texts:
I'm a graduate student who is finishing off this Summer. I currently have two postdoc offers that I am considering, and they are very different in nature.

(i) Postdoc at a prestigious university, without belonging to a lab/PI, and is essentially a "do whatever you want" postdoctoral fellowship. I can choose to get involved with a specific group or not.
 (ii) Government lab that is affiliated with a well-known university. I would be expected to spend 50% of my time on a project they assign me, and the other 50% could be spent on whatever I want to do.

They are both very well known places in and out of academia so I don't think there will be any advantages/disadvantages of picking one if I decide to quit academia and go into industry.

I can see that I will have a lot of freedom for (i) and I will be surrounded by brilliant postdocs so it will certainly be a stimulating experience. However, I can also see the possibility of getting absolutely lost without the supervision of a senior faculty member. The institution also happens to have no faculty members who are directly knowledgeable in what I am working on. However, said in another way, it would be a very good opportunity to learn about other projects.

On the other hand, for (ii), I will have a safety net because I will belong to a particular research group, and there will be other members to support me in finishing off the assigned project if I get lost (only if I ask for help, and I don't they will be pushing me around). There is, however, a chance that I will be spending 100% on the assigned project (because that is where the fund comes from and it is the priority) with 0 freedom. In contrast to (i), it is very likely that I will be interacting with a narrower spectrum of people in terms of science so it will be harder to broaden my horizons.

Does anyone have any experience with these kinds of postdoc jobs? How important is it to have someone senior down the corridor who is an expert in what you work on? Did you have a problem getting recommendation letters for a postdoc position like (i)?
And finally what was your overall experience?

(I don't have enough reputations to comment so I will add here)

Edit 1: (Thank you for your input AJK!)
I belong to a large collaboration and I do have opportunities to interact with notable professors regularly, but only through emails/chats. Since this is the way I have been working already, I think I will be fine (in terms of getting science done), but won't be gaining much compared to my current situation. However, I have a feeling that recommendation letters will shape very differently. If I go to (i), my recommendation letters will be coming from professors who I interact through emails and telecons. Whereas if I go to (ii), it will be from the project manager who I will be interacting with face-to-face on an almost daily basis. Of course, the content of the letter will heavily depend on the quality of my work but is this not better?

I should also clarify what I mean by "directly knowledgeable in what I am working on". There are people in the department working on the same topic, but those professors are more focused on building the instruments, whereas I am more theory/data analysis person. Granted, they are very knowledgeable and they probably know a lot about data analysis too, but I'm not sure how keen they are in discussing technical details. So yes, "if you are just saying that you work in general in a field X, and a subfield Y, and want to use technique Z, but there are no Z experts" <- this is what I meant.


texts: Should I accept the phd offers that don't excite me or try again?

texts: I applied to several PHD programs but only got one offer from my "backup schools". I'm not sure if I should accept it and calibrate my expectations or work as a RA and try to apply again next year.


texts: Building my personal phrase bank, would this be considered plagiarism?

texts:
I have started to build my personal phrase bank since I’m a non-native speaker and struggling to build my arguments and sentences correctly. So I decided to mimic the structure of native authors who write in academia in general. To make it clear, I will provide an example:

An established phrase from others’ work:

  In recent years, it has become obvious that informal housing and land markets are not just the domain of the poor but that they are also important for...

My use of this phrase in my context:

  In recent years, it has become popular that the idea of both big data and open data are important for the development discourse and not just as tools of the government.

I’m actually concerned whether this similarity in the sentence structure might be considered plagiarism.


texts: The correct & acceptable phrase to indicate that some papers are very likely to be accepted

texts:
I have several papers that are resubmitted to journals with minor revisions.

I feel they are very much likely to be accepted by the time my actual Ph.D. viva takes place in one month.

But I need to submit my PhD thesis now. I do not want to list those papers as simply "under review". I want to indicate they are very likely to be accepted, as they are resubmitted only with minor revisions.

What is the correct and polite phrase to say the state of these papers?

If you are an examiner, would you be unhappy to see that I indicate some papers are likely to be accepted?


texts:
I'm weighing all my options before the fall application and I wanted to know if it is possible to take out loans in the US as an international master's degree student.

Any tips where to look?
Best I've seen are private loans with an American cosignatory. Is it really the extent of loan options for an international? Do universities extend loans to their students or help in getting private loans?

Cheers


texts: Accused of cheating on online final exam

texts: Last month I took my final exam for accounting online. My grades in the class are very good as I have a tutor for the class. I got an email from my professor telling me that she had to talk to me and I assumed it was because I did very well on the final, but when we talked she told me that I was getting taken to the board for academic misconduct because the written part of my exam (solving equations) was "almost identical" to another students. She said after reviewing she noticed that our midterm exams were also almost identical. I did not cheat, I don't know what I got on the exam as she would not tell me, or who the other student is. I would not be worried as I know that I am not guilty, but I have already talked to the board about plagiarism as there was a mix up with some homework in a previous class (it was not stated it was individual work and I worked on it with a classmate) it was an honest mistake and they just gave me a warning. Anyways, that really stresses me out as the teacher claims "there is no way this could be a mistake" but she won't let me know who the person is or what the similarities in our tests were? I feel like I have no way to prove my innocence.


texts: paper rejected, submitted to another conference, got accepted again by the first, what to do?

texts:
I have submitted my research work for a conference in data science, after two months of review it got weak rejection. So I decided to submit it to another conference (the submission was closed so I contacted the chair asking them if it possible and they reopened the submission system for me because I have a positive record with them and multiple publication for the last ten years). The first conference is A ranked and the other is B.
Now, the first conference contacted me telling me that I can submit my work to their symposium and the paper will be appeared as normal full paper in the final indexing.  My paper now is already under the review process with the B ranked conference. But, I would love to have in my records a publication with the first A ranked conference.
Can I contact the second conference again and ask them to cancel my submission? is such a thing acceptable in academia? because I am really looking to have the record with the first one. I am in my final year in the phd and will not publish anything soon because I am planing to start my thesis soon.


texts: What are some steps an undergrad can take to get on a Ph.D. track?

texts:
I hope this question isn't too broad.
I'm graduating next semester and I have been accepted into grad school, but I'm having difficulty finding a full map of what one should do to successfully go from where I am now, to a Ph.D., to (eventually) a tenure track--hopefully as a full-time student through the process. Obviously, this is over the course of 10+ years, but I want to do everything I possibly can, as early as I can.

Some things my advisors have told me for the near future:

Write a thesis as part of your Master's program
Find a professor to research with (goes with the first bullet)
Go to at least two different schools throughout the whole process

Undergraduate advisors didn't have very much advise past that. I'm looking for a broad roadmap of what my future would require/look like if I were to go down this path.


texts: Professor does not care about cheating, what should TA do?

texts:
I am a PhD student, working as a Homework marking TA in a school where cheating is extremely blatant. The university has an extremely strict policy against cheating. Hundreds of students in math courses alone are reported each year, and suspensions are given to severe/repeat offenders. I have personally reported cheating many times.

Based on this environment, most courses have shifted away from Homework grades, and more toward Quiz/Test grades.

My course is a low-bar mid-level math course, very likely to be the last math course ever taken by the students who enrolled in the course.

The marking distribution of my course is done in a way where the homework mark weight is so absurdly high that cheating on homework would almost guarantee a pass.

I had realized this at the beginning of September, and discussed with (confronted) the instructor.
The short summary of the response is that the instructor doesn't care about cheating.

The professor doesn't want to put in the effort to deal with cheaters.
The professor thinks the students cheating would not be overly unfair to other students who don't cheat.
The professor also does not want me to try to catch cheaters.

I have made clear that cheating on homework almost guarantees a pass, and he/she agrees, and is ok with this.

The homework are all questions from the textbook, and a solution manual is readily available on google.

In this week's homework, I have found more than 100 students who have copied from the solution manual, where at least 50 students copied word for word (if reported, the cheating done can be easily proved by the school.)

I suspect I only caught a portion of all cheaters, as buying solutions at this university is too blatant.

I would like to ask the community of my next steps.

If I were to report the cheating to him/her:
Would I anger the professor, since this is against his/her wishes?
Would I build a tense relationship with him following this? (There is still a whole semester ahead, and possibly years in the same university.)
What would be done in the end? What if he ignores the report, what should my next steps be?

If I were to report to the undergrad chair:
Would it be inappropriate to skip reporting to instructor first?
Would I also build a tense relationship with the instructor by this move?
I am almost positive that there would be action by the undergrad chair on the cheating behavior.

I could also report to both simultaneously.
I could also do nothing at all, in which case the cheating would without a doubt continue for the whole term, with the vast majority of students taking part.

I personally disagree with the professor, as I believe that it is unfair for the minority of students who don't cheat.
Due to the high homework marks, a mark curve is highly unlikely, so the students who don't cheat are truly getting lower marks because of the cheaters.

The instructor is in the beginning of his/her career, and not retiring. The university is in North America, very large (more than 50,000 undergrad)

Edit3:
As I continue to grade, I have found more and more cheaters, in the hundreds, approaching 50% of the class.

