texts: Does IEEE membership have any value whatsoever on the CV?

texts:
Some CS veterans would probably shoot me on sight for questioning its value, but let's face it, you are a member of IEEE if you're paying them a fee every year, and I don't think there's anything else keeping you from entering if you're in CS/EE. I see every single professor writing it on his CV though, and it is beginning to look like a must-have.

Agreed, you get some (limited) access to papers from their library, and a discount for conferences and the rest of the library, but as a student I can't afford to skip classes to go to conferences (and often I can't afford the travel costs either), and I have few things pressuring me to read papers, if any. In fact I haven't come across a subject with so little material on it with public access that I felt I needed access to other papers.

I'm not denying the existence of people that actually use the papers they have access to, but I am confident that a survey would reveal that not even a quarter of the members access the libraries.

To sum up my points:

It only shows that you pay a fee every year
Probably without using anything of what you get for that fee
It just adds a line to your CV that doesn't really say anything about you.

So does it have any value? Do people notice this? Is it worth renting a title and nothing else?

Concerning whether or not it is a duplicate of Should I write IEEE membership on my CV:

That question assumes membership is already active and asks if it is worth mentioning it, however it costs nothing to mention something you already have so the parameters are significantly different. This question questions if it is even worth obtaining the membership, essentially also asking if this (or any) title is worth paying for, given that many others already do so.

Even though some of the answers do make mention of whether it holds any value to those who answered, they do not address if university staff or recruiters pay attention to this, or even how it affects them. One could even see it as renting a title to compensate for lack of other things to write on the resume.


texts: Is it ok for an applied mathematician to research a topic that she has personal experience with?

texts:
Would this idea be too sensitive / too much information / generally a bad idea?

For example, I have a friend who is doing her computational biology PhD at a strong U.S. program, and her main research is about the illness of one of her family members, whom she unfortunately lost recently.

I have also heard of specialist (medical) doctors who got into their field because they suffered from the very illness that they are now trained to diagnose and treat.

For me, at a much lower level, at the MS Thesis level, I have a chance to work with a very well-known applied mathematician, who has joint appointments at our math dept and medical school.  But, I don't have a clue what project I would like to initiate with him, other than about something that I have dealt with personally and medically  -- and this topic could likely be within his research domain.  Of course, I would be naturally very passionate about working in this area.  I am always fascinated, when I see my own team of doctors twice a year to have discussions about my health.

If I could do a mathematical project about my own health issue, do you think that this is ... TMI?  A classic "beginner's mistake" perhaps?  Or, is it pretty common for applied mathematicians to dedicate some (or all) of their research to issues that they are intimately familiar with?

Thanks,


texts: Is it okay to revise the research proposal to a writing sample

texts: I'm applying for an economics Ph.D.in Europe. The program I'm going to apply needs writing samples for application. But I don't have any first-authored English publications. I've finished the research proposal focused on one specific topic. I asked the admission committee if RP is ok for replacing the writing sample, they don't accept RP but the thesis excerpt. Since this RP doesn't conclude empirical results but expected results. I'm wondering can I　revise this RP to a writing sample? If a writing sample must conclude empirical results?


texts:
I am a graduate student in mathematics and I recently found out that I failed my qualify exams.
I have the chance to take them next year. But now I am really concerning my future. The problem is that faculty members explicitly told me they wouldn't supervise students unless they pass the quals. That means I have to waste another year because of the exams. I am concerning that this will place me into big disadvantage compare to other students because they are already doing research (as I observed, almost everybody passed). I also feel embarrassed when the others ask about my results.
I am reading on topics that I like now but I have a hard time adjusting my feelings and can't really concentrate. How should I approach this situation? Any advice will be appreciated.


texts: Publishing Same Research Paper on a National Conference as well as International IEEE conference

texts:
I submitted my final year research paper for a national level conference as well as international level IEEE conference. I was notified that my research paper has been accepted for the national level conference before 2 weeks ago. And I submitted camera ready papers, registered and ready to present the paper next week on the national level conference.

But yesterday I received a mail from IEEE conference by mentioning my paper is accepted for the conference and asked for camera ready papers based on their template.

Is this situation normal? Can I publish my paper on national level conference as well as international level IEEE conference?

Please note that there will be proceedings for both conferences.


texts: Second PhD and conference biographical notes

texts:
I am sending a conference proposal as a Ph.D. student. I am expected to provide a biographical note. I already hold another Ph.D. and I am not sure should I stress it or not in my biographical note.
I was wondering what is the best practice here. Should I focus on what I am doing right now or provide information about my previous work and achievements too?


texts: Is it okay to publish less and teach more during your PhD? (CS USA)

texts:
Background: I read this Quora post where someone mentioned they TA'ed pretty much their entire PhD tenure and took up extra TA spots as well for the same because they really liked teaching. The person only ended up publishing 2 papers (very good ones) during their tenure because maximum amount of their time went in teaching (The person won multiple TA awards and Head TA positions).
Question: Is this something which is frowned upon?
Personally, I really love to teach and would love to devote some of my research time to teaching.


texts: Journal article suggestion website or application

texts:
I'm finishing up my PhD in mathematics at the moment. I like to read journal articles from a wide range of different disciplines, and I wonder if there's some kind of service that might suggest articles that I like based on ones that I've already been reading.
For example, Google Chrome has a feature called 'Discover' built into it, where it suggests different articles that I might like to read.  This is mostly news articles, which I do read and find interesting. Sometimes it picks up on some journal articles, or for example some science journalism articles which link to papers.
Is there a website or app which works similarly to this, but suggests only journal articles or web pages which are discussing journal articles, covering a wide range of disciplines?


texts: Oral Defense for Hearing Impaired Student

texts: Does any one have an experience with a hearing impaired student undertaking an oral defense of graduate thesis? I have a colleague in my graduate program who is profoundly impaired in both ears (to the point that hearing aid is absolutely useless). He would be defending his thesis this coming July or August and concerned that he might be failed if he is unable to communicate well with the examining committee. Does any one have any experience and can advice? My colleague neither signs nor understand sign language. The situation happened recently and he is still trying to adjust. But he speaks quite well and normally, and can talk if asked something he hears and comprehends. And if it helps, the university is in Canada, although I can not find any laws, either Canada's or the University's, dealing with this specific issues. If you are aware of any one who had similar challenges and undertook an oral defense, I will appreciate anything you can share on it. Thanks in advance for your kind response


texts: How hard is it for a graduate from Canada to find an employment in the US?

texts:
I'm an international PhD student currently at a university in the US (F1 visa). My professor is moving to the University of Toronto, and has invited me to move as a part of his research group. While I understand that my decision to move should depend on the advisor and not on the school, the following question bugs me since the school is in Canada.

How easy or difficult is it for an international student in Canada to find an internship or employment after graduation in the US? I'm interested in CS companies such as Google, IBM, Microsoft Research and start-ups in Silicon valley. If its difficult to get work in the US, what are equivalent opportunities in Canada?


texts: Can a research statement contain research interests which are not concrete?

texts:
I am applying for postdoc in physics this year. Every place asks for a statement of research or research plan/proposal for the application procedure. I have been recently following papers on a very interesting topic of research. Although I have no concrete problem/question in mind. I cannot resist myself from mentioning this topic of interest. I was wondering if I can write something like the following in a statement of research :

"I am also very interested in X. I have been closely following the rapid progress in this direction and hope to contribute in recent future."

(I want this part to write at the end of my statement of research but these sentences don't sound nice to me at all!)


texts: As a post-doc, can work on applications of existing methods harm my career prospects?

texts: I'm a first year post doc in bioinformatics and am currently working on an application project based on other's method previously developed in the lab. The application would simply be applying the existing algorithm to a biological problem and validate with experiment data. Since I'm interested in a academia faculty position, would this diminish my chance (potentially due to novelty issues by simply cashing out others work), or should I suggest to my advisor that I would rather work on other project based on my own ideas and develop my own methods? Does application of an existing method counted as novel by the academia? This project is assigned by my current PI and I'm constantly worry that I will be viewed as unoriginal by working on others method. I had to ask because my PI keep me piling up more of these "case studies" recently. I just feel that my PI care more about successful applications of this existing algorithm. If I did a great job on these projects, would this be helpful to me academically? I just want to make sure before I accept more of these cases or maybe talk to my PI so I can work on a novel direction. Thanks for advices/suggestions.


texts: Is it acceptable for a graduate student to use their university email and affiliation in furtherance of a commercial interest?

texts:
I received an email from a graduate student at a well-known university in the UK. The email is a marketing email for a campaign run by a company the writer of the email is affiliated with. The campaign is about something that may possibly be of interest to people in academia, so I bear no ill will to the writer for sending me such an email. However, I have concerns about the way the writer presented him/herself. The email starts roughly as follows:

  Hi [recipient's name],

  I am a PhD student at [name of university] and I am writing to tell you about [the campaign]
  [... long marketing blurb ...]
  [... request that I forward the email to other people.]

and ends roughly with

  Sincerely,

  [writer's name]
  PhD candidate, [name of university]
  [name of department]
  [university-affiliated email address]
  [link to the company's website]

The things about the email that got my attention are:

The writer presents him/herself as a PhD student in the opening and signature of the email.
The email is sent from the writer's university email account.
The email is about a campaign run by a non-university entity (a for-profit operation, to judge from a look at the website linked to at the bottom of the email) that the writer is affiliated with.
The writer does not explicitly explain his/her connection to or affiliation with said entity, except indirectly by saying things like "we believe ..." and "our mission is ...".
In a later short email exchange I had with the writer, (s)he seemed fairly polite and well-intentioned (specifically, I emailed the student to say I will not be forwarding the email to anyone at my department since it is not relevant to them, and (s)he emailed back apologizing for the inconvenience and promising to remove me from the mailing list). So, my impression is that although the details above may may make it sound like this is a very shady and dishonest attempt to create the impression that the campaign is originating from the writer's university, it is possible that using the university email and affiliation was done out of naivety and lack of thought rather than out of an intent to deceive.

