texts: What happens if you don't enjoy your research partially through your degree?

texts:
I'm a sophomore at a Canadian university studying mathematics. Since near the end of first year, I've thought about attending graduate school for some mathematics field (this could also be because I don't know what else I can do with my degree/knowledge).

I'm thinking about it now, however, and I've noticed (through painstakingly unfortunate experiences and unnecessary, overly-ambitious classes this year) that perhaps mathematics may not be my life (although I do enjoy reading on it, studying/looking into different aspects of the field, and even if I don't do well on an assignment, test, or class altogether, I'm not typically turned off of that subject if it is maths-related).

Thus, I'm thinking about this as someone who could potentially be doing this in grad school. Right now, I have the freedom to take other, non-maths courses (I'm minoring in film, for example). Will this freedom continue in grad school? As well, I'm fortunate enough to be in an undergrad program that encourages cross-faculty research. Thus, if I wanted to look at mathematics from a film point of view (or vice versa) for a research project or thesis, it would be encouraged. However, from what I'm seeing from my grad school research, you are typically in grad school for one specific field and do research in that topic for your entire degree (which, I understand is usually less than the 3/4 years of undergrad study).

So I guess my question is, what do you do if you're in grad school but grow weary of your research? I'm sure you can't just up and leave, but what if you want to research something that isn't offered by a grad institution, or want to merge two topics together? How does the process work then? Or what if I wanted to do research with the philosophy department on a mathematical topic (e.g. something like logic)? How would that work?

Do grad institutions give a degree of freedom to their students, or is it all about the adviser and what they want? And if the latter is the case, what do you do if you don't want that? Do you have to just suck it up and do it anyway?


texts: What should I do with a master student's online report that made my work look like his?

texts:
I have a published a conference paper (in 2014) that has been used recently by a master student (whom I do not know) to write a paper for a master's class discussing a paper. In his work he cites my work and the title he put on researchgate.net is: Analysis Report on [my work].

Issues:

In the work itself the title does not contain Analysis report on.
He copied images of my work without referring to the original source.
The report is written (although it might not be on purpose) as if he did the work.

Since this work is for a master project I do not mind these issues that much, however it is published on ResearchGate and not clear that it is a report explaining a conference paper.

Should I ignore it our should I contact the student asking to remove the work?


texts: How do people changing fields after PhD overcome competition with "locals"?

texts:
There are a number of questions here about changing-fields.  Those are mostly about how common it is, how it affects future career, or whether a move from X to Y is feasible (example 1, 2, 3).  At any rate, it does happen — I have come across people with background in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, who were all in postdocs in atmospheric science.  A frequent motivation may be to resolve the two body problem.  And some fields have a higher ratio of jobs to PhD graduates than others.

But if someone with a PhD in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, applies for a post-doc in atmospheric science, how do they overcome the competition with candidates who do have PhDs specialising in (the right subfield of) atmospheric science?  Wouldn't a potential host quickly dismiss candidates who show neither experience nor interest in the relevant field, even if they have spoken the person, when other applicants are pre-trained "locals"?


texts: How to choose between multiple math postdocs offers?

texts:
I am trying to decide between some math postdoc offers, and I can't decide what is important for a postdoc position. I have talked to several senior mathematicians including my advisor, but they all seem to have different opinions. I just want to hear some more opinions on the following:

How important is prestige? Suppose that I have an offer from school X, which is fairly prestigious (something like top 10, which isn't a well-defined notion). Also suppose that I have an offer from school Y, which is not as prestigious but a better match research-wise. Suppose that the ranking of school Y is approximately n (again, not a well-defined notion). For which values of n should I choose school X over school Y? My goal is to become a tenure-track professor in a PhD-granting institution.
What makes a good postdoc supervisor? I can think of the following criteria: compatible research interests, being well-known in one's field, compatible personalities, generous with time, etc. Am I missing anything else?


texts: How to take notes during lecture properly?

texts:
I am struggling with note taking during lectures for a long time. I find that if I only listen to the lecture I am able to understand the concepts properly. But the downside is that I often forget some important details. On the other hand, when I concentrate on taking notes, often I just end up writing a lot of things without paying much attention to the concepts. I have been trying to improve my note taking skills by watching video lectures from OCW or YouTube. My lecture notes look more like lecture transcripts. I pause and rewind the video and end up writing a lot. I can't figure out how to improve. I would really appreciate if anyone could have any suggestion.
PS. I take notes with pen and paper and I haven't tried note taking on a computer.


texts: Letters in high-end interdisciplinary journals – how much do they weigh in a CV? Are they only for experts?

texts:
Some journals, especially some prestigious ones like Science and Nature, have these types of articles called letters which are usually an opinion/argument on a certain topic, e.g., to point out something that has not been discussed or some new research direction to take in a particular field.

How much do these publications matter in a young scientist’s CV? Because they are not really based on a specific study. Or are these mainly for researchers who are considered an expert in their discipline?

Also, I am wondering if PhD students or postdocs are taken into consideration if they submit such letter to a prestigious journal, or if a senior scientist needs to be among the authors.

