texts: Is it okay to charge for a software created during a uni project?

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Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure whether this is on topic for this SE site, but it seemed the most fitting.

Prequisites:
In our masters programme in Computer Science, doing project work is mandatory and we get credits for it that count towards our degree. The projects are of different nature, most are more on the research and experiment side, but some are "commissioned" by companies, who can pitch a topic to the supervising professor and the professor can then choose to accept this as a semester project. We're in Germany, if that's relevant, and no contracts on the topic have been signed, neither with the company nor with the university.

The situation:
Over the course of the past semester, me and five other people have created a website for a company on the grounds of that software project. While the company had input (defining the goals, tools to use, giving feedback, etc.), all code has been written by us, without any "teaching" input from the company. The company now wants to launch the product we created, and is looking to get quite the revenue from it.

While we knew from the beginning that they would probably launch the website and make profit of it, we also assumed that we would be in some way compensated for our work that we - essentially - did for free, should the project actually launch into production.

However, in a discussion today, our sorta supervisor was a bit baffled today when we brought up that we would still need to talk about usage rights. He also seems to not be very knowledgable on the topic.

The question:
Is it generally considered okay for us to request compensation for our work, and withhold the transfer of usage rights should the company not agree to pay us? We're of course not looking to be paid significant amounts, seeing as it was a uni project after all, but we have created a product that can be launched to production as is, which will generate them at least some revenue.


texts: Should I retake a course for an easy A or focus on research?

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I’m an incoming PhD student deciding on courses to take. A normal course load is 3. There aren’t many being offered this semester, the only third option is a course I took as a MS student last semester at another school (we have no transfer credit policy). I could take the course for a slightly easier A, since my program has high grade standards and my peers seem highly capable. My study adviser suggested this as it would free up time next year to prepare for the qualifying exam. However, I want to continue an old research project from my MS in addition to starting a new research project. During COVID times, I figure a light courseload is best, and any extra time translates to research progress. Next semester I can take 4 courses to make up for it.
After deciding on just 2 courses this semester, my friends and study adviser still suggested I retake the 3rd course. The lectures are just 2.5 hrs a week, but even if they are easy homework/projects might add up and research is my top priority. As for the course material, I loved the course last semester, but with less novel material it might be less interesting.
Should I follow my friends and adviser’s guidance, or should I focus on research now until I finish my old project and have a lighter first PhD/COVID semester?


texts: Talking to professors without attending that University

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I tried looking up the answer for this one online already, but I couldn't find something for my specific scenario:

I am interested in reaching out to a few professors in the field that I am interested in, Computer Science, in regards to some specific problems I might be facing in the immediate future.  However, I'm slightly unsure of how to do this.  That is, I don't attend the University they teach at and I do not have a college degree.  Does this make a difference of some sort or can I contact them without having to explain that I don't attend their University?  Is this something that I should even bother bringing up prior to speaking to them, or is it a complete non-issue?

I feel like if highly technical, learned people like professors are so easily accessible - completely free of charge - then I find the entire concept of attending college kind of hard to grasp.  Maybe I'm missing a basic underlying concept here.  Perhaps they would be under some kind of NDA in how much information they would be able to provide if it was on cutting edge research, or something else I might not be accounting for?  The entire concept of just e-mailing some of the top scientists in a given field strikes me as kind of odd, especially if I don't have to pay them for their time.


texts: How do I properly cite my own course project in my master's thesis?

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I am writing up my MSc thesis right now, and I am including some material that I developed as part of one of my course projects (done during the MSc as well).

How do I cite that? It technically wasn't published anywhere, just submitted to the professor for grading and I did a powerpoint presentation about it.


texts: In places outside the US and Europe, how do I know if the standard is that one applies to a PhD program with a specific PhD advisor already in mind?

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Suppose I want to apply to PhD programs at a university outside of the US and Europe.

How do I know if most universities there follow what the US is doing or what Europe is doing?

Elaboration: How do I know if most schools in the country/state want students to first apply to schools before choosing an doctoral advisor (like in the US) or to first contact the faculty members of a particular schools looking for a doctoral advisor before applying to said schools (like in Europe)?

Example: The UK mostly follows Europe. I heard Hong Kong and Japan follow the US.


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When I sit and start writing my master thesis, I write the first couple lines, then I don't know what to write and get stuck.
I feel like I'm not creative enough for writing.
The questions are. How to get around this blockage? How to organize the ideas? How to stay focused? Is this think typical?


texts: Is it appropriate to give a student personal advice?

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More often I am approached by some of my students asking for my take in matters that are personal to them. Truly random matters from politics to relationships.

What ought I do? If I offer the advice they come back for even more, if I fail they plead for an opinion at least.

Which approach should I take when asked for advice?


texts: Can I cite an accepted, pre-publication paper without DOI and the citations gets counted correctly?

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My situation: I got two papers underway and the second one was accepted only days after the first one. The second one cites the first one and, naturally, I want the citation to be attributed correctly. Currently, both publications are "accepted" and probably on the editor's desk or something.

How should I provide the bibliography information for an accepted paper? Can my citation still be accurately attributed to my first paper if I do not have a DOI for it (e.g. in Scopus)? Is there anything I can tell the editors of either journal to guarantee everything is going smoothly?

The field is solid matter physics/materials science.


texts: What is the modus operandi to get a postdoctoral position at a foreign university?

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In the field of Materials and Chemical Engineering, what exactly is to be done in order to secure a postdoc position (or even face an interview) at an overseas university especially when you have got no connections of your own or your PhD advisor?
So far, I have tried (1) cold emailing the professors to which I barely got any response, (2) applied for postdoc openings announced at different platforms like LinkedIn, jobs.ac.uk, etc. but unsuccessful in both of them.
To further add to my pain, my PhD adviser has barely got any connections, she has an expertise in Theory and Modelling while I have done research on interdisciplinary experimental and theoretical studies on materials. Although, I have good publication record to my name with seven papers in internationally peer reviewed journals and other skills as well. A few professors have replied to my email that I have a good CV and strong credentials but they don't have funding for me.
I want to know what is the right way to connect with the professors that I want to work with and how to approach them in a right way through an email. (Since I don't have funds, I can't afford to connect with them through a conference or in person!)
Please help!!
CV attached


texts: Can you be co-advised by 2 other faculty instead of 1 for PhD

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My primary research interest is in computer vision and deep learning so I will be applying to the CS department. But I also want to be co-advised by a prof who is in the radiology department and work with another prof who is part of the physics department (High energy physics).
Is that a allowed. And if yes, does that seem feasible, or "look good" on the statement of purpose during the application?


texts: How are GPAs from different universities evaluated for admissions to MS programs in the USA?

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I am about to apply for a Master program in U.S. as I am about to graduate in Bachelor of Engineering. Though I heard that all my grades during all my academic life is taken into consideration (GPA). Here in Brazil is very common to have a huge gap between universities both in teaching level and avaliation process. So, holding a degree from a weak college may be much easier and thus helping you to get a higher GPA while a well-known college will be much more difficult and probably your grades will be lower. Even though you have a degree from the very best college and you do have a good knowledge of most subjects, the GPA from the person who came from the weak college may be higher.

This also extends to the outside world (comparison between GPA's from different countries). So, how is it really done in practice? Do I still hold a reasonable chance of getting into a nice college with not a so high GPA?


texts: Does becoming good at scientific research force one to become one dimensional?

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I'm an individual interested in multiple academic disciplines such as neuroscience, biological engineering, computer science, history, anthropology, psychology, political theory ... to name just a few. Currently, I have a normal (40 hours/week) engineering job that leaves me enough free time to follow these topics to a moderately satisfying degree.

However, primarily due to intellectual curiosity, I'm considering doing a PhD (in Europe) and would ideally want to move to research later (discipline: something along the lines of genetic engineering, computational biology or cognitive neuroscience - not sure yet, but my background is in computer science). Given the highly specialized nature of modern scientific research that seems to demand intense working hours, one concern that I have is the fear of becoming highly one dimensional: completely failing to follow progress in other fields and in society as a whole, with publish or perish environment creating an inescapable feedback loop, where one cannot afford to read articles and books on topics not related to work, or follow public debates; yet alone write a blog about e.g. social issues.

I realize there are academics out there who seem to be prolific across multiple disciplines (e.g. Chomsky, Pinker ...), but the question still stands: in a modern research environment, can one satisfy multiple intellectual interests that transcend immediate work requirements, or has the game become too competitive and focused for that? What are the main variables?


texts: How should I go about publishing a manuscript in which my mentor does not actively support my best interests?

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I am at a loss of what to do. I had started working on this project, a systematic review and meta-analysis back in undergrad. I was a senior. Long story short, for a while my manuscript was going well. Come August 2016, my mentor stopped communicating with me in the final stages. Weeks of no responses predominated, and as a result I emailed the Chair of the department on 3 separate occasions (over a total of 7 months). I was promised 3 different deadlines, all of which went unfulfilled. I finally emailed the dean in April when we got close to my final deadline of May 1, 2017. I got my edits, but I was 3 days away from leaving the area because I was heading off to graduate school.

