texts: Citing author of visualization source code?

texts:
I've found some source code that creates a visualization I like. I've (slightly) modified it and used exclusively my own data in it. Is it right to cite the github repository I acquired the original code from? I don't want to be improper or misleading at all, but then it's not normal to cite matplotlib, say, which this doesn't feel much different to (except it's code from a single author) so I'm unsure on correct procedure. I'm trying not to inflate the word count unnecessarily or give the false impression that the data is someone else's (which I'm worried citing the code might do) - but equally I don't want to give off any false impressions of authorship on my part.

Edit: To clarify I'm not distributing the code at all, I'm just using it to generate a figure in my paper.


texts: I put a paper on arXiv and now I want to send it to a double-blind journal. What can I do?

texts:
Several months ago, I wrote a working paper and put it on arXiv. Now, the paper has improved considerably, and I would like to submit it to the American Mathematical Monthly. Their author instructions clearly say "please refrain from putting your paper online until you have heard from the editor" (this is probably meant to keep the review process double-blind). I see in arXiv that I can withdraw the paper, but its title and my name will remain there, so it will still not be anonymous.
Is there a way to temporarily hide a paper from arXiv, until the review process is done?
EDIT: I asked the editors about it, and they reply was, essentially: it is preferred to not put the paper online before submission, but it does not disqualify it. However, the fact that the paper is online should be noted in the cover letter, and preferrably, the submitted paper should be given a different title so that it is not too easy to find it by Google.


texts:
It's known that high quality survey papers will direct the community attention towards the author(s). Knowing that, I faced with an important questions on writing such articles. Can such papers be considered as counter-measures for the authors? Specifically, for a graduated student who want to apply for a PhD program, having several survey and literature review papers is a good sign of being a professional researcher in the field (of interest) or it won't be considered a major prominence for him.

I think such a situation can be regarded as a distinguishing criteria for a pre-PhD student because he could conduct such deep study in a specific field.

Am I right?


texts: Dropping out of a master's program to pursue a PhD

texts:
This might be a bit of a weird question, but I'm wondering if anyone's been in similar shoes or knows about this.
I'm a master's student who applied for PhD programs this round. I didn't think I was going to get in anywhere and my advisor suggested the idea of extending my master's by one semester and applying again.
It turns out that I recently got contacted by a POI who I've been really keen working with. The problem is that this contact was much later than the period for students to apply for their thesis defense, which I didn't apply for because I was pretty set on the idea of staying one more semester.
I'd really like to pursue a PhD under this professor but my graduation schedule is a little tangled. Some options I have are to discuss the possibility of deferral, but I'm wondering about the hypothetical option of dropping out of my master's program completely and going ahead with the PhD starting from this fall semester. Is this scenario unheard of? Is it even typically allowed?
Thanks for any opinions/feedback.


texts: Is there any (known) way to have Arxiv waive the endorsement requirement?

texts:
I’m trying to submit a preprint of my paper to the Arxiv as an independent researcher. My academic background is in theoretical physics; I have a PhD in physics, did a postdoc, published several papers in Physical Review and PRL before taking a job in industry. I’ve been working in industry ever since, so I do not currently have an affiliation (i.e. an .edu email). I’ve spent the past few years working on my research project independently, and I’d like to submit to the Arxiv and have the community review my results.

I’m currently stuck at the “not endorsed” step. I’ve reached out to qualified endorsers in my subject per the Arxiv’s endorsement process but got no replies. I then contacted the moderation to appeal, but they rejected with what seems like a template reply (“We insist submitters be affiliated...”)

Given my situation, I am wondering if there is any known way to make the Arxiv waive the requirement of endorsement? For example, does the Arxiv make an exception for former academic researchers who have previous publications in peer-reviewed journals?


texts: If the status of a paper under review changes, should schools I applied to be notified?

texts:
I am applying to doctoral programs in the US.

I have a paper currently under review, and, it seems that the status will remain under review after I submit my application packages.

My question is: If my paper is accepted or revised or rejected, then should I notify the schools to which I am applying that this paper was accepted or revised or rejected?


texts: Whom and how to include referees in the CV?

texts:
Many job offers state that they the applicant should include the full contact information for three referees in the CV. I was wondering about two things:

1) How to decide upon the inclusion of scholars? Naming your supervisor of the PhD thesis might be obvious, but then? Do only professors count or should the referees come from different institutions, etc.? Especially as an ERC (Eraly career researcher), I don't have many senior co-authors or collaboration partners at other universities.

2) Do you ask these people whether it is okay to name them in the CV and they might be prepared to get contacted or should I avoid this?

Are there any recommendations or past experiences that people are willing to share?

Thanks in advance!


texts: How do I pay for classes as a non-degree student?

texts:
I've already earned my degree (B.S. in Neuroscience, Psychology and Music), but need to take some pre-requisite classes before applying to a Masters in Physician Assistant Studies program. These courses are going to end up costing about $10,000 total. I imagine I'll need to take out another loan, but who should I talk to first? The school? The bank?

I know very little about financing this kind of thing and am trying to avoid getting taken advantage of.

I'm be applying to school in the north eastern U.S.


texts: How much will a terrible freshman undergradate year affect academic future?

texts:
I wasn't able to attend university during my freshman year due to personal reasons, so I ended up only barely passing 1 class the whole year (didn't even show up for the finals for all the other classes). My 3rd semester went a bit better, passed half the classes and also passed half of the remaining from my 1st semester. 4th semester went pretty good as I passed all classes with As and during the summer I also passed all the remaining ones from the previous 3 semesters. Right now I'm in my final year and have a fairly good GPA but I'm afraid that my terrible performance during my 3 semesters are going to tank my chances of getting into a MSc and later a PhD program. Is it at all reasonable for me to assume that the admissions boards can look past that since I have clearly shown improvement and have a good GPA?
I'm currently studying in Greece but plan to move abroad (somewhere in the EU) for MSc and PhD.
Note: I was enrolled in all of the core courses during my first 3 semesters I just did not attend class and did not take any exams (no show).


texts: Ethics of soliciting letters for US permanent residency application?

texts:
I recently received a request from a postdoctoral associate working at another institution to "write a support letter" for his residency application. I put the statement in quotes because the candidate in question has already written out the letter and is asking me only to put it on official letterhead, sign it, and return it.

Is such behavior considered acceptable for the US permanent residency application? Is there a difference in appropriateness if the applicant knows the recommender well?


texts:
I am dividing the question in to two parts.
I will first tell about my experiences, (in this first part of my question), at different levels of my academics and the reason for selection of a particular path.
I generally use to spend very less time on studying during all my courses after schooling. Even if I spend time, I use to understand the subject in a (faulty) way I use to understand. After hearing lectures from some universities online, I aced many exams and my colleagues didn't able to achieve it because of the reason that they use to spend time on the lectures by my own college professors. But, it is not due to improvement from my side. I can say that it happened alone due to the way of teaching by online professors. Later, when I joined research, I realized that the way I learn the subjects is not good. I use to remember concepts, formulae etc., with out going to the deep intuition, Now, I think I know the way of learning things. I know atleast the fact that subject should be experienced by me. Complex facts of a subject has underlying simple intuition. But getting the complete intuition from the textbook is not easy. It may take a lot of time, interest, patience. Currently, I am spending the time and studying on my own. And I can experience the change in my life.  I am confident about my future (life).
In this second part, I will tell about the issue I am facing
Since I am into research course, my mentor asks for research progress once in a while. Initially I use to say that I am spending time in understanding fundamentals properly. But over time, mentor is not accepting the answer and hence I am stopped saying that. But, secretly doing the same. When mentor asks about progress, I use to manage things. Since I am becoming strong at fundamentals, I am personally happy. But I cannot able to concentrate on the research task in parallel. Because when I start studying a research paper, I came to know about my issues in fundamentals and stop studying papers till I am perfectly okay with fundamentals. And I think it may take atleast six more months to complete all the fundamentals required for my research work (as per expert suggestions in my domain). I am thinking that although my research progress is zero now, it will boost up in future. But many times, I heard from mentors of different colleagues that writing papers, communicating research with journals, conferences is important. I have atleast couple of years from now. Most of the other students got few papers published in journals, conferences etc., I am no where in that. Didn't even study research papers.
Am I wasting my research time?


texts: Do journals with double-blind review allow submission with some of the references are yet to appear but already accepted in another journal?

texts: There are journals which employ double-blind review. Suppose I want to submit in such journals but my paper to be submitted depends on another paper of mine which was already accepted in another journal but does not appear in its issue. In my view, this might reveal my identity and hence defeats the purpose of the double-blind review? Do these kind of journals allow such submissions? I read the authors' guidelines but seems this particular concern is not stated.


texts:
How does a philosopher publish a paper? Does it work as in natural science where the steps are:

Find an appropriate call for papers
Submit a paper within a deadline
Receive anonymous peer-reviews
Send a final version for publication in the proceedings


texts: Ignored Requests Open-Source Software from a Research Group

texts:
For more than 6 weeks now, I have been attempting to contact a post-doc or their (former?) PI to request access to either the source code or software of a tool that was published in BMC Bioinformatics. The authors did not provide the source as a supplemental file, but assure the reader in the article that it will be made available upon request. This is the first time requesting source code of a research group, but I have yet to receive any kind of reply to my polite requests.