Thanks for all the suggestions asking me to "let it go".
After much consideration, I can not take such advice.

Thanks for all the suggestions of asking me to "not skip the chain of command".
I have since realized this may have severe consequences, and have decided against it.

I have contacted only the instructor with minimal details of the situation.
Thanks for all the support and best wishes from the community, I sincerely appreciate it.


texts: What to do with letter of recommendation if you left program unhappily?

texts:
I was forced to leave a STEM program after a fight over whether I could apply the NSF sponsored summer abroad fellowship. I was given a letter of resignation and 2 month of notice. The situation was not good before the fight anyway. I left after those 2 months. The MS is not from a prestigious program albeit a good undergraduate school.

I was not thinking about grad school. But I graduated 2 years ago for a MS, and haven't found employment using my BS. I was tempted to apply again, if only for better employment perspectives.

My question is: if I apply to a PhD again, I have to ask my previous adviser for a letter of recommendation which I have no faith will be good. Even if he writes one, I worry that the wording would be cautious. I want to bypass this, if possible, but how? If it can't be bypassed, what can I do ?

The program I left was a PhD. So perspective programs would possibly ask for it.


texts: What kind of video conference software do academics use?

texts: I'm a new graduate student and my adviser asked me to set up a meeting with some out-of-state colleagues (whom I haven't met yet) to start working on a collaboration that I'll be playing a major role in. One of these colleagues suggested a "webinar" or video conference for the meeting. I was wondering what kinds of video conference software are appropriate for this kind of situation - I asked my adviser but he's a little older and not technologically savvy. Is Skype too informal for a video conference like this? Is there another software that is more accepted among academics? These collaborators are at various institutions across the US (where I am), and are all either academics or government employees.


texts: What would my Higher National Diploma be considered in the United States?

texts:
I am currently studying my BTEC HND(Higher National Diploma) from a United Kingdom approved centre and i was planning to apply to the United States after complete this diploma. However i have no information of what to expect out of the United States. What will my diploma be considered in the country and will it be easy to apply to universities regarding my discipline. I've added a link below explaining and introducing HND for those who are not fimilar with the program.
Thank You in Advance

Infromation about HND From Pearson Education


texts: What happens when a professor can't fund his/her own lab?

texts:
Given that funding rates are notoriously low, often in the single digits, what happens when a professor is unable to fund his or her own students? Given that TA positions are also limited, they may not always be able to get their students to be funded as a TA.

I am guessing that most of the time a professor only ever takes on a student if they think there is a good chance they can obtain sufficient funding to see them through. However, I am guessing the edge case of running out of funds has happened before.


texts: Is it appropriate to ask a professor to bump up a grade when I suspect it may be at the cutoff?

texts:
Background: My course has three exams: I did really bad on the first, great on the second (97%), and I think well on the third. I regularly attended the professor's office hours and never missed class.

Question: I now estimate that my final grade could be at the cutoff. Is it appropriate for me ask if he can round up grades (or bump up..) now before the grade is out? Or after the grade is out..?

Details:

This professor didn't send out scores online for the previous two exams. He only allowed us to pick up the exam on the class. However, since everyone will be leaving, I don't know whether he is going to distribute the exam grade online or he is just going straight to put the final letter grade in the system. So, another option would be to e-mail him now and ask how he plans to distribute the exam grades.


texts: Should I talk about myself while writing a letter of recommendation for a student?

texts:
First time writing a letter of recomendation. Never saw one about me. In this case I'm writing a letter for a PhD fellowship for an applicant who has not been my student.

I know this student personally, but we worked together only while writing the proposal.

As the title says, in this particular circumstance (if it matters), should the letter focus entirely on the student, or should I also talk about my research interests and how the student fits within them?


texts:
I am applying to summer schools for undergraduates in the US and all of them ask for a CV(in addition to other documents like a cover letter).

While I understand that a CV should be more descriptive than a resume, is it generally acceptable if a CV is 2 pages long for a 3rd year undergraduate in Physics, or I should make sure that my CV is limited to only one page even if that means I will have to leave out some information that I believe is relevant?


texts: Should I simultaneously apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university?

texts:
Say this year the university A advertises one postdoc and one tenure-track position. If I prefer the tenure track position, but am not sure that I can get it, what should I choose between the following two options?

Option A: Apply for both postdoc and tenure-track positions.

Option B: Apply for tenure-track position only, hoping that even if I don't get it, the university will consider offering me the postdoc position.

I thought that Option A is safer, but some of my friends say the opposite. They think that if you apply for both positions, then even if you are good for the tenure-track position, the university will tend to offer you only the postdoc position, the lowest rank that you asked for.

Do you have any insight on this?

For more information: the job market I am referring to is the US'.

What if we have other situations: postdoc/lecturer, lecturer/tenure-track, or postdoc/lecturer/tenure-track?


texts: Can leader position in a team make up for post-doc experience?

texts:
Well, the situation is following - I'm doing my Ph.D. currently abroad, while still having a position in my home country. It's not a high-ranked university there, but the research institute itself is a very good, new supercomputing centre (40-50th cluster in TOP500 and getting new ones). Now it seems, that if I'll keep my current productivity level, I could aspire to get a senior position, right after my Ph.D.

That said, I'd love to have a family in a few years, but I'd also like to keep an opportunity to get to a better university in a future (possibly with them).

So, do you think, that accepting (if offered, of course) such leading position, could make up for the post-doc experience, if the subsequent publications from my team would be good?

I'm aware, that this is highly non-standard situation, as I know nobody who would experience it.

EDIT

To explain my situation in more detail - let's say I have an opportunity to become a leader of my own research team in a not-so-good university right after my Ph.D. with a chance to do a good research there, as the  quality of this research centre is much higher, than the uni average.

On the other hand, my long term ambition would be to get a research position at some higher ranked university. So, would this university usually prefer man with some leadership experience or a fresh "post post-doc" from some more prestigious institute?

EDIT 2

My home institute is in the Czech Republic.


texts: Visited website on different dates - apa style

texts:
Ray, B. (2018, June 25). NB-IoT vs. LoRa vs. Sigfox. Retrieved January 4, 2019, from https://www.link-labs.com/blog/nb-iot-vs-lora-vs-sigfox

In the source reference of my paper I refer to a website. I consulted this website for example on various dates. Do I only have to write the last date or each date separately?


texts: Research schedule for postdoc application in mathematics

texts: I am currently applying for a postdoctoral research grant and one of the requirements is a schedule of research work.  In experimental fields such as biology I can imagine how such schedule may be structured, say from this to that date conduct this or that experiment. In mathematics where no hypotheses are tested in the same sense as in experimental fields, no data are collected (in general) and detours or changes in approach are not uncommon, how can such a schedule be outlined?


texts: Conference that accepted my paper does not yet have a Digital Library link

texts:
My paper got accepted for a conference in July 2019 and I even presented my work there. The main page of the conference says they will post the Digital Library link for the 2019 proceedings as soon as it becomes available.In this post, the answerer has said that publishing the proceedings online can even take up to 6 months. More than 6 months have passed and nothing from that conference is on IEEE Xplore yet. Is it normal for this to happen?
EDIT:
In this post, one answerer has said it is not unusual for conferences to take 6 months to publish their proceedings.


texts:
I am going to send my application to an organization and they have mentioned that the applicants should send us both tabular and formulated CVs.
Could you please walk me through this? What is a formulated CV? In what format should it be written? What information and in what order the information should be written?
I completely know the tabular format for resumes but I am new to this formulated CV.


texts: Does changing major if you’re not passionate about a good idea or should I accept what I have and live with it?

texts:
I’m a 26 yo with a BA in English. While studying and even the 3 years after I never felt EL fits me the best but still finished it with the hope of studying again the major I like (and trust me it was a hard decision to take as doing another 4 years is unacceptable here especially people here (including my family) thinks of getting job and live with it to the end. Now I'm studying CS. but felt like… What the hell am I doing with my life? Students with me are 8-9 years younger and i feel like i'm chasing something i won't catch.

I don’t really hate my major and I’m thankful I learned a bit of English which allowed me to develop myself in math, physics and coding (which I’m into) but I feel like I want more… now it seems like the way is too long, 4 years plus I want to do master and PhD so 9 years sounds terrifying

So am in front of 2 choices, 9 years to follow my goal or just doing master and doctorate in my already-have major (5 years) and accept being stuck with what i have

I know this is too long but, Please, any advice would appreciate it, a few words of wisdom, anything, really, anything would help me out.


texts: My supervisor does not want to publish my research

texts:
I just graduated from grad school and to say that it has been hell is just a euphemism. My supervisor has been a bully all the time and every thing that I did and didn't please my supervisor was met with fierce retaliation.

The right thing to do was to leave, but for many reasons I couldn't and I was trying to think of the situation as another challenge of life.

Even after graduation, my supervisor did not let go. The latest action was to block the publication of my work which is essential in progressing in my career. My supervisor does not want to hear about publishing anymore and keeps saying (in the rare occasions where my emails are replied to) that I can point to my PhD thesis, that should be enough, no need to publish, no preprints even. We are talking about three finished papers, the essence of all of my struggle during those years.