I ended up telling my mentor I didn't want to publish or take this situation into a new institution, but if I found someone who could advise and help me with the situation I would reach out to her. I expressed I had felt we had failed to meet the deadline and the outlook was bleak. She responded positively saying we hadn't missed the deadline, but if I were open to forfeiting my primary authorship stance then she'd be glad to completely finish the manuscript. I took this as a direct offense to the work I had done because I had decided on the topic, done the data extraction, results, conclusions, and limitations of the paper.

I have found someone but am worried my old mentor will not follow through or will hinder the process again. My new adviser suggested I send her an ultimatum and deadline for her final comments for the manuscript and submit to a journal. However, as I am not a researcher, am going to grad school to be a clinician (current graduation 2019), and only have a bachelor's degree, I am scared if I do this then I may lose her support for the manuscript.

How should I proceed?


texts: PhD - unhelpful supervisor, how normal is it?

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My question maybe trivial but I really want the opinion of others if the problem is with me or with my supervisor/ the lab.
Half a year ago I started PhD in a small university town in Europe. I am a foreigner that does not know the local language but during the recruitment process they assured me that it shouldn't be a problem (yeah right no lab workers know English and even in the office where I am sitting everybody just ignores me and speak in the local language if they are not addressing me personally). Another problem is that I came from a similar yet different scientific background and I have no experience working with the topic that I got.
I understand that I should work independent on my topic and not rely on others yet this is kinda ridiculous in my opinion that everybody just assumes that I should develop my protocols, starts working and ordering the lab equipment without any supervisors straight away. Of course I try to adapt and I am starting to do research yet as my only help are articles and google. As my daily supervisor just insists that I should be independent from the start. What is even more funny I am working for almost half a year but I haven't even met my "official, main supervisor" and I don't even know what is my project timescheldue. I am constantly just left out of the information loop and get angry or confused stares if I try to ask these questions.
Is it normal? I am not expecting guiding by the hand on every step of the PhD but at least at the start when they know that I have 0 expertise in the topic, would be helpful. Basically, I am almost on the verge of nervous breakdown and feeling like a moron that is wasting time.


texts: Supervisor delays publication over style questions for years – can I remove him from the authors list?

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I did my PhD four years back. I was funded from my home country and I have done all the work. I started writing papers before submitting my thesis.

I am sending my supervisor drafts every year until now. Altogether I have now done 32 drafts. Since last year alone, I have rewritten my paper 12 times but he still is not happy to submit it and not willing to make any changes by himself. He is even not letting me to show it to the reviewers.

My supervisor is a lecturer and I was his first PhD student. I acquired the opinion of two professors (one of them is my 2nd supervisor and is a co-author) recently about the quaility of paper and they recommended to send it to a good journal (impact factor of 10 and above). After many years of struggle my supervisor wished to publish it in a journal with an impact factor less than 1. Above all he is not willing to pay publication costs and he is not allowing me to try for good journal. I am the one who did all the work, who paid for work, who wrote paper and who is paying for publication costs and i am not allowed to try any good journal.

One thing about his recomened changes: He did not ask repeating any experiments, redoing any analysis or revisiting any conclusions. It’s only text style that is being changed over last four years.
I contacted the university services and they told me that I don’t qualify for university help as they only cover two years post PhD duration.

What can I do now? Can I publish my work without him as co author. Can I just acknowlege him for hosting me and remove his name from the author list?


texts: How are years of experience counted for determining level on salary scale for a Netherlands postdoc?

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I am going to start a postdoc at a Dutch university. This is my second postdoc, and my contract says I am on salary scale 10, level 8. I am assuming that they counted 5 years of PhD and 3 years of my first postdoc to arrive at the level 8.

However, I took more than 5 years (actually closer a decade) to finish my PhD. Also, I had a couple of short-term bridging postdocs over a year, before starting my first postdoc. Do these years not figure in the determination of level on the salary scale?

If there is anyone familiar with Dutch universities' salary scale, I would appreciate any feedback. I wanted to ask here before contacting the university, so as to not sound demanding to them.


texts: What are paths that physics majors/PhDs can follow?

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I’m currently a high-school student that has been aspiring to be a physicist for quite some time. However, after much research I have found the following to be stakes in that path:

There are about twice as many physics PhDs as tenure-possible jobs in academia for them, and those who make it don’t usually get tenure.
Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors. This makes it very difficult to find a job where they are competitive applicants.
Job prospects for future physicists is at 10 %, slightly below average, meaning that this situation won't get better in the next decade.

I’ve always been interested in the sciences, but this is rather depressing. With a physics major, and no PhD (which would otherwise put you in the above position), the best possibility seems to be a high-school teacher. That’s respectable, but I would like to know what other options there are for physics majors (BSc, or MSc). Be as creative as you’d like – include options like moving to another country with better job prospects for physicists (I checked and couldn’t find the job prospects of other countries).


texts: Sharing Course Material With Other Lecturers

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I just received an email from a lecturer I do not know and have never had contact with, asking for my course materials.
On the one hand, sharing my course materials has almost no cost for me, and I have shared them before either "in house" (with lecturers in my department) or with close colleagues (coauthors/community friends etc.). This is the first time I'm encountering a request from a truly random stranger.
I am inclined to refuse this request.
I put in a lot of effort into my course material, and take pride in my work. Handing it over to some other person (who may or may not credit me) feels like I'm cheapening my efforts.
I am I just being prudish? Is this common practice that I just never happened to encounter? Is there a potential ethical issue with sharing materials that I am missing here?


texts: I would like to know about journals on water resources/contamination. Is there any? I cannot afford to pay for publication, although I have some work which I believe can be published. Also, what if I'm not associated with any university, can I still publish?


texts: Should a program I have not finished yet be mentioned in the SOP?

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I have followed a program three months ago, which I haven't get a satisfying outcome. It is in the field I am interested in, but the technology and skills required in it is something related not so relative to my major. Besides, since I am spending time preparing for an entrance exam for a graduate school, I cease doing research in the program.

As I haven't get good outcome and I don't want to do research in the chemical way in the future. What should I say in the SOP? should I mention the experience, as it is the only one experience in academic research during my undergraduate years?


texts: How do I talk about my abusive former advisor if people ask?

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I was just at a conference where I met another grad student who - upon learning about my specialization and university affiliation - excitedly asked me if I knew Dr. -- and if he was my advisor (she's a fan). Deer in the headlights moment for me, as I did know Dr. --; he had been my advisor - one that until recently I admired and was very fond of. Only he's not my advisor anymore, because our once enviable mentor/mentee relationship is now in ruins. (In sum: he crossed a professional line with me, I called him out on it, he started punishing me for it in various ways, and it culminated in him stepping down from my committee and me reporting him to HR (human resources) when my dept chair dismissed my complaints about his abusive behavior. After effects: we're not speaking to each other, avoid each other as much as possible, I get panic attacks/have some sort of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) whenever I have run-ins with him, and I've slowly become isolated from the rest of my department because he practically runs it and no student or faculty member wants/dares to step on his toes).

The thing is, I came to this university primarily to work with him...he and everyone in the dept knows this..and pretty much anyone in our field of research would assume that he and I are connected somehow, given that we're at the same university, and how much our research interests align. So, as I've discovered from this conference incident, I need to come up with a response for if/when people ask me if I know him/work with him/why am I not working with him. Personally, I'd love to just answer truthfully and throw him under the bus since that's what he's done to me several times over these last few months, but I know doing so will hurt me more than it'll hurt him. Any suggestions on how to handle those types of questions?

EDIT:
First, thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate everyone's feedback and different opinions. You've definitely given me a lot to think about. From reading the responses, I think I can clarify a few items if you think it'll alter your suggestions:

"crossed a professional line" - admittedly, I intentionally used that vague term because it's very complicated, and also because he crossed that line in a few ways. One is of a sexual harassment nature, but I was reluctant to use that term because it happened in a very subtle and covert manner - so much that the Title IX (gender equality) office at my university said that technically his behavior (both initial line crossing and his reaction to me standing up to him) - however unprofessional it was - did not rise to the level of sexual harassment. But as I said, he was unprofessional towards me in other non-sexual ways as well. Ultimately, for the scope of my question, I don't think it matters much, because regardless of what he did to me initially, regardless of whether or not I had any right to be offended, and regardless of which specific incident he took issue with when I confronted him, nothing justifies how he subsequently treated me/how he handled his anger, which was essentially bullying me and then later gaslighting me and becoming verbally abusive/hostile when I tried to address the bullying.
HR investigation: the investigation is ongoing; I filed my official complaint about a month ago, so hopefully I'll hear back soon re: next steps/resolution.
I'm an American student in the U.S.
The extent to which others know: a few of the the graduate students/TAs/my friends do know about everything that's happened. Some of the faculty do as well (including my other two committee members, one of whom is my new advisor; the other was also willing to take over as advisor) Outside my department: HR, Title IX office, the graduate ombudsperson, assistant dean of the college of arts & sciences, university police (Dr. - didn't do anything criminal...it was just a formality that HR had to observe when I filed my complaint) so his behavior has definitely been publicized a bit, but in a very hushed/behind closed doors sort of way.


