texts: Who is responsible for detecting plagiarism in a PhD thesis?

texts:
Background
I am asking this question in the context of the long running plagiarism scandal in Germany.The most prominent victim of the scandal of plagiarized doctoral dissertations by politicians was former defense minister Guttenberg. His doctoral title was withdrawn, and he resigned from his position. He was followed by several other politicians, and now even the German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan is under suspicion of plagiarism.

The interesting thing is that for all these people, the plagiarism was detected only due to plagiarism detection wikis like VroniPlag and GuttenPlag, where ordinary people compared these doctoral dissertations with other published work. The only role of universities has been to respond to allegations that are especially well documented and have caused a reasonable amount of public uproar.

Don't the Universities themselves bear any responsibility for letting this plagiarism go undetected? In fact Guttenberg's dissertation was awarded a summa cum laude. It appears as if their is no mechanism whatsoever (at least in German universities) to detect academic fraud.

Is there any mechanism at all to detect plagiarism or fraudulent research in PhD dissertations (doctoral theses)?

I understand that there are probably country based differences and my experience is primarily with the German system. Still it would be good to know the seriousness with which academic fraud is taken in different countries. This appears especially pertinent to the maintenance of the credibility of academia in general and doctoral degrees in particular, and yet there seem to be no checks whatsoever!


texts: Published paper containing well-known results

texts:
I recently found a paper published in an high-impact journal containing as a main contribution a result which is rather well-known among the people working in the field. (In fact, this result has been firstly established in a paper in the 60s).

On the one hand, I think that the authors of the paper did not do that on purpose. In fact, they are not expert in that particular research field, and so, they probably were not aware that this result was already established when they wrote the paper.
On the other hand, being myself a researcher working in that field, I would like to
point this out to the authors and/or to the editorial board of the journal, so that the readers can be referred to the original paper establishing this result.

At this point, I was wondering what the right thing to do is. I would really appreciate any comment/suggestion.


texts: Citing (or not) a flawed or incomprehensible paper or preprint

texts:
Is there a good practice of citing (or not) a paper or preprint that you consider flawed (or at best - totally incomprehensible)?

Once I had a problem of that sort. I wrote a paper on a topic, which was not very popular. Even if I was not using other's results directly, I wanted to cite a few papers solving very similar issues.

Then I had a dilemma if to cite a preprint tackling the same problem, using methods I don't understand (with a feeling that it is incomplete, flawed or just extremely badly written).

Ii that case it is better to:

simply drop it,
cite but make it explicit that you are just mentioning it, not using their results,
or cite making it explicit that you have serious doubts on its content?

EDIT:

By a preprint I understand sth which is archived on arXiv or sth similar.


texts: What is the motivation to start a new journal in a crowded field?

texts:
I've recently noticed a trend of big names in my sub-field starting new journals whose scopes substantially or fully overlap with pre-existing journals, and the motivation is not very obvious to me. To be clear, these are intended to be reputable journals with rigorous peer review, hosted by major publishing houses such as Wiley or Springer-Nature, so I guess it's not a money-grab or anything similar.

To give some more background, my sub-field already has 4 well-established journals devoted to it, as well as >10 journals whose scope intersects with my field (think bioanalytical chemistry vs. analytical chemistry), not to mention the Science and Nature-level journals and the catch-alls such as Scientific Reports. Many of these are highly-regarded society-led journals, with 20+ year histories and the journals all have stable impact factors that range from incremental (1-2), standard (3-5) to relatively high impact (6+), accommodating a wide variety of work.

Thus, it seems a bit mysterious to me why someone would go to the substantial effort and expenditure of personal political capital to create a new journal, harangue your colleagues to submit, convince people to review, etc., when there isn't a clamoring need in the community for yet another journal?


texts: Turning down a tenure-track position at a small undergraduate university for a non-tenure track scientist position at a good research university

texts:
I am in STEM field and this is my first round of attempt at faculty positions, just finished my second year of postdoc. I want to stay in research intensive environment and would ideally want a TT job at R1/R2 places. However, in my first round of application, i got an offer from a small regional university (15000 enrollment) 3-3 teaching load, sizable startup, but the department does't have masters currently.

The second job is non-tenure track scientist position in a top level R1 university. The job role will be to a oversee a user facility and then do research on part time with good and knowledgeable people around. Will taking this job to enhance research profile to get better shot in future faculty application be a good idea? Or should I just accept the tt job at small rural place? Your suggestions are much appreciated.


texts: How do some institutions attract so many female computer scientists?

texts:
It's no secret that computer science is a heavily male-dominated discipline. It's so male-dominated that some people have given up trying to attract more women. Yet Carnegie Mellon not only has close to 50% women in their undergraduate CS classes, they have lots of female faculty. Why?

I'm also interested in what any other institution that's been successful at achieving something resembling gender parity has done as well.


texts: Advice for internal grant application write up

texts:
I am writing an internal grant proposal (as a new faculty recruits). The university has asked for the names of at least three external experts as application reviewers. The university review panel (mostly non-experts) will take experts' comments under consideration, then match the application against the university's criteria to come to a final decision. My question is :

How many technicalities can I put into the application? Can I put in equations and preliminary results? As I have learned it is advisable to put technical info (esp. jargon) in the grant applications. But given that experts may (or may not) review the, can I get suggestions.
Of course, I do not have the final results yet, the idea is half-baked in my mind (which I am putting on the paper). It may evolve when I do the actual research on the project. How can I approach this in my application? Also, how can I convince the reviewer that I am looking for genuine work and not proposing a gimmick to get the funds

PS. This is my first application as a faculty member, I did write funding applications during my Ph.D., but they were not successful.


texts: Is it allowed to write notes during the "read instructions" stage of a TOEFL exam?

texts: Is it allowed to take notes during the "read instructions" stage of TOEFL? At this stage the timer is stopped and it's a good time to take notes such as drawing tables for speaking and writing sections. But I'm not sure on whether it is allowed in the exam. I'm asking this question because I didn't find any section of the TOEFL rules that addresses this scenario.


texts: Is it better to repeat a caption or reference an identical caption?

texts:
I am presenting several (11) data sets in a written communication (my dissertation).  I have grouped the data separating it into several figures which fill two and a half pages, one after the other.  Each figure shows the same three subplots, just with the new data set.

Is it better to include the same caption in each set of subfigures (a fifth of the page each time) or to reference the previous caption?

The first option would repeat the something like the following (this is a mock example):

  Fig 6. 2x167 in 10–200 mM KCl: (a) shows the reduced intensity for the varied sample conditions with the inset showing a key region. (b) shows how the scale applied to each data as a function of the concentration. (c) shows the time dependence.

The second option would have subsequent captions that look something like the following:

  Fig 7. 3x167 in 10–200 mM KCl: (a)–(c) as labeled in Fig. 6.

Edit:
I was originally inclined to do the first as I am not short on space, but the fact that they are identical has made me less certain.  Also, with the captions, two of the groups each fill a page, breaking up the overlapping sentence significantly.  This would be somewhat less of a problem if I had more to say about the figure, but I do not need a page of text to explain the differences.  I could put them all in an appendix, and only show an example (or make them smaller, as long as the labels do not get too small).


texts:
Beside the determination of a property of newly prepared compounds, I aimed for a comparision with the value of the same property for already literature-known materials.  During this meta-analysis I became aware of a program that may assist this process.

In a first attempt, the software performed better than I expected.  It looked like the potential field of application was more general than the one initially described in an accompanying publication for this program. I contacted the developer to check if the results still were reasonable with this "version A" of the softwared.  The developer was surprised the algorithm implemented performs so well even in cases initially not envisaged / estimated as "too difficult" back then the software was released initially, confirmed the results, provided hints "how to do even better" and improved the software further into "version A+".

The question is in the context of writing up for a publication.  The intended paper's barycentre will not be the aforementioned meta-analysis with this software.  Certainly the developer will appear in the literature references for the initial publication presenting the software.  Where however discern between a special acknowledgement in the publication, on one hand, and co-authorship, on the other?  As "version A" was performing well, offering already the insight sought-after, yet "version A+" does so even better?

So far, to express gratitude for the assistance provided by the developer in the section "acknowledgements"  is the minimum to do.


texts: GPA is slightly below what's required for conditional admissions offer, what are my options?

texts:
I've received a conditional offer from Australia National University (ANU). To accept this offer I must have an average of 85% in my current undergraduate program, but I found that my final average is 84.5%. Unfortunately, I'll graduate from my current school next month.

Can I email to ANU admission office to argue about this 0.5% difference? Can it make sense?

What makes me feel hopeless is that when I get my Bachelor degree, I'll no longer have the chance to increase my GPA.


texts: Advisors asked for a complete draft of the thesis - should I include the acknowledgement?

texts: I have written an acknowledgement in my PhD thesis thanking my advisors. Meanwhile they have asked for a draft of the thesis (before I submit it). Can I include the acknowledgment in the draft or will it be awkward for them to read my appreciation? I am also afraid that they might comment on it, causing me to change it.


texts: How to get big-picture feedback from advisors, rather than just details, during fieldwork

texts:
I am a PhD student in the social sciences and halfway through my fieldwork. It recently became clear that my original research project would not work out as planned and significant changes were necessary.