Can I publish by myself? Should I report this behavior and seek help from the University or a senior? By experience, students in the lab who seek help from outside get punished even harder. What would be the best way to get control over my work? I am less interested in confrontation and focused towards moving on and taking credit for my work.


texts: First research proposal for a postdoc application

texts:
I am completing a PhD in area of "applied" mathematics (although technically this general area is very broad and sits in between both pure and applied ends of the spectrum).

I am applying for some one-year post doctoral positions at another university. These positions are not attached to any specific member of academic staff, and are thus open to all applicants from pure / applied /statistics  - a committee decides who gets the position, depending on a "number of various factors". I am meant to submit a research proposal, however. I have contacted an academic there whose research is in a similar area to mine (but still quite different, of course).

In my situation, given that I am still yet to complete my PhD thesis, and publish my results, what would be the best thing to do regarding the research proposal? How stringent are the requirements in general regarding research proposals for first-time postdocs in the eyes of professional mathematicians? I certainly have a number of potential research avenues to pursue stemming directly from my work - should I just write about them?


texts: Asking recommender to avoid talking about a project that was abandoned

texts:
I'm applying to grad school and have requested a professor to write a recommendation letter. He said he'd be happy to write one for me. I had worked on two projects with him. While working on the first one, I was a full-time collaborator and I was able to deliver the targets we had set out. This was two years ago.
During the beginning of this year, we decided to start working on another project. However, I couldn't devote much time to it because I was working on a full-time job. My responsibilities on my job kept me engaged and I couldn't make much progress. Slowly this project fell through the cracks. Since the professor is an extremely busy person it is unlikely that he would recall details around the first project. I'm worried he would unwittingly be influenced by the failure of the recent project.
How do I request him to take into account the fact that I was busy with a job while working on the second one and hence factor the first(successful) one strongly into the letter? I do not want to ask for it directly because it would appear pushy.


texts: Any idea when Georgia Tech and Cornell CS PhD Fall 2021 results will be out?

texts:
Not sure if this is the right forum to ask this but I am not sure where to turn. Apologies in advance if this is not a relevant question on this forum.
Most universities have announced their graduate admission results for Fall 2021. I have applied for PhD in computer science and am still waiting to hear back from Georgia Tech and Cornell. Any idea when they might announce their decisions?
Thank you!


texts: What should I consider when deciding whether to delay an exam?

texts:
I believe I may have scheduled an exam too early, and I am considering delaying it by a day or two. The material that I would cover fits in fairly well with the earlier material, and not as well with the later material. I can cover the material as is, but barely so, and the students would not have time to digest it or gain experience via a homework set. I have already put the approximate dates of our four exams in the “tentative” course schedule.

What factors should I consider when making this decision, and how should I weigh these factors?

Here are some factors I've thought of:

Whether or not I have time to cover the material in class
How much advance notice is given (Changing the date the day before is probably too late, right?)
Whether or not the students would like the exam to be delayed (I'm guessing they will!)
Department or institutional policies
Whether or not student accommodation services (e.g. make-ups, proctors, alternative formats, etc.) need to be scheduled in advance

Update

I think there are a few things that are clear (some from the comments—thanks!):

It matters whether or not any posted exam dates are described as tentative or firm. Tentative dates are estimates and students should understand that they are subject to change, whereas students may plan around firm dates.
Exams should not be moved to a significantly earlier date. This is not fair to students.
Students should not be tested on material they haven't had a chance to engage with (in and/or out of the classroom) or ask questions about.
Special understanding and grace should be extended to students who miss an exam date due to a scheduled change (especially for short-notice changes). Of course, students who miss an exam for a school-approved reason (e.g. sports/research/bereavement travel) usually have the right to make it up anyway.
If the instructor polls the students offering to make a change to the exam content and/or date, and they unanimously support the proposed change, then there's no reason not to do so.

Epilogue

I polled the students before asking this question. Almost 60% of students preferred moving the exam date back one day to cover the extra material, and about 35% preferred keeping the exam on the same day but having it cover less material. In spite of their preference to delay the exam, and in spite of the dropped material fitting better with the this exam than with the next exam, I decided to move 25% of the content of this exam to the next exam. Thanks to all for the discussion!


texts: Is the maintainer of a database a good or bad reviewer in principle?

texts:
I have used a large database comprising the equivalent of about 10 studies.
Would the researcher in charge of this database be a good peer reviewer? As an editor, would they be a good selection?
On one hand, they know the database and the field very well, on the other hand, you could make the argument they may be biased in favor of publication because it draws attention to their project and cites the associated papers.


texts: How to cite quote from Gutenberg Project ebook?

texts:
I am reading 'The life and letters of Charles Darwin' from Gutenberg Project ebook. I want to cite some quotes from this book in academic article. How can I cite it?

Project FAQs suggests following

  No permission is needed to credit, cite or link to Project Gutenberg
  as the source of something you use. This applies even for commercial
  use.

However, I want to cite this book (maybe with page number of the quotes). Project homepage did not give any other metadata about publisher and ISBN number. This metadata is available on Amazon. I am little confused, whether I should cite without publisher and ISBN or use the one from Amazon.

I know this is not a big deal but I just want to be correct :)


texts: How necessary is research for a collegiate teaching job?

texts:
I am finishing up a PhD and looking toward teaching. I have a Masters in Math, Masters in Computer Science and am finishing up a PhD in Computational Science. I am wondering how important research is to academia jobs.

I love to teach and am very good at it and I could honestly see myself teaching for the rest of my life and not doing research (writing paper, presenting at conferences, etc is very stressful for me). My question is how important is research to getting a job in academia. For example, I see one person at my university is an associate professor and does no have a PhD. Is this person publishing?

Are full-time professors at community colleges publishing and active in on-going research?

Are there ways to become a full-time, tenured professor without a great track record for research?


texts: How to tell my supervisor I won't use the data that a colleague prepared?

texts:
I started a postdoc about a year ago. At the time of my hire I was told another postdoc was preparing the large dataset I would eventually use. In the meantime, I was to run some sample models and develop a method on some small test data.

Ten months later when I finally received the data, it was a mess of a spreadsheet (extremely long column names, no column names, typos, no documentation) and I also began finding errors in it immediately. For example some merged in values had been multiplied by 2 or 2.5 or 2.25. Nobody could explain what happened so I spent nearly 2 months redoing those values.

It gets worse. I started checking the other columns and realized some "no data" indicators had been averaged with measured values. This produced large negative values which should have been a red flag for that data. There were other similar sloppy errors in the data. I've tried to be extremely polite with the other postdoc but I'm not getting a lot of help from this person.

I've spent nearly 3 months cleaning up the mess and I continue to find problems. My budget is nearly up (I have about 3 months left) and I'm being asked to start writing and prepare a draft in the next three months. I worry there are more problems with the data that I'm not seeing because the person who prepared it did not have high attention to detail. It was also prepared by hand in Excel and not well documented or not documented at all. I don't want to put my name on something that uses data that is potentially full of errors, especially since I'm early in my career. I've voiced these concerns somewhat indirectly to my main supervisor and he is nothing but reassuring and even defensive of the data. Another colleague, not the one in charge of the project, agrees with me.

What should I do?


texts: Acknowledging data sources used for creating an image

texts:
For a conference paper, I created an image compiling data from multiple sources. What is the correct format for acknowledging the sources?

Map showing road condition (Data source: Esri, OpenStreetMap) or,

Map showing road condition (Data sources: Esri, OpenStreetMap)

In most of the literature, I observed authors commonly using 'source' when they mean 'sources'. Shouldn't it be 'sources'?


texts: How does the COVID-19 crisis affect durations of peer review and editorial handling?

texts:
One question we often get on this site in one form or the other is: Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react? Now, suppose I have gone through all the steps to answer this question in a normal situation: I have procured statistics of the journal’s handling or peer-review times, added a fair margin for individual variability, etc. My question is: How should I modify these in lights of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis? I do not want to bother editors more than appropriate.

The obvious thoughts are:

Some reviewers and editors are busy with challenges arising due to the crisis, e.g., due to having to switch to online teaching, having no childcare, etc.
On the other hand, some reviewers and editors now have more time available due to conferences being cancelled, not being able to access their labs, and similar.
Some fields are obviously directly affected by the crisis, in particular medicine, virology, and epidemiology. I am not considering those.

I am only interested in answers that go beyond such obvious thoughts, for example being based on experience as an editor.
The ideal are answers based on statistics, but those likely do not exist yet (but will be welcome when they eventually will).


texts: What is the most appropriate time frame to apply to a Postdoc?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?

I'm about to start a Postdoctoral program of 1 year, after that, there is a high possibility that the project won't go on. Hence, I have to find a new position.

What would it be a good time frame to start contacting professors to find a second postdoc, I found that applying very early usually ended up in me being not a suitable candidate because I had no immediate availability.