My questions are:

Is it acceptable for a graduate student who is involved with a non-university entity to use their university email to send marketing emails for their non-university campaigns?
Is it acceptable for graduate students to send mass-distribution emails of any sort from their university email accounts? Does this violate any standard policies university IT departments have, particularly in the UK?
Is it acceptable for a graduate student who is also involved with a non-university entity to represent themselves as a PhD student in connection with a marketing email that they send out? (Note that this is a separate question than questions 1-2 above; i.e., assume that the email is sent from a private email server but that the writer is mentioning their status as a PhD candidate at a well-known university, e.g., in an attempt to gain credibility. Is this okay?)

To clarify, by "is it acceptable" I mean that I am interested in these questions from several different angles, such as: are such behaviors ethical? Are they legal? Do they violate any standard policies that universities, particularly in the UK, have? Do they violate any cultural norms within academia or the larger professional world? If I complain about the student's email practices to their department, are they likely to get in serious trouble? Etc.


texts: Is Academia.edu's "mentions" feature real?

texts:
I just got an email from Academia.edu saying that my name has been mentioned two times (Edit: now up to 150 papers!), but to see the mentions you have to upgrade to a premium account at 8.25AUD/month.

This seems very unlikely to me, because

The name being mentioned is my nick name (and a very uncommon nick name!) and not my proper/working name
I'm not an academic, and haven't published anything! I have done undergrad research and a little bit since then, but nothing published, and also nothing really worth referencing.

Is the "mentions" feature basically a scam?

I just noticed that the mentions page now says this:

  We search for mentions of the name "Dannii Willis", "Willis, Dannii", "D Willis" or "Willis, D" in 20 million papers, books, drafts, theses, and syllabi on Academia, and around the web.

Which means that their count of mentions (currently fluctuating between 137 and 152 for me) must also include all of the David Willises, Dennis Willises, and Deborah Willises. What a joke!

Edit:

By searching on Google for my name in quotes and site:academia.edu I did find one paper that referenced a very old blog post I had written (and forgotten I had written!) But that's only one reference instead of two.

I guess unless anyone else has more data on the illegitimacy of this feature I'll have to call it real. But still a waste of money of course!


texts: Awaiting EIC Decision for more than 1 month

texts:
I have submitted a paper in a journal's special issue. In the first notification, I got a major revision. After submitting the revision it goes through (awaiting for reviewer selection -> awaiting for reviewer scores -> awaiting for editors decision -> Awaiting EIC Decision). Now, it's in the "Awaiting EIC Decision" for more than one month.

Is it a bad sign? Is it ok if I send them an email? I need your opinion.

Thanks in advance.


texts: Team conflict in a large research project

texts:
I am an undergrad working in a large research project (1 PI, 5 grad students, 15 undergrads). The project has 5 main facets, each of which is the primary responsibility of a single grad student. The undergrads are distributed as: 7, 3, 3, 2, 0. I am part of the 7 undergrad team.

Now while the grad students are the "leads" the PI treats us all equally.. because some grad students came in after the undergrads started the project (is the case for my team, I have been involved longer in the project than the grad student who is the lead).

The problem is there was an email sent by me, written rather quickly, and the grad student twisted some of the words I said. Sent a team wide email to the undergrads in my team, the other grad students, and the PI suggesting some malicious intent on my part.

Should I explain my side of things in an email? Or wait until the meeting the PI has called for? I want to do this before people start forming their own conclusion, but I'm not sure if I should wait or not.

I said: "not everyone has put in the same amount of effort in this project"
which was twisted as if I said: "I did all the work, no one else did any work" (i.e. the most extreme interpretation)


texts: Tutoring is depressing because my students are struggling too much with my exercises. What do I do?

texts:
I am a tutor for first year students in mathematics, and I feel pretty bad about it.

I recently changed universities. At my previous university, where I also tutored, the exercises were very demanding for the students; the problems were interesting and not easy. So I was really glad to be able to help.

Now, this is not the case anymore. Exercises consist simply of paraphrasing the definitions, and almost all the students are struggling pretty hard on these very simple exercises. Typically, they think that solving Ax = 0 when A is a 3×3 matrix is too hard. They have very little intuition about what is going on, especially in algebra. When they ask me questions, I try to answer so they see a way of thinking that can be generalized. But sometimes they just look at me as if I was an alien.

I am not here to complain, but to ask for advice. What should I do? Should I simply answer their questions as simply as possible? What I really want is to push them to work harder and become more familiar with mathematics. On the other hand, I am probably doing this already a bit and I don't want them to be disgusted by mathematics. I really don't know what to do.

Edit: Thanks everyone for your answers and your comments! This is really helpful. As asked here is some more detail: I am a tutor for students in the first year of a university in Europe. We are two tutors, staying in a classroom during 3 hours and answering every question they ask to us. I am paid by university, this is not private tutoring. They are studying mathematics, so they are not e.g. engineers. (In fact, two years ago I did teach complex and Fourier analysis to engineers in my previous university and I was surprised by the high level of the class! They were only in second year but got very hardcore stuff to do, and some of them were doing very well!) My current university does not organize one tutoring session for each class but only one "big" session where we should answer questions on all subjects: geometry, algebra and calculus.


texts: Undergraduate resume for PhD application: Include publication in preparation?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student currently applying for PhD programs. I am trying to decide whether I should include the citation of a work that will be submitted for publication in the near future with me as a coauthor. I've confirmed with the PhD candidate and my PI that the work will definitely be submitted for publication, but I am not sure how to mention it.

Some answers on this site have said not to include any work that hasn't been published yet, and one answer said that it might be good for an undergraduate student to show that level of involvement. What would be the proper way to indicate my contribution to an upcoming submission?


texts: Why do some professors not recommend any text books for a course?

texts:
I took a semester where a professor was teaching Statistics. He gave out no lecture materials nor the name of any text books.

When I asked him for a text book name, he gave me a name of a 900+ pages' book.
I could not find anything relevant in the text book which matches his lectures.
Finally, I quit the course.

The same thing happened whilst undertaking my Numerical Analysis course.

See this YouTube video named Introduction to Computer Graphics at 16:31. This is okay may be for 3D computer graphics. But, I guess, not good for math.

Why don't some professors recommend a text book for a course?


texts: Dean will not tell me what upcoming meeting is about. What do I do?

texts:
I am a tenured professor and co-chair at a small teaching college. I received an email last Friday morning from the head of facilities requesting confirmation of my attendance at a meeting for this coming Thursday, with the subject line "Facilities storage needs and 'MY_DEPT' space." The email was also sent to my Dean, another professor (prof. X) in another department in the same building, and another member of facilities. The text of the email read, "new time suggested because prof. X can't make the original one." That was it- no other text.

I immediately 'replied all' with "This is the first I've heard of this meeting request. Can someone please tell me what this meeting is about so that I can better prepare for it?"

My Dean replied a few hours later with "We can fill you in next week, MY_NAME."

My first thought is that facilities wants to take away space from my small discipline in my small department for their 'storage needs'. In the past 6 years, we've lost two offices, a classroom, and three small storage spaces to facilities, so I may be paranoid. My second thought is that it is unprofessional for my Dean to refuse to answer a direct, rather innocuous question.

I'd appreciate any advice about how to interpret my Dean's behavior, and how to proceed from here.


texts: Am I wasting my time as a research assistant?

texts:
To make a long story short, I have been a clinical interviewer/ERP technician in a lab for almost 1.5 years now. This has been my first job since undergrad (Psychology major/Biology minor). I plan on pursuing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience.

While I enjoy conducting the interviews and administering the ERP, I want to say about 70% of the job consists of going through my list of 400 study participants, and attempting to reach them to schedule a follow-up appointment.

When I first began this was very easy. It seemed like there was a surplus of readily available subjects. Now I suspect that this surplus was a result of the previous interviewer neglecting their list of participants towards the end of their time here.

Due to the nature of our study, many of these subjects have very unstable lives, and our contact information is often out of date. Many days I will spend 5+ hours on the phone without scheduling a single subject. The job more or less feels like I work in a call center now.

The study is a cohort study that has been ongoing since the late 80's, and I get the sense that it is winding down. Many of our subjects are simply no longer interested in coming in.