How do I elicit advice (via email or skype) from my advisors on which new idea they view as most promising?

I am corresponding with my advisors trying to develop ideas for new ways forward. My problem is that my advisors only provide comments on the details of my new ideas, as if we were at a workshop presentation. (e.g., I suggest two new ideas, and they respond with three questions/suggestions for each idea about how I could improve it.) I am grateful for this. But what I need most now is some guidance and what new ideas stand out. What seems promising/exciting and what less so.

I know that my dissertation project is ultimately my choice, and should be driven by my interests, but I would like to make the decision with some outside guidance.


texts: What is the "right" rate at which my papers should get accepted (to computer science conferences)?

texts:
In general, when submitting to first tier conferences there is a smaller chance of acceptance but also a better reward.

At one extreme, one may only submit his work to third tier conferences and get nearly all of them accepted at the first shot. Alas, especially for younger researchers, the visibility of these will be very limited and the author might not get recognition for the work at all.

On the other hand, submitting only to first-tier conferences bares a higher risk, especially for PhD candidate looking for a post-doc/position, as it may take several iterations till the paper is accepted and published.

So where should one aim to be in general? Obviously, better papers belong in higher tier conferences, but there may be a goal rate in which your papers should get accepted. If the average number of submissions before accepted is 2/paper (but not all of them are first-tier venues), should one aim higher? If it takes 3-4 submissions but papers end up in first tier venues, should we attempt less competitive venues and publish quicker?

Context: I'm a CS PhD student. My supervisor usually insist on sticking to top-tier conferences even if a paper was rejected 2-3 times. I wonder if it is better to lower the bar after a rejection or two to get my results published faster. From another student here I've heard that they usually get papers accepted in the first attempt, but most of her publications are not in a top ranked conference. What is the right balance here?


texts: Should one keep record of papers one reviews? (and of the reviews themselves)

texts:
Just like my other research-related activities, I keep a complete record of the reviews I perform: both the original papers and the reviews I have written, as well as the revised manuscript I receive one, and the final published manuscript if it is published (but sometimes in a different journal!)

I don't think I ever read anything in reviewer guidelines that forbid this, but I recently met someöne who argued that confidential material should be deleted after review. It's true that keeping it on my hard drive exposes it slightly to a risk of breach of confidentiality, but no more than the rest of confidential material that I handle every day…

So, what are policies on this matter and what are the existing practices?


texts: Relative pronoun 'who' or 'which' when referring to article by authors' names

texts:
In an academic paper, when I refer to an article by author's name and publication year, then use a relative pronoun, should I use 'who' or 'which?'

For example,

  We referred to the method proposed by Smith and  Johnson (2004) who suggested blah-blah.


texts: Advisor's Postgraduate Career Machinations

texts:
I have been applying to postdoc positions, but I'm concerned about my advisor's recommendation letter.
I have been a productive researcher under his supervision and had a good, but stressful PhD experience and I believe I have been one of my advisors better students. He certainly seems quite pleased with my work.
I have a job offer that my advisor would strongly prefer I take, it involves working in a group indirectly controlled by him.
For personal geographical reasons (not related to my advisor or anyone I work with) I would prefer to work elsewhere.
What troubles me is that I'm not certain my advisor will write me a recommendation letter that accurately reflects my abilities as a researcher in order to force me to accept the position more closely associated with him. He's certainly been pushing me to accept this position by refusing to expend any effort to find more funding for me until I finish my PhD. I'm graduating next month and I've been without fellowship for the past few months). The people in charge of this postdoc position are happy to start paying me as soon as I agree to work with them.
I realize this sounds somewhat paranoid, however my advisor has done something similar to one of his previous students in very similar position. This student had been extended a tentative offer for a position at very prestigious institution, which was then revoked when our advisor sent a private email to this students prospective employer implying that the student had already agreed to work with him after his graduation. This student only found out why the deal fell through later when he met personally with some people working with the prospective employer and they were sorry that he wasn't available to work with them at that time.
I don't doubt this. My advisor is certainly the kind of person who would conspire in this way. He's sort of roguishly brilliant and I'm sure he justified it to himself by thinking it was in this student's best interest. He's one of the big names in our field as well.
What do I do? I understand that omitting my advisor from the letter writers can raise some eyebrows. Is there anyway to inform prospective employers of this situation without sounding insane?


texts: Following this question, what does A and A* mean for conference rank? Is there a site where can I get information for conference rank?


texts: What does "Your submission will be handled by Receiving Editor" mean?

texts:
I submitted a paper to a journal and after 20 days I got an email which states

Your submission entitled "X" will be handled by Receiving Editor.

What does this mean?


texts: What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics over a MS in statistics?

texts:
What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics over a MS in statistics (other than being a professor)? Do people with PhDs in statistics earn significantly more than people with MS degrees in statistics?

More generally, does a PhD in a quantitative field provide a salary advantage over a MS in a quantitative field?


texts: Rejection from a legitimate journal, with reviewers recommending me to try a Beall's list journal

texts:
Recently I received a rejection by the editor of SCI Expanded journal (which I consider to be a legitimate journal):

The reviewer's comments (just a few days after I submitted the manuscript):

  Sorry, this paper lacks novelty, is not well written, and will not be considered due to overwhelming submissions to X journal (SCI Expanded journal).
  Suggest to try: (gives me a URL to a journal listed in Beall's List of predatory journals).

(I have removed the names of the journals above. I have personally checked https://beallslist.net/ and confirmed that the suggested journal falls inside the Original Beall's List. The suggested journal comes with a publication fee of 1500 euros for each article.)

I am quite new to academia. Is the above considered normal practice for a reputable journal listed in the Science Citation Index (Expanded)?

Any advice of what I can do?

Update:

I found that a member of the editorial board of the SCI Expanded journal, is also in the editorial board of the Beall's list journal.


texts: Should a professor recommending me talk about my (bad) grades in his or her letter?

texts:
I recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics. I'm now applying to research internships and some of these need recommendation letters from faculty.

I did very badly during the first 2 years at college (having scored around 6/10 (=2.4/4) GPA in my courses until the end of my 4th semester) -- however, I learnt from my mistakes and became much more disciplined in my 3rd year, when I scored an average of 8/10 (3.2/4). At the end of 3 years, I had to graduate with a sub-3 CGPA of 6.88/10 (2.75/4).

I did really well on research projects and other quantitative projects at college, which is one reason why I've found professors to recommend me. I understand that my poor GPA will probably put me in a bad position, but what's done is done and I digress. One of my possible references asked me to draft a letter for him and that he will make changes as necessary before sending it in.

My question is: should I ask my references to talk about my poor grades (something along the lines of "While X does not have impressive scores in his undergraduate degree, it can be clearly seen from his transcripts that he picked up pace and discipline during his final year. I believe that X has taken home the importance of hardwork after a few hiccups in his academic life".)

Even if the above phrasing doesn't seem good, in general, is it a good idea to talk about your bad grades in a recommendation letter? Or is it simply better to let this go and concentrate on my strengths?


texts: About multiple applications for graduate programs to the same school

texts:
Suppose I applied to a Master's Degree Program when I was at my last year in undergraduate. I got accepted but I couldn't enroll at this school because I failed to finish the undergraduate on time, and I need to spend one more semester in undergraduate.

I want to apply again when I'm finished so what I want ask is how my previous application will affect my next one? Will it affect positively since I got accepted last time, will it affect negatively because I rejected the previous one or will it have no affect at all and they will consider my next application independent than previous one?


texts:
Is it reasonable to request keeping my application to a tenure-track position secret in the cover letter?
Would search committee likely to respect such a request?
If at all possible, how long can such secret be kept?

The motivation for keeping an application secret is to not create any problem with the current department.


texts: German language for Phd courses in Germany

texts:
Can PhD students study in universities in Germany, in engineering courses, without knowing the German language?  Can they research and live without any problems?

Does applying to these universities require knowledge of the German language?


texts: How to mention your work in a peer-review?

texts:
I am a coauthor of a critical paper published in Nature. We showed that a common calculation is not reliable without considering new factors. Obviously, this applied to the majority of research on this specific topic. The paper attracted sudden attention in the literature but no wonder that some authors have not yet heard about it.

I receive numerous peer-review request and in many cases the authors are not aware of the new considerations. They appreciated this suggestion during revision.

I have no intention to promote our paper but my concern is that the editor may consider this as a flaw in my peer-review service by mentioning my own paper again and again. I tried to explain it in the confidential report to the editor but felt it is not appropriate too.


texts: Letter or recommendation of supervisor who gave you a bad project

texts: If your supervisor gave you an unviable project that was a dead end in honors or masters, do you think that they will write badly about you in a letter of recommendation to make themselves look good?


texts: Can I do PhD under the supervision of a Research Fellow running a group at a research institute in Germany?

texts: I appreciate a researcher very much for (s)he has very clear concepts. (S)he also points out what could go wrong in a theory. (S)he is a research fellow running a group at a respected institute in Germany. Can (s)he supervise me for my PhD, so that I can do research and learn from him/her?


texts: How will the topic of my Master's thesis affect my PhD?

texts:
Main question:

Will the admission committee care about specific research topics or do they only care if I can/cannot do research irrespective of the topic? Will an off-topic thesis be looked as sign of inconsistent interests?