I am unsure how to proceed. Pursuant to the guidelines for publication in the journal, "[i]f published, software applications/tools must be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without restrictions such as the need for a material transfer agreement." This group is located in Europe, and it is highly likely that they should have a working knowledge of English, after all, the publication and their websites are in English, so I don't think there a language barrier exists.

Possible actions that I am considering:

Contacting the managing editor for the publication to explain the situation, and see if his/her email attracts more of a response.
Contacting any granting agencies who have provided supporting funding for the project to determine whether they have stipulations about providing source code.
A phone call to the corresponding author.


texts: Is there an alternative to traditional exams?

texts:
It seems like the traditional exam model (two midterms at 30% and one final at 40% of the grade, closed book) is flawed. For instance:

Students are not allowed to access resources, whereas in reality they would
Students get only a few minutes per questions, whereas in reality they would get days
Students are not allowed to collaborate, whereas in reality they
would
Students cram for the exam the day before, and forget what they
learned after the course is over
Students focus on the exam to the detriment of learning the material
and understanding real-world applications
It is difficult to claim
that the exam score demonstrates mastery of the course material in
contexts other than an exam

But in practice, is it possible to improve on these flaws, without introducing major increases in workload for the instructor? Is there any system of evaluating student performance in an undergraduate course which is an improvement over a traditional exam approach?


texts: How can I get a PhD position to work on solving a particular mathematics problem that I have formulated independently?

texts:
I have a pure mathematics problem which I formulated after years of research in signal processing of audio signals and years going into formulating a problem on precise mathematical terms, which is a provable/disprovable mathematical statement. (I avoid using the term conjecture as I am not qualified enough)

My belief is that it has very important applications in real world signal processing. I want to solve this math problem, and I need funding, research environment, collaborators, and access to mathematicians for discussions. All this I believe is provided by a PhD position in a University that is serious about path breaking research. My goal is to solve this particular problem and not any other problem.

How can I go about achieving this goal?

Edit : summary of problem

In effect i have proposed a new formula for inverse fourier transform with no assumption on its jumps except that they are finite and absent beyond a certain point. This new formula ensures not only pointwise convergence but also convegence of variation. Classical Fourier formula does not have convegence of variation in the presence of jumps.


texts: How do you know the project you are working on is worthy of a PhD dissertation. How does it differ from MS dissertation

texts:
I am speaking of project scope here.

So suppose my advisor is working with an industry .And you are asked to build a prediction model for small section of that industry? Does that qualify as a Phd Project or a Master's thesis project.

Or does a Phd project has to be generic model , in the sense all companies in that niche can use that model as basis for their analytics?

I am trying to understand the differences in scope for a PhD and MS Thesis project.


texts: Mention marking duty for a course in an early academic career CV

texts:
I am first year post-doctoral fellow. I have been asked to carry out some marking duties by my PhD supervisor from another university which I am not currently affiliated with, but where I got my PhD from.

Can I mention this marking duty under my teaching experience on my academic CV?


texts: Finish incomplete degree before returning to school?

texts:
I left a Masters' program (philosophy) nearly a decade ago, after completing all coursework (and doing well in it), but without having completed a thesis, partly because I wasn't in line with my department's approach, and partly because of a life change (having children).

Lately I've been considering pursuing an advanced degree in philosophy again.  Am I correct to assume I would need to start by finishing up my long delayed thesis?  It isn't the easiest thing to do outside of an academic program, but my old department has indicated they wouldn't be entirely closed to the possibility of me completing it, even at this late date.  Conversely, would it be possible for me to just start fresh, even with the incomplete degree on my record? (I'm still not much in line with my former department's approach.)

Note: There are some similar questions here, but I don't think they address the advisability of finishing the old degree first.


texts: On getting reviews for research work as independent learners

texts:
Consider an undergrad student (who wishes to dive into STEM research) in an obscure university in an obscure town who has a few ideas which he converts into a well documented article. All of this by learning completely on his own. He has no faculty within his institute (or locality) to turn to (they aren't as active in research) for help.

Where should such students/learners try to get comments/criticism on their work?

Sending it out to publishing is not a good idea because it will get rejected with cliched answers and will rarely help the candidate improve his work.
Stackexchange/Quora/Reddit etc. are great for small answers but it is too much to ask to read and rate someone's work
One can send out mails but Professors/Grad Students/Researchers in the field might not have the time to reply to such mails. Further, if the work is fundamentally flawed, the student might never get replies.
Any other repository site (ArXiv?) might cause the paper to be drowned by more successful ones and the student might never get comments.

What can he do?


texts: Can I be an assistant professor to just "try it out"?

texts: Currently I'm in a situation where I was originally working with an university to develop a course while being in industry, but I left the industry job. I'm not sure how to approach the conversation with the university. On one hand I would like to develop the course and teach it, but the university is a teaching oriented one (while I'm interested in research). Would it be better to work out a deal with them that I'll be an adjunct on the class and see how I get compensated for also developing a course? Or should I go in as an assistant professor and see how it goes (even though I think I wouldn't stay there for more than 2-3 years, and I would also pursue research with outside academia)?


texts: How to approach professor about potential paper?

texts:
Earlier in my undergrad I co-authored a paper with one of my professors. Initially it was supposed to be just a class project, but on his suggestion I did some more work and went with it at a student conference and then with substantial help from his part we managed to further expand the topic and write an article which has been published on a (small) national journal.

A few months ago I took part in a problem solving contest for undergrads. Among the problems there was one which was quite interesting, basically made out of two parts. I got the highest score on the problem, but barely did any work on the second part. I tried looking in the literature and while there are many references about the general concept, nothing about the specific version presented on the contest (I should point out that there is nothing trivial about it, i.e. the solution and the implications are different from anything I found so far). This seems like a nice opportunity for a paper, and I think I could actually get it solved with some additional help. I was thinking about proposing this to the professor that was my co-author on my first paper, but I’m not really sure how to approach him, as the synopsis for the first one was totally different from this case. To make matters more complicated, we got some money out of the first paper (not much and it was his initiative to apply for the prize), and I also received a scientific performance scholarship for it, and I don’t want him to feel/think that I’m trying to do research for the sake of money.

So, how should I formulate my e-mail in order to make him understand that I see an opportunity for an article but without seeming like I’m desperate?


texts: Is it necessary that your partner (wife/husband) have English proficiency, when you are going to study abroad?

texts:
I decided to go study Ph.D. in the United States. Is it necessary that my wife be good at English?

I am expressly interested in legal and statutory requirements of English proficiency for a spouse if I am going to be studying in the United States.


texts: Is it okay for a lecturer to set an assignment about the products of a company he works for?

texts: I just found out that the lecturer of an undergraduate course I'm tutoring in has given the students an assignment to evaluate a product from the company he works for.  To evaluate it, they need to read articles written by people in his company and write up a report.  They don't have alternative assessment options.  Is this okay?  It feels weird to me, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with it?  I just wish I'd known before because I would have mentioned conflict of interest to them, but we presented the papers as straight research papers (when they were actually written by the same people who sell the product).


texts: What to do on a desk reject of a revised paper?

texts:
Since this is a longer story, let me first give some background:

We submitted a publication to a journal in the field of engineering. The article remained on the status “with editor” for more than two months. Our inquiries with the editor-in-chief and through the publisher’s contact form were not answered. When we contacted the assistant editor, things got moving and we got a “major revision” with rather positive, but brief comments from two reviewers. The editor-in-chief handled the manuscript. We addressed all of the comments very carefully and resubmitted.

The next day we received a desk reject from the editor-in-chief as the handling editor. They said our article was out of scope and had a lack of novelty. Both of these issues have not been mentioned by the previous decision letter or the reviewers’ comments. On the contrary, one of the reviewers specifically commented that the paper was on scope in this journal and the results would be useful for researchers and practitioners.

The journal does not have a formal way to appeal, and the author guidelines state that editor decisions are final. The editor-in-chief did not react to our request to clarify how our manuscript could have become worse, i.e. out of scope, after the revision. Due to a number of constraints, it is difficult for us to go to another journal.

If we would have gotten a desk reject on the initial submission in a useful delay, I would have accepted the decision. But I find it unprofessional to reject a revised manuscript on those grounds.

Given these circumstances, how should we proceed?


texts: License of code accompanying a published article

texts:
Given a paper that introduces a new algorithm and upon publication copyright is transferred to the publisher.

Is an implementation of the presented algorithm considered a derivative of the published article, hence falls under its copyright?
Or can someone implement the algorithm at any time making it available under GNU independently of the published paper?
What happens if the author published the code under GNU license before submitting the paper that derives and explains the algorithm in detail?

I guess, on a more abstract level, my question is, how paper and code relate to each other?


texts: Is it a mistake to fail to mention future career plans in an application for admission to an MSc in pure mathematics?

texts:
I am applying to various universities to study for an msc in maths or pure maths.

After sending of my application I have realized that I have not mentioned anything in the way future career plans.

Was this a bad idea?


texts: Will the PhD degree be retracted if the thesis is found to be not novel?

texts:
Suppose a person got PhD degree by properly submitting his/her thesis on a particular topic. Assume that neither the student nor the doctoral review committee including supervisor knows that the proposal is not a novel.

