more work, so he has  alphabetically listed the other 3 of us!

I find this the most illogical explanation and utterly disrespectful. I voiced my disappointment, particularly at the fact that he hadn't been open about this decision.

I face a difficult situation now, where i don't know:

If I should just let this go for now and wait to see what happens with the review process (I fear I may have to do more work).
If I should already look for other labs given what my PI has said to my face and the way he has treated the authorship issue. There is another lab I'd be very much interested in but I don't have my own publication yet and the lab head is also in the same institute. I don't know if I can trust him disclosing the issue without being seen as unprofessional.
If, assuming the paper is accepted, I will still be credited as a first author for funding/hiring bodies given that we are 4 listed as "first" and I'm number 3 without any clear random listing.

thanks for your comments/suggestions in advance


texts: Postdoc dilemma: Top department vs. top researcher

texts:
I'm a mathematics PhD student looking for a postdoc position in the US, and I currently have two job offers:

Offer A is from a top department, but while they have some good researchers working in my field, they're certainly not the top researchers in that field.
Offer B is from a good but lesser ranked department, BUT they have one of the top researchers in my field (I would rank him among the top 3).

I tend to believe that I'll be equally productive in both places. Given this information, I have the following questions:

Which is going to be more helpful when I'll start looking for a tenure-track position: Having that top department being mentioned on my CV or having a good reference letter from that top researcher in the lesser ranked department?
Are there any other factors that I should consider when I choose between the offers?


texts: Is it inappropriate for a student to attend their mentor's dissertation defense?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate student at a research one university. My former instructor and current research mentor is defending their dissertation soon. I asked if I could attend and they said they would be fine with it.

My primary interest in doing so is to see how the defense process works for when I attend graduate school. I am also just genuinely interested in supporting them since we both research the same material and they've been incredibly encouraging and helpful to me.

I know defenses are open to the public, but, in your opinion, would a student attending your defense add more stress or disrupt the process? I just want to make sure I'm not making anything more difficult for them or overstepping a boundary, even though they say they are totally okay with me attending.


texts: Doing MS in CS from low ranked university versus applying again next year?

texts:
I have done  my undergrad in electronics from India and want to do a masters in computer science. My initial goal was to do it from a good university but I got rejected from all the ones that I applied to, even though I have very good GRE scores but an average GPA (68% approx = 3.1) with no industry experience. I got acceptance from a university in TX that has no rank published on usnews rankings.

Should I accept going to low/no rank university now or should I try again next year?

Secondly, is it okay to request the university to defer the admission for a year so that I can apply for better universities next year? I think it's highly unlikely that the university will hold the spot for me for an year but still asking to get some advice.
Thanks in advance for helping me on this.


texts: Publishing with/without advisor as new Master student

texts:
I am a new master student in a ranked university. The academic program I have been admitted involves doing a Master and then continuing for a PhD (after fulfilling adequate academic requirements). As an undergrad, I published some papers as first author, and I am very familiar with the whole process, to the point where I can get papers accepted on my own. Now, I have some ideas lying around which I could quickly turn into papers.

However, as a first-year master student, I was told that I am not expected to do research (due to the tough courses). I also don't get a fixed advisor until I start the PhD part of the program. So I could just publish on my own. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I am very familiar with the topics and the literature of my current paper ideas, and have no real need for feedback in order to get them accepted on a good journal. I am not sure about the possible disadvantages later on. Here are my possible choices:

Publish on my own, with university affiliation.
Contact a professor (potential advisor later on), ask for feedback, and probably publish with him as coauthor.
Wait until I begin the PhD, and then start pumping the papers.

What is the most sensible choice?


texts: Do universities have a comprehensive reference document for all their policies and regulations?

texts:
As an organization, a university has various types of regulations (academics, disciplinary, etc), which are separately documented.

Do (at least) large universities prepare a comprehensive book containing the code of laws of the university in different sections. I mean a reference book addressing all regulations of the university.

For example, when there is an official conflict between two parties, using that reference to justify their actions, instead of dealing with section documents.

If yes, could you please reference them for review.


texts: Should I put conditional admittance to Master's program on resume?

texts:
I was recently conditionally admitted to a Master's program for Computer Engineering at a University in the United States, the condition is that I complete 3 graduate level courses in order to be officially accepted into the program.
I would like to put on my resume and social media websites that I have a Master's degree in progress, I believe I am in the right to do so because I am taking graduate level courses that are part of the process of receiving the Master's degree.