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I am a PhD student of physical chemistry, and my work involves developing packages for numerical simulation. Recently I tried to reproduce some work done with a rather well known package made by a (friendly) competing group, and failed. After some time, I found out that the discrepancy was due to an error on their part.

I asked my supervisor, and she suggested that I should write the authors. The corresponding author said the result was due to Author 2, a rather well known and respected senior of my field, and that he would get in touch. It has now been over a month, and I have heard nothing. I am still convinced that their result is wrong. I am hesitant to write back, as I don't want to appear nagging.

Here comes the tricky part. I have been invited to give a talk at a conference in June. The conference is a rather high profile thing in the US, and lots a possible future employers will be there to hear the talk. And, as I have seen from the participant list, also Author 2.
It will be strange if I don't mention that his software package is capable of doing the same calculation as I do, as part of my invitation involves giving a small review of the sub-field.
But if I do, I will have to say that they do it wrong.
I don't want my talk to become argumentative about a mis-calculation, as I want to make a good impression on a lot of people.

How do I gracefully talk about our work, without this turning into something ugly?


texts: What does acting as a "co-author" entail, and how common is it for first year undergraduate students to be added as co-authors to a paper being prepared by a professor?


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Can the word "subsubsection" be used in a thesis?

For example:

The next subsubsection discusses so and so.

It is not listed in English dictionaries.

What do you think?

Thank you


texts: Are there any proposals to make sharing code and data with publications a requirement?

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Depending on the project, many researchers have to rewrite code and reproduce datasets from previous works in order to perform experimental evaluations. Although some dataset are understood to contain private data, and thus cannot be shared, it would be very nice to have access to the source code and results produced along with the papers.

Most of the big data works present results from experiments run with very large databases, and the code developed, which is usually non-trivial to rewrite, is rarely available to the public. I even heard once that some conferences would start to request the source code of the project to be submitted along with the paper.

My question is: is there any global regulation that states what a conference must request while accepting a paper? And, if so, are there any proposals at all to make source code sharing a must?


texts: A stunted PhD: PhD in the time of a pandemic

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I'm a third year Math PhD student in the US. My concern is that my PhD is going to be stunted in the following sense:

I am my advisor's only graduate student. This is not uncommon for grad students in math. I do however compare this to my friends and colleagues in astronomy who have research groups. They meet every week and discuss their work with each other. On the other hand, I have nobody apart from my advisor to discuss my work with. I can't discuss my frustrations in research or my elation in learning something new in an informal setting. My research area (geometric function theory) is very niche in the sense that we're the only ones working on complex analysis in our department.

So far I have not attended any conferences. I had an opportunity to attend one last summer, but it got cancelled due to the pandemic. It seems unlikely that an in person conference will happen for at least another semester or so. I have not had the opportunity to meet peers in my field from other universities and learn what they do. I have not made any connections.

To summarize, I'm worried that my training in research is not going to be "wholesome". I saw my seniors present at conferences and make collaborations and friends from all over. I'm worried that not attending conferences will be held against me in the post-doc market and that I am currently unable to learn the current advances in my field because of my limited (non-existent) exposure to the math community.
My specific questions are:

What are some practical measures I can implement to make connections? How do I get to know some people in my field? (I do attend talks over zoom but these aren't exactly sociable events due to their online nature.)

How important is attending conferences with regard to post-doc applications and how can I compensate for not attending any, in the remaining two years of my program?

Thanks for your time.


texts: How to cite a book when both the first and the latest editions' years matter?

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I want to cite a proof appearing in the book from 1982. The thing is, the book has a newer edition from 2002; but at the same time, it's important for me to indicate the result is from 1982. On the other hand, I don't want to draw as much attention to this fact as I would do if I devoted full sentences of text making this observation (also, this would interrupt my narrative flow).

How should I cite this result so as to indicate both what the reader should look for right now, and when the result was published?

The citation formatting is not critical to this question, i.e. just assume any citation format you like to answer it. Also, I use LaTeX if it matters (it might not).


texts: "Academic time": why is 110 minutes called two hours?

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I found an exam online from the MIT that states:

  You have two hours (academic time, 110 minutes) to complete the exam.

What is this academic time unit and where does it come from?


texts: How can I finish my algorithms research project in 3 weeks?

texts: So I'm doing a research project on a problem in graph theory and my conference deadline is just 3 weeks away. I need to develop a novel approximation algorithm for this problem and test it on synthetic data. I've already read a bunch of papers and have done a bunch of experiments to discover certain properties of graphs, but I haven't started writing the algorithm nor the paper. The good news is  Is it possible for me to do this in 3 weeks (assuming I work a total of ~200 hours)? A deadline extension is completely out of the question. The good news is that I have an expert professor mentoring me and he'll help make the paper more mathematically rigorous. Does anyone have some advice as for how I can finish this in 3 weeks? Thanks!


texts: Is there a difference between a Research Report and a Report?

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In my reading about undergraduate student assignments at my university, I have run across the word report quite a bit but the writer is not clearly talking about a research report (but the author might be, without me understanding that).

I'm used to thinking of student assignments as being either a research report (where the student must collect primary and secondary data) or an essay (where the student writes based on understanding without any actual data (though in an essay the student would often cite theories and the opinions of others).

Is there another meaning of the word report in the context of a university student assignment? Can students write reports only based on secondary data (is this a task commonly assigned)? Can someone write a report without data?

I'm wondering if a journalist's investigative report would count as a report using only secondary data (or perhaps not using data at all).

Any clarification would be of great help.


texts: Pure mathemathics: authors appearing in alphabetic order

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So the title of the question is quite broad, I've seen a few of questions in the site regarding this particular topic (quite a few actually, so let me know if this is somehow a duplicate).
My problem is the following, I am working on my PhD thesis, and so far me and my supervisor have collaborated in a few articles (that somehow constitute the body of my thesis). Right now I am working on a particular article (on which I've made all the work). The fact is that my supervisor, and apparently all the members of my faculty tend to put authors in alphabetic order. The fact is that my last-name starts with a "T" so by using their logic I will almost surely  end-up being the second\third author.
I don't feel this is actually fair, since after some search online I've seen that in general the order of the authors reflects somehow how much work was done by each one. So it seems strange for me to be like "coauthoring" my own PhD thesis.
What should I do? I don't want to appear pretentious, or rude in front of my supervisor, but I don't think it's fair for me either.
Do you have some advice on what to do?
In case it's relevant my field of research is pure math.


texts: Is there a conventional word that describes a professor for whom you were a TA

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I am providing a block of contact information to someone and the last line of this block it is requested that I provide the relationship between this person and myself.  Basically I am trying to find a concise way of saying:  "Professor for who I was the (sole) course TA"

Maybe this question is better suited to the English language forum, but because of it's academic, I figured someone experienced here might have an answer.  Here are some options I considered but found misleading and unusable:

Supervising professor --> in academia this implies your thesis
Professor --> Considered because it's a broad term, but again, in academia my first thoughts run back to the thesis supervision
Supervising professor (TA) --> not sure it's obvious what the (TA) is referring to.

I don't think this will make much difference, but it's actually very important that answer to the above be as short as possible, as it is part of a short list of positions/interactions held with this professor.


texts: Quotations and references in introductions to novels

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I am writing an introduction of about three to five thousand words for a translation of a novel. In this introduction, my goal is to explain some of the context of the novel and briefly introduce the key themes within. There have been a couple of doctoral theses about the text and some other relevant work that provides a lot of useful information, so my temptation would be to use these in the introduction and include a list of 3-5 references with the introduction. Then again, it's an introduction, not an academic paper, and I also worry whether including quotations and references might be just a bit clunky for a short introduction. I could just ask the publisher directly what they would prefer, but I wanted to get a general, community sense of best practices first.

Should I include quotations and references in an introduction?


texts: How common are self-funded PhDs in the STEM fields in U.S. universities?

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I met a PhD student that is completely self-funded at our engineering college .  Our university is notorious for being one of the most expensive schools to attend; I can't imagine someone funding his own graduate studies for five/six years, right after paying for an undergrad education.

He did land an important internship at a large hedge fund, though, so I'm guessing in the long run, if he lands in finance, it could be all worth it.

My question is: are self-funded PhDs in the STEM fields at U.S. universities pretty common?


texts: When citing a journal paper, should I use the online publication year or the print publication year?

texts: I want to cite a paper which was published online (Open Access) in 2012 and later published in a printed journal issue in 2013. Which publication year should be used in the citation?


texts:
I published a paper on a statistical topic after my bachelors.

Currently I am doing my masters thesis and I would like to cite/use my own paper in it.

However, I did not inform my supervisor before that I already had a publication in a similar field of my thesis when I started, because I did not expect it to be directly relevant then. However, now I would like to use this paper.

Is it OK to cite my own paper in my thesis? Will the supervisor be OK with it, despite I did not inform him about my previous work when starting the thesis with him?

Thanks.


texts: Letters of Recommendation - Duration Etiquette

texts:
I finished my undergraduate degree in mathematics about two years ago, and started a master's program last year. Now that I am about half way through the MS program, I am convinced that I want to get into a doctoral program. I was admitted to the master's program based upon very strong recommendations from respected scientists at the university where my undergraduate degree was obtained.

