texts: How to remove the word "we" when discussing results in an academic paper?

texts:
I was given feedback by a reviewer that the article I had submitted shouldn't contain we-type sentences, as they made the article sound less scholarly (yes; I know; it’s a peculiarity of my field).

I want your advice on how to rewrite the following phrases to be more “scholarly” sounding:

  From Table 1 we can infer that …

  In Table 1 we can see that …


texts: How much score in GRE computer science subject test is considered 'good'?

texts:
I'm applying to MS / MS-PhD programs in CS this fall.

I don't have a good GPA (2.86 on a scale of 4). I have experience as a research assistant under a professor and also a couple of good projects.

Right now I'm working as a developer, so I have around 5 months of experience. I have a GRE score of 314 on 340. I'm giving subject test to improve my chances of getting into a grad school. What score can be considered 'good'? I don't have much time to prepare and I am a little rusty on some of the topics, what is the good advice for a crash course for subject test in, say a week or so?


texts:
This R package f.x. states:

"Kurt Hornik [ctb]"

I assume this abbreviation is coming from academic publishing - hence why I ask it here.


texts: Handling possibly unethical disclosures in letter of recommendation

texts:
While reviewing applicants for a position, I noticed a disclosure in a letter of recommendation that is potentially unethical. I'm sure this happens from time to time - something like "Jane Doe's contributions are especially impressive because her husband is constantly busy working at a hedge fund and she has small three children, two of whom have cystic fibrosis". On the one hand, that does put her work in context and make it more impressive in some respects. However, if there are no hedge funds near my university or the local medical system isn't well developed to treat such a complicated condition, it'd be hard not to let that disclosure influence my or my department's thinking. Sometimes these disclosures are intentional, but I don't believe the one I noticed (which is not the scenario outlined above) is.
My first reaction is that I should take the disclosure as a positive if it is in fact a positive (maybe we have lots of hedge funds nearby and a cystic fibrosis research center, so Jane would consider stooping down to our department's level!) and try to ignore it if it is a negative. On the other hand, perhaps it would be best to check directly with the writer and ask what they intended by making a disclosure. If the disclosure is unintentional, this gives the writer a chance to update their letter.
Clearly, the approach taken should vary depending on the details of the case, but are there other options I'm not considering?


texts: What are the conventions for indicating programming variables within text?

texts:
From my thesis:

  In this method, the get_config_value function is used that is defined within the PyWPS API.

How should I format the "get_config_value" variable?

It should be formatted differently than the rest of the text, but I don't know what the conventions are.  Using italic or bold fonts doesn't look right to me.


texts: Why do we write a "threat to validity" section?

texts:
I don’t understand this section in research papers. What is its purpose?
I am working on a paper. I see some potential limitations and think that my method may or may not work well on some other platforms. Should I put this in my threat to validity section?


texts: How to prevent papers from being published in advance by others?

texts:
I have a new idea, and the experimental results are also good. But my mentor does not allow me to publish it yet. But I am worried that the idea will be robbed by others. So is there any way to not publish it now, but I will take advantage of this idea first？
I am a computer major, and I mainly publish conference papers. If I upload the paper to arxiv, will others not be able to use the same idea as me?
If I upload it to arxiv, many people will have seen this paper. When I submit this paper again after a year, will it be because it is a previous one, and everyone has seen it, so it won’t be accepted.


texts: How can I improve my chances of receiving PhD funding (UK, Anthropology)?

texts:
I have been accepted to UCL and Oxford for a PhD in anthropology, however I have not been offered funding for either position. I am considering reapplying next year and I would like to know how I can improve my chances of securing funding. I already have experience as a research assistant for my MSc supervisor, and she has acknowledged me in a recent paper. I have also presented at a conference, though I have not published the paper. Would publications improve my chances, even if not in top tier journals? What other things could I do to make my application stand out to funding committees?

I should add that this is my second attempt - I was in the same situation last year when I applied only to Oxford for a PhD, gaining acceptance without funding. I received my MSc from Oxford, with an overall grade of 67 and a distinction in my thesis.


texts:
I recently published a book chapter with my supervisor. I just realized that I messed up two dates in the chapter. For the first one, the original sentence is like "xx policy decisions were published in 2004", but the year should be 2015. Another one "xx policy will be abolished in 2013 ", but it should be 2023.

The chapter is now published online and in hardcopy.

I wonder whether it's necessary to submit a Corrigendum? The book chapter is about reviewing the current literature on a specific topic (not an empirical study). I worry this will affect my reputation.


texts: Should I report an accepted PhD thesis in which the literature review is copied verbatim from sources?

texts:
While writing the literature review for my doctoral dissertation, I picked up a few recent dissertations on similar topics from the library to get some pointers on references and style. As I was reading some of the articles cited in one of these theses, I discovered that this person had lifted large blocks of text from the cited works verbatim. Although the original works were cited, the borrowed text was not presented as a quote, but used directly in the thesis.

I checked a few more, just out of curiosity, and realized that basically the whole literature review by this author (who graduated with a PhD two years ago) was cut-and-paste verbatim quotes strung together (and who knows how much more of the thesis is plagiarized - I only checked this one chapter).

This really ticks me off, as I (and many students like me) spend a great deal of time reworking cited information into proper coherent explanations for our projects. I happen to know the offending author's advisor pretty well, as we currently work together outside of my graduate program.

Should I say something or should I just let this person get away with plagiarizing large parts of their dissertation?

Edit:

I still don't know what I will do about this -- no-one wants to be a tattle-tale, and it really isn't any of my business how other people go about getting their doctorates. However, as I am currently writing my dissertation, it really irks me when I see someone else getting away with this, as I know from experience how much hard work goes into writing a PhD thesis.

I just have one more comment -- I ran the chapter in question through the TurnItIn software, which I have access to as an instructor at my institution. The thesis came back as 52% unoriginal. Turnitin only counts exact matches, so the 52% figure doesn't even include some of the paragraphs that I caught, where the author has changed one or two words but kept the sentence structure.

I doubt that there would be any legal consequences, even if I report the thesis for plagiarism -- it is more a question of academic dishonesty and what steps the institution that awarded the degree would take. I will show it to my advisor and see what he says before I do anything.


texts:
I've noticed that my advisor (non-native) sometimes makes minor spelling/grammatical errors in academic papers. I believe this is due, in part, to the fact that until very recently, nobody in the lab was a native speaker.

Is there a way that I can bring this to my advisor's attention professionally? I would like to also let him know that I'd be happy to proofread any of his papers prior to submission, if he would like. Obviously, I make mistakes as well, so I'm sure I will make similar errors at some point in publications, but I would always want someone to point it out to me.

Edit: I should note that I have no intention of trying to correct his spoken or informal English.


texts: Publication statistics per research company

texts:
Is there any website or other places that give some publication statistics (e.g. number of published papers, number of citations, etc.) per company? Ideally I would like to have those statistics computed for some time period, e.g. for every year.

Note that I am talking about industrial research organizations here, not publishing companies.


texts: What percentage of a professor's salary is paid for by tuition?

texts:
Is it possible to determine what percentage of a tenure track/tenured professor's salary is paid for by tuition? At my UK university, our school budget includes income from student fees (we only get a portion of the fees each student pays), grants, and central university funds (presumably some of this is indirectly from student fees). I am curious if a calculation could be made for STEM departments at US R1 type universities. Presumably some of this information may be available for state schools.

I think the answer I am looking for would be something along the lines of the ratio of the total amount of tuition fees (hopefully divided up into undergraduate and graduate fees) given to the department divided by the total costs of teaching (again, ideally divided up into undergraduate and graduate costs). In other words if a department gets $500,000 from tuition fees and the teaching costs are $1,000,000, then 50% of the teaching costs are paid for by tuition. Teaching costs would have to include space charges, IT charges, printing charges, and the cost of staff time. These all seem to be known, well defined, quantities. An exact estimate of the cost of staff time would require going through each member of staff and prorating the salary by the percentage of time allocated for teaching (e.g., 0% for someone who has bought out his teaching and maybe 40% for someone who has not). Presumably, someone in the university/department has access to these numbers.

This is only a guess as to what an answer will include, but if there is a different (more general) way of getting to the answer, that is fine too.


texts: My undergraduate supervisor is giving me very little help

texts:
I am a  student in my final year of an undergraduate programme. The majority of the credits going towards my degree are weighted on a lab based thesis which is supervised by a very time constrained professor. We are supposed to be working almost all day in the lab under instruction from our supervisor.
However they are always close to an hour late whenever we are supposed to meet. When they do arrive, they are so rushed they say something small to do and give very little explanation and then leave. There is no structure and the majority of the time I am left without work to do.
The thesis is hugely important to me as I would like a career in the field.