Is this bad practice or unethical to label as the Master's degree as "in progress" if I do plan on meeting the conditional requirements to get myself officially into the program?

Thanks for the help!


texts:
I am doing my PhD in an europe university and they have almost no requirements about the thesis formatting. I choosed the following outline:

Titlepage
Acknowledgment
Content
Chapter 1 - Chapter 3
Summary
Bibliography
Declaration

Now I wonder, is there a commen position for the declaration page (such as the first page after the title page or so?).

My declaration pages states that I did the work by myself and have not handed in the dissertation elsewhere.

I am a bit surprised, because in all so far viewed phd thesis I didn't find a declaration at all. Is this often taken out befor the thesis is published online?


texts: I have just completed my first year of grad school. I am currently in a enormous amount of debt from undergrad. I want to continue but I am afraid of accumulating too much debt! Yes I did know this going in about the increasing of debt. I have exhausted many options as far as looking around for financial resources. I am interested in the healthcare field.


texts: Research statement for a fellowship application: should I introduce my area?

texts:
I'm applying for a research postdoc fellowship in mathematics (I just finished my PhD) at a prestigious UK university. I've been told to write a research plan for what I intend to do with the fellowship. Unfortunately I have no idea who is going to be reading my plan.

Should I start off by introducing them to my area? My area is in evolutionary PDEs and professors in eg. number theory may not know anything about it. I was going to define a PDE and then quickly talk about my previous work and then my intended research work. Overall it's 3 pages at the moment.


texts: Is it disadvantageous to my research career in bioinformatics if my PhD work is mainly software development?

texts:
I am in the fourth year of my Ph.D. studies in bioinformatics. I have published two articles, one in my second year on the comparative genomics of a group of bacteria as a co-first author.
Since then I took up software development and published software for comparative genome analysis, assembled from the various programs I wrote for my first publication.
Later I generated a web resource of data from this software containing comparative genomics of thousands of bacterial strains. This may become one of my thesis chapters and another publication, hopefully.

So, the majority of my thesis would consist of software development without any direct clinical or experimental research.
Will that be a major concern for a future career in this field?
I am scared that I won’t be given research positions and become a programmer forever.


texts: May I cite an unpublished exercise from a lecture?

texts: In a mathematics thesis I am currently working on, I use a statement we proved in the exercise classes of a lecture I attended last year, but neither the exercises nor the lecture notes have been published. I am wondering whether it is still possible to cite the exercise, and if yes, in what format.


texts: Statement of Purpose, should one say "I did X ..." or "My advisor and I did X .. "?

texts:
In a statement of purpose for PhD applications, should one talk about their undergrad research like

  I did X ...

or, should one (rightfully) say

  My advisor and I / we did X ...

Would admissions committees be concerned that the applicant "lacks confidence", when they talk about their research work and emphasize that it's work between them and their advisor?  Would committees rather hear the applicant talking solely about their own work?

(Option no. 1 seems a bit ... wrong.)


texts: What are the legal and ethical implications of "padding" pay with extra hours to compensate for unpaid work?

texts:
I have come into a strange position and could greatly use some advice on how I should proceed. I am an undergraduate student at an American university in a computer engineering program. For the last several months, I have been hired as a student developer working for the university. However due to HR issues I have been working without any compensation. (I have so far worked over 300 hours for the university without pay.)

However last week they have finally got around to filling out the HR paperwork to officially hire me. My immediate boss feels bad about me working all this time and wants to "make it up". He has suggested doing this by going and "padding my pay" by a few hours each week until the time is covered. However I have been told to not let anyone else know or there will be trouble for it. This feels very shady and I am really struggling over whether this is something that is acceptable or not to do.

I know the thing that most people are likely to comment on is “Why the world did you not just quit?” The reason for this is really twofold. The position is a really nice one, I am able to be doing development work to help build up my resume and pay for school as a freshman student. The second being that I really do need the money from the position to help pay for school, and I was told throughout the entire process that I would start being payed “Just next week”.

I understand that they probably were just taking advantage of my ignorance (this is my first job), but has anyone ever had any experience like this where they can give advice on how I should proceed? (Or if the suggested method of padding hours is acceptable?) I’m told that “People do it all the time”, but also being told “don’t tell anyone” just makes it seem somewhat suspicious.