The MS program I am attending is at a small, noncompetitive institution. I am thinking that recommendation letters from this school would not be as meaningful. Also, based upon the limited scope of the research being conducted here, and my limited capacity to participate, I fear that letters from these professors might not be as strongly worded.

It is my intention to apply to several programs starting in December of this year. My question is this: Is it unreasonable to ask for my old references to "re-send" their letters of recommendation, almost 3 years after my association with them has concluded? Would it seem peculiar to the admissions board if all of my recommendation letters came from a school other than the one where I (will) have completed my MS?


texts: Should I include a grad student who only duplicated my calculations as an author on an article?

texts:
I recently received a request from another researcher in my area, who is guest editing a volume of a mid-level physics journal.  He wanted me to submit an article for the special issue dealing with our research area.  I agreed to submit something by the end of the summer.  I told him that I would produce an article about my current research, providing a careful conceptual discussion of some previously published work, as well as some recent (but not particularly exciting) advancements that have not previously been published.  The number of researchers in this area is not especially large, and acceptance of my article is a virtual certainty.

At about the same time as I got the invitation, I had a graduate student come to me, wanting to do research.  He started working with me on the same topic that I will cover in my (mostly review) article.  This student is, as another professor put it, "not as bright as he thinks he is."  He is qualified to get a Ph.D., but it is very unlikely that he will have a career in academia.  He has been doing calculations for me, but so far, he is only duplicating results that I have already completed myself.  (I hope that, by the fall, he will be able to start producing new results.)

My question is:  Does it make sense to include him as an author on the paper I am going to submit at the end of September?  He should have completed some calculations by then that have not previously been published.  However, all those calculations will be duplications of things that I have already done myself.  I could write the paper without his input at all, which suggests against making him an author.  On the other hand, he is exerting significant effort checking my own calculations, and if I had not done all the calculations before, he would be making a minor but meaningful contribution to the paper.  The student knows that he is, thus far, only duplicating my previous work, so I don't think he has any expectation of being included as an author on any publications including it.  However, I admit that I feel uneasy setting a student to re-do my own unpublished work, with the intention of publishing it without adding him as a co-author.

This specific publication is unlikely to make a real difference for either of us, professionally.  I have more than enough publications in top journals to be promoted to the next level, and, as I said, this student is extremely unlikely to have a long-term career in academia.  So, in the absence of any compelling outside pressure one way of the other, I am wondering whether I should include my student as a author on this upcoming publication.


texts:
I was a junior researcher and I submitted a paper to journal A. After not having any response from journal A, I submitted my paper to journal B. After some months, journal A mailed me to say that my paper was accepted.

I immediately replied to journal A saying that I wanted to withdraw my paper. They reverted within minutes that they have already published and paid x money for publishing. I insisted that I wanted to withdraw and they mailed me to pay y amount of money for withdrawal, which I paid. Then they mailed me saying that my withdrawal is complete. I have not signed any copyright form with journal A.

After a few days journal B published my paper. Now after one year, I see my name in a retraction list citing that journal A has retracted my paper due to “author’s personal concerns.”

How this can affect my career? I withdrew my paper, so how can journal A publish it without a copyright form? On the same day that they mailed me to say that my paper had been accepted, I reverted and wanted to withdraw. Can they publish it and then retarct it? What could be the consequences on me?


texts: Dealing with potentially bad response from supervisor upon leaving with MSc for different PhD program

texts:
To keep it brief, I am thinking heavily about leaving my current PhD program with a MSc after 4 years to embark on a PhD in a field I am more interested in, as I have grown to dislike my current field. There are a series of problems within my group, from a completely unaware and ambivalent supervisor, to internal issues, to a general lack of quality of life due to many factors. All of that bundled with my desire to pursue my passions has left me wanting to move on to a different school.

I am, however, worried about my supervisors reaction if I ask him to do so. I know from past experience he has been pretty hostile to students who have wanted to do this, and furthermore, if he gives me a reference letter, I don't know how good it will be. I know I am a good student with good technical and research skills, but he is so absent from the group here (as he directs another group overseas, where he spends 95% of his time) that I feel that he doesn't even know what I have been doing/am proficient in.

I am wondering what your advice is in dealing with this sort of situation; do I suffer through, and leave with a PhD in a field and topic I resent? Or do I go on to do what I love, at the risk of being extradited by my supervisor, potentially leaving me unable to do so? It really is a classical dilemma, and I am genuinely worried either way.

Thank you.


texts: In general, who can apply for research grants (in Europe)?

texts: Who can apply for research grants in Europe? Are there some degree requirements? Can students (undergraduate/graduate) apply for research grants? I know that the answer surely depends on the institution giving the grant, but I assume there are some general requirements, formal or informal. If you know (or even better, are) a student who has received a research grant, please tell how difficult it was. To clarify, I'm not asking about funding to do some degree, but funding to establish new research projects.


texts: Advice on whether to pursue a PhD or not

texts:
I know this question has been beaten to death over here, but I'm still not sure what to do in my case. I've been given an offer to do a PhD in electrical engineering in a top 10 university and I'm very confused on whether to accept the offer or not.

Initially I only applied for the MS program and a PhD was not something I wanted. After a few professors interviewed me, they asked me to consider changing my application from MS to MS/PhD and mentioned how much I would be paying if I did MS only since there is absolutely no funding for MS students. I was worried about the cost of going to grad school without funding, so I caved in and changed my application to MS/PhD.

For starters, I don't know if I am willing to put the time necessary for completing the PhD: I somewhat like the things I would do research on if I accepted the offer (information theory and coding theory), but I wouldn't call myself passionate about the subject or any subject in electrical engineering for that matter. Also, my priority (and possibly the only thing important to me right now) is financial security and being as financially "well-off" as possible, so would doing a PhD really make a difference in that regard if it's from a top university? This is the only case where I would be willing to put in the effort for PhD.

Please note that I am not asking people to decide for me, I am asking for different perspectives or points of view to make the decision easier for me.


texts: What do I do if a university does not inform me of my masters application status?

texts:
I have applied to a Canadian university to study a Masters degree starting Fall 2013, and they didn't accept or reject me, the online application clearly states that I will get notified by an email of their decision and I am pretty sure I didn't receive any emails from them (yes, I check my spam folder everyday).

Do I have any recourse for recouping my application fee? Whom do I contact for this information?


texts: Where does the US Department of Education report university graduation rates?

texts:
Where can I find the report that states the fact below, quoted in a CNN article?

  Only 40% of middle-class college entrants who were high school seniors in 2004 had secured bachelor's degrees by 2012, according to the Department of Education.


texts: Sign copyright agreement before paper acceptance?

texts:
I am submitting a research paper to a journal and they asked me to sign the copyright agreement in favour of the editor before the paper is accepted.  Is this right?
And what happens in this case is if the paper rejected?


texts: When I send a recommendation request, does each REU request a different "style" of rec letter?

texts:
I want to apply to quite a few REUs and I'm asking a professor to write me recommendations. I was wondering whether for most REUs, he could write one recommendation and then use it for everything, or whether he would have to rewrite or edit the letter for each program. This is so that I don't feel bad "spamming" him with requests from various programs.

Also is it a faux pas to put down the professor's email into the request box in the app without sending them an email? (Even though I discussed this briefly some time ago with professor)


texts: How do journals gain and lose reputation?

texts:
This is something I've been curious about for a while, and there's little public or explicit information about it. It's obvious that some journals are considered very prestigious and other journals something less than that. It seems most seasoned professors have quite specific opinions on the matter. But how did things get this way? It seems that almost all journals superficially look and operate about the same. I work in mathematics, but the question of course applies to all fields.

In some cases it's understandable. For example, the "Journal of the American Mathematical Society" would be expected to be a top journal since it's the flagship journal of a major mathematical institution. On the other hand, there are journals that are considered "top journals" without being attached to an important institution, having a long, distinguished history, or any other obvious reason. How did such journals acquire their reputation? I'm hesitant to start naming specific journals in this question, though it would be interesting to see some representative examples in the answers.

Reputation seems very much set in stone in the short term. And yet, over time, some journals rise in reputation while other ones decline. What causes this? One possibility is that a journal hurts its reputation by behaving in an unethical or irresponsible way, but this would not be the norm.

To phrase this another way, I imagine just about every journal wants to improve its reputation. So what are the tools in the toolbox that a journal, or a community of academics who are invested in its success, can use to achieve this?

I'm sure part of the answer is "the editors". But what do they do? Is the work of a journal/editor deeper than "wait for papers to get submitted and then accept the best ones"? I'm sure having a prestiguous editorial board helps, but in my experience even the "pretty good" journals still have top mathematicians as editors.


texts: Language of reference entries for sources in a foreign language

texts: Must the entries in a list of sources match the language of their respective sources? For example, for a non-English text, may one include words and phrases such as "In", "volume", "edited by So-and-so and So-and-so", "translated by", pages xx-yy"?


texts: What do I do if no one admits me to a PhD position?

texts:
I am from a relatively unknown university in an European country. I am one of the best performing students in my department and have won academic prizes and published several papers, which pretty much no one else does here before the PhD level.