Because of the difficulty in scheduling subjects, recently I have been getting very little opportunity to gain experience either interviewing or administering the ERP. On top of this, my rate of pay is terrible. I am struggling to make ends meet with rent, car payments, phone payments, and student loans.

If I were to leave, I have the option of a job outside of my field of interest that would pay roughly double what I am currently making. Am I better off staying in my current position till i have 2+ years of lab experience, or leaving, saving money, and just studying for the GRE?

Question/TLDR:

I'm already currently studying for the GRE. My question is, in the meantime between now and when I enter graduate school, should I stay in my current position for the "on paper" experience (I'm not getting much actual experience these days), or if I would be better off saving money at an unrelated job that pays better, with my 1.5 years lab experience already under my belt.


texts: Grad school - Is transferring to another school for a Master's program (Computer Science) a good option?

texts:
I am an international student in the US (important as my stay in US is tied to my student visa, issued to attend my current university).

I joined as a grad student in the MS CS program in one of the okayish public universities (ranked ~50 on QS/US news). I joined in Fall '18 and am still in my first semester. I took all the so-called "difficult" courses, but I find them very trivial (considering my undergrad was from a very good university). I am very disappointed with the curriculum and feel the coursework is not at all rigorous for a grad-school.

I might sound super arrogant, but I feel out-of-place when I talk to other students and hear them cringe about how hard the courses are, or how they don't have enough time to finish assignments within the deadlines as I find all of the coursework very trivial and feel that the assignments are a joke.

Fortunately, I am working with one of the best profs the university has to offer on a very impactful project and the research is going great. But that's the only plus point I see from sticking around.

My aim from grad school is to get research experience and join one of the Big 4s or upcoming CS unicorn startups. I cannot see myself joining one of the Big-Ns after graduating since the students from this school rarely bag a Google/Fb/unicorn startup job.

Since December is the Fall'19 admissions deadline, I am thinking about reapplying to those top 10 CS schools which I couldn't get into last year (probably because of my poor undergrad GPA).

On the other hand, since every CS company just asks leetcode-style questions in interviews, I can just be super good at it and try to nail whatever interview I get without wasting another year and then doing the same.

I'm not really interested in any kind of credit transfer either since I would like to start fresh in a more rigorous curriculum.

I'm not sure if switching schools would be a wise decision and could really use some advice from the community here.

PS :
Probably related -
Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?

Posting with a dummy account for anonymity.


texts: I accepted a PhD offer from a major public research university in the US this year. However, turns out that the university makes students compete for funding and try to join a group in the first month of the first year. So my POI's chose different students and were not able to take me in. So I decided not to continue and withdraw (After 1 month of enrollment) before wasting my time and theirs. Now the university is asking me to pay back the tuition waiver guaranteed by the sham RA position. I cannot request a transcript to show to schools I am applying to this year unless I pay 20k dollars. Any suggestions on what to do in this bait-and-switch situation? The transcript only shows a 1-hour seminar with a grade of W and does not show GPA. should I just hide the fact that I went to this scam of a place or just show them proof that I withdrew in the place of the transcript.


texts: Ethics of patents for research work funded by tax money

texts:
My academic research supervisor is asking me to write a patent that he is self-funding, with potential private commercial interests and benefits. I am also directly involved in the work that is related to this patent. However, this work was funded by my supervisor's research grants from our country.

Upon me questioning his motives, he told me that researchers have a right to the intellectual property of projects funded by the government.
Is such a claim regarding patents and/or intellectual property generally considered as ethical in academia?


texts: Curriculum: mention previous work I never started

texts:
I am a medical doctor from Europe currently doing my post-graduate speciality in family medicine. I'm applying for a 5-day paid course where the company will select doctors basing their decision solely on CVs (no cover/recommendation letter).

After graduation I attended the national competitive test to get accepted into specialities and was offered a quite prestigious job. I eventually never started to work there since I decided to start family medicine speciality instead (which is entered through a different competitive test).

Is it worth mentioning I got accepted there in this case?


texts: Should grading take all students' performance into account?

texts:
This question is partially related to this question.

By trying to understand which one is the correct way to grade an exam I came out with this doubt. Should each exam be considered as independent or should a mark be assigned based on the other students' performance.

As an example

if all the students final exams are from 80% to 100% correct should be considered the fact that the exam was too easy while grading it?
if all the students final exams are from 30% to 60% correct should be considered the fact that maybe the exam was too hard while grading it?

To resume, while preparing/grading the exams should the results respect somehow the normal distribution or should each one be graded independently?

EDIT:

Based on my career as a student for every exam we had statistical results from all the students (min, max, avg) with the grades distribution. Most of them respected the normal distribution. So what it is not clear to me is if it depends on how the teacher create the exam, on how it is graded or just on how usually students perform.


texts: Is the practice of lab members extensively citing each other's work looked down upon in academia?

texts:
In my lab, a few of us submitted our papers independently to a conference last week. We all had referenced each other's work in our papers. I have a concern if this is a bad practice in academia. It also looks like a bad habit that has festered in our lab: the last two PhDs who passed out from our lab have a total of 15 citations for their papers, of which 13 are from within our community itself.

Is this practice of repeatedly citing from one's own micro-community acceptable? It seems unavoidable, as we are all working together, familiarizing with each other's work and trying to build on them.


texts: Reporting Results: Active or Passive voice?

texts:
I am writing my first publication and I heard a lot of different opinions on the matter of using passive or active voice in publications.

This question focuses in particular on the results.

Should I say:

"The results show an increase in water pressure."

or

"An increase in water pressure is shown by the results."

The first seems more natural and concise to me. Yet the second puts the important statement (i.e. the result) first.

By the way, english isn't my first language, so I hope this question isn't trivial.

Cheers.


texts: Format for student "résumé" for capstone projects?

texts:
This coming semester, I am "managing" (teaching?) the capstone projects for eight undergraduate students. We are going to start from scratch in terms of ideas for projects, but one aspect I want to include is the students' backgrounds and interests.
I am thinking that these should be presented in a short-form résumé.
Because the projects will eventually consist of teams of 2 to 4 students, having this background information will help make compatible groups.
Does anyone have experience doing this?
I'm thinking that it should just be a functional résumé:

A functional résumé lists work experience and skills sorted by skill area or job function.
The functional résumé is used to focus on skills that are specific to the type of position being sought. This format directly emphasizes specific professional capabilities and utilizes experience summaries as its primary means of communicating professional competency.

Is this a good idea?
Does anyone have any pointers to templates used specifically for assessable work?


texts: Forcing to list a co-author that did not contribute after publishing

texts:
We published a paper, me as first and corresponding author. There was a technician who repeatedly refused to work, did useless measurements after having been forced, which he never evaluated and basically said "help yourself", never had a look at the publication during working on it, and now tries to force the group leaders to be included as co-author afterwards by lying about his contributions (still, he would have done no intellectual work but was pipetting down my protocols). Data integrity steps are not provided by the institute, so everyone could copy measurement files from the shared server. The group leaders want me to give in although they agreed with me on the phone, just because they fear more consequences from him than from me, since I was nice so far. Now I don't see why I should constantly reward such a person.

The paper is published. They agreed. Can they even force me if I (and another co-author) say no?
Would - by your experience - the journal be willing to amend at all?
Can he/they force me legally? I am not even employed there anymore.
Do I have to prove anything after publication? Can someone claim data from a shared server anyway? Is it my turn to (re)act?
Would you do some "preparing steps" from my side if not willing to give in?
Do you have any advice from former experience?

Kind regards and thanks for any help!


texts: Does one always accept good funding (Marie Curie)?

texts:
I have recently started a postdoc in a prestigious US university, making a leap between scientific areas. Right before starting it I have applied for a rather competitive European fellowship (Marie Curie Individual Fellowship), also in this new scientific area.

Today (5 months after the application) I learned that I got the fellowship. I have not actually expected it and I was applying more to get experience in writing grants, to apply seriously a year or two later (since in general I would like to end up in Europe in the long run). I honestly do not feel like a really experienced independent researcher I pretended to be in the proposal. Also, knowing the things I have learned during my new postdoc, if I were to write this proposal right know, I would write a very different one.

Now I have to choose whether to accept the fellowship and learn scientific maturity the hard way learning new science and managing new funding in a new country simultaneously, or to stay in the US and develop my knowledge of the new scientific area more calmly (and have time to publish something in a reasonable journal). I have some other more mundane concerns about moving from the US to Europe right now, but they are less crucial.

I was told before that when one applies for permanent positions, there is a rather hard rule that on never rejects it, if offered. In the sense that if one rejects it once, one has zero chance of getting another one in future. This funding I am talking about is not a permanent position but it is still a rather big thing, as I far as I understand.

So finally, I have two questions:

Is there some more or less firm "rule" about rejecting major fellwships/fundings, like with the permanent positions?
Overall, does the idea of rejecting a respected fellowship on the grounds of not being confident enough sound reasonable, or typically one is supposed to go ahead and ride the rare wave of opportunity?


texts: Case-specific appropriateness of an erratum/corrigendum?

texts:
Myself and my PhD supervisors recently published an article (climate science). One of the panels within a multi-panel Figure is a time-series with both a left-hand and right-hand y-axes. The axis labels have been inadvertently reversed and are hence wrong. However:

1) The relative changes of both time-series are so similar that the only way to visually discern them is by looking at axis value ranges (left-hand side extends to 100, right-hand side to 135). Further, the absolute values are not interpreted in any detail, and only the relative changes from one time slice to another matter in this case.