Example: Bushmeat Hunting As Climate Threat

Jedediah F. Brodie and Holly K. Gibbs

Science 16 October 2009: 364-365. [DOI:10.1126/science.326_364b]


texts: How to go about "record of teaching excellence" as part of an application for an academic position when you don't have teaching experience?

texts:
I am currently a post-doc and I would like to apply for a tenure-track position in a health-related discipline. As part of the application, the search committee requests a record of teaching excellence. My experience with teaching so far has been as a TA but never had a chance to teach a course or even part of a course. Just wondering what should I include in this section of the application? Do I submit a teaching philosophy with a brief summary of my TA experience? (they did not request a teaching philosophy)
I am looking forward to hearing from present and former research committees members (and for sure from anyone else would like to participate).


texts:
I'm actually an United States citizen who has been living and being educated in Malaysia.  So currently my family decided to send me back to the States to continue my future studies.  Some people told me that I need TOEFL/SAT results to prove my English but some of them said that I don't need it because I'm a citizen.  I'm kinda lost now...
What should I do to prepare myself before going there?


texts: Can I write a paper out of a simple idea?

texts:
Sometimes I have simple ideas that can be useful. They could be obvious or not, or it is possible that no one ever considered them the way I did.

For example:

To gather information about the statistics of the unemployed in a city or state, I suggest to build a website in which unemployed people register and enter their information. This information is very useful for decisionmakers on unemployment. But, after a while these statistics are not valid. On the other hand, unemployed people are very reluctant to update their employment status via the Internet or they don't have access to it. To solve this problem, we can send an SMS to them and they answer with 1 (as employed) and 0 (as still unemployed), then we integrate these answers to the central database. This way, we have up-to-date information in periods.

The idea was that simple, however maybe no one in our country implemented it. Could it be a paper? If yes, what can it include? Because it is as short as the above. Should I, for example, explain how we integrate the SMSs to the database (however, it may be simple too or the subject of other tools or papers). If I implement the system, should I provide the statistics of unemployment in a city or the percentage who contribute the plan? Totally, I don't know what else such a paper should cover.

For another example, suppose that I am the first one who invented the sliced bread. How long could my paper be and on what would I probably argue?

However it was just an example and after some research I may realize it is not workable, but I should say I actually built the website for an organization in my city one year ago (However not the SMS and updating part), then I was thinking if I can make a paper out of it. Maybe I could use some parts of the real data I gained in such paper, for example the people who registered (which was more than 80% of all the unemployed ranging from 20 to 40 years old) and those who had a cell phone (which was more than 98% of them), this topic shed some lights on my way.


texts: Referring a paper which is still under publication

texts:
My domain is Image Processing and Computer Vision.

I've written a follow-up paper for my previous paper which is still not available in IEEE Xplore. I am submitting the new paper in a conference. I want to ask what is the best approach for making the previous paper available to reviewers?

Upload the previous paper in arXiv
Submit the previous paper as a supplementary material

Please guide me.


texts: What's the point of a MSc if I can just enroll in a PhD program?

texts:
I am thinking about doing a PhD as I am quite interested in research, I really enjoy trying to figure problems out myself and having to find and understand the necessary information I need for my next report or project myself. This is great.

I am currently enrolled on BSc Computer Science and I am in my last year. Its going nicely so far. So long as I do well (at least a 2.1) then I will consider perusing a PhD.

The problem I have is that I don't know whether or not I should go for a MSc first before getting a PhD. I mean whats the point if I can just enroll on a PhD immediately?

I have talked to some other students who have done MSc/PhDs in their respective degrees and a lot of them tell me that I shouldn't waste a year of my life on an MSc, they say if your going to do a PhD, then an MSc is pretty pointless.

Is there truth to this?


texts: What is the difference between "Green" and "Gold" Open Access?

texts: What is the difference between Green Open Access and Gold Open Access?  Are there other "flavors" of Open Access?


texts: Is there (or should there be) a website to record errors in papers

texts:
There are several questions on this site about errors in papers and even the errors-erratum tag. I'm specifically thinking of mathematical errors, where there is an unambiguous mistake, like a wrong sign or wrong physical constant. I have come across ~5 of these in the past month.

Is contacting the publisher really the best way to correct these? Sometimes papers are old and it seems unlikely that a new PDF will be generated. Would the academic research community find it useful to have one canonical site that made it very easy to submit errors and corrections. Then, when reading a paper, one could check the site with the DOI or title and see if that paper has an entry. I am considering making such a site, but wanted to check with other academics if it seems like a worthy endeavor, if a site like this already exists, or if there is a reason it does not exist.

I realize this is an opinion question. I know these types of questions get closed, but this is still the best site I can think of to ask the question, so hopefully I get some good replies before this gets downvoted.


texts: How to say good-bye to an unhelpful and undisciplined professor?

texts:
DISCLAIMER: the following story does not necessarily correspond to the facts in reality. In particular, it does not necessarily correspond to the author of this post and his/her supervisor.

I joined my advisor's lab as a PhD student. I developed my own new direction for my lab, which is recognized by the community. We have presented papers at the top conference in my area. My advisor had never presented their before.

Professor: little scientific contribution

In the publications we have written together, I have been the first author and can claim 98% of the scientific contributions. The other 2% is for my advisor's very minor suggestions. Most of the time, after the paper is accepted, the finalization process is 100% on me.