I will be applying to good universities in other countries. However, I am worried that no one will admit me. If such thing would happen, how should I proceed to get a PhD at a widely recognized university?

I have thought to enroll on some summer courses organized by the universities I am applying to, to get in contact with people from there. What else could I try to do? Participating to conferences might be option as well, but it is difficult to get to talk to the people I would like to work with.

To be more precise, the awards are really large (4x my monthly salary), and the publications in mid-tier venues (impact factors in 2-3 range).


texts: Should I get a Second Bachelors and Masters to Make My PhD as Broad/Interdisciplinary as Possible?

texts:
I've currently decided to get a second bachelor's in Statistics over 1.5 years after finishing my first bachelor's in math. Both of these degrees are debt free and follow a passion of mine. The next goal is to work in industry for about three years at my parent's home while taking one class a semester in Computer Science online to save for a master's in Statistics with Thesis where I hope to take some really advanced courses over two years.

The big idea is that I could grab courses like Categorical Data Analysis, Multivariate Statistics, Nonparametric stats (and maybe substitute mathematical stats 1 and 2 with graduate Measure Theory) etc during my second B.S. and then focus on the really advanced statistics courses and math courses during my masters like advanced graduate topology, experimental design and bayesian analysis

Then I would start a PhD in say Computer Science focused on Machine Learning to develop cutting edge statistical tools based on theoretical principles in Statistics, computational topology, measure theory etc.

Would this be too much education? I want to do more than just take classes on various statistical methods before a PhD.

Edit: I should add that the answer I received from r/datascience was to go straight into a Masters program. But since I can't afford that yet, I guess the answer in my circumstances is that I can do a second B.S. in Stats or Comp Sci if I'm making good money near my parent's home?


texts:
I'm a recent electrical engineering and computer science graduate and landed a full-time job developing software. I plan to attend grad school working toward a Masters in computer science once I've settled in to my job, but there are a lot of things that I've been considering that I'm not terribly sure I would know how to approach regarding entering a graduate program with a full-time job.

Research outside of school

I was a pretty good student in undergrad, graduating magna from a decent school. I had jobs on campus, including research. My research, however, was unpublished. I want to do research before I apply not only to get a competitive edge, but also to find out what I like and what I don't like. Does anyone have suggestions for finding research opportunities while not a student?

Coursework

I'd say a reasonable guess for the number of courses a "typical" graduate student takes in a semester is around 3, saving time for any independent research and assistantships. For someone with a full-time job, how many classes are recommended? I was assuming 1 or 2 per semester, but I'm totally unsure.

Research in school

Another huge component of graduate studies is doing research. Hopefully by the time I'm accepted to a program I'll be a semi-competent researcher (see Research outside of school), but how does one manage independent research with a full-time job and coursework?

If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear! Any tips? Do's or do-not's?


texts: How to tell whether invitation to special issue of a journal is worth being accepted?

texts:
I have been invited to participate to a special issue of Entropy for some work that I have done in statistical physics.

I received from other journals many such invitations which looked like spam,  and I wonder whether I should take this one more seriously, or consider it somehow a good one.

What are the criteria to tell whether the special issue is 'prestigious' enough, besides Impact Factor and names of guest editors?


texts: Improving my profile for cs phd admissions (math undergrad)

texts:
I'm a third year math major who is very sure he is not capable of succeeding in a math graduate program, as my GPA is good but not stellar (3.8, will probably fall to around 3.6-3.7). As such, along with my exposure so far (detailed a little below), I want to move to cs for my phd.

I worked as a data scientist for a startup for 7 months, and I'm going to work as a machine learning engineer for another startup part time while doing school part time. I'm in host matching for an internship at Google for the summer. I plan to continue to work part time as a machine learning engineer and go to school part time.

I have done very well on most of my bread and butter mathematics (A- to A+ in my most recent linear algebra, calculus, abstract algebra) but I have done relatively poorly on my midterms for analysis and graph theory and I am expecting a B+ overall for both. I have taken an honors introduction to computing science sequence and I've gotten A's on both. I am taking a undergraduate introduction to machine learning course, and a graduate reinforcement learning course. I plan to continue with math up to measure theory.

My university has a very strong reinforcement learning lab and I plan to start working there in the summer full time if I do not get an internship at Google, or I will take a year off to work in the lab part time and work at the startup part time. I have already communicated this with the lab and the startup and they are fine with it.

What can I meaningfully do to improve my application, assuming that I will have my SOP and reference letters secured by the lab? Is there any must take courses for phd's in this space that are not detailed on the graduate admissions (like real analysis for most physics phd admissions)?

Also, what are the repercussions to staying at my own university for my graduate degree? I really enjoy it here and my university is quite good at the fields which I want to study, so I would be happy staying here.

My goal is to get into a top 50 phd program, and my pipe dream is to go work at the big research labs (brain, fair, openai, etc).


texts: Professor got me involved into working with him, but the experience was poor. How can I avoid him without facing negative consequences?

texts:
I am an undergraduate, #1 in my year in terms of GPA, and one of my professors asked me if I was interested to help him with a research competition. The goal was to publish a paper and hopefully win a reward.

Fast forward this professor is treating me like a slave (expecting email replies within 6 hours), his team is not interested at all (very slow, not working at all on the paper) and last time I talked to him he told me "maybe we won't make it in time for the competition". This is after I have spend 2 months working day and night on this.

I have passed his course so I am not scared of a bad grade. We have another 2 months for the competition.

He is also trying to "force" me do my thesis with him, something after everything that happened, I will never do.

I am very polite and he doesn't know I feel this way.

My goal is to end this ASAP and avoid him badmouthing me to other professors. Maybe he will submit a mediocre paper, maybe not, I really have no idea. Seems like he doesn't care at all about this competition and his goal was to make me work with him.


texts: Examples of a large-scale physics syllabus review

texts:
My Department – Physics – is preparing to modernise its entire syllabus at all levels, from undergraduate through to graduate courses. We are looking at what material should be taught, as well as methods for teaching that material. This will be a significant, multi-year project.

I have found plenty of accounts of how others have changed a single course, or a few courses. However I’ve not come across an account of a department changing its whole programme of study, root and branch, in the manner we are contemplating.

Do you know of any physics – or similar – departments/schools which have gone through such a major renovation?


texts: What can I do to be able to understand conference presentations?

texts:
(I wish to remain anonymous, so I've omitted many details here. If those
details make this question unanswerable, please don't hesitate to vote it
down or close it.)

I've been a PhD student in mathematics for about two years. Whenever I am at a
conference, summer school, or a small seminar talk in our university, I
usually don't understand anything about the talk after the first two minutes.
Sometimes the speaker goes quickly through some basic concepts about group
theory, finite fields, or similar, that I'm able to follow because I know the
stuff already. But when the new stuff starts, most of the time I get so lost
that I can't even answer the simple question "What was the talk about?" when
my friends ask. So I just sit there with an open notebook, and after the
first few minutes of each talk, I start scribbling some unrelated things to
kill time before the next talk. If I see an interesting formula or similar on
the slides, even if I don't know what the speaker is talking about, I
sometimes try to see if I can figure out what that formula means, just because
simple mathematics is still fun - what I do still does not help me understand
the topic of the talk.

The problem might be partly about being able to focus, but I guess it's mostly
about the actual scientific content. When taking courses as an undergrad, I
never had problems of this magnitude while attending lectures because I had
time and material for studying the topic before and after the lectures,
and the lecturers had a decent estimate of what the students know before the
lecture.

Do you have similar experience? Is there something I can do to actually
benefit from listening to conference presentations? I hope this is not the
impostor syndrome - if everyone in the audience feels like this, conferences
are horrible waste of money, time, and natural resources.

I came up with a few ideas but they don't seem practical.

"You're not really supposed to understand anything as a PhD student.
Just sit there and wait for a familiar term, theorem, concept, whatever to
appear. Conference by conference, talk by talk, you'll probably encounter more and
familiar stuff, and before you know it, you don't have this problem any
more." If I had to decide, I'd never fund a learning process this slow. Or probably it is much quicker than I can imagine.
"Go to conferences with topics closer to your research." Well, they don't exist, unless I organize a conference about my research. And the point of going to conferences is to learn about things in your field that are not exactly your research (of course in addition to telling others about your research).
"When the conference schedule is published, pick one interesting
presentation title for each day and try to learn something about that topic before
conference." It might take a few days of focused study for each talk, so some weeks before the conference. I guess that time would be better used doing research.


texts: Presentation Rules (e.g. 7x7 in Undergrad Communications Courses): are they supported by evidence?

texts:
I taught a Business Communications course that brashly asserted that good presentations follow the 7x7 rule (max 7 lines of text per slide, max 7 words per line). I also "learned" this in my undergraduate communications courses at a fairly decent state university (and in some MBA prerequisite work).

I see docs online at Columbia (and, other, sources - this one linked to by MIT...)that hold forth in the same manner.