Any advice that could be provided would be greatly appreciated. (Particularly concerning the legality and ethics of the situation.)

This question was originally posted on https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/78016/working-without-compensation-what-to-do
but as they said academics tends to look differently on "under the table" dealings, they recommended I try to post it here for a better answers.


texts: What is a novelty in a computer science PhD'

texts:
I'm now on my final year of my PhD in Computer Science (CS).

Unfortunately, I'm still confused with what is considered as a novelty in CS.

Some people say I have to develop a new algorithm and not applying an existing algorithm.

Some people say it is still novelty even if I apply the existing algorithms to solve some problems in my area.

Some people say if someone else method from another area can work in my area, and that particular method haven't been explored in my area, it is still considered as a novelty.

So,  now I am confused at my stage. What does it mean as a novelty in Computer Science PhD research? What it is considered as a novelty to pass the PhD?

I am also advised to present four contributions in my PhD to graduate. And, for each contribution, I put it as one chapter in my thesis. Each contribution is a new thing and published in a journal/conference. It is true? Why I can see some PhD works do not have these four chapters?


texts: Should I mention a part-time job that may have affected my undergraduate grades in my PhD application?

texts:
I'm applying to top 10 CS PhD program in the USA. During my undergrad semesters, I sometimes (for financial reasons, ie, to pay the bills) had to work part-time jobs (sometimes as a developer, sometimes even more unrelated), while also taking full credit load and double majoring with Math. So, sometimes I got less than optimal grades (B, B- etc) in some courses (whereas in some semesters I have perfect GPA, and my overall GPA is 3.9+).
Should I mention this? I'm not going to explicitly blame those grades on the work or even mention the grades, but I will say that I had to work during semesters for financial reasons, hoping that they would connect the dots?


texts: What do you call a paper that summarizes a set of mathematical formulas?

texts: A set of formulae have been collated with brief explanation for each pertaining to a statistical method called Test of Hypothesis from a very few set of sources. I would like to publish this work on ResearchGate. But what will I call it? It is neither research paper of novel method nor a standard survey paper. I don't suppose this is a technical report either. Yet I do believe this material would be helpful to many. What may I publish this as?


texts: Is it possible to be accepted to a Communications Engineering PhD program without a Masters degree?

texts:
I'm a communications engineering undergraduate in London South Bank University. I'm curious whether it's possible to gain acceptance to a PhD program without having to first complete a Masters.

Specific to my case, I'm performing very well (near-perfect GPA, significant coursework completed under self-study, significant percentage of masters coursework completed during undergraduate). I was wondering whether that would have any impact my ability to skip the Masters degree.


texts: When journals falsely assume I already have my PhD, do I need to correct them?

texts:
I have published several papers and have done a number of peer-reviews (on request by the journals) as well. In the communication with these journals, I frequently get addressed as "Dr. Lastname", although I have not finished my PhD yet.
I don't mind when this happens in predatory requests from shady journals and conferences (science spam), because I don't expect them to do their due diligence in finding out correct personal info on all the people they send these requests to.
But coming from more serious sources it feels weird.
In the beginning, I made the effort to correct them, but as it started to happen more and more, I stopped, but always wonder if this is not misrepresenting myself. Maybe the requests for e.g. peer-review would not have been sent to me if they knew that I didn't have my doctorate yet, as several journals I know only invite PhD-holders to review.
So should I always clarify my status, or is this a pretty common thing happening to many researchers, and no one really cares?


texts: How to make a one-year study plan for a difficult exam and remain motivated throughout?

texts:
In a year, I will be taking a difficult entrance exam at a renowned postgraduate school. There are many competitors, most of whom are smart. Despite that, I'm aiming at becoming #1 in the exam, and that's why I have started preparing now.

I have interviewed a few top candidates of the past years and already learned which books I should read and how much I should study every day.

I think that learning more about planning would help me a great deal. But those books on planning and goal-setting mostly focus on reaching financial goals. I have not managed to find any books befitting my situation.

Another thing is that, because the duration is quite long, I'm afraid that my enthusiasm may start weakening after a few months into it, no longer performing at my best.

So, here is my question: How can I a make one-year study-plan for myself, and remain motivated in the long run?

Also, any suggestions about books, software, etc. that will help me reaching my goal will be appreciated.