I know that there is no one size fits all time frame, but in your experience, what would be a better practice?


texts: What author name should I use for publication?

texts:
I'm soon to be co-author for a paper and I'm not too sure which name I should use for publication (like many previous users here!). I have a legal Chinese name which no-one knows me by but is on official documents (passport, my soon-to-be degree certificaet), and my English name which is what everyone calls me and is in the email I use for my CV. Unfortunately both combinations of my legal and surnames are quite popular when I search them on Google (advice I saw given by others) so I'm at a bit of a lost here of what I should do!
I'd really appreciate any advice/thoughts here thank you !


texts: Etiquette for whether to send a follow-up email to a professor who will not have a reliable internet connection?

texts: I am writing this post regarding how to approach a situation I am currently in.  First, I am an undergraduate student in math who started working under a professor last Fall.  Prior to the start of Spring term, he let me know that he will be going on Sabbatical until early-to-mid April.  Additionally, they would not have a reliable internet connection.  During January I sent him an email with a question though I did not expect a response until he got back.  Given that he has presumably been back for 2 weeks, is it appropriate for me to send him another email with a follow-up or should I wait for a response.  I am sorry if this is a ridiculous question.


texts: Does publishing greatly affect my chances of getting accepted and funded (TA/RA) in a PhD program?

texts:
Short background:

I've got BSc's in both Mathematics and Computer Science and I've just started my Master's in Computer Science after which I hope to pursue a PhD in Mathematics at a university other than the one I'm currently studying at (no PhD in Math or Comp. Sci. offered as the department/school is rather small).

For what it's worth this is all happening in the U.S.

Question:

I've talked to two professors at my current university and one has told me if I want to get some funding I had better publish while the other sort of shrugged it off, making publishing seem like it's just another thing.

Well, which is it? Should I really push to publish as much as possible while working towards my Masters or should I not worry so much about having something in a journal somewhere if my goal is to get accepted to a PhD program with tuition paid and a living stipend?


texts: Disputed territorial claims in academic submissions

texts:
This year I was asked to blind-review a paper which showed a map of China in the disputed Nine-Dash Line borders. I have seen the Nature Editorial from 2011 which discusses and criticizes this phenomenon (and suggests that there is a directive from the Chinese government to show the Nine-Dash line). The map in question showed graphically the values of a certain measured quantity for each of China's provinces. It may be of little surprise that the coloring does not reproduce very well for the tiny disputed islands. But this kind of display does give a reason to show borders.

Is it appropriate to insert a comment to this effect in a referee report, or can editors be assumed to be well aware of this issue already (or even be annoyed about an unnecessary reminder which may suggest, though not fairly so in many cases, a biased referee)?


texts: Should I write a non-academic white paper?

texts:
I have a B.S. in computer science, and I have an idea for a computer security white paper.  It essentially builds on top of another white paper's security mechanism.  It would propose an alternate application of the security mechanism, and it would also add an extra feature to the security mechanism, which would be necessary for the alternate application.

Is that sufficient to write a non-academic white paper about?

From research that I have done on reasons for writing non-academic white papers,  I have gathered they are essentially used to inform people, and persuade people making business decisions.

The real reason I would like to write this white paper is so I can ultimately get into a Master's program or PhD program.  Could writing a non-academic white paper offset a less than desirable GPA due to classes in my minor?  I have also heard that 5 years of experience in Industry could be enough to get into a Master's Program, which I almost have.

Also, would it be possible to get a grant with the proposal?

I also have a question about white paper verification.  Is it necessary to have a working prototype to publish the white paper?  I don't think it would be useful to redo the work that was done in the previous white paper, but would need to be done to build a prototype of course.  Could I just propose the features that would need to be added?

I have also done research on attacks that can be done on the security mechanism for the white paper I am building on top of, and I suspect these attacks could be applicable to my alternate application, but would occur in a different context.  Should I write about that as well? Or should I leave that for a separate paper?

Thanks for your time answering any of these questions.

Edit2
Someone answered my questions, so making it the original post.


texts:
My Problem
Generally, my problem is that I have put a great effort on a laboratory manual and I would like to publish it. Specifically, I am would like to publish a stand-alone laboratory manual for an introductory control-theory  course.
I would like to have my manual peer reviewed and published. Where could I submit my laboratory manual for the purpose of review and publication?
Anecdote
Let me start with a personal anecdote, I have taken a hand full of courses in control theory throughout my academic career. Without exception, I feel that only at the end of the courses did I even have a clue about what I had just done and how come. I believe that a solid, stand-alone laboratory course could ease passage for students.  I had looked for on-line available laboratory manuals for my undergraduate course. I found many were available, but not that meet my needs for one reason or another. I have largely felt that the authors are missing a compelling and pithy narrative that weaves together the material for their audience. Rather, its a series of tasks to undertake.
Regarding Peer Review
Peer review has many advantages as compared to just posting the lab manual on a department website. Though publication might not be possible, perhaps there is a internet site where a project might be submitted for review, or offered as the basis of a collaboration. In such case, if the process was open and juried, then there would be some measure of peer review (I imagine that this is similar to how projects like linux are done). The end work of this project might simply be a book registered with the library of congress.
Regarding Publication
Publication also has many advantages as compared to just posting on the internet. Mainly though---at least for me---I'd like that a user could easily obtain the manual, and meaningfully cite the manual (e.g., while preparing laboratory reports).
Perhaps I could post it on Arxiv? I have just looked and see that there are course notes posted there. However, this alone seems to miss out on peer review.


texts: What should I do when images in a publication appear to have been faked?

texts:
I just came across a paper published in a journal (IF < 2), which has used a couple of images without mentioning the source. This itself is not necessarily a problem. But they seem to be from a commercial software product I'm familiar with (they haven't mentioned even the name of the software, though it generated the image), and based on my experience with this software, the image looks to me like it has been tampered with.

Specifically, it is an image where the software predicts properties of a compound which is used to verify the result. Now, let's say some parameter have a cutoff at 0.5% and they are getting 10.3%. To conform to their result they removed the '1', and it become '0.3%'.

Emails to the corresponding author came back empty.

Should I report that to the journal or leave it as it is (may ruin someone's career)?

They have used the image to prove the result of the experiment.


texts: At the beginning of PhD research, how to balance independence with satisfying my advisor's expectations?

texts:
I am at the beginning of the research portion of my PhD program and as is standard in this department, I am to begin my research by writing a small literature review of some relevant papers in my field, chosen by me and approved by my advisor. This includes replicating and tweaking/improving the experiments ( which boils down to code ) in the chosen papers along with discussion in the results comparing mine to the original papers, etc. Note that this paper is not directly to be published; it is part of my qualifying exam. I am given about a month of time to do this (along with other research related things I must do...).

The problem:

When sitting down to write, I am constantly blocked by the fear that the work I am doing is not quite what my advisor wants. My advisor casts a wider net with his research interests than most professors I have seen, so his students seem to do projects in various areas within engineering. That said, the research summary I am doing is largely on clustering in machine learning, and I fear my advisor has little interest in this topic, or worse.... that I am, in a sense, not doing what I'm supposed to be doing?

If I were doing this very same research or a class, a clustering report in machine learning, I feel I would have no problem at all just working contently and developing my ideas and trying to come up with as interesting an experiment as I could and generally adapting to wherever the project took me and doing what needed to be done to finish it, but the game is changed since I feel I am working on this problem for someone rather than just for myself. Additionally, in my undergraduate research, I was given very straightforward instructions so there was no ability for me to choose papers on my own ( e.g., "Replicate the results in this paper", "Write an abstract mentioning X, Y, and Z" ). The freedom I'm given in this research review experience is somewhat confusing, I suppose.

Is this concern a normal feeling? What do I think/do about it? The reason I ask is that i precisely am afraid to be working on the wrong thing, and I am frozen in my writing and am struggling dearly. It is an incredibly nagging feeling to think that that my report isn't focused correctly. For the purpose of this literature review, should I just follow where the research takes me or should I change the focus of it and just try to please my advisor?

To be clear, my question is of how to balance being independent and satisfying my supervisor?


texts: How can I do a literature review efficiently?

texts:
For a new project I want to compile a literature review to determine the state of the art and possible approaches to start with.

Last time I adhered to the following scheme, but it felt very inefficient.

Search scholar.google with relevant keywords. (3-20 papers)
Read this first set of papers and look for main publications most of these papers link to.
Use scholar and webofknowledge to collect all papers, which cite the main publications. (30-200 papers)
Go through all the papers ordered by assumed importance or newness and note used methods, results, strengths and weaknesses in a spreadsheet till running out of time or motivation.

What system do you have to do literature review and what would you recommend me?

[update]

After posting my question I found Am I reading enough of the scientific literature? Should I read for breadth or depth? which talks, as I see it, more about how to read scientific publications.

I am more interested in advice on how to make sure one has found all the important publications and how to prioritize one's reading list. One advice I got some time ago was to start with new publications fist and then to work yourself back in time. Is this a good advice? How do you do it?


texts: Are papers presented special sessions regarded inferior?

texts:
I am doing my PHD in computer-engineering (1st year), and am publishing at computer science and hardware conferences.
My department receives requests all the time, on confernces with high probability of acceptance. (Usually there are too few submissions, so they request for more) These conferences are prestigious, however the sessions, I participate are very specific to a certain project or topic.