I don't know how to approach them. I want to start progressing more with my project but it is difficult trying change thing someone who is partially grading my thesis and I am unsure of the best way to go about this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.


texts: Grants.gov v NIH ASSIST for grant submission

texts: I am writing a training grant--what is the difference between Grants.gov and NIH ASSIST for submission? Is one preferable to another?


texts: How much do grades from beginning of bachelors impact PhD admission?

texts: Do low grades in standard 12 and first year of bachelors (including a few repeats) hamper the admission to a PhD course in Europe if one has a research paper published and a masters degree in relevant discipline with decent grades?


texts: emailing supervisor to ask about application status

texts: I have applied for PhD programme (in Dec 2020) and informed my potential supervisor that I have completed my application. Recently (9 days ago), he asked me if I have received any communication from the institute regarding my application and told me he has not received my application yet. To this, I replied that the Graduate admission office will not answer individual queries regarding application status and I will be receiving emails once the decision has been made (I informed this after making an inquire with the admission office). Also, I had asked him to update me if he has any further updates regarding my application. I have not received any email from the professor after this conversation. The institute has no specific timeline as to when the application decision will be made.  Now, Should I write another email to the professor and ask him if he has received my application? or should I make another inquire in the admission office about my application status by mentioning that the professor had asked me about my application status?


texts: Can I submit my manuscript to a second journal without receiving withdrawal confirmation from the first journal?

texts: it's a month from the submission of a manuscript of mine in a "World Scientific" journal, but its status is still "Editor Invited". I just sent the editor-in-chief a note to ask about the situation because the editor assignment process is unusually getting long. The editor-in-chief did not answer my inquiry, so I am about to withdraw the paper. Let's say (s)he doesn't confirm my withdrawal request. Will I be ethically authorized to submit my manuscript somewhere else considering that I will keep the withdrawal email (in case someone claims that I hadn't withdrawn it before new submission)?


texts: At United States PhD programs, is the research / TA stipend taxed as income tax?

texts: Is the research / TA stipend for PhD students at U.S. universities taxed as income?


texts:
I am doing dual major in mathematics and physics and I want to pursue my future study in theoretical physics, I mean want to do PhD in it.
Although, I am dual majoring but my university provides only single transcript for both major, and I have got good grades (9.4/10) in physics but bad in maths, thus overall grade is 7.8/10.
My question:
While applying for graduate admission, which grade should I put in the application?
The overall grade or physics grade?
Please help.
Thanks


texts:
If I have understood correctly, most people doing their PhDs do their best to avoid any teaching duties while in their programs. However, I think I might want to do some teaching too. Of course, I have a hidden agenda. I would hope that:

Usually, (good) skill to teach is required later on your career, when applying for tenured positions. I would receive good experience.
Giving lectures related to my research topic might get someone interested about it. I could delegate some minor (boring :-) part of my research topic for someone to do as his/her master thesis.

Am I hoping too much here? Any experiences?


texts: How to address "positively" an unemployment gap for a postdoc application in a CV

texts:
I’m planning to apply for a postdoc in Europe but in the eligibility conditions section for this position, it is written that the PhD shouldn’t be obtained more than 3 years ago unless it is a case of serious illness or parental leave.

I obtained my PhD 4 years ago and I had 2 years of unemployment gap. I'm from a developing country and the job market is simply very tough here.

Is there a way to clarify this in a positive way in my CV or cover letter and to apply for the position?


texts: How to learn something by reading a textbook?

texts: I have a huge issue with learning via books. I try to make notes, but I get bugged down copying everything in books. I try to understand sentence by sentence, I fail to do so. And at last, I give up reading books and go and study some handwritten notes of that subject. How are books actually meant to be read.  I am talking about textbook. I have hard time remembering what I read as well. I am talking about computer science textbooks here for reference. Additionally, I can at least learn sth by watching videos, even though I am not really great at it.


texts: Education or employment: What is a post-doc? What is a PhD student?

texts:
I’m afraid this question is mostly opinion-based, but I was wondering if there is any piece of material out there that covers the spectrum of opinions.

What exactly is a post-doc? Is it an education, an employment or something in between? This question is particularly bothering me, since in Sweden post-docs may be financed either through stipends – not paying taxes nor receiving social benefits (remember, in one of the most socially-oriented countries in the world) – or salary. One could argue that, on one hand, post-doc is an education towards becoming an independent researcher, on the other hand, a post-doc is expected to already produce knowledge for the benefit of humanity.

I tend to ask myself the same question about PhD students. Why would PIs bother recruiting PhD students for doing research, if an “army of post-doc-like researchers” would probably be more productive? For example, our university tends to recruit PhD students on H2020 calls which are for research, in addition to H2020 calls targeted for research training.


texts: Research Grant - Difficulty in Obtaining and How?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate student taking psychology.

Although my primary interest is counseling, I also have a strong interest in behavioral psychology - especially as it relates to operant conditioning for combat (I love combat psychology.)

In general, how difficult is it to get a research grant? There's relevant data that hasn't been explored and I'd be interested in doing it.

I imagine being at the undergrad level is a problem, but I'm asking for general information - if I have to wait until I'm in a doctoral program or I've finished it, that's fine.

Also, how would I go about obtaining the grant? We can define what makes me a good candidate, but then where do I go?


texts:
I work in an institute where I am more concerned with Development of systems and solutions rather than actual research, but of course the head is a professor and writing papers is an important task when it comes to productivity.
My ordeal is that I would rather be:

  on the programming, developing side of the research, where I like to give things a try than just writing ideas and concepts

I have however been a second author on a couple of papers; one a demo/poster paper and one for a conference (in the pipeline).

I have been stressing myself because I realize that writing papers isn't my thing but the work that I do is still enjoyable and fun and I would like to continue working as much as possible

Is being a second author most of the times accounts to something similar to publishing things as a first author?


texts: How to deal with the wealth of "help" available for programming assignments?

texts:
I teach programming, and I myself learned mostly self-taught about 30-35 years ago (pre-internet). I learned mostly by thinking things through and trying out alternate solutions. It never occurred to me that students could, or would, just "grep" the solution to many textbook assignments off the 'net. It sometimes seems that they do not make much effort to solve the problem themselves.

Sometimes I see two students's solutions with the same weird anomalies in them and it makes me go, "Hmmm..." It seems that the students who do NOT come up with the obvious best solutions are the ones actually thinking for themselves and not doing "research". In one case I searched on a strange method name and found one and only one hit on the web: a PDF that exactly duplicated the student's submission, including a lot of concepts and methods I have not taught yet.

Is this a problem generally?
How do Instructors deal with the fact that there could be many possible solutions available (most of them flawed) to students who know how to type some words in their browser?

(I have seen this question, and I do not agree and my question is more about how to handle the situation.) The assignments at this point are simple decisions and loops, nothing that requires knowledge of frameworks, etc. Most people should require nothing more than the textbook and my lectures.

Addition: I think the real problem is - now that my naivete is shattered, I have two doubts:

Could anything they hand in potentially have been copied?
Am I teaching effectively?


texts: How will be determined the format of manuscript before submission to journal?

texts:
I would like to submit my paper to a math journal. In the section of instructions for authors there is the following statement which I am confused of its meaning, may you please help me to sort out of that.

  The manuscript should be in final form; once "communicated'', little change will be allowed.

Does it mean that I must write my paper in the final format of journal  before submission?


texts:
I am asking this question on behalf of my brother, in the U.S.

Yesterday, my brother submitted his application to a Physicians Assistant program, which has a very rigorous application process (not very different from medical school in terms of rigor). However, today he noticed that when he uploaded his resume, the formatting was slightly changed; a few words went from being in all caps to all lower case. Also, he noticed that he had made one small typo.

Would this look really bad and be percieved as carelesness? What should my brother do? As we see it, there are two options. Either do nothing, or send an email to the school explaining the situation (this seems like the best option to us). If the second is indeed best, how should he frame the email to minimize the damage?

Thanks.


texts: I did at least half of the work, I am not cited in the presentations

texts:
For some context, I am enrolled in a PhD in applied mathematics.

There is a recent work where I, my thesis adviser and a friend of his in industry have worked together, with at least half of the work done by me, I even tutored the colleague to help him start at the beginning.

This work got presented by the two of them at different conferences. Each time I wasn't cited at the presentations (except just once when my adviser decided to put my name in the first slide, but the colleague then uploaded an identical version without my name). My adviser still gives me credit whenever he exchanges with attendants or other academics, and yes I got my name on the paper, but two things still bother me:

the colleague never mentions me, he remorselessly talks about the work as being his and my adviser's only (he can't easily get rid of my adviser since he's well known, but at least he can get rid of me and no one would notice), the damage is beyond just talk as he also writes that in his updates to his network;
being a PhD student or not, and even if my name is on the paper, removing it from the presentations is unfair and damaging and just feeds the idea that maybe my name is on the paper just because I did secondary work or scripting/plotting.

This kept happening for a few months now and will keep going if this issue is not addressed as my adviser and his colleague keep submitting the work to future conferences. Some might see me as overreacting but this is impacting me in a lot of ways and the feeling of betrayal is hitting hard, I even stopped working with my adviser's colleague altogether without notice and started pursuing some of my own research goals alone without notifying anyone of my progress.