I did find this bit of research that may give some credence to the above doctrine, although it failed to reject the null hypothesis, that there is no difference in number of lines per slide, in favor of the idea that retention was better for 5 lines per slide versus 10. (But it's still something, some kind of evidence, right?)

So if the evidence is spare and specious, why are we reciting it like it's the gospel truth?

In industry (and to a lesser extent in graduate level education) we sometimes see vast amounts of information contained in single slides, and it is unclear what is the specific downside of this, particularly when well-warranted (i.e. the visible whole paints an important picture that would otherwise not be seen viewed at finer granularity, slide by slide).

A lot of information is packed into those slides, but I print them off one or two to a page. Decks don't get much bigger than a dozen or so pages, and the information I'm particularly interested in may be packed into one or two slides. And the audience is fairly sophisticated, whereas the accepted introductory wisdom might be targeted to more average audiences.

So the question is, are these heuristics worth sticking to? Or are they artificial constructs designed to give criteria for ranking the ability of neophytes to follow instructions?

Or are they a little of both?


texts: Is there a smarter way to search for PhD theses for a specific topic?

texts:
Google Scholar seems to have the entry for almost every thesis I can find in google.com. However, I do not know how to search specifically for theses alone.

For instance, to find a PhD thesis written specifically for a topic, I Google the following

  "Topic Name" PhD Thesis

The results are not bad, but it would be nicer to have a result as provided by Google Scholar.


texts: Academic Honesty for Teaching Staffs (Case Study)

texts:
I want to share a case study with you.

Peter received a Bachelor's Degree from ABC University.

Later, he wanted to pursue a higher degree (e.g. MPhil degree) and found a potential supervisor in the field of topic that he felt interested in ABC University.  Let's call her Susan.

Peter read some papers suggested by his potential supervisor (Susan) and worked with her to draft a research proposal in the topic relating to "A" for his MPhil degree application.

At the same time, she was preparing a draft conference paper in the topic relating to "B" with her research group members and some researchers from other university for paper publishing.

For some reasons, she told Peter to use this draft as his research proposal for his MPhil degree application, so he could be admitted easily, and explained that the research topic could be changed once he got admitted.

Later, Peter followed her instructions, got admitted but worked on the topic relating to "C" (not "A" or "B") and the paper relating to "B" was published successfully.

Although the paper relating to "B" was unpublished when a certain portion of its draft was used as the research proposal for Peter, the paper was published some months later.

Other authors for this paper may not know she used this draft as the research proposal for Peter.

Was it just an ethical issue?

Was it related to academic dishonesty?

You can search in the web and find any universities in any countries.

Their web sites will give some guidelines or information for Academic Honesty for students only.

Can I assume all teaching staff understood these guidelines when they were students?


texts: How were people able to graduate with a PhD at a such young age in the past?

texts:
When I read up the bibliography of the mathematicians and scientists in the early 19th to 20th century, I am always shocked at how they were able to graduate university with PhD(s) at such a young age.

For example, John Von Neumann graduated from two universities simultaneously at the age of 22 with two PhD degrees and critical papers published.

John Forbes Nash graduated with a PhD at 22 on game theory. Enrico Fermi finished school at 21 with thesis on X-ray diffraction. Kurt Gödel finished school at 23 with dissertation on predicate calculus. Abel finished at 20 with thesis on quintic equations. Galois never graduated but created a field of his own before dying at the young age of 20 and the list goes on and on...

I am not knowledgeable of the trend in the social sciences but I suspects much of the same.

Can someone tell me if there has been a major shift in how university
education is conducted such that university across the world takes
longer to get through than it used to be
or is it truly because
these people are unusually talented and are able to get through
university purely based on their almost unnatural abilities?

Most importantly (and relevant), why is there such a decline in these young PhDs (I've never heard of a professor at my university who graduated at 21) and is it still possible for people to graduate at such a young age nowadays?


texts: Probability of acceptance when editor requests "major revisions" but one reviewer recommended "full rejection"

texts:
I recently received reviews on a paper that I submitted to an Elsevier journal, with 2 reviewers. One had some minor comments and recommended minor revisions, while the second reviewer recommended full rejection and was very vehement about it.

The second reviewer's concerns were basically that he believes that one of the databases used in the paper (which is used in many other studies published in this journal) is completely invalid, but to back up their claim they posted links to a bunch of blog articles. Overall though, they were very disparaging of the paper in almost every possible way because of that.

The editor gave the paper a "major revision" decision. While I feel like we can respond to the comments, it doesn't look like the second reviewer would be convinced regardless of what we respond if he believes that database is invalid. I've also read that if a paper gets a "full reject" recommendation from even one reviewer, the probability of it being accepted is basically zero regardless of what the other reviewers say.

Any thoughts on how to proceed?


texts: Can I transition into quantum machine learning with a CS (rather than physics) background?

texts:
I'm currently pursuing an undergrad in Computer Science and Engineering from an Indian university. I really like machine learning, but of late, I've been doing some digging and I think I really like quantum algorithms. So I thought it'd be for the best if I could intersect the two subjects: This is how I stumbled upon Quantum Machine Learning. But the problem is, I noticed that most of the contributors in this field are from a physics background, which I found very discouraging.

Is there any way I can study quantum learning models and related stuff, keeping in mind my current background? I'll be applying for my GRE's and making applications (most probably for a PhD) by the end of next year. What are some of the courses that I should look out for?


texts: May I write a letter to support my girlfriend's application?

texts:
My girlfriend and I am in the same college, but different major. She is a law school master student.

She just graduated from the master program and wanted to transfer to juris doctor in the same college.

I am wondering if it is appropriate for me to write the dean of law school a letter in support of her application.

Also, I am not sure what to write in the letter if appropriate. I would imagine saying that I would love to be able to continue studying with my girlfriend in the same college and things like that. Would you have any suggestions?

Thank you in advance!


texts:
I have heard of people who have gone on to pursue an MBA after their doctorates. What are the advantages/downsides of this?

Wouldn't the companies recruiting them after MBA value their doctorate experience less compared to the experience gained at an MNC? Is there a risk of them being valued as "failed" doctorates?


texts: Code in a conference paper: should I put license terms there?

texts:
I am currently writing a conference paper (an IEEE conf, if that matters) in which I include a piece of code. Pertaining to the license of the code, should I, at the beginning of the code, write something like
-- Author: Ton Ami, 2021.
-- License: MIT License. ------> this
--  Below is code to help you make a better world
...

Or should I just put the code without any license terms?
In any case, what would the license of the code be?
Related questions:
License of code accompanying a published article
Is there a default license for code libraries that accompany scientific research papers
Include code snippet which is licensed under the MIT License in a paper


texts: How much should I adapt a paper to fit another conference than where I originally submitted?

texts:
Me and my research buddies have written this paper, summarizing and drawing conclusions from a proof-of-concept we've coded and tested. This paper regards several fields or subjects in (applied) Computer Science, and fits relatively well the call-for-papers of a few highly-rated conferences. On the other hand, former papers on the same subject have been published mostly in a single conference, and only a few in one or two others.

We're a bit overdue on submission; and the most-relevant conferences' next submission deadline is in about half a year or never (one may have been discontinued, it was more of a workshop). So, we want to submit to a well-regarded conference, with a matching CFP.

Now, while the CFP covers our work, the conference's 'angle' is somewhat different. This while other papers on our subject build a sort of internal discourse amongst themselves, i.e. essentially pick up the discussion where other papers left off. More or less. This is obviously made more acceptable, or maybe made possible, by the fact that most of them are published in the same conference.

So my questions are:

Is it a good idea or not to try for the upcoming conference, even though we'll be the first paper on our subject to be published there? i.e. do we stand a reasonable chance?
How much should we try to adapt the paper, to sound less of a continuation of the 'internal discourse' of our subject and more likes something appealing to the 'crowd' of the upcoming conference?

PS - The results are sound. They're not the end-all of exploring the subject, but there's plenty of meat in there. So it's not a borderline-accept paper (if I can say so myself).


texts: How to get my humanities paper published in the short timeframe before admissions deadline?

texts:
I have around two months before the application deadline to a masters program in humanities, and I want to increase my approval chances. I don't have papers in the program major (got one paper in mathematics though), but I already have enough material for a short article.

So I wonder if there is a way to improve my admission letter by listing a publication in a subject close to the major. Is preprint (via some analog of arxiv.org) the best I can have within the time limit?


texts: Is it a FERPA violation for instructor to display grades in public computer file system?

texts: My instructor placed grade sheets for our first two projects into a "Dropbox" file system which has absolutely no access control.  So not only every student could see every other student's grades and written assessments, but anyone walking into the college library could sit down at a computer and look at our grades without having to present any kind of credentials whatsoever.


texts: Modified picture based on three different sources - citations needed?

texts:
I am thinking about where the borderline is with citations.
I made a new picture based on three different sources, so I wrote under the picture "adapted from [3,6,9]." This, however, seems to be funny.

When do you need to include citations for your modifications of pictures?


texts: Politeness of a follow-up E-Mail regarding administrative task

texts:
I have to get a certain document filled in by a professor in regards to my major/curriculum.
Initially, I reached out 3 weeks ago, and she instantly replied that she'll be happy to do so, and asked for some other information she needed. I replied with the information instantly, but didn't hear back, unfortunately.
10 days ago, I therefore sent a follow-up in the following form:

  Dear Professor X,

  I was wondering if you've had the time to look at  I sent already?
  Thanks!