It would be great if answers focus mainly on US schools, however answers for european schools are also welcome.

Related questions : Will an off-topic Masters hurt my chances of a PhD place? . My question is very very similar to this but with two main differences - 1) The author of that question had no option and was at liberty give this as a reason if it was brought up in the admission proces. But I cannot do this and thus, will it be looked at as sign of irregular intersts? 2) I want answers for US and not UK

Why I ask this question:

I am a Physics Master's student from India and will be starting my Master's thesis around 3-4 months from now.

Until this point (and even right now) my projects were in Cosmology-Dark Matter. I enjoyed them and I want to apply for PhD in Theoretical Cosmology/HEP/AstroPhysics groups. This decision is based on my chances to get a PhD position in a good place and how much I liked the topics.

I always wanted to study/work on "pure theoretical" topics such as Quantum Gravity. But after I started my Bachelor's I realized that it is impractical to pursue these topics, at least not for PhD (lack of positions and funding - from what I heard from seniors). However, I really want to research on these topics at least once, and I know for sure it will be next to impossible once I start my PhD. That's why I want to work on this for my Master's Thesis. I have read an interesting paper on semi-classical gravity and have even approached a professor in my department who is willing to guide me on a project related to the paper. However, I am not sure if this is a sensible choice. How will such a thesis affect my PhD application? I do not even know if I'll produce any new results but I really want to try this but at the same time I am worried if this would reduce my chances of getting PhD in a good place i.e will a thesis on Cosmology give a higher boost than this? My previous research projects on Cosmology were quite extensive, with one first author paper, so I can show that I have some experience in the topic. But I do not know if the admission committee compares specific research topics or do they only care if I can/cannot do research irrespective of the field.

Thanks in advance!


texts: Should I mention that I quit my job and give up good salary to take a PhD degree in the personal statement?

texts: I have a good job and salary now. And I want to quit my job to take a Ph.D. degree, which means my income will be cut in half. Should I mention that in my personal statement to prove my dedication to academia? Would that be like I am looking down the academia as I quantify the benefits academia brings me with the money?


texts: What to remember when supervising female PhD students?

texts:
I have been supervising a female PhD student for a couple of months. She is the first female PhD student I am supervising and got the position on merit.

My view is that her gender does not/should not change anything in how I supervise her or what I expect from her, the rationale being that doing so might ultimately hurt her in her post-PhD career. For this reason, I have not brought up her gender in any of our discussions. I briefly contemplated telling her that I will treat her the same way as her male peers, but did not do so because it seemed wrong (as in "of course, why is he telling me this?").

Lately I have been wondering, however, whether there are things I should do that I might not even be thinking of. Perhaps my own experience and the male-dominated environment blind me so that I do not perceive my own sexist/reverse-sexist attitudes and ultimately do not do things that I should be doing (and vice versa)? So I am interested in reading advice/views on supervising female PhD students (in male-dominated academic environments).

A few notes to address anticipated follow-up questions: Yes, I am male. I did not specify where my institution is located because I am interested in a range of opinions/comments. The agency that finances her project offers a special stipend to attend workshops/meetings for female students; I have encouraged her to attend.


texts: Alternatives to big-name proprietary remote-lecturing tools

texts:
As in many other universities, due to the coronavirus outbreak now we are supposed to do our teaching online in videoconference style. Our university suggests using either Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, but I am not so keen on using a service run by one of these data-collecting behemoths where "you are the product".

Which alternatives exist to these two big players for videoconferencing with a large number of students?

For my lectures, I would like to share my desktop's content (livestream) and my voice on microphone. Students should hopefully also have a way to give feedback and ask questions. You may assume ca. 100-200 students.

My university used to have an internal videoconferencing service but they discontinued it.

I would prefer something open source, in theory: I understand that bandwidth does not grow on trees, but that seems like a problem that could be solved using p2p, at least in theory. Otherwise, I am open to considering other commercial services that are a bit more privacy-preserving; for instance, something run by a company less focused on advertising and monetizing user data. Apple looks slightly better, and so does Amazon (Twitch -- it has ads, but I don't know how intrusive they are).

In the past I used to publish my in-class lecture videos, but I realize that by doing so without a class I would lose all interactivity.


texts: Issue creating IEEE Xplore-compatible document: accepted with caution

texts:
I am currently submitting an already accepted paper to an IEEE conference. I validated the paper with the PDF eXpress tool. However, my paper is accepted with caution. The warning message received via e-mail is the following one.

PDF links are allowed for supplemental electronic material (multimedia) only. ALL OTHER LINKS WILL BE DELETED BEFORE POSTING TO IEEE XPLORE.

If I understand the message correctly, for the document to be IEEE Xplore-compatible, it requires me to cancel all links that are not PDFs. However, many of my sources are links to other sources (e.g., GitHub or an official wiki).
What I am supposed to do? Simply upload the file as it is and wait for editors' complaints?


texts: E-assignment submission system made my effort go to nothing

texts:
My assignments deadline was due to March 13, 00:00. I uploaded my assignment half a day earlier, but did not confirm it, because instructions said we do not have to (last uploaded version always gets saved). But, stupid me, I confirmed my assignment after the deadline, without uploading new version, and that overwritten my original submission time.

Now it looks like I was late with my assignment. By 15 minutes.

What to do in such situations? I was thinking of writing to a teaching asistent and explaining the situation.


texts: Can my paper be published in a conference's special issue against my will?

texts:
I am thinking on sending a paper to a conference. However, the conference CfP says:

  The Journal XX will publish a special issue with a selection of papers presented at the conference. The selection of the papers will be made by the Scientific Committee of the Conference.

Now, if I get accepted into the conference, and my paper is selected to be published in the journal, can I oppose it, or am I forced to accept it by the sole fact of participating in the conference? In other words, if I do not want my paper published in Journal XX, is it fine for me to apply to the conference?


texts: Is it considered rude to address a PhD holder as sir or miss?

texts:
I suspect I might have offended some of my professors/lecturers and tutors by calling them sir or miss despite them holding a PhD.

Edit (info provided in comment): I'm from Malaysia. We have our own variation of English called Manglish (Malaysian English). So ma'am instead of miss then for female college educators?


texts: MLA in-text citation of documents written by an organization, like UNESCO?

texts:
Please, how should I write an MLA in-text citation of a UNESCO document?

The document in question is the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. I am using the PDF version.
The Document has no author.
The MLA recommends using a shortened version of the title of references with no authors but I don't know if this applies also to UNESCO documents.

Thanks


texts: Why don't authors include in their publications the duration of the research?

texts:
I've noticed that most papers do not say explicitly (or at all) how much time did the research take. This excludes certain types of studies, such as epidemiological studies that usually say that the study's cohort was followed for some-and-some months etc., but what I mean is that in most papers there is no actual indication of how much time the study\set of experiments took.
I believe this type of information could be useful for readers, especially for readers that would like to perform similar experiments for their own research.

So why is this information not required from authors?

(I realize that it's sometimes hard to pinpoint the date when a person begins and finishes a research project, but it could still be useful to give an approximation in months. This way a reader could get a better estimation if such a project is reasonable for their own research, at least from time investment considerations.)


texts: Does the NSF award grants to foreign researchers not affiliated with US instutitions?

texts:
I mean the foreign researchers who are not affiliated with US institutions, and are located overseas. I suspect that NSF would not award them research grants, but need a confirmation.

I also imagine that NSF may award grants for collaborations of US and foreigners. It would be interesting to get a pointer to a resource which describes the conditions for such collaborations.


texts: Should I do a STEM PhD with my own funds?

texts:
I have lost my TA position in a US public university after my first year. I was not kicked out but lost my funding due to poor TA performance. I got a 4 GPA and As in all my assignments.

My family is not millionaire but my mother and grandmother offered me to pay my tuition (19k a year) plus living expenses (10k for a 9 month academic period). They have a small profitable business in Latin America. Yes I am a foreigner. They told me I MUST finish what I started; otherwise, I will not be able to do anything in the future.

But I have contacted my advisor and he told me that even though I am allowed to continue the PhD with my own funding, the graduate committee is still a little upset with me because of my poor performance.

How should I approach the committee? Will they make my studies more trouble and more difficult?

On the other hand, my advisor and many people say it is not a good idea to pay for a US PhD.

I really want to finish that program, not only for my family support and encouragement. I also like my research field, though my university is not well known and all grad students are funded by TAships. No one has an RAship in my program.

If I don't have to be a TA, will that help me produce better research?

Anyway, I do not intend to get a US tenure position anyway. I will probably end up with running the business of my mother and grand mother in my country. But I do really love science and my field.


texts: How to provide information about past students without violating FERPA

texts:
The instructions for supervisors of an NIH NRSA Fellowship say:

  B. Sponsor's/Co-Sponsor’s Previous Fellows/Trainees Give the total number of predoctoral and postdoctoral individuals previously sponsored. Select up to five that are representative and, for those five, provide information on time spent in the lab their present employing organizations and position titles or occupations. Include this information for any co-sponsor as well.