2) All raw data is correct and provided to the reader via DOI links. So if the data was to be plotted by an interested reader, it would be correct.

3) None of the manuscript text is affected whatsoever by the error (i.e. all data interpretation, conclusions, quoted values etc.) are correct.

Does the error above warrant a corrigendum?

This is a tricky dilemma for me as, on one hand, good scientific practice dictates there is not a choice, and any significant error should be fixed at the earliest opportunity. However, whether the error is significant is subjective... On the other hand, highlighting the error to readers via a corrigendum might be perceived as "sloppy", as this was supposed to be caught way before the proofing stage. I am a (barely) post-PhD researcher and do not want this to negatively affect my career unless it is necessary.


texts: What I should write to a professor to decline a PhD offer, while I have accepted it months ago?

texts:
In Dec. last year, I got admitted to CUHK as a PhD student, and have chosen my 'future advisor', with whom I had been emailing for several months. Three months later, I recieved HKPFS (Hong Kong PhD Fellowhship Scheme, HK$20,000/m, big award). Currently, I'm waiting for the result of visa application. If nothing happened, that's the university I would like to go, for the award and its academic achievement.

However, after the time having accepted the admission offer, I met a few guys, and  gradually realized that I am homosexual and what I want is a place to live freer. I also have applied several American universities before CUHK's interview. Two weeks before, an offer was made by one of them. From my birth, I have been living in Mainland China. This could be an opportunity for me to seek a change in my life - date a guy and get married eventually. So, after months of struggle of my identity, choosing which university to go is not a problem. No matter how CUHK outperforms the american one, I would like to go america.

So, the question now is what and how I should write to my CUHK advisor? I know making excuses untrue or creating 'irresistable event' is not a wise idea. But telling him that I am homosexual and decide to go america instead would make things better? CUHK has rather early admission, and they have made all the admissions long time ago. I think they would get mad/annoyed no matter how. :(

Another problem is that my teachers from my undergraduate college heard about my story. (They thought why I chose America over HK is that I have a crush on a girl there. But the rest they know is the same as the truth.) They all want me to write back to CUHK asap. So, what I should do these days to make them not thinking less of me?

My problem is not typical. I'm not serving 'being homosexual' as an excuse. I know many people are not OK with it. But it's the truth I have to deal with. Any advice is appreciated, :)


texts: Politely ask a professor about my application status

texts:
I have applied to PhD programs in engineering in the US. I have contacted a professor prior to applying and based on my resume he encouraged me to apply to his university. Now I want to politely ask him about the status of my application and also politely but implicitly ask him to review my application file and also maintain my contact with the professor.
The other thing is that I think that if I do not send this email, it may convey the massage that I have given up. I also want to mention that I have currently taken two other relevant courses to be more prepared before starting my program. Below I have prepared a sample email message.
I would be thankful for any help and suggestions.

Dear Professor ****,
First I want to thank you so much for your past encouragement regarding the next step in my academic development. I am very excited about having the opportunity to apply to the university of **** and having this honor to mention your name in my application form. I would be more than grateful if you could please let me know when I might hope to hear any response from **** regarding my application. I would also like to mention that I am taking the two **** and *** courses to be more prepared before starting my program.
Again, thank you very much for all your kind consideration.


texts: Applying for a new doctoral program after expulsion

texts:
I am not prepared to give many details in a public forum - as such this posting will contain intentional generalizations that may be of interest to academia.se's research higher studies community help, in particular senior faculty members, if any.

I would like to ask for help in figuring out if there would be a pathway to return to the pursuit of a terminal degree sometime 2020++ in a field related to my accumulated research work and career credentials with publications and products. At present I  have a major blemish in my overall academic record at my last institution based upon an off-campus incident several years ago which ended in a sentence in a felony case.  At the time of my projected return as a doctoral candidate, the faculty committee recommended  suspension, and the admin decided on termination after it became clear I had failed to report it per student policy. Elsewhere on Stack Exch.  I have already described the good that came out of that research, and that chapter of my life is now finished.

Can I ask the community if there is any practical chance of pursuing a doctoral program again? If so, When could I approach that, and at what stage should I broach the subject to a new institution?

Thank you.

Added:

This is a US academic industry question, but I would think my research area would be useful for academic institutions of major space faring nations.
My felony is for a offense not related to any workplace or academic setting.
I was in the middle of my doctoral program when the inquiry began. Over a year I was encouraged to continue by the judge(s) to try to conclude the program as fast as possible. I continued work for the institution throughout (I tried to quit after some discussion but was asked to remain while trial was underway and the outcome not known). A sentence was imposed with reduction of all charges save a single one, based upon the admissions I made and material  I surrendered.
After completing my sentence, When I attempted to return, I was found to have violated policy for the crime conducted away from campus but while a student, and also that I violated another policy as I had signed a form for a leave of absence using a made up reason to explain my projected absence, the day before I left to begin my short sentence. The ruling was split: faculty recommended suspension and admin recommended expulsion.


texts: How should I address a professor's inconsistencies?

texts:
"How do I address the following incidents before the end of semester, without alienating the professor whose good graces I rely on to pass his class?"

I have a professor who is quite friendly, and obviously more knowledgeable on the topic he is teaching than I am. However, he consistently makes major errors, and is very inconsistent with his statements, assignments and testing. I have been tracking these inconsistencies, as they make it very difficult to keep up with the class. Copied and pasted from my notes:

  A list of Professor X’s major inconsistencies in Math 555, Complex
  Variables

  As a fellow student in my class commented, Dr. X's inconsistencies are
  “astounding”. So, I decided to keep track of them.

  Incident 1
  Professor X, in two class periods, could not prove the
  sufficient conditions for differentiability (i.e. converse of
  Cauchy-Riemann). he made errors so numerous while presenting the proof
  that he never finished it, and told us to just look at it in the book
  and practice it at home.

  Then, when asked about the proof in the book, he said that the proof
  was incorrect, but did not provide any suitable
  explanation on how the students might approach doing it correctly.

  So, he could not do the proof himself, could not explain why the one
  in the book was wrong, and yet he required us to complete the proof
  for homework…

  Incident 2
  Midterm #2 was held on a Monday. The Friday before the
  test, he explicitly told the entire class to bring a handwritten sheet
  listing all of the algebraic properties of the Logarithm and
  Exponential functions of complex numbers. Further, on Friday before
  the test, he told us that the test would cover all of chapter 2 and
  through section 31 of Chapter 3.

  When the class arrived to the test on Monday, we were all surprised to
  see written on the test, “Turn in homework for sections 34-36”. These
  sections covered trigonometric identities and hyperbolic functions of
  complex numbers not log(z) or exp(z).

  Instead of admitting his mistake, he gave zero credit for the
  properties we turned in. Further he said that we should have proved
  them, when he only asked us to list them.

  He then proceeded to tell us that if we wanted to get credit back, we
  could prove them and turn them in again. I explicitly asked in front
  of the entire class “Do you want us to prove the properties of Log and
  Exponential functions, or do you want us to do Sections 34-36, as was
  written on the test, or both?” He responded that he wanted the proofs
  of the Logarithm and Exponential function identities. So that’s what I
  did.

  When turning them in, he did not accept them, because he wanted the
  trigonometric identities instead. So, after wasting hours of my time,
  again, I find myself in the library doing work that he did not assign
  instead of moving forward to reinforce topics that we are now
  covering.

  Incident 3
  When reviewing test problem 3 (determine the derivative of Log(z)) he told us
  that we should have used the polar
  form of the derivative: f ‘ (z) = exp(itheta)(u_r + iv_r) that we
  derived in problem 1.

  The problem is, he didn’t ask us to derive that formula in problem 1.
  When I pointed this out, he looked at me like I was crazy. So I went
  to his office hours and very politely showed him the test and asked
  “When did we derive the polar form of the derivative in problem 1”. So
  he proceeded to do problem 1, and sure enough the polar form did not
  come from it. It took the answer to problem 1, plus an extra page and
  a half of derivations to arrive at the required formula to solve
  problem 3.

So, I want to address this because it is driving me crazy, but I am unfortunately a fairly poor student when it comes to test taking (high levels of anxiety). I rely on the fact that my professors like me and see how hard I work in my classes, to get the extra few sympathy points that often are the difference between passing and failing.


texts: The use of pseudocode examples in CS program--is it plagarism?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate in CS and I had a class in Adv. Data Structures & Algorithms in the spring of this year. Near the beginning of it I was pressured by a fellow classmate to "google pseudocode examples" and use them to do my labs. I guess the point here was that it wasn't copy and paste (being pseudocode) and still had to be adapted to the language for the class. I did something like that once to finish an assignment in that class (most of the code was my own that I solved myself). None of this did felt right to me, but again I felt pressured. I heard a lot of chatter from fellow students concerning the using of pseudocode. Again I didn't feel this was right.