Later at some point of time if it comes to know that the student got PhD without any novelty. Then does the PhD degree get withdrawn?


texts: Learning new things after coursework duration of PhD

texts:
In STEM (In USA), the coursework duration of the PhD typically lasts about 1-2 years beyond that, students take 0 (or in certain cases, very few) courses in their subsequent PhD years. I work in applied math with a lot of applications in every field imaginable : Finance, Economics, Energy, Healthcare, Services etc.

During my coursework phase (owing to the breadth requirement), I was made to take courses in different departments and each time I attended a course in a new department I would think "Wow, this field could really benefit from extensions of my research". I would chalk out a few ideas and read up a few papers, find out that it's already done but be glad that I generated a new idea nonetheless.

Now, I am nearing the end of my coursework phase and I am wondering : How do I keep my ability to "see" applications in fields other than mine alive?

Global Question : After a student's coursework phase, how does he stay aware of applications of his research field besides the ones discussed in papers?

My advisor encourages me to attend as many seminar talks as possible (in all allied fields) which I do but it's not the same level of enjoyment.


texts: Should teachers announce the grade breakdown during first class?

texts:
I noticed that some teachers announce the grade breakdown in the first class or in the syllabus, while some don't. What's the best practice? If giving the grade breakdown at the beginning is preferable, is it better to use an absolute or relative breakdown?

Example of grade breakdown announced in the syllabus (absolute breakdown):

  Letter grades are determined at the end of the semester. The default
  cutoffs are: a final average of 90 and above is an A, 80 and above is
  a B, 70 and above is a C. These boundaries may be adjusted downwards
  if necessary because of the difficulty of the assignments or quizzes,
  but the boundaries will never be adjusted upwards, so a final average
  of 90 is guaranteed to be an A. The boundary adjustment is done
  heuristically, and there are no grade quotas, no grade targets, and no
  centering of the class on a particular grade boundary.

Example of grade breakdown announced during the first class (relative breakdown):

  The first half get A, the second half get B (except in case of failure to try to do the homework or show up at the exams).

I am especially interested in computer science education in the US.


texts: How much advanced notice is expected for faculty interviews?

texts:
I have a faculty interview for a Canadian university coming up some time in the next week. For this interview I have to prepare 2 lectures.

I still havent received the date, nor the lecture topics. So I havent even booked time off work yet.

How much advanced warning is expected for this sort of thing? I feel that I would need ample time to prepare and with working full time elsewhere, it might be right. Or maybe Im just overreacting and stressing out.


texts: Why don't many textbooks have electronic versions?

texts: I'm trying to find a way to buy Doug West's Introduction to Graph Theory but with an electronic edition. I can't find one. What's the barrier for these books being electronic?


texts: Does rejecting an undergraduate admission offer have any effect on my chances of postgraduate admission?

texts:
I am currently an international undergraduate studying in the US. When I was in school, I applied to a few different universities, including some in the UK. Two universities in the UK accepted me and I ended up rejecting them both. I am a freshman but I am strongly considering applying to their graduate schools after I graduate here. I understand that GPA, recommendations etc are very important, but would the fact that I had previously applied and rejected an offer from their undergraduate schools have any effect, negative or positive, on my chances of admission to a postgraduate course? Have I burned any bridges?

I can post the names of the specific universities if it's relevant.


texts:
I've seen people capitalize their field of study:

    I'm studying Planetary Science.

    She teaches Computational Physics at the university.

Other people leave it uncapitalized:

    How long have you studied biology?

    He earned her degree in applied mathematics.

When should one's field of study be capitalized?

Are there rules that govern this?


texts: Who is a "Vowel" in a panel of Jury for a Master's Defense?

texts:
I have to give my Master's defense soon. I am provided with the name of a "Jury", a professor. And two professors in my 'vowel', one of whom is my advisor. (total 3 on Jury)

What is the definition of this 'vowel' and what does it mean? What is their role in relation to the 'jury'?

My university is also Portuguese and the Portuguese word is Vogal (singular).


texts: Re-implementing one's own proprietary code as open-source

texts:
I wrote some software as part of an internship. It worked well for the task and we published a paper on it. However, because the internship was at a company, not my graduate institution, the code is technically property of the company and they do not want to release it. I've received several requests for the code, and I know that releasing the software will increase my paper's citations and impact. Is it okay to re-implement the code I wrote and release it as open source, or could that violate some laws or policies?

For the record, when I say re-implement, I mean start from scratch, not reuse most of the same code and change a few things.


texts: How to organize the referee report of a paper?

texts:
One part of the work of any researcher is to referee the work of other scientists in his field. This is a time-consuming and volunteer work, that is made with the idea of service for the community.

My main question: What are the standards of organization for the referee report of an article?

For instance, is a "general comment" section (mostly, explaining why the paper should be accepted or rejected) and a "specific comments" (in the form of a list of precise comments e.g. "Page $2$ line $4$: typo. It should read X instead of Y") enough? Or do people organize the review under specific sections like "Typos and writing", "Missing definitions", "Scope of the paper",etc...

I wish my report to be as useful as it could for the author, so I am inquiring about the best practices for referee reports.

PS: It may be a field-dependant question. I am mostly interested about standards in mathematics, but answers for other fields would be interesting too.


texts: What is the best way to solicit teaching feedback from students (before the class is over)?

texts:
I sent my students a feedback form (I'm a TA) and I got three responses.  While they were helpful and informative responses, I am not sure how to interpret them, because there are only three of them and they all disagree with each other.

What is the best way to get feedback from students?  Should I enter them in a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card?


texts: Is it unreasonable to expect students to read the lecture notes before attending the first class?

texts:
The new semester will be starting in a few weeks,
and I will be teaching a course which starts on the first day of the semester.

The goal of the course is to teach students
how to use the R programming language to clean and analyze data.
I will teach the course using a flipped classroom format:

To save time (both my own time and students' time),
I will record video lectures and write lecture notes,
which I expect the students to watch or read before each class.
It should take the students about 1–2 hours to watch/read before class.
The class meets 1 time per week, for 3 hours at a time.
During the class time each week,
students will be in the computer lab,
where they will complete data analysis tasks on the computer.
During the class time in the lab,
students can ask me to clarify any questions they may have.

Question:
From the second class onward,
I will be expecting students
to watch the lecture videos and read the lecture notes before coming to class.
However, is it a good idea to have the same arrangement for the first class?
In other words, is it unreasonable to ask and expect students
to read the lecture notes for the first class
before coming to the first class?
My plan is to post the lecture notes online,
and to notify students that they should read the lecture notes
by making an announcement using the course LMS system.
(In my university,
students are automatically signed up to the course learning management system
when they register for the course.)

Some clarifications:

What types of students will be taking the course?

The course is a course for undergraduate students,
with most of the students are in their 2nd or 3rd year of study.
Is the course listed as a lab or as a lecture course?

The course is listed as a lecture course.
I am teaching in the business school,
where lab courses are extremely uncommon.
I believe that courses which are taught as lab courses,
say by teaching them in a computer lab,
are still listed officially as lecture courses.
Will I be giving the students too much work?

In my university, courses meet once a week, for 3 hours at a time.
My plan is to give students either some notes to read and/or videos to watch,
which they should do before class each week.
This should take about 1-2 hours of time each week,
which seems to me to be quite reasonable.
Students in my university take 5 courses a semester on average,
which is 15 hours of class time each week.


texts: Is it wrong to change the name of the university on a recommendation letter

texts: One of my professors gave me a recommendation letter for my master's degree application however I just noticed that she wrote the specific program that I'm applying to from a different university that I want to apply as well. Is it alright to just change that data? She send it on a pdf file, and I could easily change it to word and change it, but I don't know how acceptable that is. I'm afraid that the new program I want to apply will think is a fake letter or something like that. What should I do? Is 1.45 am and I need to finish the application ASAP.


texts: Is it a valid concern that a PhD student runs out of research ideas?

texts: A PhD student "Alex" has a few years to impress their research lab advisor and then their dissertation committee.  During these years, I imagine that Alex will come up with some great ideas that can be modeled, simulated, and perhaps validated with physical experiments, etc.  It might feel that all of Alex's work "belongs" to the lab, and namely, to their lab director / advisor.  Then after several years of working at such a high-energy pace, does Alex have to worry about running out of ideas, and that they gave all their ideas away to their advisor?  Or does Alex have so much more to gain from sharing all of their best ideas and then receiving crucial feedback in return, and that the benefits far outweigh the 'costs'?


texts: Information on Grants & Funding in mathematical research

texts:
Professors of mathematics in research universities get grants and funding from time to time. I have two questions regarding this issue:

1) There are many sources of grants and funding, are there any ways to search the records of grants & funding a person got? (Of course I know I can ask that person or I may consult the records of each single sources, but I just want to know is there a more convenient way to do that.)