While the instructions do not say the supervisor needs to provide names, even in the absence of a name, providing the information seem like it is treading close to a FERPA violation. It would be surprising if a reviewer would not be able to identify who the former students from the required information even in the absence of the name.

Do I need my former students to fill out some sort of FERPA statement? If so, can I make it them agreeing to some sort of blanket FERPA release a requirement for me to agree to supervise them?


texts: Moving from a modest research laboratory to a laboratory with a prestigious research portfolio. Tips to be successful?

texts:
Background
I have done my PhD (Computer Science) at a university (in a third world country) with very limited resources. My research was not funded, my previous lab didn't provide any research support at all (except a desk, internet access and access to some research databases). No training, no equipment, no projects.. they didn't even reimburse students for conferences/travel, etc. As a result, I was very limited in my research (experiments, submission to conferences/journals, etc.). I really had to work a lot and sacrifice a lot so I can defend my thesis in good time and with very good results.
Now I received an offer from a very prestigious university in the world. It's quite the opposite of my previous lab in terms of research support, funded projects, etc. So this is a completely new work environment for me. I know that the key mindset to have is research is research, but sometimes I feel that my pace will be slower than previous postdocs and for that I need to adapt and adjust quickly. What advice can you give to a researcher with my background?


texts: Marijuana use and job/grant opportunities

texts:
I am now living in a state (in the US) where marijuana is legal (for recreational use) and I'd like to be able to try it. However, I am concerned that doing so might effect my job or grant prospects as a current graduate student. In my field, students can intern for the DoD or NSA and my understanding is that smoking marijuana is a disqualifier for those kinds of positions.

Am I correct in this?

Are there any other grants or jobs for which this would be disqualifying?


texts: How do I get better at giving talks/presenting research?

texts:
I read many papers and try to present some of them at a reading group of some sort in my department (these are all quite informal). Both my most recent talks were what I consider quite bad, and I really want suggestions to get better.

I only choose to present papers that I understand reasonably well, but when I start talking about them, I often fumble, fluster, and feel the need to constantly look at my notes, even though I know the math (I am in Theoretical Computer Science). I often start saying a sentence, then pause and start afresh since I forget to add a "modifier" like, "given an epsilon > 0" or something like that.

I really don't know how to get better. Due to classes and research, I didn't get time to rehearse my talks before. I also recently gave a formal talk as part of my Qualifying Exam, which went very well (as the committee told me, but also, I felt it too!), but I'd rehearsed it six or seven times before the final talk.

I can't spend so much time for every talk. So I want to know if there are any suggestions to get better at talking. I know stage fright isn't an issue as I'm quite an outgoing person.

EDIT: These are all whiteboard talks.


texts: Why do conferences keep deferring the deadlines?

texts:
We work on some research problem, obtain some publishable results, then we target an international conference to disseminate the results and methods in, and then there is a 'last' date or deadline.

We submit the complete manuscript to the conference on or before the mentioned deadline of the conference.

Then, suddenly we see the deadlines (both for submission and for the acceptance) continually change over time. For example, in one of the last year's Computer Science conference, the deadlines were changed repeatedly. Please note that the deadlines for submission were getting extended on the very day of the earlier notified deadline, which is another demotivating factor.

Why might it be happening?

Because the targetted number of submissions were not received.
The reviewers could not meet the deadlines.
Can there be any other reasons than the above two?

I have the following questions:

If the conference organizers were not so firm about this stuff, why did they even have an important date page?
It is actually frustrating for the authors who have submitted the paper on the first submission dead line and still waiting for 3 months to get the review. This is ridiculously bad for a conference.
The papers which are submitted at the last notified deadline will be reviewed in a less productive way. If this is true, then what is the point of having a peer review?
In such a scenario, is it advisable to withdraw the paper from the conference?
Does it not hamper the quality of the conference as good researchers would not submit to the same conference again in following years?

I believe that this question is not a duplicate of this question.


texts: Should I reward points for an incorrect answer if it is the result of misinformation presented in a TA's office hours?

texts:
So a TA came to me asking for advice. He gave wrong information in office hours leading a student to a wrong answer.

The TA showed the student how to solve the problem via the wrong statistical test - the assumptions for the statistical test he used do not hold in this case. The answer generated from this test yields a test statistic that doesn't make any sense when you think about it's meaning. Kind of like if you were asked to "find the length of the fence that encloses ..." and your method produced the answer of -50 meters. The TA provided the student with step by step instructions, but did not do any of the numerical calculations. Had he done those calculations he would almost certainly have caught his mistake.

The student complains that she should not be punished because her TA made a mistake. TAs can change HW grades, if they have good reason to do so, and this TA wants to correct his mistake by rewarding the student the points on the problem. I told the TA that I would get back to him as I don't want to give my advice in haste. I think I want to say something like this.

to the TA: "Thank you for asking for my advice in this situation; it is indeed a difficult position to be in. However, this situation concerns me, not because you gave wrong info or bad advice, as we all occasionally make mistakes, but because you seem to have told a student the method for answering the question. While it's OK for students to get help from their TAs, it should only be by reviewing concepts and asking them 'leading questions' that nudge them in the right direction. Note I am not saying that what you did is objectively wrong, as I should have been more clear in my instructions at the beginning of the course, but in the future telling students how to do a problem, in my opinion, is unfair to the students who can't make your office hours."

to the student: "Your TA contacted me recently about changing your HW grade. While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is reasonable, and therefore I can not give you full credit on this problem. Ultimately the majority of the points you lost were not for using this incorrect method (the TAs error), it was for not interpreting your answer and realizing it made no sense. As stated on the first day of class and in the syllabus I require all students to interpret their answers to make sure they make sense. Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority."

Is this the right thing to do?


texts: Meta-analysis using Google Scholar - are all years equally complete?

texts:
Like so many others, I scrape data from Google Scholar as a part of my lit review process, so that I can have a structured data set for meta-analysis of the literature.

I noticed that for a couple of many topics of interest, the # of articles per year seems to be increasing until 2017, then it drops off sharply.

I wonder if it's really safe to assume that fewer articles were published in 2018?

Is it possible that this means that the data through 2017 is relatively "complete", whereas journals and authors for 2018 may still be in the process of being added to Google's index, thus the total number is under-reported?

Has anyone encountered this?


texts: Can a successful, prestigious post-doc make up for a PhD from a mid-ranked university and make you competitive for a tenure-track position?

texts:
EDIT: Apparently, the longer version below is somewhat off-topic due to the number of personal, non-generalisable factors involved in the decision it describes. I do however believe that the main question of whether a good post-doc can outweigh a "bad" or "modest" PhD is highly general both in its nature (trends in hiring and successful curricula do exist in academia) and interest for current, past and prospective grad students. For this reason, I would sincerely appreciate if fellow users could discriminate between the main question in itself and the additional, somewhat optional description of my personal situation given hereafter before flagging the message as off-topic.

Detailed, horrendously long version below for those brave enough to face a wall of text:

I recently graduated with highest honours from a good, albeit not tier 1 UK university. Like many science students, my dearest (and pretty much only) wish is to become an independent researcher in a good university, preferably in the US. Unfortunately, today's academic market being in the atrocious state we know, entertaining the hope of becoming a PI without a stellar curriculum appears suicidal. And judging from the CV of most of the tenure or tenure-track academics in the top 30 universities, the crucial point in an academic's career appears to be grad school, as over 95% of those I checked hold PhDs from a top-ranked institution in their field. This trend seems even stronger among the younger generation, as pretty much every cases of faculty coming from "lesser" institutions (e.g. U. Delaware or Ann Harbor) have been appointed in the late 80s or earlier, while most recently-filled positions went to CHYMPS alumni. The most terrifying point being that even in mid- or lower-ranked universities, the vast majority of professors also comes from top grad schools.

I have been offered a fully-funded PhD scholarship at a Russel Group University. The subject is exciting, and I was first very happy with this offer. Unfortunately, although the uni ranks 3rd or 4th nationwide as a whole, the department in which I would enroll in very poorly ranked (in the 50 - 75 worldwide bracket at best) and has an abysmal placement record for PhD students. Worst: the project is a coin toss, and has about the same probability of yielding very high-impact results as of yielding nothing at all. However, due to a number of factors (source of the funding, network the research group is a part of, subject of the PhD project), even a moderately successful outcome could position me for a series of very prestigious post-doctoral fellowships, that would take me to leading US universities.

Which leads - finally - to my question: Is it completely insane to contemplate declining this scholarship in order to apply to higher ranked departments? This option would obviously force me to take a gap year (which I could use, to be honest) to get back in synch with the applications calendar. Considering my academic record (3 degrees all obtained with high honours, 4.0 GPA, 2.5 years of research experience, 2 published papers in 5+ impact factor journals, and industrial experience through the potential gap year), I believe I have a decent shot at high ranking programmes both in the US and the UK. This is, however, a big gamble, as I would have absolutely no assurance of finding another PhD of equal or higher quality when taking my decision.