I just started my PhD half a year ago, so surely I may be lacking experience with regards to these issues of authorship and citation, but is it common practice to assume that a PhD student should just be content with his name being in a paper, but not expect to be cited when the work is presented in conferences, even if he put more than half of all the combined work? What would be the motivation of keeping me out during conferences ? Better to split the cake in two rather than three ? Should I bring this up with my thesis adviser even though the one who is clearly dishonest here is a friend of his?


texts: Should I include a recommendation letter in my MS applications if it is not required?

texts:
I am considering my options for further Master-level studies in Europe (the goal being to improve my PhD application down the line). To summarize, my current transcript is weak, but I may be able to get good recommendations from one or two professors or researchers. This could remove some doubts about my academic abilities, and confirm some past circumstances that explain why I didn't perform better, so I see it as quite crucial in my applications.

One university I am considering states that admissions are based on "past grades, and relevant experience (including work, research, or anything related to the field)" (paraphrasing). Unless I missed some hidden meaning, this excludes recommendation letters.

I imagine that I will be able to provide supporting documents later in the process. Should I then ask for recommendation letters and provide them anyway?

I will of course contact the university directly about this, but I would like to know if there is a more general etiquette for this situation. Do admission officers generally see a good recommendation as positive even if not specifically asked for? Can they on the contrary see it as an attempt to hide other weak points in the application?


texts: How to recover work output from past lab when the head is uncooperative?

texts: I have done a part of my PhD project in the lab that was not in our university and in another city. At the end of my work I produced a mutant enzyme that was necessary to perform another experiment to measure one of its characteristics. but they did not have the facility. So, the head of that lab told me that they would send my samples for the measurement to one  of their collaborator. I left their lab and returned to my city to continue my project. After that, whenever I followed up about the measurement the head of that lab postponed sending the samples to another time. After Six months I have asked him to send my samples to the lab that I introduced him. But,... He did not. It is almost two years but they did not send my samples for the measurement. Once I complained about this issue to him, he replied that whatever produced in his lab "is exclusively him". Is my samples really exclusively him? It was my idea and my work. How can I handle that? Is there any place that we can complain about these kind of issues?


texts: Tips on finding research groups that focus on credit scoring based on alternative data

texts:
Despite conducting a thorough Google search implementing all the tips provided in answers to this question, I still haven't managed to find a single active research group (at a university, or a public research institute) that focuses on credit scoring based on alternative data. (By alternative data I mostly refer to mobile phone data, psychometrics-related data, social network data, digital footprint data etc - virtually anything besides traditional credit history data provided by credit bureaus).

I did manage to find the famous Entrepreneurial Finance lab at Harvard University, however, they don't seem to be active or publishing anymore since they started an extremely successful spin-off company.

There seem to be many startups focusing on alternative data based credit scoring but their technology is of course proprietary and I can't find any relevant papers.

So what I'm looking for is a) tips on how to find relevant research groups given the circumstances outlined above or* b) a name or even better, a list of names of research groups/labs focusing on alternative data based credit scoring. (I'm doing some background reading before officially starting my PhD studies)

inclusive OR

EDIT: After taking into account Flyto's comment I've changed the question title in order to adhere to the policy.


texts: Do grad students in the USA typically have more or less student debt than undergrads?

texts:
A student advocate at my institution recently claimed that grad students have more debt than undergrads. This surprised me, because I would expect that typical grad students are the kind of student that would be able to gather more financial aid (scholarships, awards, fellowships, etc.) during their time as an undergrad than typical undergrads. Furthermore, most PhD students (and many masters students) have their tuition waived while working as a TA/RA, so they accrue little/no additional debt. Of course, this likely varies with field, too: students in STEM are more likely to have institutional funding while law or medical students often have to pay their own way.

While I don't know if the statistic I quoted was comparing undergrads who haven't yet accrued their full measure of debt to grads who have all of their undergrad debt, it begs an interesting question:

Do undergraduate students typically have more student debt than graduate students have, and (broadly) how does this vary with field of study?

The comparison ought to be made after each group graduates from their respective program, since comparing a 1st year undergraduate's debt to a 1st year PhD student's debt clearly would not be helpful.


texts: For graduate admissions, are difficult classes valued over perfect grades?

texts:
I am an undergrad at a top 5 research institution for context, and this is pertaining to math Ph.D. admissions.

I know looking at grades in isolation w.r.t. admissions is a questionable thing to do in the first place, but from an admissions perspective, are difficult classes valued over perfect grades? I guess the example in mind would be, is it better to have a couple of difficult courses + mostly undergrad courses with all As, or a lot of difficult classes but some Bs sprinkled in?


texts: Contacting Professors and Letters of Recommendation

texts: Last week I emailed a professor from my undergrad whom I was close with to say hi and inform her that my undergraduate thesis had been published. I am currently in a master's program and asked her if she would be willing to write me a letter of recommendation for upcoming PhD applications for next Fall (and it is worth noting that she wrote me a letter of recommendation for the program I am currently in). She has yet to reply and having a letter from her would really strengthen my application. Is it in poor taste to resend her an email, or should I move on? Like I said, I would really like to have her letter as part of my applications.


texts: A senior colleague that belittles my contributions, expertise and won't acknowledge a published error that I identified

texts:
I am a PhD student and the most junior person on our small team (me, a lab manager, a statistical analyst, a wet-bench scientist, a senior statistician, and our PI). The statistical analyst has been on this team for over 15 years--we'll call her Emily. Emily trained me in some areas when I started, but I've learned a lot and I have become very independent in the 5 years I’ve been a trainee.

Some Context

Emily and I have been working closely on a project lately.  Because we work so closely, I often ask her for documents related to relevant analyses that she has previously done. I have come to realize that Emily is very error-prone, which I believe our PI already knows. Lately, many of these errors have been discovered when I say something like "that estimate doesn't seem quite right to me" in a lab meeting. I nearly always turn out to be correct and Emily is livid with me for pointing it out. She is typically very defensive and it's very difficult to persuade her to re-check her work. She is dismissive of pretty much everything I say to her directly.

When we went to publish a paper for which I wrote the entire first draft, contributed half of the figures/table, and designed ~90% of the experimental approach, my PI said that Emily and I should be "co-first" author. I agreed because Emily had done ~80% of the experimental work (she wrote most of the code). When my boss made the suggestion that we equally share first-authorship, Emily was so upset that she wasn't the sole first author that she literally screamed in my PI's office about it and then didn't come into lab for 3 days after. These things have set up a poor working relationship between me and Emily.

The Problem

That paper was published, and I'm currently working on several papers that build on those published findings. In working on these new projects, I've discovered an important error that Emily made in the published paper that we are co-first author on.

I made the decision to go to Emily about the error first so that she had a chance to address it with our PI. She denies that there is a mistake and tells me that I'm "too confident about myself" when I say that I'm 100% certain that there is a mistake and lay out all of the evidence that definitively proves it. Unfortunately, I lost my cool a little bit and some of my responses to her were harsh and less-than-professional.

So, I have an email thread that documents Emily's mistake, that I approached her about it directly, and that she actually doesn’t understand what she was doing and therefore denies that the mistake is real; however, we both made some statements that were unprofessional.

The mistake needs to be corrected in order for me to continue with publishing my recent projects (but fortunately does not change the main takeaway of the paper). Emily plans on telling our PI that I’m just a trainee and that I don't know what I'm talking about and that she did not make a mistake (again, I can definitively prove that she did with the email chain). She also has some clout with our PI because she's been there much longer than I have and is more experienced.

How should I proceed?


texts: Should I email a corrected version of my essay to graduate admissions?

texts:
I realized the writing sample I'd submitted for my grad school application (US grad school) had a small mistake that messed up the formatting of the first page. I'd written the authors' contributions in the footnote of the first page, and because of a small formatting problem, half of it had gone to the footnote on the second page and that half includs important information on authors' contribution. (And since it's a writing sample with multiple authors, authors' contribution should be crucial for the admission committee I guess.)

I've already submitted my application and can't make any changes, but there is still couple of days left till the deadline. Should I send the corrected version to the admissions, explain there was a formatting problem, and ask them to replace the old one with the correct one, or would that do more harm than good?


texts: Where can I find information about upcoming special issues in a field of study?

texts: How can I find information about upcoming special issues related to a special field of study? There are good websites for upcoming conferences but I could not find any place to search for special issues.


texts: How to formulate a reminder regarding letter of financial support?

texts:
I have received my admission letter for a graduate program from a Canadian university. However, the letter contains no information about funding. I have already talked to my professor about the availability of funding. I contacted him again more than one month ago and he said that he will send me a letter of financial support. So far he has not sent me said letter. What should I write to ask him again for this letter? Could you please tell me how I can contact him or provide a template email? I am an international student and I need to apply for the visa.
Best,
Nikki


texts: Attend an international conference during PhD? How to know I'm ready (or not) to attend/answer a call for paper?

texts:
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate (1st year). I am still reviewing literature and thinking about the design of my research to begin the empirical part within 4–6 months (social sciences, qualitative research).
There is an international conference organizing different seminars about themes I precisely deal with. Though I still did not start the empirical part, I would like to know if it is of any interest to answer a call for contribution to discuss the theoretical framework I contemplate to build upon?
My supervisor seems not knowing yet that this conference is organized (his research interests are quite far from that of the conference). I fear it might sounds being fiercely ambitious, though I consider this meeting as an opportunity to meet people sharing my research interests/challenging my first assumptions.


texts:
(Too Long; Didnt Read members of academia.stackexchange, read the text in bold only)
I am a PhD student in one of the Hong Kong Universities. For those that do not follow news, Hong Kong has been through turbulent social and political changes for more than a year now. As it happens, these changes correlate with ever increasing pressure on me through-out the last year.
To the best of my knowledge, I have not associated myself with any political stand, nor showed support for either side. Despite my non-involvement, there are situations where I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, since the university was directly affected by the unrests and people have noticed (supervisor, other PhDs).
Also, to the best of my knowledge, I am not involved in academic sins, such as improper communication (quarrels with supervisor, other PhDs, technical staff, department leader, department staff), academic dishonesty (faking progress/results/documents) or similar. Further, I can truthfully say that I do not have conflicts with people around me in general, nor family, friends, and especially in academia I keep my opinions down, since it is a very small place. Further, I am not unproductive, lazy or stupid, but I have several publications as the first author (conferences and journals, that are relevant to my field).
In summary, I do not think I am a problematic PhD or evil person, and I believe there is a cause to the issues described below, that is external to my doing (it is not caused by my wrong doing, but I do not speculate as to what exactly it can be).