2) What are the most common grants and funding math professors get? (I am not shopping among those sources, which sources are most commonly gotten in this field has statistical and objective answer)

I am asking about the information in United States and Canada.


texts: Universities offering PHD in Economics or CS without requiring a masters degree

texts: I am an Information Management and Systems student just about to graduate in three years from college. Due to financial constrains I would like to pursue a PHD degree directly without having to go through Master degree which is extremely costly. I am determined to get a PHD either way. I have a 3.7 GPA and I got 730 in GMAT. I am looking for a good university (top 50) who offers Phd programs in economics, eCommerce, or something that is economics or computer science related without having a master degree. Any suggestion will be highly appreciated.


texts: Besides salary, is there any difference between "classes" of faculty in France?

texts:
While learning about the different faculty jobs in France, I discovered that the two different ranks of faculty are subdivided in classes: maitre de conférence are sorted in "normal class" and "outstanding class", while professors are sorted in "second class", "first class", "exceptional class". You start in the lowest class and if you're good you can be promoted.

From an outsider perspective I could not find any difference other than salary. However reading the history of these ranks they used to correspond to, I think:

maitre-assistant -> new maitre de conférence
old maitre de conférence -> professor "second class"
non-titular professor -> professor "first class"
professor titular of a chair -> professor "exceptional class"

Today, other than salary, does the class change anything? Does a higher class faculty have more weight with the university or something? More responsibility? Or is it purely financial?


texts: Supervisor using my dataset without my consent to submit papers with his other students

texts:
During my PhD (field of machine learning) I've been working in collecting a very large dataset. The whole work took more or less 1 year. I had the idea, collected most of the data and wrote all the software for data collection and data annotation. I acknowledge I had help from other people setting up sensors and collecting data, but mostly technical work.
Recently I've found out that my supervisor is giving this dataset to his other students without my consent and even submitted 2 papers (even before the submission of my own paper, so I don't even get a citation).
In those other papers, they wrote my name in the acknowledgements. I didn't find it fair and I've claimed at least co-authorship from the other papers. But my supervisor claims that he purchased the equipment, and the funding came from his project, so he owns the dataset and he decides what to do with it.
I took 1 year doing everything, and other students spent 0 hours, and I just get an acknowledgement? I really didn't find it fair.
I'm trying to solve it internally with my supervisor, but it's not working. Since the papers were already submitted, I'm not sure I will be able to change authorship. I have many proofs that this dataset was mainly developed by me.
What's the best way to try to solve this problem? Report it to the department? Address it to the conference chairs (the papers are still under review)? Or just forget about it and finish my PhD without complain?


texts: How feasible is it to go back to BS to get a second degree?

texts:
I assume it varies from institution to institution, but out of curiosity. If a person graduates, from say computer science, and he wants to go back to his institution after a couple of years of industry work to study a related field like mathematics.
Would that person need to apply from scratch and redo all the work, or would he be allowed to skip some of the courses he has already taken? (in part to avoid grade inflation for retaking courses a second time).
Like in the above example, let's say the person has already taken introductory and medium level courses on linear algebra, algebra and calculus.
Will the person be required to retake all of these course?
Again I know it will be different across institutions but I am wondering on average.


texts: I submitted paper in a elseiver journal.It first asked for major revision. After a month of submitting revised manuscript it asked for minor revision.I adressed all the points submitted. Now it is again showing reviewers invited since last 10 days. Should I be worried.


texts: How can I study PhD in business after masters in physics?

texts:
I got master in Physics and now I am thinking to continue for PhD in marketing, business or Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Is it possible to switch for Phd? How can I do that and how should I persuade admission committee?


texts: How to scale grades to take into account how strong the students are?

texts:
I am interested in different methods for scaling grades from a class test, say. In this case there is only one test and this gives the whole class grade. I remember from years ago a method that took into account the relative strength of the students taking the class by looking at their grades in other classes. However I can't remember the details at all.  The idea was that a hard test taken by strong students would be scaled up more than an easy test taken by weak students.

Is anyone familiar with this idea and how it might work mathematically?

In response to comments let me give an example. Say there is an optional class on Semiotics and Structuralism that the strongest students typically choose to take. The mean for this unit is 60% typically, say. Say there is also another optional class on how to spell the words in Harry Potter book one that the weakest students take. Say this gets the same mean of 60% typically.  It would be interesting to know what formulas have been used to scale the former class  so that the mean is higher than the latter.


texts: What do legit journal/conference/review invitations look like?

texts:
As everyone else here probably does, I receive a lot of unsolicited emails. I don't like it, but I've gotten used to it and can just ignore them with a friendly smile on my face, because at least those emails give some unfortunate person a job and an income.

However, today I got an email that at first seemed undesirable but at a second look appears to be legit (albeit irrelevant, so I wouldn't have missed anything), so I'm wondering if there's any rules or hints to go by to identify legit conference invitations or journal introductions?

On the one hand, this is probably going to be simply somewhat of a reverse of identifying undesirable emails (see below) but I guess I'm mostly looking for information on how legit entities advertise themselves. Do they:

actually send out unsolicited emails at all?
invite "unknown" researchers for high profile roles?
even care if they emails look legit?

I'm a geoscientist (sorry, we hit rocks with hammers and trample on vegetation, but I'm working to better myself), so I have been at conferences organized by AGU and EGU, so I do get emails from those two and they're legit, but for example AGU doesn't care about the third point at all, with their emails being a mess of HTML with embedded (and thus of course blocked) images and obfuscated links with over 100 chars of tracking stuff in them, so if I did not know they were legit, I'd long have added AGU to my list of undesirable publishers.

And the second point, well, like most early career scientists, I have a slight case of impostor syndrome, but I probably have some good stuff out there and apparently I'm a good speaker, so it's probably not impossible that someone saw me at another conference and thought "Yeah, I'd like to have that person as a speaker", but is that really how it works?

And just reversing my criteria for spam is probably also not a surefire way to identify them. Sure, a  poorly formatted email in poor English to "Dr. JC_CL, Coauthor and Coauthor, I hope this finds you well" from a Chinese company I have never heard of for a field not even related to what I'm doing can probably be disregarded. However, all of those errors could also happen in a legitimate case, as my name is somewhat complicated for people not speaking my language, most people don't speak perfect English (and I can't identify perfect English with 100% certainty) and I do work quite interdisciplinary.


texts: In the USA, do college courses deeply differ from high school courses?

texts:
I'm interested in school systems, and I have a question regarding the "college" level. (I have a French background).
When I look at college math or physics books, it seems to me that there is no big difference with what is taught at the high school level.
By comparison, in France, first year university math or physics books dramatically differ from high school books.
To put my question in a provocative way: what is the purpose of teaching at the college level what students already know from their high school courses? Or don't they? Or, is my vision of college contrary to actual facts?


texts: How far ahead should you search for a faculty job?

texts:
Suppose you want to obtain a faculty job at a particular time.  When should you start searching for job ads?  When are they advertised?

Answers describing different customs in different countries and disciplines are encouraged.


texts: How to find the number of citations for each version of an arXiv article?

texts: I wonder how to to find the number of citations for each version of an arXiv article. (E.g., given an arXiv article, 100 citations with no version, 31 citations for version 1, 56 citations for version 2, etc.)


texts: Why are researchers at some think tanks titled professor?

texts: Within my own discipline one of the best examples of this may be at the Santa Fe Institute, but I've seen this other places as well. Quite simply, why are researchers at some think tanks titled "professor" when they don't have a university affiliation?


texts: Am I responsible for a Wikipedia article if I wrote it?

texts:
Some time ago I wrote a few Wikipedia articles covering a rather obscure event I was interested in. I did it more or less completely out of interest and was not paid in any way. Although Wikipedia is fundamentally collaborative, most of the text is mine - the other editors have largely only added results tables, logos, and such.
The organizers of the event noticed the articles and have since been forwarding me requests by a professor saying things like:

You should cite this article. It's good for publicity!
You should write about X, Y and Z. Right now the article doesn't cover them.

However from my point of view, because Wikipedia is fundamentally collaborative, I don't actually own the articles, and if anyone (either the professor or the organizers) want to add those things they are free to do so themselves. That's not to say that the addition will be welcomed - any Wikipedia editor can dispute the addition - but it is something they are free to do. Certainly asking me to do something they can do themselves feels rather improper.
I am wondering if my point of view is reasonable, and if so, how I should communicate with the organizers & professor. I certainly don't want to offend them, since they can make it harder for me to watch the event.


texts: How soon can I poke a potential PhD advisor for a response if contacting them about an advertised position?

texts:
There is a PhD programme I recently found which matches my interests very closely but with a deadline in five days. It doesn't require me proposing my own research, instead asking me to choose from a list of available projects. The application instructs me to contact the professor who advertised the project before I proceed with the main application.

I've sent that potential advisor a carefully-crafted cover letter and CV a few days ago but got no response. Normally I'd not try to send a second email so soon but I'm feeling increasingly pressured on time given the few days there is until the institution-wide deadline. I am find with filling in the forms at the late notice but I'm concerned my referees might not be as happy about copy-pasting the references they have already wrote for me.

I wanted to see what other people think on the subject - would it make me a disservice to contact the potential advisor again in a couple days or should I just give him a time to respond in his own time (potentially after the deadline or never)?


texts: When can/can't I upload full-text to researchgate?

texts:
I just joined research gate (finished PhD in December - published 3 papers early this year) and as soon as I made an account, it shows that someone requested full text of one of my papers 20 weeks ago.