Currently, my decision hangs from the title-question: let's say I take the studentship and (big if here, I know) manage to secure a high-end postdoc position; would that postdoc offset the modest ranking of my grad school and give me a decent shot a tenure-track positions in the US?


texts:
A colleague of mine noticed that one of his co-authors copied and pasted a discussion from another paper into their manuscript. When confronted, the co-author freely and casually admitted to it. My colleague is understandably distressed, they are at the beginning of their career and the co-author is near retirement. They are concerned that if they have a mutual paper which openly plagiarizes another, then that could severely hurt their chances of getting a professor position in the future.

My colleague was wondering if there are any good tools to check against academic papers, so that they could see if the final manuscripts of their co-author actually contains plagiarized materials.

I know of turnitin, but I assume that just for undergrad essays and what not.

Does the community have any recommendations?


texts: Should the slides in a presentation be self-explanatory or be as minimal as possible?

texts:
When you do a research presentation, what is usually the focus that you take.

Some professors tell me to make the slides as self explanatory as possible, and I quote:

  Someone should be able to understand your slides without you being there

To me, this approach seems counter intuitive to the principle of a "talk". After all, you already wrote a paper that meets that objective.

Other people, for example in things like TED talks or (please bear with me) presentations by Apple, have very bare bones slides, where they only focus on transmitting the main message of the talk.

What is your take, should the presentation be made as didactic as possible or just a cold transference of information?


texts: How to mention non-archival CS workshop publications on resume

texts:
I'm a new PhD student in a CS-related research area with a very limited number of publications. As part of working on my current research projects I've managed to get some non-archival publications at workshops of top tier conferences to show my work in progress.

These non-archival publications range from 3 to 8 pages and contain enough good content to make it into a decent number of mid-range journals/conferences. I'd say that this is quite different from what you would know from workshop publications in e.g. social science, and I would therefore like advice from others with a similar research field to mine.

I'd like to show this work on my academic resume, but what is the preferred approach? Should I list it alongside my "real" publications and mark each one of them with a note saying it was non-archival, should I list them separately or should I do something completely different?

Edit:

Things are a bit complicated as I also have 2 recent non-archival papers from a more tangential field to CS. These papers are not workshop papers, but similar in scope in terms of amount of content. I guess I also need to fit these in the same category. Note that some of my non-archival papers involve presentations and some posters.


texts: Do I need to repeat the books quoted in footnotes in the bibliography?

texts: When writing an essay, if I have cited some paragraph from a book in the footnotes, do I need to include that book in the bibliography after the essay? Or I only need to include books that have not been cited in the bibliography?


texts: Is it ok to include an epilogue dedicated to colleagues who passed away in the end of the manuscript?

texts: We are writing a dedication in the form of an epilogue to honour our colleagues who recently passed away. Both colleagues have substantially changed our field and we believe they deserve to be honoured in a paper that will be published soon so that the next generation could read it and will always remember them. However, one reviewer wants to remove it and placed in the 'acknowledgement' section. Any advice?


texts: What is the best way of getting a part-time PhD in Europe?

texts:
I am interested in pursuing a part-time PhD parallel to having a job in the industry.

In particular, I am a financial professional based in Germany and I am interested in a PhD in Economics orFinance.


texts: How can I signal that I don't intend to follow up the items in my "Future Work" section?

texts:
I'm currently writing a paper that is based on work that I won't be following up on, as I'm changing career directions. I believe that the work raises a number of questions and ideas for future work, and my program solves a number of the boring problems without getting into the interesting applications. However, I've previously been told that raising an idea in a "Future Work" section effectively 'reserves' that work for me, and it would be considered rude for readers to begin research on those areas.

How can I signal (without flat out saying that I don't care) that I hope others will pick up and run with the ideas I'm presenting?

If it's of any importance, it's a Computer Science paper.


texts: What provisions exist to handle scooping when there are multiple reviews of research papers?

texts:
Point 1: At my university, it's a practice (not compulsory) to submit our conference/journal paper first to a department where it is checked for plagiarism and quality. Then it's sent to professors in the university to confirm that they don't have any authorship problems with it (ie: that the student didn't copy one of their ideas, unacknowledged). It's only then that the student gets approval to send the paper to a conference (specifically this one) or journal.

Point 2: A journal or conference has it's long procedure of reviews and only some papers get accepted. If rejected or un-published, the author can send it to another conference or journal and there's a similar lapse of time.

During both above situations, isn't it possible for someone else to scoop the idea? Does the academic community have any provisions to prevent a planned scooping? ie: Someone reviewing the paper purposely rejects it and during the time that elapses, publishes the same idea or allows one of his/her other students to publish the idea.

A teacher of mine says that it's because of these fears that she directly submits papers to conferences without going through the university's process. Also, the same reason she submits to conferences instead of journals, because the journal review process is much longer, increasing the scope of the idea being scooped.

So are there any safeguards? If I see my idea scooped somewhere, would it help if I can show proof that I had already submitted the idea at a conference and the paper was rejected? Will the person who supposedly scooped it, get blacklisted?


texts: How do I publish the work of my elderly father, a "fringe" scientist?

texts: I am trying to figure out the best way to publish my elderly father's life work. He says he would be considered a "fringe" scientist or an independent researcher. Should we self-publish? The subject matter would be of great interest to those interested in earth-moon systems, and the Egyptian Pyramids. How should we proceed?


texts: Personal information (trivia) in the “about me” section of an academic webpage

texts:
It has been pointed out to me that several business-oriented websites advise to add a few “interesting facts about yourself" in the “about me” section on your professional webpage.

It seems that the aim of this practice is to avoid being “stiff and boring” and to share some unexpected or humorous details that paint a picture of your personal side (quirks and all).

  I wonder if this practice is widespread in academic setting as well (and thus if I should take the advice).

In principle, I don't object to publicly sharing little (not too weird) bits of personal information about myself (such as the music I like, the books I've read recently, what the name of my pet is);
I do know some (quite successful) colleagues and a few professors that include such personal trivia on their webpages;
I think that this might actually have a positive impact on personal relationships with colleagues, senior researchers, and can surely show younger (undergrad) students that we're humans after all!

However, I'm afraid that this practice may be seen as jokey or unprofessional by senior researchers (especially since I'm young, a graduate student). Hence the question.


texts: Difference between private and public universities as a faculty member?

texts:
As a grad student I was, for the most part, shielded from issues like high-level bureaucracy, departmental duties and politics, and long-term career advancement.  Obviously these things become more important when you're looking for a faculty job.

Question: As a faculty member in the U.S., what are the most tangible differences between being at a public vs. private university?

I.e., how does it affect your day-to-day life, or alternatively, key events like promotion, student recruiting, etc.?  Obviously the question depends a great deal on the particular department and perhaps its ranking; I am interested mostly in departments "near the top" [ed: of some fairly arbitrary ranking systems...], but broad answers are also useful.

Thanks!


texts: What does it mean by "Follow-up Masters"?

texts:
I see various universities in Czech Republic and Netherlands offer a type of Masters degree called "Follow-up Masters".

What does "Follow-up Masters" actually mean?


texts: Journal requires to cite Arxiv pre-print of the same work – where and how do I cite?

texts:
I am submitting my paper to a journal that requires to cite Arxiv pre-prints within the content of the submitted article (presenting the same work) to avoid self-plagiarism. How would I practically perform such a citation:

In which section of my manuscript should I cite the Arxiv reference?
What would be an adequate explanation for this citation?


texts: How to find out who funded a study / research?

texts:
It has been proven that the source of funding can have an influence on the results of a research (funding bias, well documented here and here).

When we check for pieces of research, for example through the Pubmed database, how can we check the source of funding? (And check for possible financial conflict of interest?)


texts: What to do if most of the students did badly in the 1st midterm?

texts:
What to do if the average of the 1st midterm is like 35%?
Should I repeat the exam? should I ask them to redo the problems in which most of them did poorly in the exam and average the old score and the new score?
Other suggestions?

(The level of the exam is not different from past exams, where the average was around 60%. Same learning outcomes, same everything as past semesters. The only difference I made this semester was to break each question into sub questions, each of which will target certain concept in the main question. Students usually have the habit of asking for partial credits for writing relevant equations without knowing how to use them properly. I made that change to see how clear they understand things and to make grading scheme less ambiguous. I have already trained them on similar problems and concept questions in class, but it seems that they did not take it seriously or they are not used to that, I am not sure)

An Update: I regraded some papers using the same way I graded papers in past semesters (just by looking at the overall solution of each question) and the average became slightly higher (~40)


texts: What is the industry standard for the level of technical detail when writing about machine learning for a paper in a science journal?

texts:
I am writing a paper which utilizes machine learning to guide clinical decisions regarding a certain disease. This paper will be submitted to some neonatology journals in the next couple months, but I have never written anything about machine learning in this context before. Additionally, if published this would be my first paper ever. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone of whom I can ask kinds of questions.

Currently, the technical portion of the paper includes everything we tried to select a good machine learning model. For example, all hyperparameters are listed, all attempted feature engineering is listed, all algorithms implemented are listed, etc.

A few questions:

Should I include every model we tried including those that we didn't?
Should I include hyperparameters for gridsearch or only the best hyperparameters?
Should I include every method of feature engineering we implemented?
Should I include examples of the data's structure?