When we have other co-authors, my advisor tries to appear to input more and implies that I have been told to do something (for example, "as we discussed earlier"). My advisor often implies to me that the others are unhelpful to my work, and seems to prefer working in isolation with me.

My advisor has recognized my contribution, saying "your work" as in "sorry for talking about your work" in internal meetings. However, my advisor also seemed to insinuate that I am the one being overly protective about my originality, saying on several occasions in a jocular tone "No problem. I can be the first author."

Professor: little scientific discipline

My advisor asked me once to add someone who did not contribute at all as a coauthor. On several occasions, he/she suggested me to submit the same paper to multiple conferences, and to spam low-quality conferences with my publications. Now that he has seen the benefits of my way of quality-thresholding, he started to educate me to have a high standard.

Professor: the good side

My advisor has a pleasant personality, enjoys a good reputation among certain communities in our university, and has encouraged me when I fail. Our working relationship is a really, really patient one, and my advisor can leave me alone for several months without pushing. This is not sarcasm but the biggest help that I was given. I have been able to take a larger-than-usual number of vacation days, and have found that my advisor never crosses the line in communication.

Student: helpless

I have been very exhausted writing papers and am suffering mental problems from having to fight on the frontiers of science with little help. I am just always stressed.  I find it difficult to smile or even to concentrate, and have nightmares every few days.

At the graduation stage, my advisor continues to talking about the "next paper", and talks about doing post-docs, without agreeing on my graduation date.  He/she intentionally delayed some of these administrative procedures. Frankly I feel too disgusted to continue this "co-authorship".

I feel less confident about complaining to the university, because (1) I do not speak the local language; (2) I find it difficult to be sociable because of my health issues; (3) I am from a third-world country, which could bias people's judgement; (4) I rely on him/her to organizing the defense; and (5) what should I complain about?

Questions

Generally, how does a Ph.D. student. who has progressed well, safely and permanently leave an unhelpful and undisciplined professor, to avoid being intentionally delayed in the graduation process, and to roll on with the rest of his/her life?

What are the general limits of a student's rights in the process of getting his/her Ph.D.? Can he/she submit the thesis and demand to defend, without respecting his/her advisor's suggestions to stay longer as a Ph.D. student or a post-doc?


texts: Messed up my PhD. Hope for academia lost. Not attractive for industry. Hoping for some advice

texts:
My civil engineering PhD got extended to 5 years due to my lack of commitment during the early years and lack of interest in my research area on part of my advisor.

I feel that I made a mistake by joining under the advisor in spite of having good profile in masters degree. Though I was initially interested in the research topic, I lost interest in it as it became a solo journey right from the start. My advisor's interest area do not align with my PhD thesis. I believe he had to work in the field because he was part of a grant. My lab colleagues work in different research area in alignment with my advisor's expertise.

Now, I am stuck with a PhD degree that couldn't get any rigorous due to personal limitation. I obviously can't conceive, execute complex research ideas absolutely independently. Also, my advisor did not push all my manuscripts for publication till date. I have only published 2 papers in the 5 years of PhD.

Now I am applying for postdoc positions, and I am receiving no suggestions from my advisor. He has no contact on my research area. I am getting no response from my applications. My defense is due in December. And I am panicking about not having anywhere to go from here.

I am overqualified for most of the industrial positions and those positions where they need a PhD, my research appears underwhelming.

I really messed up, I don't know what should I do. Academia seems closed. Industry a far fetched dream. I am in the US and I am an international student. Sorry for the rant. I really can use an advise. Is it possible to come back from such a disastrous profile?


texts: Should I give authorship to a senior person whose main role was to connect me to other people?

texts:
My former postdoc mentor wants to be an author on a paper I wrote with some other people. Her role was to connect me with the other people (she knew them, and they had access to a specific patient population I needed). Also, my mentor and I talked about some related ideas years back, but never the specific experiment that the paper is about. She thinks the experiment was her idea, but she is mistaken about this: when I first told her about it, it was already completely designed, she gave no input.

Agree to the request?

Pros:

She will support my career more (promote me to other colleagues) if I do what she wants.
If I leave her off the paper, she will probably go around telling people it was her idea and that I'm some kind of jerk. And they might believe her... she is senior and well respected in the field.

Cons:

It detracts from my record in the sense of making the paper look less independent than it actually is (a fairly minor concern as my tenure application is already under review).
It detracts from the contributions of the other authors who actually worked on the study (also a minor concern because it only detracts slightly for there to be 6 authors instead of 5).
She did not make a scientific contribution to the study, so it is unfair (this is maybe the real sticking point).


texts: Writing subscripts in editorialmanager abstract window

texts:
I am trying to submit a manuscript to a journal that uses editorialmanager system. I wish to know how to insert subscripts in the abstract window . When I go to insert special characters link

I only find subscripts for the numbers from 0 to 9. How to write subscripts of letters like

Thanks.


texts: MBA recommendation letter from the board member of another business school?

texts:
I know someone very well who is a board member of a business school at one of the world’s top ranked university. This university has a great business school for undergraduates but the MBA program is not at all held in high regard.

I have my eyes on a highly ranked MBA program at another university.

My question:

  Will a recommendation from a board member of a
  business school improve my application or harm it when applying for an MBA program
  at another university?