  Signature

Since I still haven't received any reply, I was thinking of sending another follow-up of the following form:

  Dear Professor X,

  I hope you've had a good weekend.

  I was wondering if you had received my previous E-Mail?

  Thanks!

  Signature

Would this be polite enough? (For some reason it strikes me as a bit too straightforward, but on the other hand I don't really have any reason to add an apology either, I think.)

I actually encounter such situations regularly, but my follow up emails always look more or less like the above, sometimes with an apology for reaching out again, even if I think it makes the E-mail look much too submissive. So I'm basically wondering if it is appropriate to send follow-ups in such a format.
I just wouldn't know what else to say in them, since the whole point is just to get the target's attention again if they accidentally missed it, were too busy, or forgot about it.


texts:
A student co-author drafted a response letter to the reviewers in which they apologize numerous times.  I found this strange, but I can't pinpoint why.

Question: Should one apologize in response letters to reviewers?  If not, why not?

I'm not sure if this is just my personal feeling, or if there are some underlying, tangible reasons for not apologizing.


texts: How can I publish an academic paper independent of work while working at a company?

texts:
I have been working on some independent research for a few years now, and I'm finally at the point where I'm seriously considering publishing a Computer Science/Mathematical Algorithm in an Academic Journal.

I presently work as a Software Development Engineer at a major tech firm. I have never published a paper before, though I do have my Masters and have gone through the process of writing a research paper before.

My specific questions are:

If my research paper is completely unrelated and independent of anything I do at work (nor am I even in a research type position), what - if any - obligations do I have to my work place? Do I need to seek their approval before publishing a research paper?
If so, do I need to supply them with my research paper - or merely
provide an abstract/description of the research to them?
Will an Academic Journal require me to submit evidence that there is no
workplace-conflict as an Independent Researcher?

Thanks :)


texts: “Professional contribution” in Australia for the purpose of applying for a Lecturer position

texts: For the purpose of applying for a lecturer position in Australia in computer science, what is actually a "professional contribution"? This phrase occurs among the selection criteria but seems to me way too broad from a purely linguistic viewpoint. According to the text describing the selection criteria, a "professional contribution" is supposed to be separate from experience in research, teaching experience, experience outside university, creative achievements, and technical achievements – they are measured separately.


texts: Is it appropriate to copy a drawing from a book in my master thesis?

texts:
I would like to know if it is appropriate to copy a drawing from a book (specifically a directed graph) and develop my theory on that drawing? It is sure that I am going to make a reference for that drawing.

Note: The author of that book I intend to copy the drawing develops his theory based on that figure, but I am going to approach everything it matters more deeply.


texts: Do non-English academic journals pay for a translated paper?

texts:
I am currently a PhD student in mathematics with a very strong interest in foreign languages (native language English), and I would be interested in translating math articles in foreign languages into English on the side.

Is this something that academic journals are generally willing to pay for? How would one go about finding work in this area?


texts: Accessing research databases with company computer?

texts:
Are there any legal (or other) limitations in accessing research databases from a computer at my workplace?

As a part-time student I have full access to resources provided by my university and was wondering whether I should stop using company's laptop for research purposes.

I'm based in UK, if that matters.


texts: How to develop experiment to justify construction of a prototype system?

texts:
I have worked hard for my master thesis project to build a system that uses an already existing algorithm, just in a mobile setting, which hasn't been done before. Because the algorithm is complex, it required a client-server infrastructure. Now, as I said most, of my efforts until now went into building the system of already existing components rather than contributing to knowledge.

Now my question is, how can I use my system and efforts to go more in the direction of a scientific contribution? The problem is if I, for example, simulate data loss over the network, I could have done that without even building the system. So I somehow want to include my real system in the experiment rather than doing a simulation. What would be a good approach that justifies also the construction of my real system?


texts: Professor Lost Assignment Grade, But So Did I

texts:
I am a first year undergraduate student (direct entry engineering) and today something happened that I have dreaded for a long time.

I received an email from my professor saying that he lost all marks from his computer, the midterm exam marks could be recovered but the assignments could not. Normally this would not be an issue, I keep all assignments in a filing cabinet plus I input all grades into a spreadsheet. But in an effort to clean up for an upcoming move, I seem to have misplaced the folder of math assignments I had.

The assignments are worth 5 percent each and I misplaced two of them. This wouldn't be the biggest deal typically as I get fairly high marks, but I had done well on these assignments and my midterm mark wasn't as high as I wanted. With a 0 on both these assignments I would need close to a perfect score on my final to get an A. I would like to keep a 4.0 GPA as I want to get into electrical engineering which is quite competitive.

With all that being said, I have already emailed the professor briefly explaining the situation along with the third assignment I still had. Technically, I don't need to keep assignments and the professor's computer problems are completely out of my control. So if he concludes that I should get a 0 on both assignments, can I appeal? I know my assignment marks so under my university's honesty declaration I must be honest about my grades, so anything I report to the professor must be true.

What should my course of action be in the event of him giving me two 0's on the assignments?


texts: Referencing references that reference references? How deep do you need to check for "accuracy"?

texts:
This is a problem that I figured lately. Say that you reference a text that references other texts.
How far must a new reference check that the earlier references are "accurate in information"? Is it possible that "lousy referencing" leads to "webs" of referencing that "blurs" some of the more original results there due to ambiguous referencing?
When does one know that one can rely on a reference?


texts: What should I do if advisor asks me to move to another university or lab for strange reasons?

texts:
Summary: Yesterday, my advisor told me that he wants me to change labs through because I said something "inappropriate" that made the lab unstable.  He is a really famous professor and his citation is within world top 100 in our field. I don't want to lose the opportunity to cooperate with him. I have enrolled. He has no right to make me leave. But if he is unhappy, he could make me not able to graduate three years later.

Question: What should I do? Should I leave as he asked?

Details: At first, I was unsure what he meant by "inappropriate". He didn't specify, and I have only been here for like two months and only know 3 or 4 people. Maybe I said some gossip, but I mean no harm and I never offended him. I don't even remember what I said.

My guess is that since my grade is not good enough, the university didn't give me the scholarship that it had promised when I was admitted. I had used my own money for enrollment and then waited to be refunded when the scholarship came through. I am not the only one, and apparently everyone is afraid that their scholarship will also be canceled. The lab is expanding so fast but the funding is not catching up. And the professors in the scholarship committee are unhappy since he recruited like a dozen PhDs at once.

It seems that the professor blames me for telling the others that my scholarship was canceled, which caused the panic. My family is wealthy enough that I can self-fund, but that doesn't help if I am being forced out of the lab. This seems very unfair.


texts: Can I include in my CV the invitation to a conference I'm not sure to attend?

texts:
I have seen this question (Unable-to-attend conferences in CV), but the situation is a bit different. In my field, we don't usually submit papers for conferences. Rather, the organizers directly invite a number of persons whom they think interesting to give talks (sometimes participants can contribute talks or posters, but that is not the case here). I received such an invitation, but for a number of reasons am not sure yet whether I will attend.

Can I still add the invitation to my CV?

One could of course argue that it is strange to get credit for something (a talk) I might not do. But one could also think that the invitation itself is a distinction and therefore worth mentioning.


texts: What should I take in consideration when planning a Design Science Research?

texts:
I am planning a proposal for a thesis (on Forecasting Daily Energy Prices), in which I need to select the methodology and define its phases.

As I intend to develop new technologies and/or solve specific problems, I was investigating the most adequate, when I came across the article Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems Research (read it here).

In that article one can read about investigation process Design Science Research (DSR) and its steps, and it seems appropriate for what I intend to do.

Assuming that DSR will be the methodology for my investigation, what should I take in consideration when creating the plan/defining the phases?


texts: Is the personification of concepts or terms accepted in academic writing?

texts:
The subject of velocity therefore also concerns itself with the capacity to process real-time data...

Would the above sentence be appropriate in an academic paper, specifically the use of the word concerns?

This is a habit I consistently notice in my writing when explaining concepts or subjects: I write as if the concept or subject is a person and then attribute words that are usually used in conjunction with human capacities, i.e., I personify.

I am not a native English speaker so my instinct may be wrong, however, I cannot remember that we were ever taught it is wrong to write in this way.


texts: Typesetting statement of purpose for a masters application

texts:
What is a good format to use for the statement of purpose on a masters application?  I read that margins should be 1 inch (2.54cm). This seems to leave quite a lot of space on the page though. Should I use the justify feature on word? I used this often when writing mathematical coursework, as a lot of my lecturers also used it in their lecture notes, but is it suitable/needed in this case?

The main things I'd like to know:

Font
Margin size
Use justify or not
Spacing

Note: by format, I don't mean the structure of content, I mean the aesthetics of the document.


texts: Will my supervisor be contacted by a conference if my submission is rejected or requires revison?

texts:
I submitted my paper to conference proceedings and still waiting to get the feedback within 2 months. When I uploaded the paper they asked me to fill the name and email for each co-author in the paper. So I did as they ask and I noticed that they sent an email to all mentioned authors (including the office of my professor and his secretary) that the paper is received and still under review.