Time passed and I forgot about it. The school recently sent out an email survey regarding plagiarism. That's what got me thinking about the previous semester. I want to note that I've never plagiarized in my life and I make every effort to avoid it [I have principle's]. I also have a good definition of what plagiarism is, to a point I think I understand this better than most.

So my questions are: is using pseudocode examples an act of plagiarism? If so where do I go from here? Shall I email the instructor openly and honestly tell them what happened?

Honesty is one of my principle's. I'm posting this here in the hopes that some of you will understand that. Logically it sounds like using said pseudocode is an act of plagiarism (the idea's are the same). Its still ambiguous to me, I need to know what others think.


texts: Why should students be asked to register for a co-supervisor?

texts:
The university where I'm doing my PhD is asking me to register a co-supervisor.
However, I don't really know the role of co-supervisor. What exactly is it for? Does it mean that for every publications we do, we should also add him in the authorship?!


texts: Is it possible to do two PhD's in the same field one after another?

texts: I am PhD student in an area of business in India. I am dissatisfied with the coursework and research guidance available at my university and feel that I won't be a very good PhD post completion of this PhD. That is why I am thinking of applying to business schools in the US and Europe after completion of my first PhD but I am worried if they would even consider my application or look at it unfavorably as I will already have a PhD.I want to apply in the same area I study in my first PhD. Any thoughts on this are welcome.


texts: Studying recreational math professionally?

texts: Are there professors who specialize in recreational types of math problems, or is my best bet to be a high school teacher and do recreational math in my free time?


texts: Are athletes' college degrees discounted by employers and graduate school admissions?

texts:
This question and the pertinent answers suggest that, as a rule, college athletes in the United States are not held to the same academic standards as other students. It also seems that this is well-known.

If so, employers and graduate school admissions committees can be expected to discount the degrees and the GPA of college athletes in order to control for an informal "athletes' bonus" when screening applications.

Do employers and admissions committees, in fact (but likely not formally), discount athletes' grades and degrees? What is the approximate "discount rate", as it were (e.g. the average athlete's bonus)?


texts: Can you submit an abstract that was accepted to a conference but not presented, for a different conference?

texts:
Our group has submitted an abstract to a conference for an oral presentation (not the proceeding track), and it was accepted. We're scheduled for an oral presentation, but it seems like we cannot make it to the conference because of travel expenses.

I was wondering if we withdraw our presentation, can we submit the same abstract to a different conference? In particular, we're considering submitting it to the next conference of the same organization; would there be any upside or downside to that?

( I read this question, but this is about whether the abstract is considered published or unpublished and does not discuss whether it can be submitted for a different conference or not.)


texts: NSF graduate research fellowship eligibility,

texts:
I've read from past questions and answers on this site, namely an answer by JeffE, that anyone with more than 12 months of full-time graduate study, MS or PhD, is considered too late of an applicant, unless there is a significant change of field.

What if my undergrad degree was not in mathematics, but I have an MS degree in math, and am looking to apply to PhD programs in math?  Would my MS degree be considered something equivalent to an undergrad / first degree in math, and thus make my application eligible for a review by the panelists?


texts: Dealing with listening/talking to researchers with difficult accents

texts:
Often, when speaking English in research, you can find a great variety of (mostly, non-native) accents. Since I started moving in academic circles and a more international environment, I slowly learned to understand some of the accents much better. I can currently understand well most mild accents and some specific accents even if they are strong, but there are still both researchers with very strong accents and types of accents I have a very hard time understanding.

As networking, communicating, and generally talking to other researchers is very important, it got me wondering about what I can to to overcome this "accent barrier".

I've encountered this "accent barrier" in at least three different settings, and there's always problems arising for that:

speakers and presenters on conferences (or other big events)

I usually try and decide from the slides (and what I can understand) how relevant I think the presented material is for me, and then I would read the paper later on my own.

Still, it means that I could miss some interesting papers, miss some of the authors insight on the problem only mentioned in the presentation and loose a certain amount of time, because listening to a talk is much faster than reading (especially if one just wants to understand the basic idea).
poster sessions and social events on conferences / other manifestations

This one is a bit more tricky since it's more personal interaction. I would usually try and ask the person to clarify or reformulate the question, and then if I still don't understand try talking about something related to "keywords" that I succeeded to identify. If it's a social occasion, I would try to look attentive, smile, and excuse myself the first acceptable opportunity I get.

And again, I might be missing on some great ideas this way. Missing making some potentially useful contacts with the people from the community, and even possibly looking rude if I didn't understand something crucial.
interactions with people from you team/close environment.

With this one, I'm totally at a loss. I know how much team dynamics is important. If something like that happened, I would probably try and avoid one-on-one communication with that person as much as possible. Still, it would probably make me feel constantly uncomfortable.

What are some suggestions on how to act in such situations? They generally make me feel uncomfortable, and often afraid that I'll offend somebody. Again, I do believe that a little practice and effort can go a long way to understanding different accents, especially when they are not too strong. But (and I guess this also depends on ones mother tongue) I think a lot of people have problems with (probably different) strong accents.


texts: How to design and structure a technical/programming Thesis

texts:
I'm currently writing my bachelor thesis. The scope of this thesis will be approximately 25-30k words/80-100 pages of content.

We have only written literature reviews during the course of studies so far. My  thesis, however, will be more technical: the thesis will be about an application that I develop.

Since I've mostly done literature reviews before, I have some doubts about the way I've structured/justified the thesis. While I have a (I think) general idea ofhow to go about this thanks to online research and talks with my advisor, I'm not entirely confident that I've understood the "big picture" of writing a thesis that focuses on the development of an application.

Most of the material I've reviewed that deals with application development is relatively short (<10 pages), so the structure of it is hard to apply in my thesis. I have the feeling that, if needed, I could cut down the thesis to about 15 pages. If I wanted to explain all the things that I did during the course of the development, however, I would probably need more than 200 pages.

My first question is: How can I find a good middle ground between those extremes?

Also, I'm a bit confused about how to formulate a solid "contribution to science"-argument for this kind of technical thesis. Going along the lines of "this hasn't been done so far in this way" seems lackluster. Something like "this application can be used by other researchers" also sounds a bit flat, especially considering that this is only a bachelor thesis.

The second question is therefore: How does a good "contribution to science" for this kind of thesis has to be formulated? Which points does it need to address?


texts: Should I take OSAP (student loans) even if I can pay for my tuition?

texts:
This is something I have been pondering for a while. I am currently in my second year at University and my program comes with mandatory Co-op throughout the 4 years of study. I have completed 3 Co-op terms already and those have covered my expenses and tuition for each term at the university. I understand that not every Co-op will provide enough compensation every time but my parents are ready to support me where and when needed.

OSAP is a government program which funds students doing their post-secondary education in Ontario, more here. The loans are interests free until the student has completed his education. Then the interest rate is as follows:

  On the provincial part of your OSAP loan, the rate is the prime rate
  of interest plus 1%. On the federal portion interest rate can be the
  prime rate of interest plus 2.5%.

So my question is, should I apply for OSAP and receive their funding and save what I earn from Co-op? Or is it better to not receive any OSAP funding?


texts: Does arXiv do peer review and can a high school student submit to arXiv?

texts:
Is it necessary to publish in a journal after writing paper in arXiv?

Is arXiv peer reviewed journal? If yes, then will the editor
consider and send to other experts in that field?

Can a high school student publish paper in arXiv? If not is there any other way a high school student can share scientific knowledge (only if they have discovered something new)?


texts:
Some journals expect the Discussion to have the following structure and order (with some flexibility):

summary of results
strengths and weaknesses
interpretation/context/comparison with previous studies
implications

This makes sense: discuss the study strengths and limitations before interpreting the results and discussing their wider context and implications.

But how about putting the "strengths and weaknesses" after "interpretation/comparison", or even at the end after "implications" (and before the conclusions)? It this less logical/convincing?


texts: Contract signing session etiquette for student coaches

texts:
I am a first time faculty member straight out of grad school and I have been installed as a director for a "learning center". We hire undergraduate and graduate student "coaches" in the learning center to help students who have trouble understanding concepts in physics or math.

Now, I have interviewed students for the "coach" position and I have to have 10 of them sign a contract. How do I do this? I am assuming that I cannot have all of them sit in a circle and sign the contract? Should I ask them to come to my table one at a time and read and sign the contract with them?

I am unsure if this is really a "question" here and please feel free to re-assign it if it isn't.


texts: How much unfinished work and unexplored ideas should one share in a presentation?

texts:
Background: I am a fourth year math graduate student working in differential geometry in the US.

I'm currently preparing a presentation for a graduate seminar at my university, and today I met with my research advisor to go through my outline.  Shortly into our discussion, he became rather serious and expressed concern about my inclusion of unfinished work and unexplored ideas.  While they only make up about 5–10 minutes of my hour-long talk, he was worried that I'm not sufficiently protecting my IP from theft.  He went on to say that this is a much more significant concern at conferences where I would know very little about my audience members, but he still wanted to exercise caution.