Situation now: I feel I am actively being pushed-out of the university. I do not have support from my supervisor, neither material/financial, nor on personal level. The supervisor kicked me out of PhD groups used to share information. Further, my forms do not get processed at the department level (no one is willing to provide signature, even if the form is rejected). I was directly told not to contact anyone (Professors) /  cooperate with anyone (Companies).
There are other unflattering situations which I will not list, to keep identity secret. But all of this correlate with the unrests. Before October 2019, my progress and relation with supervisor, staff and PhDs was normal.
From comments: I pointed out correlation and I am not here to judge causation or specific relations among academia and politics. I can add that my supervisor lost a (non-specified due to anonymity) position, which s/he didnt take lightly. This also correlates with the unrests as it happened right after the main wave.

My view: I think I have formally proven myself as a researcher/PhD. I have produced and published relevant work. And as such, I should technically finish my PhD by the summer 2021. But considering the current situation, this is unlikely. Further, the ranking of the university is not bad, neither the impact factor of my publications.
Can I resolve this situation, such that I receive the PhD degree (somewhere else)? If I reach to someone, how do I describe my situation? Can I address the political pressure in front of other professors from unaffected regions, if enquiring about potential solution/help/opinion?
P.S.
This is not a dispute with single person (supervisor or other). The department leader is not impartial. There is no third-party committee (the supervisor is at the top of everything, no relevant co-supervisors or other staff). I am willing to relocate myself to Europe, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan. I do not want to start again, technically there is no reason.


texts: If I use an auto-grading script and allow students to see their would-be grade based on the auto-grader, is it wrong to change their grades after the due date if I decide to change the auto-grader? I'm curious what others think because on the one hand students could go back and change their submissions as many times as they liked prior to the deadline, and many students took advantage of this to do as well as possible. Now that I've changed the script many students now have a zero (including a few who previously scored perfectly). On the other hand, the issue that these students had was a result of not following an instruction I gave out, which I overlooked while writing the original auto-grader. So is it wrong to change the grades or am I justified?


texts: How to read papers without falling into a rabbit hole?

texts:
Often while reading a paper, I will see a citation that that seems more relevant than my current one. I'll switch to the new paper, only to experience a similar feeling. Or maybe I need to look something up on Wikipedia. An hour later, I'll still feel as if I didn't really digest anything. I will have skimmed 2-4 papers' introductions and conclusions, scratched some notes on the side, and generally feel overwhelmed.

Is this a bad habit? An abnormal feeling? How have others dealt with this to become more productive readers?

I'm fairly new to research, if that matters.


texts:
I was quite curious about doing neuroscience so I reached out to a prof in my institution (IIT-K), who suggested me an online course on the same (MCB80). I have audit the course and am following it through, but recently I was wondering that apart from the knowledge gained, will I have any proof that I did audit this course and I have sufficient amount of knowledge about the course? Will I be able to use evidence of my audit (screenshots) as an evidence of completing the course? How am I expected to communicate with any one else that I have done this course properly?

This is an issue because purchasing the entire course on the edX site is not possible for me as I do not have the required financial support.


texts: What do professors do if they receive a complaint about incompetence of a teaching assistant?

texts:
If a professor is teaching a course with a significant number of students.
My university randomly assigns teaching assistants (TAs) to courses. For example, I was given the assistantship of an advanced hardware course when I was only a freshman.
The TA assigned to the mentioned course has no knowledge about the course topic.
Thus, he is making a lot of mistakes here and there.
What happens if a student complains to the professor about the TA doing a poor job?


texts: How should I introduce myself (a graduate student) at a conference?

texts:
I am a fifth year pure mathematics graduate student; I'm currently on the academic job market. I'm traveling to a few conferences this semester and I believe that I should take this opportunity to meet and talk to people from different universities. I don't find it particularly easy to strike up conversations with relative strangers (while I have some skill at this in 'real-life', the added pressure of 'Oh my God this is a person who wrote a seminal paper in my field' is somewhat nerve-wracking)

  What is the best way to introduce oneself as a graduate student to senior members of one's academic community?

I've considered the following:

Hello, my name is X, I'm student of Y at University Z
Hello, my name is X, I work on ABC
Hello, my name is X, it's great to meet you, I really enjoyed/am currently reading your paper on DEF [[assuming of course that this is true]]


texts: Should I be truthful about graduate school rejections?

texts:
Suppose a student applies to a few good graduate programmes, but for some reasons, gains an admit in one great school and rejects in a couple of equally good ones. How necessary is it for the student to be truthful about his rejects? There are a couple of circumstances that arise here:

The student is invited to an interview at a school, where he is asked about his applications and decisions. Is it okay to lie that the results are pending? Or that he has been offered admits at a couple of places? It is likely that the student will face a dilemma if he feels the other decisions may affect this one as well.
Is it vital to be truthful at the graduate school you have joined? Is there any mutual communication between administrative sections of all top colleges, which may leave bluffing in bad taste?


texts: Conference vs Congress vs Symposium vs Meeting

texts:
What is the distinction between the following scientific events:

conference,
congress,
symposium,
meeting?

While I have some idea about differences (e.g. congress - large and serious, meeting - by a certain organization, ...) I have an impression that sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.

Is it safe to assume that the three later are variants of a scientific conference?


texts: How reliable are QS Top Universities rankings?

texts:
I was told that universities in USA are generally better that the ones in Italy. I will take the undergraduate degree this July, and I need to decide whether to continue my studies in Italy or to move to the USA.

This site reports the world ranking for computer science & information systems, and Politecnico di Milano is ranked 48th.

I'll not be able to afford an university with high tuitions like MIT (let's say 15,000 $ per year maximum), also since I may have not the prerequisites to join high selective universities, if I move to the USA I'd choose a university that is ranked below or almost as Politecnico di Milano. So the indecision: it is still worth to move to the USA? Do you think that the rankings are reliable?


texts: Is it normal to "extract a paper" from a master thesis?

texts: I have finished my master thesis and now a couple of colleagues who were involved (one of which was the supervisor) are interested in "extracting a paper" from it. We have already written one paper on a topic covered in the thesis, but in a bit more detail. I am worried that this would be considered self-plagiarism since I have already done the thesis and am only really summarizing one part of the thesis.


texts: How can I obfuscate my writing style when I review papers?

texts: Does anyone have any good advice for obfuscating one's writing style when reviewing papers?  I have a fear that I would inadvertently use the same turn of phrase in a referee report as in some published work, thus revealing my identity, and I'm curious if there is a good general practice to follow to mitigate this as much as possible.


texts: Four papers accepted for publication however not published due to some monetary issues?

texts:
I have successfully got my papers accepted in different journals. However, due to some money issues, I couldn't get them published. Now I have my final project presentations.

Will it hold value for me? I have slogged day in and out to accomplish this, but money constraints have shattered everything.

How do I manage my presentation in such a scenario?

EDIT : I do have all the email conversations and acceptance notifications and  do have the feedback as well.


texts: How do I limit results on a Pubmed search to original research only?

texts:
When I search on Pubmed for research articles, often most of what comes up are reviews of some sort. I'd like to limit my results to original research articles only. I see options to limit my search to reviews or meta-analysis, but that's what I don't want.
Is there any option on Pubmed to narrow the results to just original research?


texts: If a journal not indexed in SCI nor in EI, is it worth publishing in?

texts: After looking up the journal name (Journal for Internet Technology and Secured Transaction (JITST)), I discovered this journal was not listed in either the SCI or EI indexes.  Is this journal worth publishing in? More generally, how do I judge journals that are not indexed?


texts: How can I enter into the mathematics field at the graduate level when I only took a few math courses as an undergrad?

texts:
Background
I was ignorant as an undergraduate and didn't focus heavily in any specific area. I finally graduated with a single math/computer science degree that consisted of 5 math classes beyond multivariable calculus and a few relatively basic computer science classes (algorithm analysis, SQL database design, etc.). My only research experience is in economics.
Now, I work at a research institution in economics where I primarily write Stata/MATLAB code.
Question
I'd like to get more mathematics under my belt over the next few years in order to either enroll in a PhD program in economics/finance or a M.S. program in finance. What are my options for getting more math experience that I can use in graduate school admissions?
Options
These are the options I thought of so far, but I would like to know more if possible.