There is a lot of progress on my research, but since I am publishing a lot, it is dilluted into more publications.
Can this later hurt my reputation, if I publish extensively on these sessions?


texts: How to find people who do similar research?

texts:
I am 28 years old and did my PhD last year at an applied math institute and left. However, I am still in good contact with my old working group  and my PhD adviser told me I should come back.

At the moment I am a self-employed programmer. Although I really like my current job, I sometimes wonder if I should give the academic career another try. The main reason why I left was that I did not feel integrated in research society.

To be more precise, most articles I read where between 1950-1960. Most of my focus area are was out of scope from my adviser (he is an expert in numerical optimization, I was doing measure theory and Markov operator theory combined with numerical optimization). I had a lot of fun to modernize old theorems and try to apply them to numeric problems. Although I enjoyed the freedom of doing research on my own, I often was wondering if the results that I found are already known. My advisor was often surprised about my fundamental results, but he could not tell me if they are actual new. In fact, after searching persistent for one of my main theorems, I found it in a booklet from 1960 written with a typewriter - with a much shorter and genial proof.  Although most of my other theorems have been peer-reviewed and published in B journals, I am still waiting for someone contacting me: "Hello, your result X in journal Y is known for a long time".

The author of this typewritten book is actually still alive (85 years old), on facebook and on top of that even accepted my friend-request. However, lives in New York and I live in Germany, so I can't easily visit for a short talk. I did send a text message, but  never received a reply, I am not sure if it was because they do not want to talk about math anymore or if they just did not receive it, because facebook sometimes hides messages.

I was searching the web for professors doing similar research to what I am interested (by entering some keywords together with university into google). However, when I scanned their recent publications, I had no idea what they are doing.

I think I might missed the opportunity to connect to other working groups. I love teaching and doing research, but I also hate doing isolated research and having no defined task.

Is there any specific way of finding people who do similar research that I am not aware of?


texts: Updating the arXiv version of paper after it is published in ACM proceedings

texts:
Before submitting my paper to one of ACM's conferences, I uploaded the earlier version of the paper on arXiv. The paper has now been accepted and published in ACM proceedings. I plan to update the arXiv version of the paper with the final version of the paper that has been published in ACM proceedings. I wanted to ask if:
1) Am I allowed to do this?
2) Do I have to make any changes to the format of the draft. i.e the paper contains a copyright block from ACM now.

When granting licence to ACM, I did NOT opt for open-access. Also the paper was published in 2018.


texts: How long do applicants ususaly have to accept a PhD offer? How committing is it?

texts:
I'm currently and full-time employment and planning a career switch. I've identified a doctorate programme as something I'd be interested in doing and so consequently I'm going on full steam with the application processes. However, I am not yet 100% sure a PhD is something I should do. I anticipate a bunch of life changes in the next several months and I'd like to generally keep myself open to opportunities which don't require a few-year-long commitment.

I want to plan the timing of my applications, as well as prepare mentally for potentially having to make that commitment. And hence my question:

How much time would I usually have between receiving an PhD offer and having to accept it? I am aware of that time when it comes to normal employment (approx. 2 weeks) but I don't know how that works in academia (and British academia in particular). Surely, they must be mindful of the fact that many programmes have different application deadlines and hence to make an informed decision one would want to hear from most of them... Although, must they?


texts: What is the proper way of searching for a reference whose type is unknown?

texts:
In the article, Stability of quantum motion in chaotic and regular systems, Physical Review A, 30, 1610 (1984), in the reference section these two references given:

  [11]M. V. Berry, in Chaotic Behaoior of Deterministic Systeins, Vol. 36 of
  Les Houches Summer School Proceedings, edited by G. Iooss, R. H. G.
  Helleman, and R. Stora (North- Holland, Amsterdam, 1983).

and

  [13]A. Peres, in Quantum Chaos, edited by G. Casati and J. Ford (Plenum,
  New York, 1984), and references therein.

However, when I search for these two publications, for the first one, I can only a single volume - 16th - and the for the latter one none at all.

It is clear from the title that the first publication is a Proceeding of some summer school held, but the the second one, I cannot even speculate what it is from the way it is referenced ("in ..."); a book, an article, etc.

Question:

First my second question: what type of publication the second reference references ?

Secondly my first question: what is the proper way of searching such documents.


texts: How to become a visiting student in a UK University

texts:
I'm about to finish my BSc in Computer Science, and in September I'll start an MSc in UK.

What if I don't want to waste my time during the August and September months? Would it be feasible to ask a university for a short period as a visiting student in their department?

What are the steps to follow?


texts: Tests: at the beginning or the end of class?

texts:
I'm teaching a 1st year math course. I have to give a one-hour test about the content of the past three weeks during one of my two-hours sessions.

Usually I give such tests at the end (i.e. during the second hour), as I don't want the test to be disturbed by the invariably late students, and I think the students will only be thinking and talking among themselves about the test during the second hour. But now I'm also thinking that if I do this, then students will have their brains already a bit "fried" by the first hour of lecture/exercises, and will have trouble focusing during the second hour on a test that is about what they learned the previous weeks. Besides, my session is from 11h15 to 13h15, so I expect everyone to be hungry during the second hour.

In either case it's not really optimal... but there isn't much choice. What are the other pros and cons?


texts: Advantages and disadvantages in working after PhD while waiting for postdoc

texts:
I am in the process of finishing a Chemical Engineering PhD at a british university that is solely based on numerical work and programming.

My thesis is finished and I set a date for delivery.
I have published a paper as first author, I am in the process of finishing another one (which will probably be published quite after my thesis delivery if it is accepted), co-author of a third and I have contributed to four more. However

Only the second first author paper has anything to do with my main research topic
I believe that my main research topic does not have the potential for further meaningful development
There is a period in which my productivity slumped due to mental well-being issues (I had to go to university counselling and even undergo an examination) related to my personal life

I would like to continue my career in research and academia. I enjoy the intellectual freedom, even though in these years I have also seen many downsides to research and flaws in the general. I also believe that my PhD has given me numerical knowledge that is on the more advanced scale compared to several of my colleagues in the department, but that these skills are perhaps too specific and that research positions that require them tend to prefer people that have done their PhD in a more purely numerical subject.

I have not yet secured a postdoc, although I am applying for several. One problem here is that not many groups carry out the sort of work I have studied toward, and I cannot continue working with my supervisor since he has no funding available for such a position. Among the various applications I am also trying to get into another group in my department, with my supervisor consent. This postdoc would be my favorite choice (let's call this Option 1), both for the stimulating work the group carries out and because I would prefer to continue living where I am now for personal reasons (social network, community participation and so on).
This is still not limiting my search for a postdoc, and I am applying for positions in the rest of the country and abroad.

The head in this other group seems to have a positive response to the possibility of joining him, however he told me that funding will only be available from the start of next year, if he manages to get it, and that it will have to be an open call, although I will be informed personally as soon as it is secured. I will be able to know this around December. Another identical call will be made 6 to 12 months after that.

So, at the same time I am applying for several jobs in quantitative finance, for which, by the recruiters responses, I seem to be at least minimally qualified since they are so strongly numerical. They also seem to be the highest quality job I can apply to and, having attended some recruiting events from Quanta companies, I think I would enjoy working in the sector.

I have read a few answers on this site reading gaps after your PhD, and understood that in most cases this is bad, so I don't want to sit on my butt and I would continue job-hunting and finishing up some secondary research.

What I am asking is

Would working for an year or more in a highly numerical environment hurt my chances to return to academia? Or would this be looked at positively?
If I received a postdoc offer that is less interesting to me than Option 1, would it be better to take it or would it be better to take up a job and wait for the second call of Option 1?


texts: Should an undergraduate answer a call for reviewers?

texts:
I'm currently a senior undergraduate student that has a couple publications where I've been 3rd author on conference papers. I've been conducting research in the field for around 3 years.

I got a call for reviewers from a conference that I've submitted and been accepted to before. I am unsure on whether or not I should answer the call as I don't know how much experience I should have before I can review papers.

I know it would be good experience for me to get and something I am looking forward to doing in the future. However, I don't want to take this on without knowing what is expected of me.

Some questions:

How do journals verify your expertise for review?
Can I work with someone else to conduct the review (advisor)?
Are reviewers usually faculty?

Should I tell the conference leaders that I am an undergraduate and ask if I can still review papers?

Thanks and let me know if you need any extra info!


texts: Tips for transition to online classrooms given university shutdowns in response to COVID-19

texts:
Given the recent shutdowns of many universities across the world, there's an increased interest in online education techniques.

In my case, I am a TA for a quantum chemistry class, and I'm finding it daunting to transition to online teaching. At first, I got really excited because I thought of taking advantage of this situation to run a flipped discussion section: I'd record lectures in advance, and then have virtual office hours where students could Zoom/Skype/Google hangout with me and we discuss in the same chatroom (so everyone hears the conversation).

However, in what I suspect to be an attempt to distance themselves from something nice and free/far cheaper (like edX) which has been doing this online routine for a long time, my university has required that we livestream our lectures/discussion sections. This is purportedly to be in the aim to make their online experience as college-like as possible, but it's problematic for multiple reasons. First, lectures are at 9AM EST... Do we expect students to tune in at 10 PM in Japan? Or 3 AM in Hawaii?