I don't disagree with him, but that led me with the following questions:

In my personal opinion, I work in a rather dark corner of my discipline.  I don't intend to contradict my advisor, but is this a legitimate concern?
Obviously the risk is venue dependent, but would there be any forum in which I would be completely safe?
How nervous should I be to discuss ideas with people who ask questions at the conclusion of my presentation?  Do people ever go "fishing" for ideas?
Should I be more careful speaking about "unfinished work" or "unexplored ideas"?  Does one carry more danger than the other?
Since publishing is such a drawn out process, is there some point before the release of one's results that they could be given as part of a presentation?
Finally: Is there any way to say how much should I feel safe sharing?

Any responses to these questions or related comments are much appreciated.


texts: What are the best methods for independently publishing an academic book?

texts:
I am a statistician and am thinking of writing a book on variations of regression.  I submitted it to one place who said that even if they accepted it, they would pay $1100.  That's very little. So I am thinking of self publishing but was wondering about the best methods - LaTeX? Pressbooks? or what?

"Best" in terms of ease of use and ability to produce the files needed for a book in various formats.


texts: How can I run a keyword search that targets only papers resulted from industry or industry-sponsored research?

texts:
I want to know -- if there is a way -- how I could customize my keyword searches to target research papers or other research artifacts generated by industry or industry-sponsored research?

In particular I am interested in Software Engineering. I have access to Google Scholar, Web Of Science, and Scopus so if there's a way to do this in either of these systems that I would love to hear it.


texts: How do academics in humanities such as philosophy apply mathematics or physics in their discipline?

texts:
(I am from an engineering background and know very little about liberal arts
and humanity programs, so I apologize in advance if my question sounds condescending or ignorant.)

I am often puzzled as to how academicians in the humanities (<- corrected) such as philosophy or religious study or in other branches of liberal arts, apply or integrate what we usually think of as "hard sciences" such as mathematics or physics into their studies. This is partially motivated by the plethora of questions on academia stackexchange asking about the feasibility of switching between from one to the other and vice versa, such as,

Teaching philosophy with a PhD in math

Changing field from Computer Science to Philosophy

I have two main questions:

I am not certain as to the difference between, for
example, a computer scientist like Stephen Cook, versus a philosopher
of computer science (there is certainly no shortage of philosophizing computer science, see
https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf). In particular,
could your average researcher or a student studying the philosophy of computer science feasibly come up
with new results in computer science or theorems on complexity theory?
Are there well-publicized research performed by religious
scholars or philosophers that actually inform or advances or guides
the development of mainstream theory in say astrophysics, biology,
medicine, mathematics, etc.?

While I am aware that these titles are not mutually exclusive, i.e.,
   a student of philosophy may well have a background in mathematics and vice versa, ultimately I am not certain about how subjects such as mathematics and physics can be made relevant to philosophy (or other areas). This has kept me wondering about the hypothetical questions: what would Kant say about string theory? What would Spinoza say about ZFC?
   What would Kierkegaard say about neural networks? Or the other way around, in what ways can quantum computing inform phenomenology?


texts: Advisor trying to patent an idea for himself even though we wrote the paper together!

texts:
My advisor is trying to patent an idea without me. I got to know that he is registering the patent through the IP officer at our University. When I asked him about it, he did not give me a straight answer and has not responded to any of my emails inquiring about this. The idea he is trying to patent is literally the entire paper that a colleague and I wrote as co-first authors. I have defended my PhD and I am about to begin my job in industry.

Any advice on how to go about this situation ?

If I go against him,I have 2 fears at the moment i.e.

He might make my colleague's PhD miserable because the two of us would be on the patent, which he does not like (he tried to remove one of the inventors on a previous patent but I convinced him otherwise). I was lucky enough to graduate on time.
He would not provide me any more recommendation letters for green card, etc.

And advice is appreciated.


texts: As an undergrad, is it unethical to work in a field that I'm not interested in pursuing further in graduate school?

texts:
I'm a CS undergrad in my senior year(last week!). I've been working as a part-time research assistant in a research institute. I didn't think twice when I took the job, as I just thought it would be fun, and because it's not a school, I never thought I'd continue my research in this field after this job-at least not there.

However, recently I've decided to go to a graduate school, and I want to pursue a master in a different field. I still want to finish my work and hopefully publish my current project, which would probably take 6 months to 1 year more.

During a lunch, I told another RA(graduate student) about my plan. He said that I should quit my job immediately, or otherwise it'd be abusing resource. I'm very confused right now as to how should I take this situation. Is it generally considered unacceptable or unethical for me to not quit my job?


texts: Dependence of EU universities on external funding

texts: Are EU universities as of 2019 more dependent on external funding than 20 or 40 years ago? Is there any EU policy on increasing external private funds and reducing public funding?


texts: Literature search: Finding the most reliable data

texts:
My problem: I need a value for a specific physical quantity. I found several papers with contradicting numbers. How do I make sure to not miss the most accurate data by e.g. missing the newest publications on it?

In other words: What is a good strategy to find the most reliable sources due to newest insights (where to start, which websites to use best, which books etc)?


texts: Why are computer science related degrees at some good European universities not ABET accredited?

texts:
I was wondering why some good European universities in the field of Computer Science and related careers, I mean:

Computer Science
Information Systems
Software Engineering

Their faculties do not really put information about if they are accredited by some entity like ABET for example. I know that these faculties rely more on research outcomes, quality of their staff and also to have a very dynamic curricular scheme that is not so fixed from time to time.

So is it that for these universities the accreditation is not important? and if one faculty has to choose an accreditation entity which one would be the best for the aforementioned careers?

I ask this because I found, for example, that some faculties are accredited by ACISCS or other entities, but according to what I found on the web there were a lot of rants against these accreditation types.


texts: Graduate school applications with papers in the peer review process

texts: I am currently applying for graduate school and I have research papers that are currently in the peer-review process. What is the best way to send the schools these papers, since in the application forms, there does not seem to be a section to highlight the journals where I submitted my papers? They do not allow submissions like arXiv.


texts: Interested in Neuroscience programs but lack research experience & grades

texts:
About me:

I'm in my last year of undergraduate studies majoring in cognitive science at a very prestigious university.
I'm very interested in going to graduate school for neuroscience.

My concerns:

I lack research experience. I recently just learned about how wonderful neuroscience is so I have a very late start compared to my already-competent peers. I did apply to RA positions but was rejected to all of them. I will be graduating in one semester so I do not have enough time to build up my research experience. After graduating, what can I do to be more competent - research experience wise?
I have a mediocre GPA (3.077). I did not take any courses like chemistry, or physics. Many programs make these a requirement. I also did poorly in my math classes - as it is not my strength. But I did very well in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, biology psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Since I only have one semester left, I don't have enough time to take classes that programs want. Will GRE subject tests be able to compensate?
Is there any hope for someone in a situation like mine? I feel very lost and hopeful, to be honest. Any words of advice would be helpful.

My current plans:

Self-learn R, Matlab, Python, HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Take on the habit of reading papers related to the field, in order to build knowledge.
Will apply to many RA positions.


texts: How to approach admissions when applying for a Master's without Bachelor's degree?

texts:
I have a decade of experience as a network engineer. At this point I'm consulting large ISP in a network design role.

I am thinking about applying for a Master's in computer networking without a Bachelor's degree.

Any recommendations on how to approach admission?


texts: What can a PhD student do when a professor is no longer interested in advising them?

texts:
I am a first-year PhD student. After about  months into my program, my adviser has asked me to look for another lab. I have had no luck so far with other labs in my department. He told me as my background is not similar to his research work, I cannot succeed in this area. He told me to look for a lab which matches with my background and interest. I have funding for this semester but so far have no guarantees for the future.

I have talked to the graduate adviser, and they said there are no options for departmental funding.

Given this situation, what could be my best option? I can’t even earn a master’s degree without funding, and from what I’ve heard, transferring to another university would be tough since they may not view my case favorably.


texts: What is a "normal" teaching load for a Lecturer in a UK pre-'92 University?

texts: What is a normal teaching load for a Lecturer on a teaching and research contract (equal split) in a physical science field in a UK pre-'92 University? Is there such a thing as "normal", or is the variation huge? In this case, what is the range in "normal"?


texts: Using Fiverr for proofreading/editing essays

texts:
I have written my Statement of Purpose all by myself. Now, I am planning to use Fiverr to proofread the essay since I come from a country where English is not widely spoken.

Does it count as academic fraud? Has any University
 taken action against students who have used online
 proofreading websites in the past?
Can the seller use my essay to write other essays? If yes, will it lead to
plagiarism
Would you personally recommend using Fiverr?


texts: Meaning of 'high-level overview' in a Maths talk?

texts:
I am a first year Maths PhD student in Singapore.
As I am going to give my first talk at a Mathematics conference soon, I look for  some tips on how to give a good talk.
While googling,  I come across Terrence Tao's blog post entitled 'talks are not the same as paper'.
In the post, he stated in third paragraph that,

  Instead, a talk should complement a paper by providing a high-level and more informal overview of the same material, especially for the more standard or routine components of the argument; this allows one to channel more of the audience’s attention onto the most interesting or important components, which can be described in more detail.

I have difficulty understanding the meaning of 'high-level'.


texts: What is the difference between falsifying data and just being wrong?

texts:
I had to take a standard ethics seminar at my research lab (everyone in my lab must take the seminar).  As one would expect, I learned that the charges associated with falsifying data are serious.