Study enough courses through a system like Open CourseWare to gain enough experience to enroll in more advanced undergraduate classes part time, which my employer might pay for, and then ideally move into an M.S. program in applied math.

Return to my alma mater for a M.S. degree in math that would at least give me a basis to either move into another math graduate program with higher rankings or a lower-ranked graduate program in the fields of my choice.

Join the Air Force and hopefully take advantage of the GI bill to take more courses somewhere and gain entrance into an M.S. program in applied math.

(Sadly) Forgo advanced mathematics and find a consulting job, which although unpleasant in the field of economics (in my opinion), wouldn't be difficult to obtain given my research background in the field.

Do I have any other options? I also plan to take the GRE subject test in mathematics to prove that I have at least minimal knowledge, regardless of what course I pursue (since many graduate programs will require it).


texts: Can I use tools in beta version in my research?

texts:
In my actual research work, I need some functionality that is not supported natively by any existing solid tools. So I have two choices: rather I implement this functionality my self, or I use an emerging tool which is in beta version.
So, can this have a negative impact on the acceptance of my results by the research community? (I mean when I publish it in a scientific paper)


texts: How can a Master degree lead to 300 ECTS?

texts:
http://emjd-dc.eu/files/2011/11/emjd-dc.pdf

Here, one of the admission requirements is, A Master's degree corresponding to 300 ECTS.

How is that possible?

A Masters degree is at most of 2 years. 2 years = 4 semesters.

1 semester = 5 courses = 5 * 6 = 30 ECTS.

Then, 4 semesters = 30 * 4 = 120 ECTS.

Where does 300 ECTS come from?


texts: Avoiding the double effort of academic research and marketable job skills as a math PhD

texts:
For context, I'm entering a mathematics PhD program that offers several different areas of specialization, mathematical computer science (MCS), pure maths, statistics, and more. My undergrad was in pure maths, so I feel most comfortable there, but I'm also interested in MCS, although I'm essentially a stranger there, other than a course on graph theory and a chapter of Algorithms. I'm trying to decide which track to put myself on while considering job prospects after school.
After reading several posts about job prospects for a pure maths PhD here, here, and here, I've noticed a few places where you can go with your PhD.

Academia, with a notoriously tight job market, but where you get to continue doing enjoyable research, possibly gain tenure and basically continue the freedom from the same "business" demands that industry would have. I'm not sure I have the mettle to make it here, so the next options feel safer.
Industry, where your skills will probably be underutilized, or even totally irrelevant, meaning you will have to learn entirely new skills -- programming, statistics, etc -- that you're perfectly capable of learning but haven't been directly taught in your PhD studies. These are jobs like actuaries, software engineers, etc.
Industry Research, rare in between opportunities where research is restricted to what the company needs, but is still relatively open and free. Places like Google and Facebook labs.

There is obvious tension between the first two because a PhD is an academic, not professional, credential. It's simply not optimized to land you into option 2. If you're interested in options 2 or 3, the advice is that you should learn programming or something else on the side and use that to get your first job, and essentially leave the learning in your dissertation behind. This seems like an enormous waste to me. The effort and time spent learning esoteric pure math is essentially for fun (admittedly, a lot of fun), while you are still left to develop marketable job skills on your own.
So my question is: how can I choose my academic track/thesis topic minimize doubling my work? Am I merely butting my head against an intrinsic problem of academic vs professional credential? Should I see the PhD instead as an magical time to enjoy learning math, which will end but leave me mentally strong to tackle other, very different challenges? Perhaps instead it is merely an incubator, where I'm supported while developing a variety of skills not directly involved in the program?
Edit: Thank you for your responses. They're very helpful on a soul searching level and definitely respond to my question, but they weren't exactly what I was looking for.
I should have phrased it like this: What kinds of concrete choices -- courses, advisors, areas of mathematics, etc -- can I make while doing a PhD to maximize its' value after graduating?
For example, is MCS a better choice in terms of applicability outside of academia? Should I consider where a professor's students go after graduating when considering them as an advisor? Am I just worrying too much, and I should just find a problem I love so much that I think about it in the shower? What else am I missing?
Thank you again for your help.


texts: What are the main factors that mean Humanities PhDs get published as books?

texts:
In both this comment and this answer it is conveyed that it is often the case in the humanities, that PhD thesis are viewed as a first draft of a book and are often published. There are probably a number of factors that have led to this view.

I'm interested in a number of issues. First of all, is there hard data that shows how many PhDs by discipline get published as a book?

I have no knowledge of the publishing process but it would be interesting to know in this case where the driving factors are. Does the student themselves seek to publish or does their supervisor/committee/department inform the student that they think their material could be a book. Do the publishing companies actively seek material to publish or expect the author to approach them. Are there other factors unique to the Humanities that mean the book is a preferred publishing route?

So to round up, what are the main factors that mean Humanities PhDs appear to often get published as book?


texts: My personal views and my research work kind of collide. What can I do?

texts:
Climate change and mass extinctions are happening, so in my private life, I try to be as sustainable as possible. For example, I eat almost exclusively organic vegetarian food, I have no car, buy most stuff used, have a renewable energy contract and avoid flying (especially intercontinentally).
But when I look at my professional life, it is a different story: I am doing my PhD at an institute, working on a side branch of microelectronics. Our institute reportedly uses the amount of electricity in a year that is comparable to a city of 25,000 people. While certainly a lot of what we are developing might end up being useful, other developments aren't leaving the prototype stage once a project is finished. We produce a huge amount of electronic waste on the way to success and other not very sustainable stuff is happening along the way, too.
My dilemma is that I really enjoy working there. I love my colleagues, my supervisor is great, the work is challenging, but extremely interesting. I have a lot of freedom and support, and a good career outlook. And: I am really good at what I do. I published papers and I built a great network.
But on the other hand, I really question the need to integrate electronics everywhere. I cannot really stand behind a lot of what I/we do and the unsustainable practices in our industry. To make matters worse, we even sometimes work on projects for the military — which goes totally against my political beliefs — but the projects themselves are interesting and fun to research.
I am really torn between what my personal beliefs are and what I do at my work / during my research. I try to convince myself that what I do is ok because it is better to have critical people working on a topic, that aren't afraid to question the necessity of new developments, than just the ones who blindly think everything is great. But this sometimes feels like I am gaslighting myself into thinking that what I do is great, even though I know in my heart that it is (kind of) wrong.
What are strategies to deal with this, apart from changing careers (because that train has kind of left the station)?


texts: How to put website links in "Used literature" slide of the presentation?

texts:
I'm preparing a presentation for my class. Last slide should be the list of resources I've used for the material, e.g.

  Sherwani N., Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 2002, -C.1, -P.1-15

I've also used some Wikipedia material. How should I write it? Like this?

  Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_design_(electronics)


texts: Should I attend a conference even if I don't have a paper accepted there

texts:
Attending conferences is considered one of the perks of working in academia, for a variety of very good reasons:

networking, meeting new people
cutting edge research results and new directions
advertise your own research (while networking)
(often) nice venues

In some domains, such as computer science, conferences are (becoming) the main exchange site of top work. In some other domains, conferences are considered entertainment. Next to this quality ambiguity, there are some downsides:

travel costs can weigh on budgets of smaller research groups
conference papers more likely to be dismissed by hiring committees than journal papers

A consequence of the first downside is that many groups only allow researchers to attend conferences if they have accepted talks/papers, which is difficult in top venues. A consequence of the second downside is that some researchers prefer to submit top work to top journals rather than top conferences.

I do consider the second con relevant to the question, as this is one of the reasons for ending up wanting to attend conferences without having any accepted papers.

Given the ups and downs, I would like to assess the importance of attending top conferences (even without accepted talks/papers) for both individual researchers as well as their research groups.

My field is machine learning, but answers concerning other fields are more than welcome.


texts: Could I ask an employee of my company's client for a recommendation letter ? Will it violate any company policy?

texts:
I will be applying to Graduate schools for Fall 2019, so far I have given my GRE and will be planning to give again, I work full time as a Team Lead at a software company and am planning to resign if I get an admit into a good school.

Now my undergrad CGPA is not very good as I had health problems and I will be probably mentioning this in my SOP.

The thing is that the company I work at has a contract with a very huge software company, lets call this company BIM (name changed) and I work for this company as a contractor but involved fully in software programming and development. The people I work with at BIM are scientists and practically the rightest kind of people to write Letters of recommendation if you want to get into a good college especially to offset the low CGPA. My work experience will probably also help with this but LOR's from scientists is a big deal.