Second, we should use the silver linings present in this university shutdown: video lectures = students get to go back and re-listen to a part that confused them! From my perspective, this university requirement goes against an attempt to maintain normalcy: normalcy should not be defined as continuation of the same daily routine (impossible for many), but rather a continuation of helpful instruction.

I intend to find out whom to email about this, but in the meantime, what resources/advice would you suggest for an instructor who suddenly has to transition to the digital classroom?


texts: PhD Applications: Can a good academic record in my master's compensate for a horrible UG academic record?

texts:
I have a very bad undergraduate academic record -- I failed or didn't attend the end semester exams for many courses (15 courses, to be exact!), and I  had to clear these later on, towards the end of my course.

Admissions to graduate courses in my country (India) are based on entrance examinations (and not your profile or UG record) -- which I've cleared and I'll be going to one of the best universities in my country.

I wish to do a PhD, and I want to keep options in the US or UK open. I intend to study well in my masters and get good scores, and, going by what I've done in the past couple of years, I think I'll be a lot more disciplined in my masters.

My only worry is: will my undergraduate record be a bottleneck no matter how hard I try in my masters? Should I just go into the industry after my masters? I really want to do a PhD!

My overall undergrad GPA is bad (2.72), with, as I've said, 15 "backlogs" (exams that I didn't attend or failed, and cleared later on). However, during the last 3 semesters, I took no backlogs and I averaged above 3. During the final two semesters, I averaged 3.2 and in the final semester I got a 3.4.


texts: Is it wrong to start your abstract with a question?

texts:
My abstracts starts with three specific questions that my proposed research will answer. But when my friend saw this, he said: "I will never start an abstract with questions, and I will never read this paper if it starts with questions."

Is it wrong to start your abstract with a question sentence?

Edit:

My friend and I are in the field of Information and CS (broadly speaking). He added that only some very prominent scholar dare to write such abstract.


texts:
I'll be teaching a graduate-level mathematically oriented class with probably less than 20 students. I have to grade the students (our system doesn't allow for pass-fail grading), and while I don't want to be overly fussy about the grades (this is after all advanced level material and mostly Ph.D students), I would like to provide some incentive structure so students will do the classwork and hopefully learn something in the process.

One possibility is "coarse-resolution" grading where in each homework, the possible grades are +, 0, -, where + denotes having done about 75% or more of the work, 0 is between 50 and 75%, and - is below 50%.

At the end of the semester, the number of +/0/- determines the grade, with "mostly +" getting an A, "mostly 0" getting a B, and mostly - getting a C.

Is this likely to be effective ? Is there something else I should do ? I'm open to the idea of not grading at all and giving out dummy grades, but I do think that people who put in effort should be rewarded in some way.


texts: Copy pasting definitions and theorems from other papers to my own paper

texts:
I am writing a mathematical paper.  Since my English is not perfect, i am borrowing sentences from English-speaking authors. I have some questions about copy and paste from other papers to my paper. As you know, one needs some definitions and theorems from other papers. I cited all of papers that i used either definition or theorems from them.

1)Can i copy and paste the original either theorems or definition from the papers to my paper or i have to change them?i mean writing somehow that is not as same as original one.  Because i have seen English-speaking authors often change original theorem or definition in their papers. On the other hand, i have seen someone does not.

2)As i mentioned, i am borrowing sentences from English-speaking authors. When i look it my introduction, i see this sentence from that paper, that sentence from that paper and ... It makes scene. My supervisor read it and he said it is okay( it is not ambiguous) but i'm scared that referee rejects my paper.


texts: Reference to the unpublished lecture notes

texts:
I doubt about the following situation.
There is a kind of lecture notes, which contains really valuable examples on which I want make a reference from my paper (I cite some of them and reuse some of them).
But this work wasn't officially published, and it is not listed in the list of the works in the CV of the author. The only one place where this document appears is this link:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf

So what the proper way to deal with this situation? Give a link like on web-resource as MISC or UNPUBLISHED or do not make reference at all?

At the moment citation of this work looks like:

M. Kanazawa, Context-free tree grammars, SemanticScholar, URL https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf, 2012.

which doesn't look very nice.

HINT: I'm not asking for a specific TeX or BibTex advice!
Below just a convenient formal view of the reference which I'm going to put.

@MISC {kanazawamakoto2012,
    author   = "Kanazawa, Makoto",
    title    = "Context-free tree grammars",
    HOWPUBLISHED= {SemanticScholar},
    month    = "feb",
    year     = "2012",
    URL = "https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/95a3/cb63b80c3416879d534f41eedcd174b40159.pdf"
}


texts: Is it a good idea to submit paper which is shorter than conference's page limit

texts:
I'm writing up a paper for an upcoming CS conference. The problem is my paper is 1 page shorter than the conference's page limit. This conference doesn't have any workshop to accept a short paper.

Someone told me that submitting the paper shorter than the page limit was a very bad idea as it guaranteed rejection. Is it true?


texts: Is it possible to get in to Genetic Engineering after completing a bachelors in computer science?

texts: I am almost done with my bachelors in Computer Science. After BS(CS), I am interested in Nanotechnology/Nano-electronics and Genetic Engineering. I would prefer Nanotechnology/Nano-electronics first and then Genetic Engineering. My goal is not a good salary, I am very fairly skilled in Computer Science so that's enough for financial support. I want to study these subjects because I like them. So my question is that is it possible to get an admission for either of these courses after a bachelors in Computer Science?


texts: It seems that almost all succesfull academics have had distinguished advisors. Is it really true that pedigree defines success?

texts:
In his manuscript "The making of a scientist" [1], Hans Krebs highlighted the fact that great scientists are moulded for success by their renowned grad school advisors. Additionally, he talks about other things in the paper.

My question is, does the observation which Krebs made five decades ago still hold true? I was not lucky to get an inspiring PhD advisor during my PhD, in spite of my advisor having a really renowned PhD advisor. I did not learn anything substantially life changing (in matters of ethics, dedication, passion) from her apart from getting suggestions about my research. In such situation, should I just accept the fact that it is highly likely that I will never surmount to anything great in my future research career?

[1] Krebs, H. A. (1967). The making of a scientist. Nature, 215(5109), 1441.


texts: How to avoid overly extensive introduction of otherwise unnecessary preliminaries for a minor result?

texts:
For my PhD thesis I have proven a minor result but with the help of a theory that is far apart from my actual subjects.

To have my work self-contained up to a certain level and to make my proof understandable, I should introduce like one page of notions, which I will never use again.

The result is quite different from others. But even if it was just a modification of a known result, I don't think the line

  "... can be obtained by a modification of the proof of XYZ to our
  needs..."

is appropriate in a PhD thesis.

How should I proceed in such cases?


texts: How can I fund my PhD after the first year?

texts: I'm in the process of applying for admission to a PhD program this Fall after several years in industry. Due to the late timing of the application I'm looking at self-funding my first year, but after that I would rather not be doing so. What would my options be for funding after the first year beyond just TA and RA-ships?


texts: When do STEM academics learn how to manage funding?

texts:
I'm from the humanities, where research grants etc. are scarce. Also, training to deal with research grants and external funding is nearly non-existent in my field.
I'm curious as to how graduate students in more external money-heavy areas like engineering or medicine (or maybe even computer science?) learn how to manage a lab.
I saw Managing lab funds , How does laboratory funding and money management work in grad school?,  and a few other posts but it still feels opaque to me how people become adept at managing research money at scale — and yet this is a really central part of the job in many fields (but as I said above — not common in mine).
Presumably a lot of that money has allocation rules, accounting rules, and can be audited to insure compliance too.

Are there courses in graduate school?
is it learned informally from being a postdoc?
or does everyone take a funding management compliance course at their university?

Other questions indicate that people do have knowledge of this: Is it usually allowed to use grant money for voluntary contributions? but it’s hard to believe no one has an explanation of how they got this knowledge.


texts: is it ethical to publish the same paper in a conference proceedings and a journal?

texts:
The papers for a conference are limited to 3 pages. On the website, however, it says Transactions of the IEEE offers a special feature edition (whatever it means?), so I think it would be good to submit the full manuscript to this special issue.
But that means I'm submitting two papers with the same title to a journal and a conference proceedings.
Is that ethical? How should I deal with this?

The extended abstract is accepted. Meanwhile the special issued journal is open for submission. I contacted the editor of the journal and she said you can present your longer version in the transaction journal.

But basically I think I will use the same text and figures. Maybe 2 more pages than the conference one. Is it considered as self-plagiarism ?


texts: How to overcome changing undergrad course/university due to failure

texts:
Right after school I decided to pursue a degree in physics. It went well at first but then I started to struggle with depression and other personal issues. Eventually I started to fall behind and felt overwhelmed by the coursework, I lost my passion for the field and just felt frustrated.
I noticed it was time for a change, so after moving away and attending another university things were lightening up a bit.

Since I was too far behind in my coursework I was afraid of losing my financial support. Thankfully I was always good at programming, so I found a nice job to cover my expenses and switched fields to Applied Computer Science. Ever since then things are working out great. I got top grades, am nominated for a stipend, and even got the time to volunteer and participate at some minor research groups.