I can see it harming my application because if I am such a good applicant for an MBA then why would the board member endorse my application for another university? Why wouldn’t he try and make me attend the MBA at his business school?

On the other hand I can see it improving my application. For someone in his position to endorse my application to attend another business school shows I must be a very good fit for where I want to go.

  Do I ask this board member for a recommendation letter or find someone
  else? What are some of the pros and cons of asking this board member?


texts: Ethics of conducting research on a class

texts:
I'm a repeat Teaching Assistant in a fairly large (100-200 students/semester) core, required CS course at a large, private US research university.  I'm very interested in researching what factors influence success in the course, possibly with an eye toward SIGCSE.

I'm concerned about how to ethically conduct research on students.

Yes, I know a little about IRB, and I assume at some point I'd need to get IRB approval. However I'm so unsure about this, I'm not even sure what to ask the IRB yet. I'm hoping y'all can provide me some guidance and advice as I begin to plan for next year.

I assume I have to ask for explicit, opt-in consent? Obviously, participation or non-participation couldn't affect their grade. However, if only a very biased subset bother to opt in, the research might not be worth conducting. Can I compel students to choose to opt in, or opt out?

Additionally, the course is very similar year to year, so the extent that it would be very useful to be able to include previous semesters. I imagine this is even trickier.

I have the full encouragement and cooperation of the faculty member, but working with human subjects, much less students, if totally outside their expertise.

This is similar to this question, but slightly different and, I think, more difficult.


texts: How to cite in two languages combined with acronym at the same time in Harvard style

texts:
Let's say one is writing an academic paper, and one has to deal with two languages and possibly acronyms. How would be appropiate to formate the citations in the text using Harvard style?

If one is writing if for example German, and one wants to mention a company/institution that is located in the UK.

So I would format it like this:
company name in English (acronym in English)

But in the case one has a German translated version of the company name I would format it as follows:

  German translated name of company (English name of company [English acronym of company])

Alternatively:

  German translated name of company (English name of company; English acronym of company)

Alternatively:

  German translated name of company (English: English name of company [English acronym of company])

But does this last example seem like overdoing it? Sometimes though the German translation is not widely known, or the English name is more common. Also some companies are commonly referred to with acronyms.
Let's say that the readers of you paper don't know/understand English, then the German translation would tell them what type of company it is, for example: The Electrical National Company of England in German.

When it comes to certain physical processes or geographical locations the same applies, would one use the same rules as above (replace company by process)? For example certain languages don't have direct translations of the English words, because English might have a wider vocabulary. In these cases one can experience that even lecturers and professors use the English terms (in lectures in the local language), because the English terms are more commonly used/known and maybe due to lazyness. But what if there actually is an appropiate equivalent term in the language you are writing, then it would make sense to include both versions right? Even the English acronym if there is one.

What do people normally do when encountered with this challenge?


texts: Contacting POI regarding status of my application

texts: I applied for admission for a PhD at a university in the US well before the deadline. A potential advisor contacted me saying that he is recommending my application to the department. I thanked him for it. However, it has been almost one month, and I still have not received the official letter from the department. Should I send an email to the professor enquiring when I can expect the official letter?


texts: Career Advice (Math Major): Industry or Academia

texts:
I have one year left until I graduate with a bachelors in pure math, and as registration rolls around for next fall I need some advice on deciding which path I should go down. Ultimately it comes down to the decision to eventually go into industry or stay on the path of pure math with hopes of attending a good graduate program.

Ever since I started university I have wanted to get a PhD in math. I think I would truly enjoy being a professor, and I find the idea of studying math for a living very attractive, but as of late I have been considering other options for a couple of reasons.

1) Financial Reasons:

Industry jobs usually pay much higher than jobs in academia, and although money has never been my number one priority I still have to be realistic in planning my future.

2) I'm not Competitive:

So far the upper division math classes I have taken are 2 courses in Real Analysis, 2 courses in Abstract Algebra, 2 courses in Number Theory, 1 Probability course, and 1 course in Complex Analysis from a top 40 school. I have done decent in these courses (3.4), but not as competitive as I know one might need to pursue a PhD at a good school. Originally I thought I could be one of the "top" students in math and eventually go on to make real contributions to math, but it seems that I might not be cut out for it. I definitely don't want to fool myself to continue in a field that I will never be successful in.

3) Mental Stability:

I don't know if I am as motivated as I need to be in order to pursue a PhD. I enjoy math and the mental challenge, but I find that consistently struggling with math problems every day can be overwhelming for me, and I'm not always as dedicated as my peers seem to be. I also suffer from anxiety and find myself very overwhelmed in regards to tests.

4) I might be romanticizing academic life:

I think I was originally drawn to the idea of becoming a professor because I didn't want to end up working for some corporation monotonously running through the same set of tasks daily. I also have always liked the idea of teaching students and helping them discover their interests and harnessing their potential. That being said I think I might be overgeneralizing and overlooking the good qualities of jobs in industry.

With this in mind I have to make my decision for next years classes. I have two options; I can enroll in graduate level classes for analysis and algebra to boost my application for graduate programs, or I can take classes focusing on applied math, like financial mathematics, or some computer science classes.