My manager is alright with approaching them for requesting LOR's for the application process, my Project Manager is not. Apparently he believes it will create a "chaos" and probably thinks it would make the clients uneasy (the BIM people I work with might feel uneasy since I am handling a major project)

Now, I spoke to HR whether it is against company policy and waiting for her to reply. Nevertheless I am thinking of going ahead and requesting the BIM clients directly for an LOR since I dont think in anyway that it is a violation of any policy just to ask for an LOR.

What do I do ?


texts: How do I refer to my PhD studies in my CV; under education or experience?

texts:
I am currently updating my CV before applying for postdoc positions (and grants) and got a bit puzzled about a small but possibly important detail.

The chapters I have on my CV are Education, Experience, Extracurricular/Voluntary Work and Publications. While I am not forced to keep this structure, I find it very logical and rather neat, so unless there is a good reason to do so I will probably keep the structure.

Now, to the question, I am not sure if I should include my PhD years under education or under experience. Not sure if it's the same elsewhere but over here in Sweden, the years as PhD student counts as both education and full-time employment. I think there are points to both sides of the coin.

The work I have done as a PhD student is quite relevant for the type of stuff I will be applying to hence an argument for listing under work experience. Besides I am not too happy about the last entry in my "Experience" section to be from 4 years ago, as it stands looks a bit like I am "fresh off the school".

Is there a generally accepted way to tackle that?


texts: Why are our responsibilities and duties centralized instead of more evenly distributed?

texts:
I understand that academia is a very competitive place where motivated people are always trying to get ahead of the others. What I have noticed is that few famous/known/recognized people tend to commit to more and more duties, some of them unpaid, to the point that they have very limited time to perform  some of these duties.

For example head of departments are also main editors of famous journals, may be a member of an international panel, on top of all the other duties. Then what I read and hear is that we are overworked, but it seems that many duties which bring prestige but involve a fair amount of work are centralized.

Because people tend to say "yes" then why is not all this work more evenly distributed? It seems that this would benefit more people and make the system less cluttered. I am referring for example to journal editors, or having 50 phd/post-docs and not being able to properly supervise any of them, etc.


texts: How can I know if there is any journal interested in my proposed topic?

texts:
After doing research for a while, I figured out a topic (1) that nobody has done it before (2) and I think It's pretty cool and valuable (3) to the community in my field. So, I proposed the idea to my professor with some drafts. But, my professor told me to find out if there is any interest in the topic in the publishing industry (journals) If no one cares about that It's not worth it.

It's like I created a paradox. How can I find out the interests in the topic if nobody has done it before?

If you guys have any ideas or tips that can help me I would be really appreciated!

Thanks

(1) I'm working on Fault Management Framework for Network Function Virtualization.

(2) I cannot find any relevant paper that employs it. They're mostly about Fault Management for SDN or cloud or on a specific problem whereas I want to design a complete solution.

(3) I think it is valuable because It will save time for the deployer/implementor by including all the best practices.

There'are several reasons why this question is different than the one at How to select a journal for publishing? because of:

It's not about selecting a journal to publish, It's about whether the journals are interested in my topic. I've already known which ones I want to publish to. It's just that I'm not sure if they're interested in my idea.
The question in which mine was marked as duplicated with is much broader than mine I think.


texts: How to deal with "too descriptive" comment in dissertation proposal feedback?

texts:
I am writing a University Dissertation proposal on Big Data. I have recently received my feedback and while there are good, constructive points one of the main issues in the marking is it is "too descriptive". I do not understand what this means really, when we are talking about a literature review how can it not be descriptive - you are talking about what has already been found.

The exact feedback is:

  Your literature review is overwhelmingly descriptive in character and its needs more of a critical edge, evaluating the main contributions to the literature. Having a critical edge is essential, if you want to achieve a high mark in the final dissertation.

So the question is: What is descriptive writing and what is critical writing, preferably with examples?


texts:
I'm preparing for a PhD interview and there is one question that I'm not too confident to answer, which is if they asked where do I see myself in 5-10 years or what I plan to do after my PhD.

I know I want to remain in science and do research in molecular biology, so I would do a Post Doc but I'm curious about it because I have heard that there are many levels of it but I'm not too sure what these are. Is there a list of them I could go through and see which suits me most? I'm sorry if this is confusing but I'm a bit clueless about it too.

Also during one of my interviews I was asked about becoming a lab leader. To be honest, right now, I feel that I won't ever be ready for that and I would prefer not becoming a lab leader although it seems like the very final step in the research career. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong but I have seen most lab leaders to be stuck with paperworks, applying for grants etc and they rarely ever work in the lab. My desire is to enjoy doing experiments and I feel that being a lab leader is such a huge responsibility. I kind of wish I could be a Post Doc... forever? Or maybe one day I might feel the need to have my own lab, but how to answer such question without putting yourself at disadvantage?

Many thanks for your help! I know I sounds like a naïve student with all these ideas (which might not be realistic), but because that's exactly what I feel like I am at the moment that I need to know anything relevant about further studies and Post Doc is still such a grey area for me. I know at some point it's all going to be a battle for money...


texts: Deciding between cursive and print handwriting

texts:
I was taught cursive in elementary school but was discouraged from using cursive by an English teacher in in a non English speaking country. At least I took his/her comment that “not many people use cursive these days” as a sign not to use cursive. Later I practiced and adopted a “connected print” style, because I feared there might me legibility issues for standardized tests. In college, naturally I continued the use of connected print. However, this is slow and laborious, so if you use this in handwritten exams, your mind is distracted from thinking about the question.

How can I choose which style to use? Does it depend on the professor? Is there any evidence that professors prefer either style?


texts: How to acknowledge someone beloved in a publication for his/her support in writing the manuscript?

texts:
Is there a way to acknowledge girlfriend/wife or boyfriend/husband for his/her support in editing a Manuscript that got accepted with a great impression? I mean to say that he/she had re-written the manuscript.

One reviewer has commented "English of the manuscript is very clear and is very well written".


texts: How to handle not being credited for research software development in papers?

texts:
I worked for a publicly funded body. Whilst there I designed and developed a number of epidemiological surveillance applications.

I have left the organisation but since then I have noticed that some of my ex-coworkers have started to publish papers based on the data collected by the systems that I designed without crediting myself in the publication (in at least two cases directly referring to my system in the paper).

Since the publications wouldn't be possible without the systems I developed would I have any remit to ask for credit and/or authorship? How is this viewed any different from a co-worker using someone's lab results without credit for their own publication?


texts: My advisor rejects my idea, but claims that the modified version is hers. What should I do?

texts:
I am a junior PhD student in electrical engineering and I need ideas about how to handle my mentor. Whenever I go to her with an idea she rejects it saying it is wrong or not interesting. But after a few months she comes back with a slightly modified version of my earlier idea and takes credit for the full idea. She asks me to do experiments with her version of my idea. Then when we have results, she publishes them in a conference (includes me as an author), but she gives the talk at the conference saying she came up with the idea and I only did experiments.

I don't want to stop working with her because I have been working with her for two years and leaving will set me back by at least one and a half years. Can you suggest how to avoid this?


texts: For a transfer applicant, is it wise to ask the university applied to, not to contact my current one?

texts:
Premise that I'm already an undergraduate at a university, but want to change to a UK university. Call the Current uni, C. Call the university that I'm Applying to, A.

Is it acceptable and reasonable to ask A not to contact C without my permission? I don't look suspicious or weird to A, but I will fret about repercussions from C, dislikes students changing unis during their course, if C learns about my application to A.

I'm completely OK for A to ask me to send A reasonable details about me directly from C or my referee, like grade transcripts, without going through me. Privacy is still kept because my referee already knows and because only the transcript office at C is probably bound by privacy rules. Even then, the transcript office will only know that I've something to do with A, but not what. But I DON'T want A to write C's student office, registrar, departmental office, relevant undergraduate faculty, ... like underneath.

  'Dear C, This is A. Because Frank is applying to A to change subjects, therefore can you please tell us ...? Also, can you please ask Frank to send us ... ?


texts: Why does the IPCC 1.5 degrees report say "Do not quote, cite or distribute" at the bottom of every page?

texts:
I thought I'd have a look at the recent IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees. From wikipedia, the link to the report was given as:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

At that site, there are links to the chapters of the report, and every chapter I've looked at so far has "Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute" at the bottom of every page.

Who is that an instruction to. Me? Why wouldn't the IPCC want people quoting or citing their report?

Is the link on wikipedia to the wrong version?
Have the IPCC published the wrong version?

(Implying here that people granted access to a draft version shouldn't be sharing it)

I've never seen a footer like this before, but I see something similar is recommended here in this question


texts: How to identify a research question as artificial

texts: I recently go through an interview on the basis of my research proposal and the person evaluating me said my research questions are artificial. I want to ask which characteristics make the research question not artificial?


texts: Proposing collaboration to an invited speaker?

texts:
I am organising a conference. This will take place in 6 months time. One of the invited speakers works on a topic that is highly related to my research interests. I would like to propose a specific collaboration to this professor, but I feel that the fact that I invited him to the conference (I am paying for his accommodation, expenses ...) may induce some pressure to accept my invitation to collaborate.