Anyways I feel bad for not being able to finish my physics degree. I feel like I completely wasted 2 years of my life and just don't know what to do/think about this. I do miss every aspect of physics now and secretly regret my decision every now and then.

Would it be reasonable to get my physics degree (at least finish the bachelor) when I am done with my current field? If not, how can one deal with the impression of failure and regret?

(English is not my first language, any edits are warmly welcomed)


texts: Submitting an unsolved-problem paper to open access journals

texts:
If a person without good records and with bad records (many flawed papers on arxiv) submits a paper which claims a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis to a traditional journal, then will it be ignored certainly?

If so, then will it make any good for him to submit it to an open-access journal
which accepts articles in two weeks?

I would like to know if the International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences is still active or not. I think they used to receive many submissions but now they seem not. I, for one, like their special interests in publishing unsolved problems.

Thanks.


texts: Trends on time spent studying over the the past few decades, for students outside the US

texts:
Is there any research/study/survey/dataset that looked at the trends on the time students spent on studying, over the the past few decades in different countries in the world (aside from the USA)?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, if field-specific, and college level, if level-specific.


texts: Using Discord to support online teaching

texts:
This is a question I plan to self answer, but answers from others are very welcome too.

This term, I am teaching group and Galois theory. This is a heavily IBL course, where almost all the time is spent on group problem solving. You can see the course webpage, with all of our problems, here (and the previous term's webpage here .) Like everyone, we have been told to move our teaching and office hours online.

I asked my students what tools they use to discuss math online, and several of them mentioned discord. I am currently setting up a Discord channel for office hours and course meetings. I am planning to use this to document what I have learned so far, and hope others will help.

I would like to thank the denizens of the "homework help" channel on Discord for their help! We academics criticize online homework help sites a lot, but this could be their moment to shine!

Questions which I plan to write answers to, if others don't:

How do I log onto discord? How do I invite my students?
How do they add themselves to voice and text chats? How can I break them into smaller groups for group discussion, and how can I monitor those groups.
How can I and students type math in discord, if we know LaTeX?
How can I and students embed photographed images or hand drawn sketches in Discord?
What are other useful things to know?

So far, the advice in this post is based on one test run with 6 students. I'll continue to update once our course comes online.


texts: Would it be okay to provide a template when asking reference?

texts:
I am applying for grad school this year and I am considering sending an email to ask a professor to write me a reference. He had previously agreed to write me a letter because I took one of his advanced courses.

I am not sure if it'd be okay for me to offer to provide a template to him for the letter. The reason I want to do this is I will be applying for a PhD in a different, though quite related, field, and I want to make sure that he knows what the advisory committee will be specifically looking for in his letter, and make sure that his letter corresponds well with my statement of purpose.

Is this an acceptable practice between professors and students? Or would they consider it offending since he is supposed to provide his independent opinion? And if it is okay, how can I offer it in an appropriate way?


texts: Is it considered plagiarism for a professor to use uncited sources in teaching materials?

texts:
I have a professor at my university who uses content from an un-cited textbook that he has never referenced anywhere, including his green sheet (syllabus), as an additional resource. At least some slides he has used include parts of content that have been re-worded and others that are 100% the same. I noticed this by Googling for textbooks on the material we're studying in class and found that examples given in one that I found were exactly the same as what he has provided.

Would this technically be plagiarism? Should he be given the benefit of the doubt in this situation?


texts: Canadian External Examiner for UK PhD Viva advice

texts:
I have a PhD viva next week and have (very) recently that my examiner has no knowledge of the UK viva system

My first question is what is the PhD defense failure rate in Canada? (I'm not sure if I really want to know this).

How much weight is put on the defence in Canada?

Is there anything that examiners usually look for in PhD defence in Canada?

I have four Journal Publications from my PhD work. I know my work very well.


texts: What research has examined the cost in time and money of conference attendance?

texts:
I am looking for surveys/studies that quantify the time and money academics spent on conferences/symposia/workshops/etc by both organizers and attendees. Specifically, I'm interested in both academic and institutional costs related to conference, travelling, and administrative tasks related to travel. (In my experience the overwhelming majority of expenses are covered by employer/grant/etc anyways.)

I am most interested in the field of computer science, and academics affiliated to US institutions.


texts: What is the circumstances will the Editor consider rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted?

texts:
We have a medical paper under revision and we hope to be accepted soon.

In submitted version, last author is head of department and who is the one who had the original idea. He proposed to be first author after acceptance.

But current first author has done the most work. We are preparing to write a letter to journal.

Is there any ethical issue in changing author order as I mentioned above?
Under what circumstances will the Editor consider rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted?


texts: How do I specify that I ranked first in a university which has alot of affiliated colleges?

texts: I ranked first in my university in my undergrads, which had many affiliated colleges. How can I specify that in an essay in a compelling yet precise manner?


texts: How to survive in a small field where unethical senior professors on major editorial boards abuse their power?

texts:
In my small area in STEM, there are quite a few unethical senior professors who are members of editorial boards of almost all major high impact journals and seem to abuse their power. They are powerful and have a strong network. I have conflict of interests with some of them. How do I get my research published in those high impact journals?

For example, I submitted a paper to a journal where some of them are on the editorial board. It was rejected after a few days of submission with the reason that they received many more interesting papers than they could publish. Asked the editor politely for an explanation and got ignored.

Another example; a competitor was assigned to review my paper. It was kept on hold for a year without clear reason for rejection at the end. Later, they stole my idea and got the publicity.

One more example; I applied for a job. The PI said that they were not interested in my research. A year later, I found that a new group was established,  doing the things I proposed. Moreover, they published a few papers without citing my work.


texts: What is normally not acceptable to budget in a grant

texts:
I seem to have much more freedom in industry sponsored grants, so this is specific to government grants.  I have never been allowed to budget in a 'Computer', but I can budget in 'a CPU'.  I mostly work with computation, but I assume the computer issue effects many fields.  I also cannot budget in tables and chairs, but through overhead from the institute I can buy those.

Are there other issues for budgeting funding for items that are not allowed that may be more specific to fields?

For example, are there usually restrictions on a microscope, for people in that field.


texts:
I (a grad student) wrote a paper and sent it off to a journal for review as first author, with my coworkers as the other authors. A professor on the team says that another student wrote much the same paper, using possibly some or all of the same data (it's mostly secondary data), and, I suspect, the same or very much related theory. I am not on paper 2, which I haven't read. This seems a little weird to me. Is it? I wonder if it will impact my chances of getting my paper published if, say, the paper gets rejected where it's been sent.

Both of those individuals are on my paper. Also, I don't think they could not know this was happening since the team has a formal paper proposal process related to publication that has to be followed to prevent problems . Who knows, though?

If anyone has suggestions about how to broach this topic with my professor that would be great.


texts: Who holds intellectual property rights on a thesis?

texts:
I thought of an interesting idea for a thesis for my Masters program and I think I would eventually be able to sell a product that is built from the algorithms/code that I develop for this thesis.  I realize my thesis is my work and I have the copyright permissions, but I am wondering what rights I have and what rights my school has if I were to take my thesis and develop it into a product which I then sell to customers.

Would I have all rights for selling this product or since my professor is essentially guiding me and assisting me in my research, does he/she own a part of it as well?  I can only seem to find answers on the internet that pertain to the copyright permissions of the actual developed thesis, not products that might be derived from such efforts, or code that was developed in tandem with writing the thesis.

Any links to proof or legal precedence would be very helpful as well.


texts: How detailed should a methodology be presented?

texts:
I am writing a manuscript dedicated to the classification of natural processes occurring worldwide. In this study, I create a composite model involving a classifier, i.e. a Neural Network model, that will be used to process the classification. The study discusses which variables, related to the observed natural processes, are more important for the classification procedure (e.g., weight matrices are described and discussed).

To explain the method, I briefly give an overview of machine learning (principles) in 3 sentences and relate it to my study. In addition, I also explain what are neural networks, and the explanation is made in the appendix (3 pages). For both, machine learning and neural network, I use a citation pointing directly to a book.

Is it preferable to leave a citation inside my manuscript so that the reviewer just takes a look at the cited book to understand how neural networks work, or can I explain the concept in the appendix (but in this case I use different citations for detailing the explanations)?


texts: Minor typos found directly after submission of a revised manuscript to a geochemistry-focused journal

texts:
I am a PhD candidate working in fields related to environmental sciences and climatology, and have recently finished the revisions/corrections for my first peer-reviewed manuscript.

Unfortunately, I did not get to be the corresponding author for this first submission, for which I collected all data and wrote the paper. Therefore, my first supervisor submitted the revisions instead. However, this was done without informing me and, more importantly, before I could carry out final checks on the manuscript to make sure all the figure references and citations were correct...

Immediately after submission of the revisions by my supervisor, I have checked the manuscript and found the following errors:

One full reference is missing, but cited in-text (out of a total of 80 references).
One Figure reference early on in the manuscript was deleted by my supervisor, which now means the figures are presented in the wrong order...
Another Figure reference has a minor typo ("Fig. 4a" instead of "Fig. 4").