Sorry that this was so long, but thank you for reading and any advice would be great! Specifically if you have experience in math academia, or if you have experience with industry careers like actuarial work or programming I would love to get your opinions.


texts: Studies over how noisy is it to accept/reject submissions

texts:
This year, the NIPS 2014 conference did an interesting experiment: conference chairs duplicated 10% of the submissions (170 papers) and sent them to two different groups of reviewers. The result: 25.9% of disagreement.

This indicates that for almost every one out of four papers, the paper is accepted by one group of experts while rejected by the other group. This just shows how noisy the reviewing process is. I was wondering if there were other similar experiments for other fields and what the disagreement percentage was in each (regardless of the venue: journal or conference).


texts: Must I share my transcripts with my supervisor?

texts: I am in the data analysis phase of my Phd Dissertation. My supervisor has demanded that I share my transcripts with them so they can "help me" analyze my data. I do not want their help analyzing my data. Must I take this help, and must I share the transcripts with them? I fear they are going to try to use the data in their own research, which is not unheard of for them.


texts: What should a student do when they are the victim of a FERPA violation?

texts:
A student was subject to a clear  Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) violation by a professor.
Does student have any rights against the professor?
How should they proceed when they are the victim of a FERPA violation?


texts: My paper was recently published and I submitted a report to my institution for a promotion. However, the research administrator asked me to provide a copy of peer review of my paper, which was reviewed in double-blind. The purpose was for the "validity" of my paper. This is strange and new to me because I never encountered this before. Is it ethical to disclose peer review from a double blind review outside between the author and the editor?


texts: How are interdisciplinary degrees viewed by disciplinary (AACSB) faculty hiring committees?

texts:
Perhaps someone with direct experience can help with some clarification.

My research interests involve human resources in the truest sense. But the phd program in which I have an interest is listed as an "interdisciplinary" degree. I have a masters degree from an AACSB school in accountancy (24 hours in graduate accounting). Of course, the phd would NOT be AACSB because it isn't even a business degree.

My real goal is to conduct research related to business decisions made based upon labor availability and the implications of technology, etc.

So my question (even after reading the AACSB definition) is if I pursue such a degree (where my passion lies), would I be considered AQ for a college/school of business as per AACSB standards? My intuition tells me no, but I just want to get some feedback.

I should clarify that I'm not only interested in the AACSB official position, but also in how a faculty in business schools might view such a situation. That's why I included the "direct experience" part. Any faculty members at AACSB schools with an opinion?

I've reviewed 13 "similar" questions on this site and am still lost as to the answer as the other questions differ significantly in the details.

Thank you


texts: What are the steps to establish an academic journal?

texts:
We want to establish a journal. Also I want to add the journal to various indexes. What are the main steps /guide to building an academic journal? What should be done to enter the SCI/SCIe/SSCI index. What is the difference between ISBN, ISSN, DOI numbers. I'm not interesting basic steps like deciding topic, name ,reviewers and editors of journal. It would be nice if you mentioned about the application/reference prices.

Note:This question might be broad so I can narrow this topic in the direction of your suggestions/comments


texts: What is the difference between Project's background and Project Significance?

texts:
I need to write my project's significance.
I googled to find examples on project's significance, but I found article referring to project's background and significance as the same thing.
https://orsp.umich.edu/research-proposals-background-or-significance
Do I need to write a background about my project in the when asked to provide project's significance?


texts:
I used available data from my PhD study database in a new independent post doc study.
In this study, except for the raw data available, every other aspects are new (study design, hypotheses, analyses, and discussion). In sum, the source of data (sample and instruments) for this study was the same database I created during my PhD. The two studies are different, but because I used data from the PhD database, should I give authorship of this new study to my former thesis supervisor? Would this be a ghost/gift authorship, or a necessary action?


texts: Why do some journals want figures at the end?

texts:
This is one question that probably has an archaic answer.  I recently reviewed a paper for a journal that stuck all the figures at the end (with placeholders in-text).  Where I publish, we typically provide camera-ready manuscripts or at least give reviewers a version with the figures embedded so that they can see what the heck is going on.  Occasionally, you embed the figures plus they are attached separately at the end (due to how the system generates the PDF).  However, I recognize that dumping the figures at the end of a journal submission for review is quite common in some fields.

My simple question: Why?

I assume that at some point, there was a purpose to putting figures at the end rather than where they belong.  I am also aware that it is quite common for journals to shuffle around your figure positions.  But why would journals possibly want their copy to have all the figures dumped at the end?  Obviously it is not for the reviewers' benefit, as it makes certain papers nigh-unreadable ("As you can see in Figure 1" - opens up second copy of the PDF so I can see Fig 1 at the same time as the text).  Anyone know the reasoning behind this?


texts: I have slightly over 3 weeks left before my master's thesis submission and I have done nothing. What can I do now?

texts:
I am in a very sticky situation here. I was forced into a field I had very little interest in (for lack of other options) and I have been slacking off a lot. Whatever little enthusiasm I had for getting things done got waned because the professor assigned me to one of his senior research scholars whom I did not get along with. To top that, I have a major supervisor phobia. I didn't read papers I was assigned, to learn the techniques I needed for my thesis. And I never reported to my supervisor. I rushed into choosing a topic for my thesis which on surface appeared manageable, and my supervisor believed I had my things sorted. However, that is far from the case. I didn't set a limit to how deep I should delve into it, and I wasted a lot of time learning things that haven't gotten me anywhere. Now I'm left with a hazy problem definition, I do not understand the necessary techniques well, I have barely started writing my thesis, and I have no results. What are my options now? I am too afraid to talk it out with my supervisor because the result of that wouldn't be good and would further contribute to worsening my grade.