I wonder whether I should just wait after the conference to tell him about this project or if it is OK to tell him now? The reason I want to tell him now is that I would not like to wait for another 6 months to start this project.


texts: How specific should I talk about my papers and projects in my personal statement for grad school?

texts: I am applying for grad school and during my undergraduate studies I have some projects and papers. How detailed should I talk about these projects in my personal statement? Should it be like an abstract or is that even too detailed? Or should I provide only the motivation and results of the project?


texts: Order of authors in an engineering publication

texts:
Recently, I was involved in an engineering research project where I significantly extended the main functionality of the work. As my other team-mates were not involved in that aspect of the project, I thought I would leave them to do the write-up. I don't want to complicate things but lets just say their contribution matters less, at least according to my advisor.

This work is now being readied for publication and there's the matter of ordering the authors. Initially I thought we may be doing things alphabetically, but on the recent draft the order appeared to prioritize those who are doing the write-up, listing them first. My advisor raised no objection to this. If we are going down this road, it seems to me those who have done the most work should be first authors (i.e. me), rather than those who are doing the write-up.

I'd like to avoid any potential conflict with the people involved, and so I wonder if one acceptable compromise here is to specify the contributions of each author in the paper. Alternatively, we can do the alphabetical thing and make explicit mention of this as a footnote. I don't have any problem with either of these options.

First, am I correct in thinking that the ordering here is misplaced?

Second, are the compromises I list reasonable enough to propose?


texts: My supervisor and head of center is doing unethical things and I am in the middle

texts:
Slowly but surely my supervisor's behaviour has escalated. It started from unreasonable, to downright unethical.

My university complies to the Vancouver autrhorship protocol, yet my supervisor/HoC has made his own guidebook regarding who is author and when. Something along the lines of "Student, Actual Contributor, Cosupervisor, Supervisor, Head of Center". Which implies that he is on every single paper. In my papers and in my work in general, though I always inform him and invite his contribution, he never really does anything more than "give comments" which are surprisingly all clustering in introduction and conclusion. When I am finished with my PhD, I need to submit a form for every paper I've published and state which of the coauthors have contributed in which way. This is a direct clash with the University rules.

He also overrules the PhD school, even when he simply cannot. My Mid-PhD evaluation report is now 3 months late, but "who cares, they are super rigid anyway".

There are many examples of how his way of doing things does not comply to actual rules of the institution, and it is putting me in very bad situations both with other authors but more importantly it is impending my progress in my PhD project.

How do I raise these issues with him without being the black sheep that has a problem with the way he does things? It's my impression that the university's rules were put in place for some reason. I've informed the vice-dean of these things and it is being looked into, but in the mean time there are deadlines that I cannot afford to miss - a PhD is a time-constraining thing. Is there any way possible to bring to the table my honest concerns without implying that what he's doing is immoral and incorrect?

After all, I'm a lowly PhD student whose credibility is worth nothing compared to the HoC. I don't want to become a target.


texts: How to avoid competition while giving a talk or presenting a poster?

texts:
I would like to know how people avoid unnecessary competition if they are going to give a talk or present a poster about their work. Of course, presenting our work might hopefully lead to new collaboration and connections, however, it might lead to competition with others if they find the idea behind the work good.
Do you only present your published work? or do you present your work when you are sure it is going to published soon so even if someone else wants to do the same work cannot finish in time?


texts: Why can it take more than a month to find a reviewer?

texts:
In the mainstream publishing model, it can take more than a month from the time a manuscript is submitted to the time reviewers are assigned to review it. I feel this is a bit unfair as editors from these publishers generally require reviewers to submit their recommendation within a month from the time they agree to review. I believe the effort required to review a manuscript is much greater than the effort to find a reviewer.

My question is: Why can it take so long to find a reviewer?


texts: Questions about the process of collaboration in Mathematics

texts: How does the process of collaboration in math work ? Do mathematicians like to share their problems ? Can I do this by e-mail ? How to ask mathematicians if they want to collaborate in a math project ? I'm still learning more advanced math but these are questions I had in mind and didn't know where to ask.


texts: How effective is the website Kudos in terms of spreading the word about one's research?

texts:
The website Kudos offers a service whereby researchers can set up a profile, choose their publications from a database and add a short summary of their content (not the original abstract). How effective is

setting up a profile with Kudos
adding summaries to one's publications

in terms of making one's research better known? Is there any evidence to suggest that it's worth the time?


texts: What does the type of funding mean for the type of research?

texts:
What are the implications of the type of funding, i.e. hard money vs. soft money (institutional vs specific project support) for the type of research it incentivizes?
My hypothesis is that hard money supports basic (rather than applied) research, research autonomy and drifting away from the norms of contemporary research.
I'm looking in particular for answers based on existing studies on the topic. Have there been any attempts to evaluate aspects like these?


texts:
As you might have seen from my history I had a very bad advisor who deliberately underpaid me, stole my research work and undermined my career at multiple phases.

Now I am done with my university and leaving next month. A professor in my department had been very supportive of me during these times, giving me advice on how to handle this situation, gave me recommendation letters to apply for PhD programs at other universities and also got me a internship. I just want to thank her for her help. I usually would have got a champagne or something but I know she doesn't drink alcohol. Any advice?


texts: How many resubmits of my thesis support paper can I expect from my sponsor and readers?

texts: I'm preparing a support thesis paper for an aesthetic creation for my MFA. How may times can I expect my sponsor and readers to send my paper back to me for edits?


texts:
I have written a thesis for my bachelor degree and next week I have to defend it. The problem is that I found some small mistakes (not spelling mistakes, but small mistakes in equations, a wrong number in the abstract and so on) and one or two more significant problems.
Now I want to write an erratum on my thesis that handles six different of these mistakes. Is this too much? I don't want the jury to think that I was sloppy with writing the thesis or that I didn't check it before I handed it in (I did check it numerous of times).

So, is it normal that an erratum contains so much mistakes?


texts: Value of listing OEIS contributions on an academic CV

texts:
The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) is a large online database of number sequences.  It's popular among professional and amateur mathematicians, and its entries are widely cited.  Like Wikipedia, most of its content is authored and edited by the community; no particular qualifications are required to participate, though in my experience most active editors are working mathematicians or scientists.

I've occasionally seen academic CVs which list OEIS contributions among the publications (usually in a separate subsection).  I've also seen CVs of known contributors which make no mention whatsoever of their OEIS contributions.

I was wondering, then, whether listing OEIS contributions is generally a good idea when applying for academic jobs such as post-docs and professorships.  How much weight, if any, do recruiting committees in math and computer science place on OEIS contributions?  Are they viewed as minor professional publications, as non-academic community service, or as unwanted and annoying CV padding?

Related question: Value of contributions to Wikipedia when applying for academic jobs


texts: Distinction between Article writings and Academic writings?

texts: How is writing an article for publications different from writing a thesis or dissertation in terms of ethics and language usage. How does the background to the study look in the case of an article or dissertation?


texts: Is it possible to co-finance a personal grant in Europe if it doesn't meet salary conditions of the country?

texts:
If one obtains a personal postdoc grant to cover a couple years of research as a full-time employee, but the value of the grant is only 60% of the union-stipulated wages in the country in which you wish to tenure it (and additionally does not include social benefits), what alternatives are available?

I can only fathom three choices, none of which seem appealing/feasible:

Decline the grant in favour of working on an existing project that covers full wages. (That seems wasteful and to forego an opportunity to further one's career opportunities as a researcher who attracts external funding.)
Convince the department to co-finance the remaining 40% of the wage as an "income supplement" out of their operational budget (That doesn't seem very likely.)
To obtain another grant from some other funding agency, on short notice, to co-finance the grant. (I'm not even sure that such actions exist, particularly at this time of year.)


texts: Undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate student — is that Bachelor/Master/PhD or Bachelor/Master+PhD/postdoc?

texts:
I received an invitation to nominate students for an award that could be for an undergraduate, a graduate or a post-graduate student. I've seen those terms used before, but never been sure what they mean. I know Bachelor student, Master student, PhD student and post-doc.

The timeline:

Being a Bachelor student → Getting the Bachelor degree → Being a Master student → Getting the Master degree → Being a PhD student → Getting the PhD degree → Being a post-doc → ...

Then what do undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students refer to? Are undergraduate students exclusively students studying to get a Bachelor degree, or can it also refer to students studying to get a Master degree? After all, that's a graduation that they don't have yet. Literally speaking, it could also be "under" the PhD degree, but that's surely never used as such.

And a graduate student, is that then someone studying for the Master degree, er is it used only for people studying for the PhD degree?

But then what is a post-graduate student? Is this a post-doc? But post-docs aren't students anymore, so then it could only refer to PhD students. Or are post-docs considered students, too?


texts: Work with a professor from non-PhD-granting university in the US to earn PhD?

texts:
I'm new on this website and am not sure how much of higher academia works.

Suppose I wanted to work with a professor in a particular field of mathematics at a research university (not necessarily a PhD-granting university) to possibly write a dissertation in that field. Must that university be a PhD-granting university? If not, how would I go about working in a particular field?