Am I allowed to just upload the .pdf? What are the rules there and how will I know if/when it is appropriate?


texts: Should an instructor tell his/her students before the exam that there are multiple versions of the exam?

texts: When I was an undergrad, I had instructors who did not tell students that there was more than one version of the exam until afterwards. I also had instructors who told students that there was more than one version, before the exam started. The question is: should an instructor tell his/her students before the exam that there are multiple versions of the exam.


texts: Can co-authoring a paper as a new grad harm my reputation/career?

texts:
To be specific, I just graduated with a Bachelor's degree, and my final project supervisor has asked me to co-author a paper with him about the subject of the project I did with his supervision.

I'd love to join the research community, and I guess this would a be good starting point, but there are two issues I'm concerned about:

The first is related to the subject itself: (a) I'm not convinced of the quality of the suggested solution. (b) The project tries to solve two different problems.
The second issue is that I'm not interested in the field of the project. My interest is in a different field. Though, both are related to computer science.

So, would participating in this paper do any harm to my reputation or my chances of getting into a good graduate program in the field I'm interested in?

Update:

Thank you so much for the kind answers. Almost all of you agree that the second issue is harmless, but there are different opinions regarding the first one.

So I said that my supervisor knows better, and I decided to go on and started planning the outline of the paper with his help. When I got to the writing part, I noticed that the main body doesn't relate to or even mention the main problem that we've specified. This is when I decided to decline the offer. It just doesn't feel right.


texts: Whats the average salary (inclusively) in china? How expensive it is for a single postdoctoral life?

texts: I'm going to join one of the top university in China. I have been offered 130000 to 180000 RMB per year (including the basic performance and housing subsidy) on invitation letter although it's less than what was committed with me in the mail. How expensive is Bejeing? This is my third postdoc. I am afraid if it will be lower than the average postdoc. How is the working condition in Tsinghua and Peking University in Engineering Science?


texts: Good place to publish funded grant proposals

texts:
I have two grants and I would like to publish their proposals for which I received funding.

Should I publish them in the first place? I think it would look good being transparent, and it would certainly be informative about what I'm currently working on (I am at least 6-8 months away from publishing my first results from these research). But I also think that it can have drawbacks like others thinking I'm just trying to pad my CV, or giving space to any and all kind of accusations about my research topic or about the quality of my proposal (I'm in the Social Sciences from a CEE country where social research is becoming more and more ideology-driven. I already have bad experiences about ideologically biased attacks and accusations against my academical activities)
Where and in what form should I publish it? Should it be a self-publication on my institutional or personal website, academic social media account, in a repository etc.? Or should I find specific journals that publish grant proposals? (Do such journals exists? I found one https://riojournal.com but it looks like I have to pay them a fee for this).
In my CV there is a section for funding. If I publish my funded grant proposals, should these items go to "Publications" or should I add them to "Awarded Funding"?

Thank you for your advice!


texts: Replying potential PhD supervisor with documents

texts:
I applied for PhD at a University and receive a mail from the supervisor, he asked me to mail my cv and transcript. I am thinking to reply like this:

  Dear Professor XXX,

  Thank you for your reply.

  I have attached my grade sheet and resume, with references, to this email.

  Thanks for your consideration.

  YYY

Is it sufficient and decent?


texts: Some conferences ask for an extended abstract. What are the differences among "abstracts," "extended abstracts," and "full papers?"


texts: Is an actual recommendation letter (vs. the name of a reference) standard at the UK Lecturer or US Assistant Professor level?

texts:
I'm currently 2/3 of the way through my first postdoc, and starting to look around at, and apply for, my next job.  I've noticed that some places require three letters of recommendation, whereas other places simply require two or three references -- i.e. they will call or email the referee if they view that as appropriate or necessary.

Writing an actual recommendation letter -- which typically has to be uploaded by the recommender -- is much more of an "ask".

Is an actual recommendation letter standard at the UK Lecturer or US Assistant Professor level?  The pattern I seem to be seeing is that more prestigious places are more likely to require an actual letter; would others confirm that?


texts: Can I take GRE year prior to applying graduate schools?

texts: I will be taking GRE this November 2015 (giving four colleges name whose application I will fill fall 2016) , but will start the application process by next year. Will the college keep my GRE score for fall applications of 2016.?.Please help me.Thanks in advance.


texts: Can a professor ask students to upload a picture ID?

texts: This week I had a midterm exam which wasn’t mandatory, but the professor provided it so we could improve our grades. Along with the instructions that was listed, there was a line which says have your photo ID ready. So when the exam came, I logged into the zoom channel and I had my ID with me in case the professor wants to verify it through the Cam. The professor wasn’t there and I found myself answering the questions as it’s a maths exam and it has a time limit. Later on, I received an email from the professor saying that my submission cannot be accepted because I didn’t scan my picture ID and upload it with the exam. I told him I don’t feel comfortable uploading my ID, he insisted that I can blackout sensitive information. Is this normal ? Why would the professor ask for a picture ID to be scanned and uploaded with the exam ? I have reached out to the chairman and I am afraid that the professor would target me more.


texts: Inform the search committee of another university about your current campus interview

texts:
I applied for some places and got a campus interview from one of them. My second application, however, has remained silent and I have not heard any news yet. I email the staff who is in charge of this position (answering email and uploading the missing documents, ...). She said that "We are still in the selection process. We'll notify you if we need further information from you." I think this is just a very general response without any clue and maybe they already have selected the finalists!

I was wondering if it is wise to let the search committee that I already have a campus interview and want to get an update on my application? Because I like this institute instead of the one that has invited me.


texts: Is there any problem with students seeing faculty naked in university gym?

texts:
This is a strange one. I have been going to the gym 2-3 times per week for stress management. Before summer, our university made some nice offer for staff to register to the on-campus gym. So, I switched. Compared to my previous gym, I pay less money, it's more modern, and it's more convenient.

Over summer, everything was fine. I usually go at 07:30 and it's quiet. Now that the students are back, I realised that many of my graduate and undergraduate students go at the same time as well.

The showers are sex-segregated, but the problem is that the gym showers are open. Meaning that I'm bound to meet one of my students "butt-naked" in the shower. I've never been conscious about this before and I'm used to using shared showers since I was a kid (camping, sports, etc.). However, I've started thinking that meeting your PhD advisor or first year lecturer naked in the shower might lead to a slightly disturbed dynamics in the Professor-Student relationship.

Am I overthinking this? Should I just pretend I don't see anyone? I've thought of switching back to my old gym or go home to shower, but it would be very invconvenient.


texts: Chicago MOS for Bibliographic References - BibMe and CiteThisforMe seem to disagree

texts:
Which of these (if either) is the correct method of citing a journal article using the Chicago Manual of Style? Each of these were entered using the same article.

This one was generated by CiteThisforMe:

Arsenault, A., and G. Cowan. 2008. "Moving From Monologue To Dialogue To Collaboration: The Three Layers Of Public Diplomacy". The ANNALS Of The American Academy Of Political And Social Science 616 (1): 10-30. doi:10.1177/0002716207311863.

This one was generated by BibMe:

Arsenault, A., and G. Cowan. "Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (2008): 10-30. doi:10.1177/0002716207311863.


texts: Software to draw illustrative figures in papers

texts:
I would like to have suggestions of good software for drawing illustrations in research papers. I already know about Xfig, but this works only on Linux and is at times, clunky when it comes to text. Moreover the resolution is not always perfect making it difficult to manoeuvre the objects. Besides it is tough to learn and master, with all its weird click procedures.

I would love to know about better alternatives. Not talking about graphs here, just block diagrams and explanatory illustrations.


texts: Do workshop publications hold the same value as conference publications in CS?

texts:
I had missed deadline for a reputable conference (Computer Science). Now I see that a workshop is being organized with the conference which exactly aligns with my area of research. The workshop proceedings will be published with the conference proceedings. (It is the first workshop in this series)

Does a workshop publication holds same value as a conference publication for PhD work, future employment opportunities etc. ? (I am a PhD Candidate as of now)

Edit

My field is Computer Vision
The conference is ECCV


texts: Can individual international scholars apply for US federal funds?

texts:
When checking the grants.gov I found that individuals can directly apply for available grants. Since it was not mentioned that individuals should be US citizen, I thought that everyone can apply, and judgement is based on the proposal.

Can international people apply?
Should the project conducted in the US territory? Or they care about the results no matter where it has been done?
If yes to 1 & 2; can an international person apply, and upon success coming to the US to conduct the project?


texts: Maintaining sustained productivity and enthusiasm

texts:
There are researchers who work each day, every day of the year from the moment they reach their office till late. As a young and upcoming researcher, I find that I need breaks after a few days of this kind of heavy working or else I have a mild "crash" following which I get back on the productive track.

My question is: how do these researchers continue to work with no breaks and remain creative and productive? Are there concrete tips that researchers use to ensure they don't keep having periodic crashes and burn-outs?


texts: Asking for funding opportunities for phd in France if a professor has said yes to me but his university doesn't have any doctoral scholarship

texts:
I am a masters of mathematics student in India and a professor to whom I  mailed my CV has said his Institute doesn't have a doctoral scholarship at the moment but he will be happy to supervise my thesis if I get funding from other organizations.