General advice is appreciated too.


texts: How best to format and position legend in line chart when legend text is long?

texts:
I always struggle when showing line chart with long legend title like this:

Is there any best practice to a chart with long legend title?

I try to show several alternatives below, but of course, it's not comprehensive.

(a) Stretch y-axis limit

(b) Put legend outside chart's body

(c) Shorten legend title

Update

I'm a researcher in computer science field. But, general discussions beyond research domains are also welcome.


texts: How much of an onus is on the teacher in an undergraduate course?

texts:
I am an assistant professor at an undergraduate college in India. I teach a rigorous compulsory course in microeconomics, requiring some intermediate-advanced math knowledge. There is no add/drop option at my University/college, nor is there an option to take a course in a later semester. I don't decide the syllabus or the final exam--it is set centrally. We are a publicly funded University and have a diverse set of students.

General math preparation in my country is low, due to poor schooling standards and sometimes, students are not clear about basic concepts: for example, in a third semester intermediate microeconomics course, some of them don't know how to write the (linear) equation of a budget frontier (something taught to them in the first semester). Unless they understand such things, it is impossible for them to grasp the rest of the material, since all topics are related. Is it my responsibility to explain concepts taught in introductory-level courses? I welcome all questions and have a generally amicable attitude, so students don't feel intimidated in getting a clarification.

However, I do get frustrated sometimes when having to answer something very basic, that too repeatedly. I get glowing feedback for most of my courses, but despite being appreciated for my effort and the clarity of explanation, a group of students (around 20% of the class) repeatedly under-performs, which upsets me a lot. How much should I hold students responsible for their learning?


texts: Chances of being accepted into Canadian PhD program with Masters from Germany

texts:
I will be starting my Masters in Mathematics in University of Würzburg, Germany from this coming winter semester. I completed my Bachelors from University of Calgary, Canada but because of my low GPA (2.8) and a personal issue, I did not apply for Masters in Canada. Tuition fees being an another issue and my dedication to pursue a PhD in Mathematics I applied to several English taught Masters program in Germany and I got in to most of them.

The reason why I chose Würzburg is because it has produced notable Nobel laureates in the past and has a good international ranking so it'll look good on my resume when I apply for a PhD school. Another reason is that the masters course has a research component by which I will be able to get some research experience (30CP) that is needed for PhD.

With all these factors, do you  think my Masters degree will be acceptable in different universities in Canada like in Waterloo, McGill etc.? What do the professors look in the candidate when they contact them for the first time? Applying to PhD school when the professor is not that interested in student would be useless.

What are the factors that the admission committee looks upon for such student like me? The only thing I know is grade, recommendation letters and research experience.

Will my Bachelors degree play an important role in the admission process? I am not sure if I can get a really good recommendation letter but I can get one from my Bachelors university.


texts: Could I arrange random gifts for the participants in my research?

texts:
I've seen in many research projects that they give people who fill the questionnaires or participate in the experiment (more often the latter) some amount of money to acknowledge their help. But I can't pay that much because it's a small project. But also I want to attract many people to fill my online questionnaire. Is that right (according to research ethics or anything else) to say to them that I will give only random gifts, for example only 10 gifts when more than 500 people participate?
My concern is that the participants subjective perception that they will receive the gain for their participation is not true (in terms of probability) and maybe I'm cheating on them, in a sense ?


texts:
I have to write a letter about a graduate course abroad. I began it like this:

  I am writing this letter to apply for XXX Master in XXXX.

and ended with:

  I am absolutely sure that I will complete Master's program in XXX.

So here is my question: Is it okay to use both “Master in” and “Master’s in” in one letter? What is the difference between these two?


texts: How to contact the Department Chair or Graduate Program Director?

texts:
I'm planning to apply to grad school for a Computer Science M.S. However I graduated with a 2.4 GPA, and I realize that I face an uphill climb to even get my application read (although my GPA was a 3.67 for the last 60 credit hours and I got a 169V / 170Q / 5.0 on the GRE). I figure that if I can make a good impression speaking face-to-face with the department chair and graduate program director it might help my chances.

Is it considered appropriate for a prospective applicant to request an appointment like that, especially with the department chair? If so, what would be the best way to contact them? Would sending a simple email asking to make an appointment suffice, or should I give a summary of my background or any other information?

If I do meet with them, what should I talk about or ask them?


texts: If I work on a project but don't do research, should I be included as an author on a paper?

texts:
This semester I started working with a professor and a PhD student on one of their major projects, which is an application of their research. Though I was not involved with the research that went into developing the "idea" for the project, I have spent a significant amount of my time helping them to actually build the project, and a lot more work is planned.

Would it be typical for someone in my position to be included as a co-author on the paper that motivated the project I'm working on? Again, I wouldn't say that I have done any research myself, but I have done significant work in getting this project built, and the project is the main product / showcase of the research they performed.

Assuming it's reasonable for me to be included on the paper, how should I go about bringing that up?


texts: How to collaborate with an experienced researcher as a first year master student?

texts:
I am currently investigating some generalized properties in my mathematical research with my professor. We are basically now working together to produce new paper to publish.
My professor is very well experienced and he seems to know what he is doing very fast compared to me. I feel like I do not do anything worth the contribution for this project.

Is it normal for a first year master student to feel this way when he or she tries to write a paper together with a professor? How come can a person generate possible ideas to solve so fast? Is it because I am still inexperienced or am I doing something wrong?

I usually read some papers trying to get some ideas which might be useful but I still dont get anything really 'valuable' for the progress of my current project.

I am hoping for some advises coming from well experienced mathematicians / researchers. Thank you very much!


texts: How do graduate admissions committees in the US perceive grading systems other than GPA?

texts:
I am a senior undergraduate student in computer engineering considering applying for Ph.D in the US. In my country we use a grading system based on percentages rather than GPA and it works as follows:

85-100% ---> Distinction
75-85% ---> Very Good
65-75% ---> Good
50-65% ---> Pass

My cumulative grade will probably be about 77% which lands me in the top third of my class. My question is how will graduate admissions committees view and evaluate my academic performance given the differences in the grading systems?


texts: How can professionals vet research ideas (and potentially collaborate) with academics?

texts:
I am a professional software engineer. In my downtime, I enjoy following some of the informal streams about advances in my field (Lambda the Ultimate for example, academic email lists, etc.) as well as more practical practices to keep myself up to date. Some of those practical aspects involve playing around at the edge of my knowledge/skill to try and advance it.

Recently I've had a particularly good idea that I've been able to turn into a workable prototype for something a little novel (as far as I can tell looking into past research). Normally, I would pat myself on the back and go about my life - or maybe post it to a blog. But this one falls into a realm that is almost entirely academic (Type Theory and Parsing). Nobody reading a random blog would understand or be able to extend/expand it into anything greater. On the other hand, I've read enough papers to know that I wouldn't be taken seriously by academics (or even skilled amateurs) without a boatload of formalism, that I honestly don't have (and may be beyond me).

It's been 20 years (and 2000 miles) since college, so contacting my alma mater's CS department seems to be not an option. These questions ask about how to get into doing research somewhat full-time, and their answers recommend actually entering a degree program at a research university. That certainly seems premature when I'm not particularly interested in doing research full time, and odds are heavily against this idea actually being novel or non-trivial to someone with more formal training.

This question is similar, but is asking more of "is it possible? how is it possible?". I know the options, but I also am pretty sure they won't do much, or I can't effectively do them. The answers point out the difficulty of being a solo outsider, which I readily acknowledge, even if I don't well understand how little I know about the difficulties.

So as someone well removed from university, how would I find someone to vet this idea - and in the best of scenarios, help form it into something respectable?


texts: Waiting Decision After Phone Interview (PhD)... Should I Email them?

texts:
I just recently did two phone interviews (one with the professor on the admission committee and the other with prospective PI) and was told that if I was offered admission, they would invite me for an on-site interview for sometime next week.

After the phone interview, I emailed the program coordinator at the department regarding when the admission decision will be made. She told me she would know by this morning (morning of the day I have written this post), yet I am still waiting to hear back from them.

Would it be okay to email them back to ask whether I was offered admission or not? Or should I just wait?

Thanks.


texts: Effect of duration taken to get phd degree when applying to faculty positions?

texts: In my university, PhD students usually talk 3 years to finish their thesis and got PhD. However, I worked very hard, and I finish all courses required and my thesis and I can get my PhD within two years of starting my PhD program. My advisor is okay to let me graduate. I am planning to start applying for faculty positions. My Question is do you think this has a good impact or bad one when applying to tenure track faculty positions? I have been interviewed with a research committee and he asked me how I get PhD in two years.


texts: What types of questions should I ask in a cold-email to a professor?

texts:
I'm applying to a PhD program in computer science. My friends and advisors all recommend that I cold-email the professors I'm most interested in working with and have a conversation with them about their research. However, I feel like just asking something like "What type of research do you do?" would just come off as lazy since most professors already have information on their website.

So that leads me to wonder, what are some productive questions that I could actually ask professors in the context of a cold-email or scheduled phone call?


texts: How to obtain citation counts per year or exportable data from Google Scholar?

texts:
To me, it seems that "Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation" (http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.4038v2) has quite a bit of impact. However, I would like to support this feeling with data.