Whether you falsify data or make a stupid mistake, the end result is that the published work is wrong.  But the charges of falsifying data are much more serious than the charges associated with human error.

My motivation for making this post is as follows.  Researchers must be allowed some leniency on accuracy, otherwise one would not progress at a reasonable pace.  Nobody is right 100% of the time. Some of the best papers and discoveries have inaccuracies (some are in fact 100% wrong).  However, if your data is innacurate, and the allegation is that you falsified the data, your career takes a major hit.

Question

What are the specific differences between falsifying results and making a human error?  How does one decipher  between erroneous results (due to human error, or negligence, or incompetence, or an early career mistake, etc) and falsified/fabricated results?  How does one prove results are falsified?  Conversely, how would a researcher prove his/her innocence?


texts: How are mathematics PhDs from the USA viewed in mainland European universities?

texts: Do American-educated mathematics PhDs generally have an advantage over natively educated PhDs (in, say, France or Italy) in applying for research positions?


texts: How common is it to write out a script for a talk? What are the benefits?

texts:
I have never written a verbatim script for a talk. I have at times written notes or outlines, but I never read from them when presenting (and rarely when  practicing). With enough (weeks) of practice, I can give a pretty good talk. With less practice, I sometimes digress and sometimes omit an important detail. But what I am most interested in is improving my presentation by removing awkward pauses (e.g. while I remember what to say about a slide) and by using appropriate intonation, phrasing, and cadence.

Recently, a friend of mine who is a writing studies doctoral candidate suggested that the first step toward accomplishing these goals is to write out a script for each slide. This is a difficult task, but one that I plan to experiment with. I do not plan to actually read the script during the talk, but to memorize it while practicing.

My questions are:

How common is it to write a script for a talk?
How does having a script help?
How early in the preparation should I have a "final" version?


texts: Is it worth self-funding a PhD to attend a top 10 university?

texts:
What should I opt for?

Option A) very well paid PhD, around €3000 per month at a respectable university
or;

Option B) a non-paid PhD, where I have to pay €2000 per year at one of the top 10 universities of the world?

EDIT: Actually they are both UK universities, Option B  is ranked between the top 10 in the world in engineering and tech, and I do get a scholarship that pays 18000 pounds which covers the difference between international student tuition and EU tuition. In Option A, I will be doing research in a good university and will be working alongside giants in the industry.


texts: Should I structure my CV in sections for relevant experience to PhD and day job work if the two are unrelated?

texts:
I am applying for my PhD currently [in Music]. Part of the application concerns sending a CV. When I applied for my master's I just sent them my normal work CV [which had nothing to do with music] and that seemed to do the job to get the application through.

However, I have done many music-related things over the years [A&R, promotion, journalism etc] and have constructed a CV around these for my new application as 'relevant experience' to the PhD. Should I include another section for my day job[s] as well [which have nothing to do with music] or should I just keep to relevant to the academic application?


texts: Is the name of this institute acceptable?

texts:
Perhaps it is more a question of translation than an academic one, but I think it cannot be wrong to get opinions from people here because the question has a relation with higher education anyway.

A China-based college is officially named (translated into English, to be exact) Guangxi Vocational and Technical College of Communications (广西交通职业技术学院 in Chinese), and the business of that college mainly focuses on knowledge, skills, training, majors or programs in strong and close connection with transport (or transportation) which includes roads and bridges engineering, auto engineering, navigation, traffic control, etc. Guangxi is the name of the place where this college is situated.

So the name in English doesn’t sound so clearly defined or even confusing because communications might contain the meaning of transport, but the word is now more related to telecommunication, media outlets, broadcasting, performing arts, etc.

Technical and Vocational College does not seem a common name found in mainstream higher education of English-speaking countries. Polytechnic can be the substitute, can it?

My alternative for the above name in English is Guangxi Transport Polytechnic. Does it sound acceptable to native ears?


texts: Should I be worried about low undergraduate grades during the COVID-19 crisis affecting grad school admission chances?

texts:
I'm currently in my undergraduate junior year studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada. I'm hoping to apply for Top 10 US grad schools in mechanical engineering in about 18 months. In response to the worldwide COVID-19 health crisis, our institution has (as have most academic institutions) switched to online teaching and made many changes to the structure of our courses to accommodate the situation.

As part of these changes, the university has offered students the option to selectively change the grade reporting on their transcripts to CR/NCR (Credit/No Credit) at the end of this semester. Normally, my grades would be pretty good (hovering around ~3.9 GPA) and I wouldn't bother to report my grades as a CR instead of as a percentage, but this crisis has completely disoriented me and made it difficult to focus on my studies.

Furthermore, the university has allowed instructors to retroactively adjust the course breakdown/weighting away from the original syllabus--this means that tests/projects that were originally worth 15% of the grade might have been increased to upwards of 40% weighting. This has had a negative impact on my course grades as well, as I was hoping to make up for poor showings on some of these lower-weight deliverables with strong final exam performances. Instead, these final exams are going to be worth much less now.

In the aftermath of these changes, I'm contemplating using the CR/NCR option on some of my course grades, particular with any grade that ends up lower than my current GPA. However, I'm worried about how this will be interpreted in my grad school admissions in a couple years. In normal circumstances, I think changing a percentage grade into a CR/Pass grade would be a red flag that a student's performance in the class was less-than-stellar.

Given the COVID-19 crisis and its effects on academia as a whole, are admissions committees two years down the road likely to be understanding if I decide to take advantage of the CR option now? Should I make use of it and explain that this was "the coronavirus semester" in my application package, or am I dooming myself by converting my grades from percentage into CRs?


texts: What to do with rejected papers in case of conflicting reviews everytime?

texts:
Recently, I got two times rejection for my paper from two different reputed journals of Mathematics fields. The first time, I received two review reports in which both reviewers gave detailed comments with decision of major revision. But the paper got rejected by the handling editor of the journal.

Before going for a second submission (new journal), I tried my best to implement the comments of the reviewers of my first submission. This time again I got two review reports in which the first one suggested me to go for minor revision, while I received negative comments from the second reviewer. The second review says that my methods do not offer very much of an advantage over some of the existing classical methods. Also, it argues that no comparison is done with them.

Now, I am worried whether to submit this paper in a reputed journal or an average ranking journal. I am totally appalled by addressing their comments. What am I supposed to do in such circumstances?


texts:
A PI I might potentially apply to is planning on making three or so offers. Said PI only has a few students at present which I think is the reason for their doing so.

I worry that I will not get my hands on very many projects and will not have enough time with the PI. So my question is: How detrimental is a large lab cohort to a graduate students’ success?

I think it is important to mention that this is a social-sciences PhD program with cohorts of around ten or fewer. This situation seems unique as the PI needs students this year. Most labs only take one student per year.


texts: If because of some recent mental health situation you cannot perform as good as before, should you mention it when applying for a position?

texts:
Imagine the case that because of recent treatments for a mental health problem you cannot perform 100% as good as before. (let's say 70% or 80%) On one hand, mentioning a health issue on its own might have a negative impact on your chance to get a position. On the other hand, you have a CV and a background that reflects your performance in the past and, to some extent, misrepresents your current abilities which are not as good as before.

What is the best solution to this dilemma?


texts: How long does it take before an academic article can no longer be kept behind a paywall?

texts: Just a curiosity: after how many years does publications become public (cannot be kept behind a paywall anymore)?


texts: Typical research on experience for physics graduate school applicants

texts:
I am applying to US PhD programs in physics. I do not have much research experience because I am an international student transferring from a completely different field. When checking the profiles of people applying to physics PhD programs, a random profile looks like this: 4 REUs in astrophysics and computational fluid Dynamics resulting in 2 first author publications, 10 graduate courses in such and such. If this is a typical profile, then I feel I have no chance getting an admission to a single graduate school.

My question is: To what extent is this representative of physics PhD applications in the United States?


texts: Is it rude to write in a journal paper "the proof is left as an exercise to the reader"?

texts:
Many books, particularly in mathematics and related disciplines, contain sentences like "the proof is left as an exercise to the reader", which actually mean that the claim should be easy to prove for anyone reading until that point.

Can I write such a sentence in a paper submitted to a journal? Or will the reviewers consider it rude to omit a proof in such a way?


texts: How common is it that professors have their students write textbooks?

texts:
I keep hearing my teachers (high school and college) joke about how professors make their grad students write parts of textbooks for them.

For example, one high school teacher picked up a history textbook and joked that Spielvogel (the author) just made his grad students write all 1000 pages or so.

How common is this practice? Does this even have a grain of truth?


texts:
I am a German undergrad Math student (3rd year) at the university of Munich and I would classify our courses as relatively hard compared to what I have heard from other (German, but also some other Country's) universities.

During the terms, I really dedicate almost all of my free time to studying and Math itself because I really enjoy it and love learning new stuff.
Yet, I really struggle at exams. I am always able to pass the exams by doing the standard exercises, but once it gets to tasks where you have to have the right ideas and think a little bit more I am unable to have a clear head and almost never get a REALLY good grade.
My grades are almost always around B+ to B- (if correctly translated), but never an A or even A+, since there's always some exercises that I can't solve. I start feeling like I am either studying the wrong way or I am simply too "stupid" to do some harder exercises.