So, I want to ask can somebody please tell about to which organizations I should ask for funding opportunities.
My family is allowing me to self fund my phd  and after that I am thinking I would also do part time work as per my spare time. But do French Institutions allow doctorate student to work along with Phd thesis and also do phd students in mathematics get enough spare time that they can do some part time job.

Can anyone please guide me.


texts: As a copy editor for a professional journal, how far should I go in adjusting the wording of an article?

texts:
(It is important to note that the articles are generally written by people for whom English is not their first language)

I recently got my first article to edit, and realized very quickly how uncertain I was about how detailed I was supposed to be in my editing. The article was very wooden though and required a lot of editing to hold a professional English tone (to no fault of the author's, since English was not his first language). I am very good at editing and so had to settle on just going with what made sense to me, but I am wondering if there is a consensus or specific set of rules to follow.

For instance, I always use the word 'one' to denote an inclusive general view in my essays (ie, "If one accepts the premise of John Doe, then yada yada yada...), but this author continually used 'we', which seemed odd to me. I couldn't tell if it was something that needed editing, or was an intentional stylistic choice. I decided to be conservative there and left all the 'we's, but would really appreciate some input.


texts: Research Summary Article Published. Can I Submit the Full Research Paper Elsewhere?

texts: Last year, I submitted an original research paper (approx 3000 words) to a public health journal (USA). The editors advised me that they were unable to assign it sufficient priority to allow publication as a full research paper, however, they invited me to resubmit it as a research summary article (approx 700 words) which was published 6 months ago. My question is as follows: Would it be feasible for me to resubmit the full research paper somewhere else?


texts: What should I do when teaching maths for unmotivated undergraduate students?

texts:
After completing my Phd in an area in pure Maths and going back to my country, I got a job as a math lecturer at a university, where maths is not the main subject for students there. Maths is like school swimming subject that every student at my university has to learn before moving on to other subjects.

I usually teach 35 hours/week. That sounds a bit crazy for many people, but it is normal here when you are living in a small country with a big population. I love doing reaseach. Spending time quitely, reading papers of other mathematicians, taking note, enjoying the findings, these were what I used to have during my Phd in support from a scholarship.

The problem is that, I am now teaching students who are really unmotivated. It is understandable because maths is not their main concern.  Even though Maths here is quite basic, for example calculus or linear algebra, it seems that it is a big deal for them. The students always feel like they are forced to learn unnecessary, difficult stuff. So their reaction is to almost ignore the subject. They go to class, sleep or talk, and let whatever happens to their exams for the future. It is quite stressful to teach these students. I admit that many maths stuff like, surface integrals or Green formula, are really hard to teach  for this kind of students. Because they don't like to hear or know how should a theorem be true. On the other hand, if you just tell them that well! this is a theorem, let's imagine it was true and use it. Then the situation isn't better either. Of course, I am not in a position to determine what I have to teach, what not. All the given content in a subject should be taught for students during the course.

These things are bothering me and take me a lot of time. The students may complain if they don't like me. So I should focus on my teaching duty. However, it is killing me since I cannot have time for my reserach. At the end of the day, I am exhausted and feel guity because I have done nothing.

My question: do we have any way or tricks to teach unmotivated students to make them feel easy, feel smart, so they don't complain, but in the same time we don't spend total energy for the teaching? If I run my work properly, I still have time and mental energy for my reaseach.

Any suggestions, even small, would extremely be appreciated.


texts: Why not design the proposed online survey using the actual survey tool?

texts:
Question:
Assuming no school prohibitions on doing so, why would you not design the proposed survey in the proposed survey tool, and include screenshots of the survey in the proposal?

Background:
I edit dissertations and students are increasingly asking for formatting guidance for their proposed surveys. The handbooks from the schools of interest have no guidance other than that the design be approved.

Consequently, I am wondering why I've never seen a proposed survey presented from screenshots of the actual survey tool; but I've also never seen a prohibition on it. Instead, I always see a mock-up using Word or Excel.

My guess (and that's all it is) is that maybe no one mocks it up in the actual survey tool because--as part of the proposal process--the reviewer(s) might recommend another tool. So mocking it up in the actual tool could be a waste of time.

Note: I realize my question is rife for opinion rather than a black-and-white answer. But I couldn't think of any other way to ask it. To recap, assuming there are no school prohibitions on doing so, why would you not design the proposed survey in the proposed survey tool, and include screenshots of the survey in the proposal?


texts: Apply for assistant/associate professor at same institution as postdoc?

texts: This was a conversation I was having with a colleague earlier today. He was offered a postdoctoral position and doesn't want to move after that. It's a very highly regarded university so it's understandable that he doesn't want to leave, but it made me wonder how common this is. Do postdocs frequently advance in the ranks at the same university or is it still the norm to go to school A for PhD, school B for postdoc, and school C for professorship?


texts: Letterhead in application letters for tenure-track in computer science in USA?

texts:
I'm a postdoc in computer science preparing an application for a tenure-track full-time faculty position in a US university. The opinions on whether to use a letterhead or not vary: Postdoc using current university's letterhead for job application cover letter (academic/national lab jobs)?, Should I use my university's letterhead for a cover letter for a job application?, Letterhead ethics, The Professor Is In: Why Letterhead Matters.

Which choice is prevalent or advisable for the position in question: with or without letterhead?


texts: Value of light-to-none peer reviewed pay-to-publish articles

texts:
I have been approached by an international student about doing a PhD with me. As an MSc student in his home country he has published 3 articles in pay-to-publish venues, that are known to have little peer-review process, with his supervisor as second/senior author. These articles are not particularly good and likely would not have been publishable in more traditional venues.

I am struggling with how to evaluate these articles and the candidate. Should I simple ignore the place/type of publication and evaluate the work on its own? Can articles in pay-to-publish places really be fairly evaluated? I am worried that changing his behavior will be difficult. I don't want to accept a student whose goal is to publish things in pay-to-publish places.


texts: How should one react when one's work is rightfully critiqued during a conference presentation?

texts:
When somebody presents the paper, the attendees ask questions about the paper. But what if they raise a legitimate objection when they ask about our work and we know that they are right? Should we accept that or should we defend ourselves?

I ask this, because recently I attended a conference, and in one presentation I saw an important mistake on one of the presentations' algorithms. But he denied my reasons, and both of us knew that my reasons were legitimate.


texts: How to read effectively a research paper?

texts:
I am a student and I have been assigned to read a research papaer in the robotics field, understand it, elaborate it and write an essay about it. I have never done something similar, so I am a little bit lost.

How should I read a research paper in order to do this? Is there a particular way of reading a paper or I just start from the top and follow the order of the pages? And is there an effective way to elaborate it?

Thanks in advance.


texts: Impact of the visit weekend weather on the admitted graduates' grad school decision in the US

texts: US universities typically organize visit weekends for newly admitted graduates, after which the latter confirm or refuse the offer. Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the impact of the visit weekend weather on the admitted graduates' grad school decision?


texts: Do I have to prove all the theorems I mention in my paper?

texts: I am writing a paper on a big theorem in Algebra. But in order to supply as many proofs as I find interesting, I have to mention the theorems used to prove this Big Theorem. Do I have to include all the proofs of all the theorems I mentioned as well as relevant lemmas, even if they take me away from my topic for some time?


texts: Software for extracting data from a graph without having to click on every single point?

texts:
There are many times when I am faced with the task of extracting data from a published graph (usually a bitmap image in an paper). For example, a scatter plot from which I would like to get a list of individual (x, y) coordinates for the points.

One option is to ask the contact author for raw data. Most will do it, sometimes in nice ASCII format, sometimes in Excel files, sometimes in formats that I cannot open (chemists are fond of software like Origin or Igor Pro). Some authors never reply, or ask questions like “what do you want to do with it?”. In all cases, it takes time. Sometime, it's not even possible (I can hardly email the author of a 1936 paper!).

The other option is to extract the data. I currently use g3data to do that, but for large scatter plots having to click on every single point is tedious. Thus, I am looking for a data extraction software that could recognize individual points automagically, and possibly filter them by point color or symbol used. Is that even something that exists? What other tools can you recommend to work around this issue?

I don't think it'd be appropriate to have extra requirements on the software, so I'm happy with free or commercial solutions, running on any OS. Of course, if given the choice, I'd prefer open source software running on Linux and Mac OS.


texts: The department I will be getting my degree from and my research area have very little in common

texts:
I am a PhD student whose main research focus is in robotics: I work on computer vision, mapping and planning algorithms for robots. I recently switched universities along with my advisor, and hence had to move from a 'Systems Engineering' concentration to a 'Mechanical Engineering' one, because my professor joined the mechanical engineering department.

So in the end, I will be getting a degree in mechanical engineering, whereas I personally do zero work in the conventional mechanical engineering areas. It's hard to categorize robotics as a research field but I guess it's closer to computer science. Is this even a big deal? If yes, how should I handle it in the future, say, in terms of my resume and prospective employers?


texts: Mendeley - References in Bibliography that I did not insert (MS Word 2016 plugin)

texts:
I have references in my bibliography (that Mendeley automatically generates for me) that are not in my paper. How do I get rid of them? MS Word 2016, Mendeley Plugin, Windows 10.