Moreover, I am beginning to question if I am really cut out for research at all. I do want to pursue a PhD but in a field I have a penchant for, and not what I'm stuck with right now. I am also worried that if things go further downhill, my supervisor wouldn't be writing out recommendation letters for me, thus making it impossible for me to get into any labs. Will I have to repeat the masters course because of this?


texts: No response from journal after submission

texts:
I submitted a paper to a journal just before Christmas time last year. The journal didn't send any note whether they have received the paper or not. Mid of January this year, I sent again an email asking whether they have received my submission or not, but still, didn't receive any reply.
Just last week, I sent an email to the main publisher regarding the matter, and they told me they just emailed the main editor, who will contact me soon. But until now, I have yet to receive any reply from the editor.

I am thinking of emailing to let the editor know that I will wait for another week before I will retract my submission to be sent to other journal. I understand editors are busy people, but I think they should notify the author that they have received their submission. What do you think?

Also, from SJR Scimago, this journal is from the UK. Nothing against people from UK, just want to ask whether it is vacation season now for the academics, which in that case I should wait a little longer?

Thanks!


texts: Publishing a paper in an academic conference being someone who works in the industry

texts:
I have been working in the industry of software engineering for 5 years so far. Lately, I am planning to take a PHD, I am interested in software architecture and quality, something that started fascinating me after experiencing failing/successful projects because of bad/good architecture mainly.
After doing some search about the matter, I see that most of PHD positions demand some publications so my plan B is to get something published to have the courage to email some possible advisors, especially that my master thesis was done in artificial intelligence, something that would be funny to tell a software-architecture-advisor about.
My question is, would an academic conference accept a paper written by me, alone, no advisor and no university to belong to?
Thank you all.


texts: Translate academic titles (lecturer, assistant and associate professor, tenure track, instructor) in French

texts:
I am puzzled how can one translate the following in French?

  Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Tenure Track, Instructors

Does Maître de Conférences translate the first three altogether? So, how can we distinguish between the various ranks? Maîtresse de Conférences for a woman is considered a "barbarisme" or not?

Can we use Conférencier(ère), professeur(e) assistant(e), professeur(e) associé(e) for the first three, respectively? If not, why?

Google Translate gives Professeur agrégé for associate professor but this is partly faulty, for

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professeur_agr%C3%A9g%C3%A9

  En France: Professeur agrégé de l'enseignement du second degré Titulaire d'une agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur : agrégation de droit, de science politique, d'économie, de médecine, de pharmacie.

Nevertheless,

  Au Canada: Titre universitaire atteint généralement après avoir été professeur adjoint, avant de devenir professeur titulaire

Further, can we use professeur(e) adjoint(e) for assistant professor?

Ibid. for the couple Instructor and instructeur/instructrice.

Lastly, can we use Tenure Track in French?

For example professeur(e) assistant(e) «tenure track» is comprehensible in general?

Should we use instead something like professeur(e) assistant(e) avec titularisation conditionnelle?


texts: Isn't English the common academic language?

texts:
In a question about university ranking, many people mentioned that language is a privilege for better ranking of English speaking countries.

Isn't a decent fluency in English the requirement for senior academic positions (regardless of native languages)?

Most ranking factors are about research activities. If a professor in non-English speaking country is not fluent in English, how does he supervise graduate students? For supervising/conducting cutting-edge research, someone should be able to read technical literature. Research papers are published in English (and there is no translation normally).

Most non-English speaking countries with excellent higher education (such as Scandinavia, Netherlands, Switzerland) offer the graduate programs in English.

I understand it is easier for native English speakers to read and write in scientific literature, but we don't speak their language, we speak an international language, which is their native language too.

I understand that this requirement is neglected in many countries, but is it reasonable and justifiable to give a senior academic position to someone who cannot read 99% of recent research findings in his field?

Is it acceptable for a professor or even a PhD student to have no understanding of English language? To avoid confusion, consider STEM fields.


texts: Conference organizer pushes to Journal instead of Conference Proceedings

texts:
Recently  a paper was submitted to ICIMP 2018(will be held at Imperial College London - South Kensington Campus,  London, UK during  Jan. 12-14, 2018 .).
Organizer  told that the  paper is accepted for publication in JOIG and ' Welcome to participate in ICIMP2018'.

But it is written on the webpage of ICIMP 2018 that-

  All the accepted papers of ICIMP 2018 will be included into Conference
  Proceedings which will be published by IEEE. And they will be archived
  into IEEE Xplore and be indexed by EI Compendex and Scopus.

If the paper is accepted for the conference then why it will not be published in
Conference Proceedings which will be published by IEEE? Why do they push it to a journal ? Is there a convention like what I stated above? Is it ok/legal to switch like that?