I'm currently working on a master's degree in mathematics. I have found that most of the researchers in the field I would like to pursue are employed at non-PhD-granting universities. Does that mean I won't get the chance to pursue research in the field?


texts: Advisor asked for my entire slide presentation so she could give the presentation at an international conference

texts:
First, she never helped me on either my thesis or my slide presentation.
After my presentation (which she did not attend), she asked me "how to present" it to her so she could use it in the international conference.
(I don't want to do that, but I have no choice.)

Then, she asked me to send the whole presentation.
I sent it to her as a PDF file.

Later, she asked me for the "power point presentation" with the script.

I really don't want to give it to her.

What should I do?

P.S. She never gives anybody credit. (She did this before with my senior.)

Update: After reading many comments, I realize that I might be over-reacting. In academic area, it is normal that advisor could use the entire presentation of their student in the conference. (If I am lucky, she will acknowledge me)

I feel so bad about it but I need to accept the reality....

Thank you for all comments.


texts: The book suggested for a class has bad reviews, should I use it or another?

texts:
I 'm at the start of my second semester of college and I don't have any real practical experience with programming, but I have to take a class on OOP that is usually taught to juniors.

My OOP class teacher recommended "C++: How to program" 4th ed. by Deitel & Deitel as a textbook, which is a book with many horrible things written about it on the internet.

He also cited a couple generic manuals: "C++ primer plus" by S. Prata and "Absolute C++" that have cold reviews if any; plus a book on general theory: "Concepts of programming languages".

As an ultimate reference he suggested "The C++ programming language" which should be a very solid title, but seems to be more aimed towards experienced programmers.

I read the list at The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List and I'm really tempted to just pick up a title from it, maybe "C++ Primer" or "Accelerated C++".

Does anyone have any sensible advice about this kind of situation?
Should I try to study from books that are recognized as faulted by all other sources but my teacher?


texts: paper acceptance probability in case of long peer review time for the 1st decision

texts: I have submitted a paper in a physics background journal about eight months ago. However, I have not received any status updated of the paper yet. I sent email several times to the Editor, but I have not received any reply. Five months ago, one of the journal staffs informed that they are waiting for the referees' comments. Does long 1st decision time indicate higher probability of acceptance ?


texts: When do postdoc positions typically start?

texts: Do postdoc positions (joining date) start only in the fall semester or in the spring semester also? I mean, can it start at any time during the year?


texts: How precisely should I implement algorithms from other papers?

texts: When I write a paper comparing my algorithm to someone else's, how should I make sure that the results are not skewed because I implemented the other algorithm poorly? Is it acceptable to write that the other algorithm was implemented to my best knowledge?


texts: Do authors normally check their own papers for plagiarism?

texts:
I was recently asked to review a paper (for a very reputable journal). In the cover letter, it says

"This paper has been checked with turnitin to ensure there is no similarity to other papers."

I haven't seen this before (although I have limited reviewing experience). Is this normal? Or does this indicate something strange about the author?
I've never checked any of my own papers for plagiarism. Should I?
EDIT: Also, why would you mention this in the cover letter?


texts: Alternatives to relying solely on student evaluations of teaching to help administrators more accurately assess teaching effectiveness

texts:
This question is about my attempt to give the administrators at my institution some feedback on how to better help them assess faculty teaching effectiveness.

My institution is soliciting input from faculty on how to improve the way teaching effectiveness is evaluated and assessed at the administrative level (e.g., by department heads, deans, etc.). Currently, as is probably fairly common at many institutions in the US, the administrators at my institution rely mainly on student evaluations of teaching to gauge whether an instructor is effective in the classroom or not.

One of the main problems with having administrators relying solely on student evaluations of teaching to gauge teaching effectiveness is that the average student is not equipped with the necessary skills to adequately assess an instructor's teaching effectiveness. Further, as highlighted in this question, if an instructor wants to boost their student evaluation ratings, one possible way to do that is to lower the standards in the course. The problem with that is, for those instructors who actually care that their students come away from the course with some tangible benefit (e.g., better prepared to move on to the follow-on courses, better prepared to enter the workforce, etc.), lowering standards is obviously not the correct course of action.

What's more, in this question, research is cited which basically concludes that student evaluations of teaching are not accurate tools for assessing an instructor's teaching effectiveness.

While I am a bit skeptical that my institution is really sincere in their claim that they want to improve this situation for faculty, I would nevertheless like to give some good feedback on how the teaching evaluation process can be improved such that the administrators more accurately assess faculty teaching effectiveness.

  Are there any practical alternatives to relying solely on student evaluations of teaching, which are better at giving administrators a more accurate measure of whether a teacher is effective in the classroom?

Note:

I am not asking for how to evaluate my own teaching in the classroom, or even how to improve my teaching.
I am looking for alternatives to student evaluation of teaching that will help the administrators at my institution more accurately gauge faculty teaching effectiveness.

Both personal accounts and research references of better teaching effectiveness assessment alternatives are welcome. If one provides an answer with several alternatives, a listing of the relative upsides and downsides of each would also be very helpful.


texts: Should Figures and Tables follow a certain order or be at a specific location in a document?

texts:
This is a topic I constantly think about when writing a document.

Often after I complete a document in LaTex I would go through the document to make sure that the figures are where I want them to be (I want you here, not there!) and this is a very frustrating procedure.

My question is: How important are figure locations in a document, e.g. if the figure you refer to is not on the page where you are referring to it, perhaps even two pages after.

I have noticed that textbook publishers rarely give any thought to it and I cannot decide whether it bothers me or not. It would certainly make my life easier if I don't have to worry about floats jumping around in a LaTex document.

Any thoughts?


texts: Is it good to buy health insurance for time period between the date of entry into US and the date on which university insurance coverage starts?

texts:
I will be soon joining a PhD program in US on an F-1 student visa. I will be entering US about 20 days before the university academic session starts. The university will be providing health insurance to me, and coverage will start with the academic session itself. So I will not be covered by university insurance for my first 20 days in US. I would like to know if it is a good idea to buy a short term health insurance policy for these first 20 days in US ? Is it very risky to not buy this short-term insurance ? FYI, I do not have any chronic diseases or other things.

Since US healthcare system is very different from everywhere I have been to (some European and Asian countries), I am in utter confusion regarding this whole health insurance stuff. Any answers would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


texts: I am having terrible experiences with my PhD program. I have no feedback and no supervision on anything. I have been working with other people in other departments so that I can get proper training before I graduate. Recently, I realize that if I apply for a post-doc fellowship and stay here, I can actually learn more about these techniques. But I heard from many people that staying in the same university or with the same people that you worked with is not possible. Does anyone have any opinions on this? I have been travelling around throughout my entire university journey. This will be first time that I will be staying in a place for two different positions. Is it still a no?


texts: Find a specific paper on information retrieval method supporting literature research searching not by keywords but by documents

texts:
About 2012, I did a literature research on the following topic but unfortunately lost my results. Specifically one paper comes repeatedly to my mind, therefore maybe someone knows about this or subsequent research.

The research question of that paper was about information retrieval, specifically full text mining of scientific literature to automate literature research.

The researchers built a custom spider/search engine which takes as input not a set of keywords but set of documents.

They described that this approach allowed them to find relevant branches of research they were not aware of.

Which paper was it and/or what is state of the art regarding this topic?


texts: Attaching reprints of published but copyrighted papers with job application

texts:
How wise and legal is it to attach my published but copyrighted papers with my job application or even put up on the personal (academic) website? I see a lot of people posting their papers that I guess are copyrighted. Also many academic job applications ask for reprints of the papers.

May be I am not fully clear with the rules. I would like to be educated on this.

This and this say something regarding posting the manuscript on the website. I may not post my manuscript pdf but assign a link to the publisher's webpage for the paper.
What if my new job application is asking for my papers to be attached?


texts: Which are the most popular cartoons on academia?

texts:
I find self-criticism and irony are strong means to communicate genuinely and involve people who are not necessarily expert in a field.

As cartoons offer a quick yet poignant way to describe how academia works, I am wondering which cartoons on academia are the most popular. I am interested in particular on cartoons which may highlight the true spirit of academic life and academic hierarchy.

A simple Google search for "cartoon academia" yields 580,000 hits, with the first image posted being a New Yorker cartoon by David Sipress. Is such ranking correct?


texts: Is it "pestering" to email a professor for a recommendation after no response the first time?

texts: I talked to a professor about writing a recommendation (sometime before winter break) and he verbally agreed to it, and I sent him the official email request during winter break. He has not responded (I suspect it is because I sent the email during winter break) and out of politeness I didn't put his email down for reference requests without his consent. Is it considered pestering if I send him a follow up email now, restating my request? It has been about 3 weeks, and deadlines are in February and I wish to give at least a month's time to write the rec.


texts: Assuming the rest of your application is solid, is a gre score of 160Q and 155V good enough for a math phd?

texts: I plan on applying to graduate school school soon and I'm confident the rest of my application will be pretty solid. However, I'm worried that a quant score of 160-163 will put me below the other applicants. Most have quant scores of 165+. I could break this, but I have a huge problem of making silly mistakes when under pressure and trying to keep a good pace.