My supervisor has refused to re-submit the corrected version of the manuscript, even though the corrections were only submitted yesterday evening. I am asking for expert advice and opinions on what my best course of action is. Can the above errors be the decisive factor in rejecting my paper for publication, even if the reviewers comments were otherwise addressed objectively well? My fear is that the paper will be rejected as "sloppy" (i.e. the revised paper should be perfect in terms of referencing and citations).


texts: What is a Chartered Scientist/Engineer & how do you become one?

texts:
British societies (and commonwealth countries) offer the title of chartered scientist/engineer.

Is it based on my education only or work experiences (and research outcome such as publications)? How do they judge an application?
Do they need a final degree for the process: do they just contact my university to verify the degree or must I have obtained the degree from specific universities (e.g., accredited programs)?
Is this British professional qualification useful outside the commonwealth countries? For instance if applying for a job in US or Germany?


texts:
I am currently writing my master's thesis in English in Germany. One of the sources I found has a relevant figure that I would like to show and properly cite in my thesis, however this figure is in German.

Is it okay to show the same figure in German in my English-written thesis?  Or should I adapt the figure (if possible) to English while still citing the source?


texts: What is the difference between Ph. D programs with coursework and those without it?

texts:
I have been looking into PhD programs in the Engineering field, and I have found different types of programs, such as some with coursework, and others without any coursework.

What is the practical difference between them? (Besides the obvious coursework) What kind of student is expected for each of them?

EDIT: To be more specific, I have been looking into Robotics PhD programs, such as:

CMU Robotics PhD (Coursework + Research).
KCL Robotics PhD (Only research).


texts: What do professors really want in a PhD student in Europe?

texts:
Background:
I have done my masters in computer science/artificial intelligence. I want to do my PhD related to data science, applied machine learning. I do not have degree from world's top ranked universities nor I have top quality research publications. I have had some domestic issues since my completion of degree education so I have not been able to fully focus on my career.
Nevertheless, I am very much willing to learn and upgrade myself is to meet the research labs requirement. With curious mind and life-long learning attitude, I have been doing various online courses (after my work hours)and have worked on different tutorial projects related to data science and machine learning i.e. from text mining, image processing, process mining, genomic data science to blockchain development.

More background
Since, I want to become a really good researcher and for that Phd is the first step. After my masters, (more than 2 years) I had time to reflect and I take notes about what I am going to do during my PhD. I am going to be a dedicated Phd student where I can work hard, learn, collaborate and produce good quality research publications and build a strong research profile. I am very much willing to learn whatever it takes to complete my Phd project.
With my qualifications and the skills, I have been applying for PhD positions whose qualification and skills are very much in match with mine. I apply only after I feel confident that I shall be able to handle such project. However, after applying for more than a year, I have not even got reply from most. I have been interviewed 3 times and I have been told that they have found better candidate for the position. One Prof. wrote that he liked my profile and wants to interview but after interview he told me he got better candidate for the position. After one week, I noticed same phd position being advertised again :(. I was interviewed again lately by the same professor, but rejected again. No clue what they really want from a PhD candidate.

My Question(s)

I am really confused about what professor look in a phd candidate? If its the skills and qualification or is it the certain level of interest and passion to go for research degree. I believe, I have both.

What should I do now? Keep looking for PhD positions? Or improve myself (in I do not know what way).

I have been keeping up with my interest for research career even through the tough times. I have applied to more than 50 positions. The only prof. who found my profile interesting rejected me twice in interview. I do not want to give up but do you think I should give up and rather look for other career.

Thank you for your attention and precious time.
Your feedback is highly appreciated.


texts: Does the talk count as invited if my PI invited me?

texts:
I'm a just-graduated undergraduate in Biology/Bioinformatics.

In a month or so, I'll get to give a short (10-minute) talk at a major conference during one of a handful (5?) 50-minute workshops (I'm so excited!).

The other 4 speakers were invited to talk by my principal investigator. He also invited me to give a talk. My PI applied to give the workshop—it’s a competitive proposal-based thing, I think.

I'll be applying to graduate school in a couple of months and plan to list the talk on my CV.

I guess it's officially an invited talk (by the criteria here and here, at least), but that feels somewhat contrived since it's my PI who invited me.

Should I go ahead and list it as an "invited talk" on my CV, or would "contributing talk" be more honest?

Thanks!


texts: I applied for a tenure-track assistant professorship position in computer science (CS) in the US. The particular opening announcement was broad, non-specific to the subarea. In my application, I emphasized the subarea X. After applying, I inofficially found out that the CS department doesn't hire in the area X, but hires in a nearby area Y, for which I could also produce a different but still valid application. Technically, I cannot change my application documents any more or withdraw my application through the website of the hiring department. The best I could do is submit a new application using a new e-mail address. This might raise concerns on the side of the reviewing faculty, or, on the contrary, it might be considered pretty normal. Any advice on whether to submit a new application? Pro/contra arguments are welcome.


texts: How to write a postdoc research proposal in mathematics?

texts:
I have to write a research proposal for some (post doctoral) fellowship (for Mathematics/Mathematical Physics). The authority wants me to submit a short research proposal (preferably in two pages which includes bibliography). Can someone suggest what one should consider while writing such a proposal with a length restriction? I believe, I just have to highlight the main points of the the research and give a bibliography with it, but I may be wrong. The idea in my mind contains several steps. Should I give a time frame as well to finish each one? Please help.

Reconsidering once again, can someone tell me how to write good research proposals in areas like pure mathematics (I mean, like Non-commutative geometry, K-Homology etc. where, unlike some other subjects, number of papers, an average researcher can produce at the time of graduation, is less).


texts: How to ask an university for application selection result before accepting an offer from another university?

texts:
I have an offer from one university and still awaiting results from others.

How to approach other universities and ask them about my application status so that I receive my selection / rejection before the deadline of accepting the offer? Is it rude to inform the universities that I have an offer from another university and will be accepting if the results are not announced before the deadline?

All the universities are in the same region.


texts: Must one find references to fit knowledge already known from education or experience?

texts:
Recently I wrote a course paper on a subject connecting my major to my current major. In the background section, I listed quite a bit of essential information I think is information that is readily available, and which I can confirm through many years of life and work experience, but which my instructor knows nothing about. The instructor has accused me of not providing references for this information.

Do I need to fill my paper with citations to people who wrote books saying the same thing? How do I know where to draw the line between what gets a reference and what does not?


texts: Why is it unusual to add a date to scientific papers?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  Why is the date left out of some academic papers?

A scientific paper usually begins with a title, a list of authors with contact information and affiliation, and an abstract. There is usually no date to indicate when the paper was written or first published.

Yet, the first questions that comes to my mind when reading a new paper is often: When was it written? How current is this research? Can I expect that science has moved on since this was written?

However, when I suggested adding a date to the header of one of my own papers, my advisors reacted, surprisingly for me, as if this was a quite outlandish idea. The reason given was that it is "unusual". Is there any rationale behind this?


texts: Why do graduate programs have comprehensive examinations (comps)?

texts:
I'm about to begin studying for the comprehensive examinations (comps) my masters program (Computer Information Systems) requires.  I'm curious as to the point of even having them in the first place.  I'm not concerned about whether or not I'll pass my comps.  I know that I will.  It just seems like a lot of wasted time in both preparation and the fact that I'll have to burn a precious day of vacation to take them.

I could understand if, as stated in another post regarding PhD programs, we were required to take them after our first year of the program as part of a larger weeding out process.  However, that isn't the case.  We're simply required to take them before graduation.

In four separate exams, we're tested on the four core courses for our program.  Didn't I pass those courses already?  Haven't I already earned a satisfactory/passing grade for each course?

Would someone please provide my ignornant mind with some insight into the possible reasons why?  It feels like double jeopardy...  Thanks!

EDIT:
The exams are written by the same instructors who taugh the specific class I took.  For example, both Dr. Jones and Dr. Smith teach CourseX.  However, since I took Dr. Jones for that course, he is the person who wrote the comp for the course.  At least, that's my understanding of how they're written and by whom.  I apologize for leaving this nugget out.  I shouldn't write these questions while I'm sleep deprived...


texts: Ask for a recommendation letter from a teacher in the university I'm applying to

texts:
My situation is a bit unusual: I plan to apply for a second Master's degree in a foreign university I did an exchange semester in. It is pretty well-ranked compared to my current one. The Master's is related to my current one, but contains more theory (from a computer science degree with data science courses to a machine learning degree).

I need two letters of recommendation, and I am thinking about asking professors whose courses I followed during my exchange semester. Since my application is borderline (good grades lately, less so in my first two years of bachelor's) and the program is competitive, I assume that a letter of recommendation from professors at the same university would give my application a much-needed boost, especially since they teach courses in the program I am applying to.

I don't know how to ask for letters. I have never done it, and while I passed these courses, I didn't have the kind of stellar results that would make them call me a genius in the letter, though I think that they would be willing to help if I asked.

Is a good letter from my current university a better bet than an okay one from the university I apply to? Should I send one letter from my current uni, and one from the one I want? Is it even a good idea to ask these teachers for letters if I didn't have a close working relationship with them? If so, how would I go about asking them for a letter?