I have tried:

Clicking the Refresh button
Deleting the bibliography and re-inserting it


texts: Recommendation letter from supervisor in this case?

texts:
During most of my undergrad I have spent a lot of time working in a research center where my mother is director.

During this time I worked with her and many of the researchers there.

Of course, I cannot ask for a recommendation from my mother because we are related. Would it be OK to ask for a recommendation from one of the other researchers on the center I worked with?

To clarify, this is a public center and while my mother is higher in hierarchy than them, she is an employee too, as she don't own the center.


texts: Frustrations about my master's program and how I should cope

texts:
I am currently a first-year master's student in a field of study with a strong international focus. The school's program that I am enrolled in is ranked in the top ten for the major, and the school is located in an ideal location. However, I have serious doubts about my program, and I am a disillusioned student. Other than the fact that I had gained acceptance to the school, the main reason that I chose to enroll at my current school was because of its emphasis on professionalism. Most of the professors in my program seem to be adjuncts who are employed full-time elsewhere and teach at my school on one of the weekday evenings. I thought that by learning under such instructors, I would be able to gain a more practical, realistic knowledge. However, I feel that I am proven wrong. All of my courses are scheduled in the evenings to allow students to work or intern during the daytime.

I am just a second-semester student, and I have taken four courses the first semester and am taking four courses this semester. So, out of my eight courses, only one last semester and one this semester are taught by a full-time professor at the university. The other courses have been or are being taught by adjuncts who work full-time elsewhere. The problem is that the ones being taught by adjuncts, especially this semester, lack clear guidelines for the expectations for the course. Also, most of them do not even have office hours, nor do they respond to emails. I only feel very lost and frustrated.  Grades are highly unpredictable, too. In terms of how grades go, I am in the situation of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. At my current university, strangely enough, undergraduate grades seem to be inflated, while graduate grades seem to be deflated.

Also, what else frustrates me is that my courses seem to only revolve around theory. It's about trying to apply the theory in real-life situations. They don't even encourage creative thinking, just theory. One of my current courses gives out a lot of abstract reading assignments, but the instructor who is an adjunct does not make an attempt to explain them. In each session, it's like, "Hey, what did you think of the readings? I want you to talk about them."

Is it common for a master's program to have so many adjuncts who lack availability? Is it also common in most master's disciplines to feel totally lost without any faculty guidance? Would the situation have been different for a PhD program? Is my situation common or unique? If my program is in the top ten for its discipline, would it be beneficial for me in the job market? I feel very embarrassed to tell anyone, especially family members about how I actually feel about my program. I don't feel motivated about challenging myself further because I feel that taking a unique viewpoint is risky to obtaining a decent grade.


texts: How can I get the most out of conferences?

texts: I recently attended a very large conference in my field (SfN, ~30,000 attendees), and after I got back I was thinking about what I had gained from the trip, and I realized not that much. I listened to a few different talks, and I saw a whole bunch of relevant posters, but on reflection I don't think anything I did progressed my knowledge/career that much. What should I do in the future to ensure that I make the most out of conferences?


texts: How much does rigor and time commitment of a math PhD correlate to prestige of the program?

texts:
My question is the extent to which the prestige and rank of a PhD in mathematics correspond to the rigor of the program. I'm absolutely not worried about working hard, but I'm recently married and I want to factor in time with my wife when deciding where to attend.
To expand, what are the levels of rigor corresponding to schools with
a) a big name and a well ranked math program (like Penn and Princeton),
b) a big name with a not-as-highly ranked math program (like Carnegie Mellon or Dartmouth),
c) a smaller name but a well ranked math program (like CU Boulder),
d) a smaller name with a less highly ranked math program?


texts: Choosing and training (admitted) PhD students for research

texts:
What do you expect from a PhD student before being an advisor for him? I mean do you expect from him to fully understand your papers and to be able to contribute your research from the first day or first month? Or, do you ask him to join your research group meetings and ask him to do some minor tasks in the group (collecting data, maybe some coding) while still learning about your research and other relevant topics he needs to understand the papers.

For example, assume that you are working on manifold learning and your PhD student has some experience on machine learning and has a very superficial knowledge about topology and manifold learning. Do you tell him to go and not to come back till getting some advanced math classes. Or do you rather tell him: "You did well on the general machine learning class which I taught why not come and join my group and lets have a look what we can do"?


texts: How to cite a TED Talk with Youtube URL in MLA 8?

texts:
How do I do it? I've already googled the heck out of it but all the answers were incomplete.

The URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tOp7OxyQ8


texts:
So there are already some good questions on the topic of double doctorates:

Is doing two PhD's a good path?

When does one go for a double doctorate?

I'm looking for some advice specific to my situation. I'm currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in a mathematical field (computer science) but most of my research is geared towards applying these methods in a scientific field (stellar astrophysics). Because of this, my advisor is encouraging me to take up a second Ph.D. in astro. He says I can write one dissertation to get both degrees, and he doesn't think that it will delay my time to graduation too significantly.

On the one hand, it is attractive to me, because it might help qualify me more towards future positions in astrophysics. On the other hand, I don't necessarily see too much additional value in getting a second one; to me a Ph.D. is a license to do research, and one doesn't need two licenses. Further, I'm sure there is a real risk of it delaying my time to graduation significantly despite what I might be told. I'm also not completely convinced that it would equip me with skills that I wouldn't already be getting, although it might demonstrate to others that I have those skills. But then again, can't they just look at my publication record? Finally, while I absolutely love astrophysics, I am also attracted to other sciences, and I wouldn't want a doctorate in astro to cause people to think that I can't work in other sciences also.

Are all these concerns legitimate? Have I laid out the pros and cons appropriately? Are there other considerations I should contemplate? Are there some drawbacks or advantages that I haven't listed?


texts: Papers in progress, but am leaving academia

texts:
What should I do with my papers in progress? I have several with a few co-authors.  It's been known that things in my department have deteriorated considerably, and that many of the newer faculty are looking to leave.
Do my papers in progress get abandoned?


texts: In what cases are you able to start a postdoc without a "conferred" PhD?

texts:
Many PhD programs only confer their degrees one, two or three times per year. If you  successfully defend and submit your dissertation after the scheduled conferral date, you must wait until the next one to get the PhD. At many of these schools you can ask for an official document that basically states that all requirements for the PhD have been successfully completed and the degree will be conferred on the next conferral date.

Do postdoctoral research positions accept this type of official document in lieu of a PhD, to begin work, if a PhD is required? Is this specific from position to position or country to country? I will be receiving a PhD in the US and looking for postdocs in either the US, Canada, Europe, Japan or Australia.

Note this question is less about applying to postdocs and more about officially starting them. In other words, assume you have accepted a post doc offer, and the job requires a PhD, would having an official letter from the University stating the dissertation is done and everyone has signed off suffice to start?


texts: I'm writing my PhD thesis (math) and struggling to find titles for the appendices. The thesis has three main chapters and for each one there is an appendix that contains some proofs that did not belong in the chapter itself (e.g. proofs of lemmas and technical details). What should I name the appendices? Currently I'm thinking about "Missing proofs for Chapter X" or "Omitted proofs of Chapter X". Any suggestions?


texts: Are ERC starting grant preparation courses worth it?

texts: Has someone here an opinion or already experience (and recommendations) with online preparation courses for writing ERC grant proposals, or for other kinds of funding?


texts: Can I cite an unpublished Master Thesis?

texts:
As title above.

This thesis is only available at the author's blog, though it is indeed a formal Master thesis. If I can cite it, how may I fill in all the blanks?

My concern is even if I cite it, the readers may be still unable to find it, if it is somewhat removed from his blog.


texts: What matters the most when choosing a post-doc -- the reputation of a research institution or the reputation of a mentor?

texts: I would like to ask SE community here about where one should pursue his/her postdoctoral research. At a wold's top three university with an early-career assistant professor or at a top 50 university with a very well known professor in the field? I need to accept one of these two postdoctoral offers and would like to hear your views. I already have 10+ publications and my long-term career goal is to go for industry position after 1-2 years of postdoc.


texts: Should I take a summer class at my university or a community college?

texts: I am an economics major in my second year looking to pursue a master's in statistics after graduation. This semester I am taking calculus 2 and will be taking calculus 3 this coming summer. I am weighing the pros and cons of taking the class at a community college in my hometown. Obviously the class will be more rigorous at my university, but it would be far cheaper to take the class at a CC. Would taking the class at CC have an effect on applying to master's programs?


texts: Is it possible to request withdrawal of authorship almost 2 years after the publication?

texts: Is it possible to withdraw authorship almost 2 years after the paper has been published in a journal? Reasons could be anything ranging from disagreement on data interpretation, new data contradictory to the original one, etc.


texts: PhD student and postdoc statistics related to relationships

texts:
As a graduate student and postdoc, I remember more of my colleagues becoming single than entering new relationships. In many cases the problem was that their partners could not accept their unusual working hours and low wages. In some others it was the lack of solution to the "two body problem".