On Google Scholar, I can see that the paper was cited by 116 publications. However, I would like to plot a curve showing when it was cited. So I would like to export this data to a CSV with a "date" column and a "title" column. (Other columns like authors, how often the other paper was cited, journal, ... would be nice, too).

Are there other ways to quickly analyze the impact of a paper?


texts: Is Computational Social Science better as a degree or as a field of research for various disciplines to collaborate in?

texts:
I'd like to go to grad school, but I've been dragging my feet on it for so long (I'm three years out of college, with a Bachelors in Computer Science) because the sound of traditional CS research sounds uninteresting to me. However, I recently found out about the field of Computational Social Science, which asks are questions that I'd enjoy doing research on (see examples here: https://as.cornell.edu/block/computational-social-sciences).

Basically, I'm motivated by social and people problems rather than technology problems. I'd like to be someone who has a strong grasp of the technical and can use it to answer questions about the state of the world. I'm also motivated by having an audience (sounds shallow, but I might as well admit it), i.e.: my work matters to people and spurs discussion.

I even realized that the undergraduate research thesis I wrote was technically in CSS. I was training language models and then using them to predict societal gender disparities (e.g.: can you tell from the English language model whether the word "tennis" is more male or female? And using that, can you predict how many male vs. female tennis players went to the Olympics?)

Since doing my research on CSS programs, it seems like it's a field of specialization rather than an actual degree (so far I think only George Mason University offers it as an actual degree). My question is, which of these is better:

Do a Computer Science PhD and then specialize in CSS.
Do a PhD in some other related field to CSS (e.g.: Data Science, Informatics, Economics, Sociology, other ideas?) and then specialize in CSS.
Do a PhD in CSS directly, even though this is uncommon.

I'll add that along with finding something that I'm interested in, I do have long-term considerations like which degree gives me versatility, respect and income.

I have very little guidance right now, so any words of wisdom could help. Thank you!

My background, in case that helps:

I work at a large tech company, and I've done both mobile product engineering as well as some research in deep learning (my current role). I transitioned to the research team to see whether I'd like to dedicate five years of my life to those kind of problems. Unfortunately, reading about neural networks/adversarial attacks/bayesian neural nets etc etc is not my cup of tea, nor where I think I excel.
Some of my strengths (according to the last three years in industry): communication skills, design thinking, looking at macro patterns, executing and driving projects, mentorship.


texts: Should I sleep less to achieve my thesis targets?

texts:
I am doing my Masters (thesis-based) in Computer Engineering in Canada. I started my research in September 2015 and it is now the end of April in 2017 but I haven't done ANY significant research. It is very distressing and I definitely will need extra time to finish my research and graduate.

I meet with my professor and we both decide on what I need to do and a deadline is set for specific tasks. The initial stages of these tasks mainly involve installing software on my lab system which has the hardware I need for my research. I always run into problems during these installation processes and I end up spending more time than necessary JUST to have the necessary tools needed to do my project. By the time I get started with my work and do anything meaningful, the deadline arrives and the tasks remain incomplete.

My professor is frustrated by my lack of concrete results but despite that, he is encouraging and believes in my abilities. I also think I can publish at least one conference paper before I graduate. However, I am wasting my potential and my expertise by not meeting set deadlines. I know I can get things done but apparently, I am too slow in getting to where I want to be.

I feel that setting aside a set amount of time each day (6 hours or so) is not always effective in meeting goals. Should I just give up sleep (and definitely my leisure time) to meet my goals? I am afraid that it will impact my health and my concentration and negatively impact the quality of my work.

Should I simply come to terms with the fact that given my capabilities, I will need to sleep less to meet my goals?

EDIT:

I also work as a TA and a good amount of time also goes towards preparing for labs and marking students' papers.


texts:
I'm a physics graduate but have written a number theory paper as a hobby. A couple of professors have read it briefly though it is not their field they gave positive feedback and suggested I send it to  professors working in this area.
I sent it to 8 professors and none has replied to me. I asked the original professor what's going on and he said probably the following:
The nature of the paper (Fermat's last theorem) and being an amateur mathematician it will invoke memories of all the failed attempts on this problem over the centuries. Even if it is correct that doesn't matter they will throw it in the bin without reading it.
He suggested I may have to pay a qualified reader to evaluate it  so I'm wondering how do I find a qualified number theory reader. There are no listings for maths readers and I don't  want to email everyone on the number theory web until I find one.

Thank you for any advice.


texts: Thoughts on unfunded programs for better job prospects?

texts:
When applying to graduate programs, the typical sentiment is that it is unwise to go into debt for a graduate degree because, due to lost wages from not working/not advancing a career for 5-6 years, one comes out of a program 'doubly in the hole', so to speak. Since even a funded program has real world costs in lost wages, these costs should not be compounded by paying large tuition amounts, especially in pursuit of a tenuous job market that is likely to leave one jobless in the end.
But, for someone who wants to go into academia in the humanities or social sciences where jobs are so scarce, is this really wise? Say someone could get into a masters program at a top school, perhaps one in the UK or the US, which isn't funded but is regarded extremely highly in one's field, isn't it worthwhile to take on debt for a program like this because it secures a significantly higher likelihood of academic job prospects (vis-a-vis better chances for admissions into top-level PhD programs)? Isn't that a better move than taking a funded offer from a decent but not outstanding school, and then very likely not getting a job after? It seems to me that one can take on the explicit debt of a student loan, or the implicit debt of a funded program with unreliable job prospects. The former gives a much better chance at paying back losses, but the latter?
Would love to hear from someone who has tried this route with success. Sometimes it feels like the only people who offer this advice (never pay to do graduate research) are professors who got their degrees 15+ years ago when the job market was less abysmal, and people who went into a mid-level funded program and couldn't find work after. I wonder if there is also a group of those who paid for opportunities (MA programs, visiting student programs) at top universities and managed, through resume additions and/or networking connections, to get themselves into PhD programs with better placement records, who are now employed and paying off their debt, and who we don't hear from.


texts:
I am a postdoc helping in the supervision of a PhD student who is finishing his 2nd year now. This is in Europe, meaning the student came in with a MSc degree and these 2 years have been of research. "Helping in the supervision" actually means here that my professor is nominally appointed as supervisor but I am doing all of the actual supervision (my professor is not familiar with the details of our project, just the "big picture").

The project is on computational physics/chemistry, and the PhD student has a background in chemistry with no prior computational knowledge. At the time of hiring we were under pressure to get the project going and complementing my physics background with someone who actually knows chemistry seemed like a good idea back then. Also the student was very motivated.

I have been spending a large amount of time teaching this student lots of physics and programming/scripting, which is needed to carry out the project. I assumed I would need to spend a lot of time at the beginning because of the background mismatch, so that was no problem. I thought things would improve with time. Unfortunately, they have not. The student is terrible at any kind of programming and has a lot of trouble learning new concepts, but what worries me the most is his attitude.

He basically is obsessed with getting results but is overlooking learning, in the form of reading books and papers and working hard on a problem for a period of time. If I tell him to "bang his head against the wall" for a couple of weeks trying to crack a problem before seeking advice from me (like we all have done during our PhDs), he gets frustrated after one or two days and starts sending me lots of desperate emails begging for me to intervene. This is a "gimme teh codez" kind of student, looking to avoid any problem which is of any real difficulty. I spend long meeting sessions explaining the theoretical and practical details of some approach, but he only seems interested when I write code that he can copy paste and use to get results (without even understanding the code, let alone the underlying physics).

Because of this I have to do lots of debugging and finding the same little (and large) mistakes that arise now and again because the student does not understand what he's doing. I have discussed many times with him that he needs to focus on understanding theory and code, instead of just getting results. But this is to no avail. I get the impression the student wants to do a technician's job rather than a scientist's job, but still get a PhD out of it.

As a result, I find myself working personally on any part of his project which has any hint of difficulty in it, spending way too many hours a week doing supervision, and getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress on the project. At this point, it would be fair to say that I could myself get everything he has to do (and more) done just in the time I spent meeting with him.

I have brought some of these concerns up, but the student won't accept they need to adjust how they work, instead claiming the tasks are too complicated (believe me, they're not), the professor does not help enough, the project is not well organized, etc. I don't know what to do - this student is getting easily 10 times more help than I did during my PhD (and I had a good experience).

To complicate things, I am just a postdoc so I have not a wide experience supervising different students that would tell me whether this case is common or isolated.

Am I expecting too much from my student? Is the problem I'm having a common one? How can I improve his attitude towards learning and working? How to deal with a bad research student?


texts: How to cite this quote "The whole is other than the sum of its parts" in an article

texts:
I am preparing the draft of a scientific article which greatly benefits from the well known quote:

  "The whole is other than the sum of its parts"

However, I am unable to find the correct citation for it.

According to Wikipedia:

  This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system)
  forms a percept or "gestalt," the whole has a reality of its own,
  independent of the parts. The original famous phrase of Gestalt
  psychologist Kurt Koffka, "The whole is other than the sum of the
  parts" is often incorrectly translated[4] as "The whole is greater
  than the sum of its parts," and thus used when explaining gestalt
  theory, and further incorrectly applied to systems theory.[5] Koffka
  did not like the translation. He firmly corrected students who
  replaced "other" with "greater". "This is not a principle of addition"
  he said.[6] The whole has an independent existence.