PS: The incident didn't happen to me, I was informed the incident by a forum member, I suspected/suspect, the paper author is lying about the acceptance, it is highly unlikely that such thing can happen.


texts: Is it acceptable to propose the same PhD research plan to two universities?

texts:
Well I have proposed a research(starting next year) and accepted by supervisor and university (formally applied and accepted by university). I have a conditional offer letter. But I need funding for it so I have applied for an external scholarship(good chances but not 100% sure) but the decision of scholarship will be made only after 3-4 months. If I don’t get scholarship or funding, I think, I won’t be able to pursue the research or study.

And, there is another university (but 2nd preference) with some very good internal scholarship options and I have very good chances looking at their criteria. I also have a supervisor, whom I know academically, who is ready to supervise the research from that university. But off course he cannot make decision on scholarships. I am thinking of applying to that university as a backup so that I don’t lose one year waiting next year’s scholarship round if I don’t get the first scholarship. And also, after 3 months there won't be any scholarships deadline left for this year.

So, is it good thing to apply for same research project in two different universities? (Off course, ideally, it is not but in my case what should I do?).

And are we allowed to do so? Is it normal? (Off course, finally I will have to select one between two).

I am afraid that after all the hassle and correspondence with both the future supervisors, how I may be able to deny one, if I am selected for the both.

And also if I say to second university’s supervisor that I have already applied in another university as well and only applying as backup, firstly it may be rude (who knows, may have ego problems later) , secondly, that may even diminish my chances in 2nd university as well(admission and scholarship).

So, I am in dilemma what I should do? Please suggest.


texts: Advice needed for completing my PhD thesis. Which timeline should I follow?

texts:
First of all, I apologize for the nature of this post. I am freaking out inside and I am branching out to seek as much advice as possible.

I am a 4th year PhD student, and I am looking forward to defend my thesis this year. However, I am confused of the timeline I should follow. There are two initial submission deadlines in our university. First in April for defending before August and other in August for defending before December.

What should I do?


texts: What should I say to my project advisor who thinks I may not get a Ph.D position?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student who is looking forward to work in Theoretical Physics in the future and therefore, I chose a project advisor who is a string theorist. But since, my grades are average and I failed his QFT course (which I am going to repeat anyway), he believes that I may not get a Ph.D position if I continue to do my undergraduate project with him. And he is trying to push me into fields in which I have no interest whatsoever. And he may be right.

I took his QFT course and I worked hard, despite that I failed, not because I am stupid, it is because I am a bit slow and he went with the course at blazing speeds (but I do not blame him, it is not his fault), but since, I took his course, I got motivated and deeply interested to continue with Theoretical Physics. In short, I am in this too deep to discontinue. And he keeps asking me this question,"What will I do if I do not get a Ph.D position in Theoretical Physics ?". And he wants an answer before he continues.

What should I answer him ?


texts: No response to after PhD interview, Germany

texts: I had a face-to-face interview in a research institute for a PhD in BW, Germany (Don't want to mention city and institute for confidentiality) on the 16th of September 2019. The interview itself went quiet well, but I told them I could start from December onwards. I wrote to the Professor in November that I am available and the Prof. just responded "thanks for your patience". I wrote them (the Prof. and their secretariat) again a couple of weeks ago for an update on the application status and whether if I am still a candidate for the position (P.S. In very smart and polite way). I haven't received any response yet. Should I consider this a rejection? It has been almost 3 months since the interview and almost one year since my MSc graduation.


texts: Does using GPL material in a paper make it impossible to transfer copyright to the publisher?

texts: I am writing a paper, and would like to use some GPL-licensed material I found on the internet; for instance, an image. The GPL requires any work using GPL content to be GPL licensed itself. To my understanding, using GPL content would make it impossible to transfer the copyright to the publisher, and therefore unacceptable for most research papers. It is correct?


texts: Does an updated chapter in a book count as a new publication?

texts:
I came across one of the edited books where authors contribute chapters that was published once in 2010 and the again in 2014. The two different books have identical (or almost identical) titles but different ISBNs and different DOIs. This means that a chapter that was included in both (same title, abstract and content, unfortunately I do not have access to one of the full texts) is counted as two publications. As far as I can tell, most of the content between the two books is the same.

Is this common practice generally or to certain fields? Is it ethical? How are these cases generally treated?


texts: Research paper with experimental results from a small amount of data

texts:
I have written a research paper in image processing that I will be submitting to an IEEE conference. I have proposed a new method to detect 'X' in images. However, due to hardware failure I could acquire only 4 sets of images. Thus, I have applied my method only on 4 images and I have also compared the results of previous two methods in literature by applying them to the same 4 images. The results obtained by my method are much better.