So, I am curious if there are compiled statistics related to number of students and postdocs in relationships and with families, number of children, divorces, and comparison to people outside academia.


texts: Does university location affect job prospects?

texts: My university is in Oklahoma and most companies are in east coast and west coast in the US. I am a bit worried if a PhD will be worthy from an average university with poor location. Should I apply to a college where there is a bunch of industries around?


texts: Should you state multiple degree titles in your CV next to your name?

texts:
If I hold a MSc and a BSc should and I want to show that next to my name in my CV, should I use:

  Sosi, MSc, BSc

or simply the highest one:

  Sosi, MSc


texts: How to deal with administrative duties killing the research spirit?

texts:
Some months ago I was promoted with a managing position inside the university (in my case, associated chair of my school, being for instance the head of admission committee and the director of doctoral studies).
At least in my country, these jobs have a teaching reduction. However, my intention taking this position was to try to make contributions to the bad way that my university is doing right now.

However, I have encountered a really big issue that I was not expecting:

The type of duties I have are really of ‘administrative’ nature. This means: preparing schedules of courses, preparing calendars of bachelor thesis defenses, preparing slides of how satisfied the students are with their courses. I found that there are no really ‘important’ duties to do, i.e., strategic duties.
What worries me more: Due to all these monotone work, I am feeling discouraged about my research. For three months, I arrive home every day after dealing with this administrative things and say to myself: ‘Today is another day that you both did not finish several things, and even worse, you did not have even one hour to work on your projects.’

Some months ago I was somehow discouraged about my place in this university, but after taking this position I feel that I am going directly to a disaster. Either if some months ago I was a little tired (maybe burnout), I had still some energy and feeling happy making research. But now I had arrived at a point that I have started giving a deadline for this situation (December 2019), and if this does not change, start looking for something else outside academia.

What do you recommend to do? I have considered to talk with some senior professor here, and even to quit this administrative duty, but the thing that worries me more is that nowadays I have lost the passion I had for research that make me sense to stay at the university.


texts:
I am doing some economic estimates of natural resources which require to develop some models. To construct the models, I had to aggregate data from the literature, which are represented in 3 different tables (3 pages). I have 2 other tables where I present general statistics (median, average, SD, min, and max) of these data (2 pages). The median and SD are important for the model development.

Should I includes the 3 tables of data either (1) in the text, (2) in the appendix, or (3) as supplementary data that will certainly be available online from the journal's website?


texts: How to respond to a professor who was insulted by an email detailing mistakes in the exercise?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student. Preparing the solution to an exercise regarding computer assembly language programming I discovered an error in the program skeleton that was given to us to base our solution on (one of the instructions was illegal, because its immediate operand was outside the permitted range).

I sent an email to the professor's address for "questions and clarifications" regarding the exercise, explaining in detail (about 5 paragraphs) and citing a textbook, why the skeleton program would not compile (assemble) and finally commenting that it seems surprising that this error would make it to the question text, since simply running the assembler on the skeleton program would reveal it.

I got the reply that indeed there was an error in the program skeleton but it was put there on purpose and one of the objectives of the exercise was to see if we (students) would spot it and correct it.

There was no mention of this in the question text. The exact wording of the question text was "complete the program below so that it performs the desired function".

Now the professor wants me to apologize because my comment implied that there was carelessness on their part. I am not convinced about their answer, and worse, even if I were convinced, I believe deliberately misleading the student to be worse than simply being careless. I cannot give an honest apology. What should I reply, if anything?


texts:
One of my friend has a 2-years gap after completing his PhD in 2014, gap due to personal reasons, family-one mainly.

He is now trying to get a postdoc position in electro-engineering.
To me, this two-year gap is hard to justify as he has not produced any relevant papers, nor really gained much sought skills as he had to take care of his family.

I'm not familiar with academia but I'm familiar with recruitment in tech. I advised him to find an angle where he can put his two-years gap in a way that would work for him, instead of letting this 2-years gap being an hindrance.

My question is the following:

  Except to be involved in side projects or do side researchs that he can put on a cv, to help him find a postdoc, are there any other things he can do to make his cv better and make this 2-years hiatus less visible?

Many thanks for your feedback


texts: Saying no to student requests for excessive appointments and help solving homework

texts:
I am relatively new to teaching University undergraduate classes in mathematics. One of the harder things I've had to do is to say 'no'. To somehow respectfully deny a student what they're asking for.

For example, very recently, a student has been demanding too many appointments outside of office hours and during these appointments, the student asks me to solve various questions for them and also almost entirely help them on their homework. As their instructor, I am certain that the student isn't actually understanding anything, but is rather making me do their homework.

My question is, how do I tell them that their homework is not meant for me? Another question I have is, I feel like making compromises on my research time and family life to spend doing a student's homework doesn't seem like the best use of my time. So am I required to meet them outside of office hours? Or is it frowned upon if an instructor says no to meet outside of office hours?


texts:
I know peer-reviewing research papers is a lot of work, but it is something that as a scientist in academia you must do. However, you are not required to become an editor of a journal. It seems to be tons of work, and I am trying to understand what people gain from it and whether it is worth the effort.

I mean, I can understand how being an editor for Science or Cell would be helpful in terms of prestige, connections, and exposure to top science, but what about for lesser known journals? And how is that integrated with research and other duties?


texts: Publishing expanded supplementary information as separate paper

texts:
I contributed to a paper to a journal in the life sciences. The paper contains a lot of field-specific theory, but the main point relies on a result obtained through some new inference method that I worked out. Since the method was not the focus of the paper, I described it in a terse, but pretty general, supplement to the paper. The code implementation was not included.

We think this method and its implementation are of a general interest to the community, and would like to submit a separate second paper which will expand on the supplement, and provide new sample applications. In principle, there would be a lot of overlap: identical text in the derivations, similar notes, etc. Is this plagiarism? And generally, at what point would it cease being plagiarism? Obviously tacking on an introduction and a conclusion would not be okay (or would it?), but what about past that?

A related question is this: New paper which is very similar, but subtly different, from previous paper. However, the difference in my situation is that I won't be making any big additional theoretical contributions.


texts: On choosing a license for software in academia

texts:
In my university, professors in Computer Science decide by themselves the licenses for the code of their research group. This happens without consulting the university legal team (or the university, more generally). As an undergrad researcher, this strikes me as incredibly odd.
I have the following questions:

Is this common practice?
Is this good practice?
How should a situation like this be handled?

Is it reasonable to expect the software only to be published only if the contributors that did most of the work agree on it?
The software may or may not have economic value. Is it reasonable to expect the professor to consult if he is allowed to distribute it under open-source licenses?

For more specific context, I have checked the percentages of ownership on patents. It turns out research Groups get <10% of the ownership. My university doesn't have any special rules for software.
I have no interest in my possible ownership of this software. However, it worries me that my group director is able to make this decision on his own.


texts: Is there a self-consistent citation system?

texts:
I study undergraduate philosophy. My school of philosophy allows its students to use whichever citation style they prefer to use. I've used a few different styles; however, I haven't yet found a methodical one.

I'd prefer to use a style enables the user to derive the formatting for any given type of reference (e.g. a website, or a paragraph from a printed publication of a compilation of translated public-domain articles) from a set of just a few rules.

Do you know of a system like that?


texts: What to do if I found out the preprint paper missed a citation of others' work?

texts:
I recently found out my preprint paper (to be published in a journal) that missed a citation of others' work, the paper is just published online in IEEE Xplore? The sentences are rephrased, however, I forgot to give credit notice within the texts. I feel very badly about it. I know this is a plagiarism. I do not want to find the excuse for myself. I want to remedy it before I cannot. What should I do it now?

The paper I should cite is in the reference list of the bibliography. I did not cite it within the texts.


texts:
While using Researchgate platform for a while, I could not understand how the change of the RG score is carried out. For example, after my first paper RG=1. Afterwards, it became 0.99. Then, after the second paper, RG=1.13. Few days after it became 1.12.
Do you have any idea how this change is carried out? What is the issue behind the score decrease?


texts: Why does Google Scholar combine my journal paper with its arXiv version only in my profile?

texts:
I authored a journal paper, of which I've also uploaded a version to arXiv. The title and the content of the two versions are same, only the layout is different. In my Google Scholar Citations profile the two versions are "merged" as one paper. But when I perform a search for the paper, or with my name, Google Scholar shows the two versions separately, with separate citation counts (8 for the journal, 2 for the arXiv manuscript).

However, if one looks at my Google Scholar Citations profile, they see only one paper (containing the arXiv manuscript as one version), and with citation count 10. Obviously, this is what I'd want to be seen whenever someone searches for the paper -- the combined citation count, and the possibility to download the arXiv version pdf for free. How can I make Google Scholar present the paper in a search in the same way as it presents it in my profile?


texts: Difference between research paper and scientific paper

texts:
What is the difference between a research paper and a scientific paper? Does the research paper also mean a term paper at the end of your Masters?

I need to present a research paper. So does it mean I need to present a solution to an existing problem or does it mean a summary of various solutions already existing?


texts: What are questions to ask during oncampus visit?

texts: During the campus visit, I meet the faculty members, dean and provost individually and they asks me if I have questions to them. Actually, since I got all answers from the chair, I reply "no, I donot have questions". My question is what should I ask the dean, and provost, and other faculty members?