To the best of my understanding, since I am using it as a quote, I am required to cite it. I have tried finding the source of the quotation using Google, but have been unsuccessful thus far. In such a scenario, is it appropriate to cite the 6th citation from the Wikepedia page, i.e,

  Heider, F. 1977. Cited in Dewey, R.A. 2007. Psychology: An
  introduction: Chapter four - The Whole is Other than the Sum of the
  Parts. Retrieved 4/12/2014.

?


texts: I have an opportunity to do internship at the cost of a gap in my academic year. Should I accept it?

texts:
I have just completed my B.Sc in Physics and I have a unique opportunity to do internship in my field of interest for more than 6 months. If I choose it, I may not be ble to start with my Masters' courses this year and this academic gap will be reflected on my CV.
I would like to know how will it affect me and my career. My aim is to become a good researcher.


texts: How to establish a collaboration with other researcher?

texts: As a Ph.D. student, I am curious about how collaborations among researchers are established. To me, it seems like it is a very informal process: someone proposes an idea(while in a lunch discussion, for example) and the other person tries to give some advice. Eventually, the first person will return with some results and the process will continue till they get both involved in the topic. Is this standard in academia? Is there any other way of establishing collaboration?


texts: Are you expected to bring poster presentations to academic conferences?

texts:
BACKGROUND

I am attending an academic (engineering) conference where I am schedule to speak for my paper which was accepted, using MS PowerPoint/videos to assist my talk.  This is my first conference.  Currently I'm only bringing nice clothes and my lap top and the basics.  Due to lack of money, I'm only arriving on the day I'm scheduled to speak, then leaving immediately (cheapest roundtrip available).

QUESTION

Am I expected to bring a poster presentation to the conference?  Or is it typical to only give a talk (with a powerpoint, etc)?  I've checked the website and it says nothing about posters - but I don't want to be embarrassed and not have one.  I tried calling but couldn't reach an informed person.  Am I expected to be at the conference the entire time, or just for my talk?


texts: Do I have an "anti-research" personality?

texts:
I am a second year Ph.D. student in a North American university who is mostly working on applied mathematics with a supervisor/advisor/PI. I have been troubled by a pattern of my own behaviour that seems to go against the seemingly correct way to succeed in research and I wonder if I have some sort of an "anti-research" personality.

Here are the problems:

I study whatever is interesting and cool (within a reasonable range of my discipline) and this causes me to lack a solid focus. It seems to me that people who wind up obtaining a PhD learn to abandon so-called academic freedom early on and drill into a tiny research area. For example, while other people's research could be about different types of seahorses, my research would be about seahorses, pipe fish, shrimps...you get the picture.
Since I work in applied math, therefore I often demand more proof of applicability, where my supervisor is totally happy with toy models. He thinks it is completely sufficient for publishing a paper while I think it is fake applied research. This seems to generate some conflict between us and usually I am the one who gives in at the end and do some simulation on these toy models to make him happy - I never care about these problems. Most other people in my field only simulate toy models as well, not really "real-world" applicable in any sense, but hey, it is sure pumping out a lot of papers.
I never collaborate or ask for help from my peers no matter how stuck I become. I often see my colleagues collaborate with each other in the office. A part of me is jealous that they are taking advantage of each other's knowledge, another part of me almost thinks that this is like cheating. I feel that my thesis and my ideas wouldn't be mine if it was interfered or influenced this way. It wouldn't feel authentic
I move on to a completely new topic immediately after I finish my old one. Usually the way I see how other people work is that they try to do something tangentially similar to what they have done before, i.e., blue-tailed seahorses, then yellow-tailed seahorses. I jump to studying pipe fish immediately after I warp up my research on seahorses. I think my advisor must dislike me immensely for starting from scratch after every project.
If a problem seems to have an easy or existing approach that solves it, I find the problem less attractive to the point that I get physically sick from reading about other people's approach. However, a lot of times in research I find that other people would simply adapt other people's method for their own problem and then publish a paper that way. I try to solve it in my own way every time and most of the times it gets to a point where my supervisor intervenes and tell me to do whatever other people are doing. Again, I give in at the end.
I don't even try to follow my advisor's vision of my project. My advisor seems to have his own vision and ulterior goals that are not completely aligned with mine. I think a good PhD student should just listen to him like a father-figure and do whatever I am told. But I don't agree or sometimes don't even care about his specific vision. For example, why should I do a research on the dorsal fin of a seahorse (for your "dorsal fin grant") when I can study pipe fish instead? I understand that he is the one who is funding me, but I also care deeply about my own academic freedom.

Given these habits, am I doomed to fail my PhD? Do I have an anti-research personality?


texts: Referencing mistake in masters dissertation

texts: I handed in my masters dissertation a few weeks ago and I’ve now discovered a referencing mistake in my literature review. A medical publication I’d been citing has had a number of updates over the years and instead of citing the earlier year (2009) I’ve cited 2018. I could kick myself. I’m very anxious about this and not sure if I should just wait it out or speak to my advisor? I had mentioned to him that I couldn’t stop re reading it (before I realised about the year thing and he told me stop it and I wish I had listened. I realise that nothing can be done to rectify it and I’m willing to accept I’ll lose marks if found but I’m worried something more serious will happen. I’m so mortified and hoped to apply for a PhD next year ( I was on track for a first) I honestly can’t believe I’ve made such a careless mistake. Marks are due out at the end of Nov.


texts: A term similar to "ABD" for PhD student who's completed all coursework but neither comprehensive exams nor dissertation?

texts:
Is there a term similar to "ABD" (All But Dissertation) that denotes a PhD student who has completed all coursework, but who hasn't taken comprehensive exams and of course hasn't done the dissertation?

I left my PhD program unfinished, just before taking the comps. Hoping there's something similar to "ABD" that I can put on my CV/resume.

Thanks!


texts: Is it usual for finished PhD students to send out physical copies of their thesis to unknown persons?

texts:
Some time ago, a recently-graduated PhD has sent me a physical (book) copy of his dissertation. The graduate works in a somewhat-related field, but is personally entirely unknown to me (I have some loose connections to the advisor, though). I was reasonably confused by this - I personally have never heard of a custom of sending physical theses to anybody besides maybe parents. I was 100% convinced that I received the dissertation in error (also because the mailing was addressed to my name, but using a wrong department name).

Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work. He told me that he thought it is customary to send a finished PhD thesis to people that he thought might profit from its results.

So, is this a thing, at least in some fields? If so, why not just send the core papers or a link to a digital version of the thesis? Mailing out printed copies seems extremely expensive, and also (at least for me) very unlikely to result in anything else than me having another book gathering dust in my office shelf. I am honestly very unlikely to read an entire thesis, especially if I only have it in a dead-tree book version.


texts: At which level (D or E) should I apply for an advertised faculty position in Australia?

texts:
I am putting together an application for an academic position that has been advertised as either level D or E at an Australian university (equivalent to full professor or chair professor in the US). The selection criteria are slightly different, depending on the level at which I apply, and I need to specify which level I am applying for in my application. I would happily accept the role if offered at level D, but would also be a credible candidate at level E.

My publication record and h-index are comfortably on par with existing level E professors in the department, my grants and funding record is good, and I would also bring the industry experience and leadership skills that they are looking for. On the other hand, I am not a shoe-in for the role, even at level D: my research interests are only just within scope for the department and I have limited teaching experience. It's a ("Group of Eight") research-focused university, so teaching is likely to be secondary to research, but it is still a factor.

I am guessing that they would not consider me at level D if I apply at level E, or vice-versa. Australia has less of a culture of salary negotiation than the US. I have thought about addressing both sets of selection criteria and leaving it up to them, but worry that might simply be annoying.

What is your advice?


texts: Medical school admissions vs. STEM PhD admissions in the United States

texts: I read an article in the past - I forget the source now, but I believe it was credible - about how American STEM PhD programs (and master's programs) admit a lot of qualified international students, e.g. from China and India, in order to help fill the skills gaps in the U.S., but an interesting phenomenon was that American medical schools don't act in the same way, effectively not admitting international students and preserving the acceptance slots for American students.  If this is indeed true, why is that the case?  Doesn't the United States have a skills gap in medicine and a shortage of medical doctors?


texts: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal Requirements

texts:
I'm looking to apply this coming fall for the NSF GRF and was wondering about the two key components of the proposal that will affect how I apply. I couldn't seem to get a clear answer to these questions in the program solicitation or prior Academia SE questions

Is the proposal for research to be done or is it meant to be an idea? That is, am I expected to carry out the project I suggest or is the award to the applicant rather than the specific idea?

@JeffE's comment on NSF graduate fellowship: how specific should the statement of purpose be? suggests the award is to the applicant, not the project, but I would like to be sure if this is still the case and the degree to which I'm tied to the project I propose.

Should the project be something I come up with essentially independently or is it allowed to be an extension of a project I'm currently or nearly working on (I'm less than 12 months into grad school)?