Whenever I talk to graduate or PhD students or even professors, they always tell me that they have been straight A+ students and I've never met one who was just an average or maybe a little bit above average student.

So my question: Is the excuse "I am just bad exams" a legit one and if not, how can I work on it? I don't think that I don't study enough, it's actually not really possible to dedicate more time to be honest. I would really love to stay in the academic field but I am afraid I am not the right type of person to work on higher mathematics.


texts: If a college/ university made false claims on its website, should you still consider studying there?

texts:
The school I'm taking about here is regionally accredited. The problem is, on its website, it falsely claims to be a member of two different international academic associations. Should I look for a different school just because of this?

PS: I asked these academic associations through email if the school is any way related to or affiliated with them at any time. They gave me a negative reply.


texts: Do I have to write GRE to apply to physics PhD programs in the US?

texts:
I'm doing my Masters in GRAPPA at University of Amsterdam now and I want to apply to multiple places for PhD after I'm done.

However, the applications in US confuse me. Some say they want GRE scores, some don't and some say it's optional even. And since I'll be applying to some places in Europe as well, I don't want to write GRE and Subject GRE if it isn't that mandatory.

I'm sorry if this might be a duplicate question but any link/explanation would be helpful.


texts: PhD admissions - Contacting multiple profs from the same university

texts:
Presently, I am writing to potential PhD guides in US universities. There are two professors from the same department who work on topics that cannot be considered closely related, but I would be happy to work under either of them.

I have already written to one of them, who has asked me to go ahead with the application process. I am now wondering whether I should mention in my mail that this (contact with first prof) has already been established, while still conveying that I am adequately interested.

Upon a positive reply from the second prof, what would be the best way to talk about both profs in my Statement of Purpose? I want to keep both options open, while not being rejected because the admissions office/the professors thought I wasn't specific enough with my application.


texts: “making it look good”- is it always important?

texts:
Recently I created a project report for the project that me and my classmate are working on. The project report goes to the external examiner to whom later we have to give a demo on our project.

Me being inclined to designing (web designing, graphic design, etc) I decided to make the project report look really good. A nice clean report with good choice of paper. And care taken while choosing font etc.

It turned out to be much much better than anyone else's report. BUT! The first thing I heard from other classmates was. "Making project report look good is of NO USE. Your project (Application) should be good enough and it's all that matters"

Is it true? from a general perspective of people. Does "making it look good"  matter at all?

I couldn't find any other section more relevant enough to discuss this question. Please let me know if there is any.


texts: How to deal with bogus and unethical journals?how to stop unethical journals?

texts:
In research and publications there are database maintains good quality list of journals, Maintaining a reliable good impact factor too. But on the other side there are list of journals who publish anything for money. They give misleading information about their indexing and even some unbelievable Impact factors.

We find difficulty in publishing one quality paper in a quality journal .while the other hand there are people publishing plagriazed text and repetitive papers in regular way and just dumping the research papers in databases with such unethical journals. Its annoying for me to see these kind of habits been followed.

HOw could you handle such thing. Give our suggestions?

Avoiding is always better but you cant avoid when you see a man publishing 10's of papers for year with these kind of journals and you publishing papers in single digit but its a quality research.

comment name of such unethical journal


texts: Doctorant (PhD student) vs doctorant contractuel (contractual PhD Student)

texts: In the French education system, what is the difference between doctorant ("PhD student") and doctorant contractuel ("contractual PhD Student")?


texts: Is it okay to share work submitted for undergraduate assessment online?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate theoretical physics student in the UK nearing the end of my degree. Over the course of my studies, I've produced a lot of computational code and written reports that I think would add a lot to my portfolio. For this reason, I'd like to publish them on my personal website.

All the work was performed solo, but I usually followed a lab script. These were just a series of tasks to complete and a few useful hints, so there wasn't much to copy other than standard physical equations, but there may be an issue with the similarity between what I've done and what I was asked to do.

I'm also concerned about academic misconduct: It's likely that similar assignments are set every year, and I'm concerned that publishing my work will lead to accusations that I'm helping students in lower years cheat. Since I'm interested in an academic career, I don't want academic misconduct on my record and I don't want to get on the university's bad side.

Are there precedents of people getting in trouble for saying "Hey, look what I made at uni" online?


texts: Should I comment on a cited paper in the paper-review part of my master's thesis?

texts:
I'm writing my master's thesis and began to wonder if it is acceptable to comment on some of the publications I cite in my 'State of the art' part.

I have several papers where the results and/or methods are obfuscated. This is sadly not uncommon given the source of the author(s) are industry vendors who want to show their capabilities and domain expertise without actually revealing anything competitively substantial. The papers are all written by the engineering / research departments of various manufacturers and are published in scientific or engineering journals.

Some of the 'errors' in their publications are surely due to out-dated methods and/or models. However some others are just plain misleading, most certainly as a way to obscure competitive information. I don't have hard facts that they are entirely erroneous due to the omission of their data, but deriving from my research I am pretty confident that some of their results don't add up.

So I don't want to just write down what they found out and how, but also comment on how correct/incorrect their results seem based on my research.

How should I best comment on these opaque industry publications?


texts: How many authors should attend a conference?

texts: I wrote a paper with  3 other students regarding my final year project in mechanical engineering. It was recently selected for a conference in NIT Delhi. Minimum one author is required to present and the price is pretty steep for the participation certificate.Should all of us attend the conference or just one of us? Does the certificate hold any value?


texts:
I am entering Hofstra University this fall as a mechanical engineering student, and I am curious what the workload would be like if I took a second major in mathematics?

To clarify my situation, here are some points:

im simply considering it and dont have to make a decision until, at the earliest, my second semester
I am fascinated by how things work, and I have been told that math is the "purest" science in that it explains everything. I am operating on the assumption that this is accurate
while I have a passion for engineering and hands on work, I would also very much like to participate in research
math is one of my weaker subjects, so I would have to devote extra time to study, though it still fascinates me
Im a hard worker, and plan on using summer and winter class sessions to get as much out of college as I can
i intend to continue college through my masters degree at a minimum

Additionally, MechE is 131 credits and mathematics is 124. My university allows credits to apply to more than one degree. Please feel free to ask for any other clarifying info you need, and
Thank you all for your advice in advance!


texts: how remind a professor we were supposed to have a conversation through Skype?

texts:
Recently, I am looking for a PhD position.
I emailed a professor and he said I chose a day for Skye, I did.
Then he said that afternoon is OK with him, and asked me a bout time difference between my country and his country.

then he did not answer me for 3 days and yesterday was the day we were supposed to have Skype.
now, I do'nt now how to remind him


texts: Talking about other projects in a job talk

texts:
I have seen plenty of job talks, but whenever the speaker talks about a list of topics that they are "not going to talk about today", I often get distracted and even a little bit annoyed. It dilutes the main talk contents, and I hardly ever remember what those items were. I understand that they want to show their breath, but it usually doesn't convey very well. Now that I am in that position, I am wondering if there is a good way to deliver the message.

What would be a good approach to briefly mentioning other projects that you are excited about?

Should I talk about them at the beginning or at the end? Is it a good idea to put all of the other projects under a single theme and not talk about the details at all, or should I try to explain each project's objective and approach? Should I talk about only a couple of projects or is 4 a better number?


texts: Can I keep my full-time job while I pursue a PhD in Psychology, and if so, for how long?

texts:
I have read this question posed a lot for math and science doctoral degree, but my question pertains to pursuing a social sciences doctoral degree. I'm currently working as a Management Analyst in local government. I've decided to pursue a PhD in Psychology at a nearby university. Being accepted is a big "if", but if I were accepted, my goal would be to retain my position in government as long as possible and find ways to connect my research to social behaviors pertaining to civic engagement and public health. I'm also in my early 30s, which means I'll be doing this during the decade where most people are settling into their careers. The eventual goal is to pivot to academia, and pursue a career in lecturing and research.

My hope is that the overlap would ease the tension between holding down a relatively demanding, full time job and would benefit my research. With that said, I'm wondering if I need a reality check here? Has anyone else endeavored anything like this? How difficult is it to balance both?


texts:
I often get asked to review papers on new software tools. This always makes me wonder how one should review such a paper, or even whether software papers should undergo a typical review process at all?

My private checklist typically consists of:

Is it available for download for others?
Does it run?
Did the authors provide benchmark problems? Do they give expected results?
Is documentation sufficient?
Go through numerical methods used in the software (briefly, no meticulous code analysis)

If everything runs fine and produces expected results, I honestly have nothing else to “demand” from the authors. My referee reports are positive and (embarrassingly) brief in those cases. I’m of the opinion that the user community should “do the rest”; evaluate the software and decide whether it’s useful in their workflows.


texts: Should I declare a minor if it is not required?

texts:
With my current major (Medical Lab Science) I am not required to declare a minor at my university. However, the program's supervisor informed me that through taking all of the required courses to complete the program, I will only be one credit in chemistry away from being able to declare a chemistry minor.

Is it worth it? Is there any real positive prospect in declaring a minor if it's not necessary, given my major?