What I want to ask is If the paper rejected or sent back to major reviews will my professor get an email from them as I will get?


texts: How to work with an overly positive advisor?

texts:
I'm in my second year of my PhD and my advisor is very, very positive. She never gives me negative feedback, even when I objectively have made a mistake.

For instance, two months ago, I noticed that I had made a mistake in my code that invalidated about 6 months of work. She wasn't even mad, saying things like "everyone makes mistakes" and "we can fix this." I was able to redo the analysis and still find interesting results, so it did more or less work out. But this is just one example of how positive she is.

Last year she encouraged me to apply to an university internal poster session and strongly suggested that it was highly probable that I would win one of the prizes offered. I did not win, nor do I feel like I was that close to winning. I was a first year student competing against fourth and fifth years.

Additionally, she is always happy with whatever I present to her. I'll admit, some weeks I do not produce much work, sometimes I'm slow to give her abstracts to review for conferences, etc, but she is always happy with whatever I give her.

She praises me excessively for every little thing, no matter how good or bad. She says "excellent work, great job, you're making fantastic progress." I get the same exact level of praise on the weeks I do a lot of work and weeks I do little work.

I'm used to working with PIs were much more blunt. Not necessarily negative, but told me how I was doing. If I didn't do much work, they would say "that's all you've done?" However, if I actually did a good job, I would get a "good job" or something.

It's very hard for me to manage my expectations with my advisor. I don't know if I am actually doing a good job or not. I don't know what my approximate actual chances are for awards and acceptances to conferences.

I'm afraid to ask her to be more blunt, because I'm afraid she would completely switch and criticize me too much.

How can I manage my expectations and work better with my perpetually positive professor?


texts: Should marker TA discuss marks with students?

texts: As a marker, there are always some students who will email requesting to meet  as they disagree with the marking. According to the professor, the marker should solve students' marking issues but I am uncomfortable with those students who insist that marks should be given in their way. Some of them are disrespectful. If I refuse to meet them, they will complain to the professor about me not engaging with students and the professor will criticize me. Should I engage with these students?


texts: How do I get editing help for technical (mathematic/statistic) paper publishing?

texts:
I have several topics that I would like to publish. While I can get a paper, in technical terms, 100% of the way done I am not an English major. I don't do great at speaking human, or dotting my "i"'s. I could be much more productive if I had help.

I am currently not affiliated with a university or academic institution. I work and on the side I sometimes do some thinking or work on (statistically) fun problems. I would like to share the results in an approved and excellent forum.

How does one go about finding someone with that strength to help edit (or is it co-author) articles with the intention of publishing them in decent to great peer-reviewed publications? Are there any culture-known "best known methods"? Are there negative repercussions of having non-mathematical technical help? If so, what?


texts: Retrieving the references in a publication automatically

texts:
This is probably not 100% on-topic here, but this site is closer to appropriate than others. Let me give it a try: I have collected about 50 publications relevant for a project of mine. For these publications, I have all the important information like author, title, journal, etc, but most importantly, I have the DOI for each paper.

I was asking myself, is it possible to retrieve the DOI of the references given in each publication through a web-service, an open database or any other service?

Background is that I would like to create a graph showing the connections between the selected publications. One semi-automatic approach which comes to my mind is to use Web of Science, go through the stack of my publications and copy the DOI of the listed references.

Any better ideas?


texts: Difference between ACM's print and online memberships

texts:
I would like to inquire about the difference between ACM's SIGACT online membership and print membership.

The group's main page showing both of the membership choices
https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/sigs/sigact

Background:
I am a sophomore computer science student interested in computing topics with emphasis on mathematical rigor, particularly, computational complexity theory and quantum computing. Subscribing to prestigious ACM gaining latest developments in the field and a chance of connecting to others seems promising.


texts: Why would master student spend more than the normal duration to complete master degree?

texts:
I am looking at a particular research group for graduate studies. The research group is in STEM.

From talking to the professors, they have repeatedly told me that a master degree merely takes two years. First year you take courses, second year you complete your thesis. Sounds about right.

But when I look at the CVs of the students, a lot of the students seems to be graduating way past this two year limit. One student was doing his masters from 2011 all the way till 2014. Another recent student is still completing her master that was started from 2013. I have only sampled a few students, they might not be representative of the entire research group.

Still the question remains, what could be the reason that a master student is taking so much longer to complete his degree given that the research group has explicitly told everyone that it only takes two years.


texts: Citing different papers which use different notation for the same concept,

texts:
Not sure if this is the place to ask about this. But for lack of knowledge of a better resource, I turn here.

When citing papers which use the different notation for the same model, is it better to leave the notation as is when citing each source, or, to retain consistency conform to one notation?

If I were to conform to one notation, does the more recent source take priority when choosing notation or the earlier source? Additionally how would it be formatted when quoting the source with the altered notation?


texts: Is it appropriate to ask for recommendations, which I'm not sure if I'd use eventually?

texts:
Is it OK to still ask for references, if I know I may not use some of them in my PhD applications?

I wanted to ask the potential referees if they're willing first - but I might not necessarily use some of them, because - for example a stronger prospective referee agrees to write letters for me later on; or that I decide to apply for fewer programmes than I originally intended to.

More specifically:

Is it appropriate to approach all (or more than enough) potential referees, in the first place, in one go?
Should I keep them (those whose letters I did not use) updated? And if needed, how does one politely do so?


texts: Should all computer science courses from a reputable university contain programming?

texts:
Right now, I am taking a BSc in computer science from a more reputable online university. Courses from there are transferable to most major Canadian universities. I would have preferred to take it from a brick-and-mortar place, but I wanted to just get as much done as fast as I can. In addition, I already have a degree.

Now, many of the programming courses (e.g., Beginner's Java, C++) are quite intensive even coming from a programming background. Some courses like Data Structures go through the concepts as well as have you code them (also fairly involved). However, some courses like Operating Systems and Computer Networks do not have a programming component. They are quite intensive, but I’m worried that not having a programming component will render my learning useless by future employers. (Though, on the other hand, they do have courses like socket programming that does cover that aspect)

So, I am wondering: Do brick-and-mortar universities typically have every computer-science course require you to program?


texts: How can I best make an impression to a professor advertising for a research role in his lab

texts:
While my job hunt which started a couple of weeks ago has been positive, there are nothing intimately related to my background in mathematics and physics.
While my grades aren't stellar (2.8/4.0), I've a strong interest in mathematical modelling of physical systems, strong reference and one good grade in a final year scientific research project I did.

Today, I was informed by a recruiter that a position in atmospheric research has opened up in my local university and, with a bit of detective work, I managed to find the hiring professor-great
In his personal webpage, he was open to applicants dropping him an email before making any formal applications.

While I have dropped him a short introduction expressing my interest, how should I make an impact should I be invited to meet him? It means a lot to me to be doing something intimately related to my academic background.


texts: How can I properly attribute unpublished data gathered by someone else when using it in my masters thesis?

texts:
I am currently writing my master's thesis. The project is a cooperation of the lab of my university supervisor, where I am writing the thesis, and a research institute, where I am employed part-time as a research assistant.
My thesis work involves analyzing measurements that were taken from someone else who is affiliated with the research institute. The measurements are not part of a public dataset and, as far as I know, will not be published. The data is not being reused from previous work, but was measured for this project.
I want to explicitly state in my thesis that taking these measurements are not part of my thesis, but I am unsure how to do this properly. Throughout the majority of my work, the data is used, so I would like to avoid mentioning its origin each time. It would of course make sense for me to acknowledge the contribution of the person who conducted the measurements, but I do not think this is sufficient.
The reason I am asking about this is that in order to submit my thesis, I am required to sign a form stating 'I am the sole author of this document and did everything myself, unless stated otherwise', which I believe is quite common. For other documents, a citation would be appropriate. However, I believe this case is different because there is no formal document accompanying the dataset.

How can I sufficiently state that the data used throughout my thesis was not measured by me, and at which point in the thesis should I do so?
Is it sufficient to mention the origin of data once, such as in the introduction?
Should I write a section (perhaps in the appendix) where the measurements are described in detail, including who conducted them?

Related Questions:

How to write the data section when data is reused from a previous work? (different, because it is about re-using data from a previous paper of the same author)
How to use data from a colleague who retired in my thesis without commiting fraud or plagiarism (The person who gathered the data is suggested as a co-author, which is not allowed for my master thesis)


texts: Is this OK that I use "doctor (or doctorate) candidate" as appellation on my business card?

texts:
Is this correct to call my self "Doctor of engineering CANDIDATE" on my business card?
If it's not improper, what should I use instead of doctorate candidate?
Background:
I'm a college student in master's course and will graduate this summer, then go on to a doctoral course.
So, I'll become the student who has master's degree and also become the student who tries to work toward a doctorate's degree.
I will have business cards available after entering the doctorate course.

*This is my first time to have business cards available.
*I was looking for many same questions, but anything didn't fit my background.