My question is, is it OK if I submit the paper showing results only on 4 images? The previous two papers have demonstrated their method on around 10 images or less. Also, is it OK to quantitatively compare the results (accuracy in percent) with just four images?


texts: Is it appropriate to apply for the same job twice if it's re-advertised?

texts:
Last month, I saw a job offer and applied for it. I did not hear back from them, but it is not uncommon to wait for 1-2 months before hearing back (especially with the COVID-19 situation).  The deadline for applications closed on 17 Sept (offer was only open 1 week).  Today, I just saw the exact same job (same reference number, job description, location, etc.) advertised again.
I assume that they did not consider any of the initial applicants suitable. My question is, should I apply again? I have read advice elsewhere (e.g. here) to apply again, maybe after modifying your CV and cover letter.
Please note that I am well qualified for the position (qualifications and academia experience) and did not receive any rejection letter from the first offer (otherwise I wouldn't bother re-applying). The fact they are re-advertising suggests they are (more) desperate to find someone to fulfil that role, and might be more receptive.
Note there are some similar questions on this site (e.g. here) but not quite the same situation.  This question is specifically about seeing a job offer that has closed, and the same job being re-advertised.


texts: Is it okay to directly address your reader when writing a scientific paper?

texts:
I'm currently writing a paper that has some kind of tutorial parts in it. I have written sentences similar to:

«... depending on your operating system, the procedure is different»

Is addressing the reader directly like that in a scientific paper ok? Or should I try to rewrite these sentences?


texts: Please inform details and feasibility of pursuing a second bachelor’s degree in mathematics/applied mathematics/statistics/related discipline?

texts:
I am in my late 20s from India. After my high school, I completed my bachelor degree in engineering, specifically in textile engineering and later, my masters degree in statistics-cum-operations research.

Both the above-mentioned degrees are from Indian institutes.

But I want to pursue at least one degree from abroad universities. Also, I would like to acquire a solid foundation in pure mathematics. Although I have studied Linear algebra, Multi-variable calculus, Differential equations, Integral equations, Numerical methods, higher order integration, Infinite series, Complex Analysis (analytic functions and contour integral, etc), Vector algebra and calculus, probability and statistics, etc. I don’t have sufficient knowledge in abstract algebra (like in group theory, ring theory), topology, measure theory, functional analysis, etc.

To pursue a master’s degree in maths-oriented discipline, universities typically ask for a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. That’s why I am keen on pursuing a bachelor degree in mathematics through regular full-time mode.

I am ruling out the possibility of doing in India through regular full-time mode because there are many age-related restrictions in Indian universities. The only possibility is through correspondence courses (distance-learning) which i am not very keen on.

By abroad, I mean universities in USA, Canada, Australia, New-Zealand, UK and in Europe (Like Germany, Czech Republic, etc.).

Please inform what are the chances of universities admitting international mature candidates for a bachelor degree in mathematics and that also, taking into account the high school scores, and other previously studied degree scores. Also please inform, which such universities are present that admits such candidates.


texts:
I completed my Ph.D. a few months ago, but it was 4 years of a living hell. My PI was super abusive, I had severe depression and when I said I wanted to defend (6 months earlier than the deadline) because I couldn't bear it any longer she said: "you will only defend if I want you to".
Anyway, I spent a year abroad, funded by an agency, and when I came back with the data she said it as bad work and unpublishable. I still wrote a manuscript (after the Ph.D. ended and I no longer had funding) draft without any participation from her and any result coming primarily from her lab. I recently shared it with the authors and she is taking it as if it was her work, sharing with random people and claiming she is senior author, which I don't agree since she didn't contribute at all (not even with experiments planning).
My question is: do I have a saying on the authorship order? I feel like it's my work and I should be able to decide that, especially after everything she put me through.


texts: Grad schools emailing to request that I apply?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate major in International Studies applying for grad school programs in Development, Securities, and Global Governance.  I have international experience working in West Africa for World Bank and USAID sponsored NGO research initiatives.

I've recently submitted all of my intended applications for graduate school programs and fellowships.  In the last week, I've received three emails requesting that I apply to graduate school programs which I had not intended to apply for - Cornell, Denver, and Penn.

Does this mean that the programs are particularly interested in me or is this a normal spam-type email to people that have applied to other programs with similar major focus?


texts: Is there a shortage of accounting professors?

texts:
I spoke with an economics professor recently (before he passed away) and he made a claim to me that I thought was interesting: that there is a shortage of accounting professors, and so a PhD in Accounting would be valuable for both academia and industry.

Is there any data available that backs up this claim?


texts: Describing figures vs letting figures speak for themselves

texts:
I'm writing a journal article that involves many comparisons within and across groups. Visually, these comparisons are quite easily understood. However, describing them in text requires the use of long sentences with several acronyms and numerous references back to sub-parts of the figures.

In general is it acceptable in academic writing to simply say a couple of high-level sentences (and maybe point out some nuance that a reader might miss) about a complex figure and allow the reader to absorb the bulk of the information by viewing the figure?


texts:
I'm a PhD student, and my advisor published what appears to be the theoretical frame I came up with for my dissertation as a standalone paper with some other people (not me).  It seems (to me, though who knows) like I was going to make a reasonably important contribution to my subfield, so I'm even more cut up than maybe I would have been. And now I have to finish my dissertation as other people are now using this theoretical frame on data similar to mine. There is also, of course, a small chance that my advisor came up with the same idea as me, but it smells wrong, since we don't work in quite the same area. (My feeling that something is wrong is bolstered by knowing that he very definitely screwed me over in another incident.)  How do I handle this? Do I have to cite his paper? I cannot switch advisors --my department is small, so there isn't someone else who can advise me in it. I'm also too close to done. I have no desire to fight; I only want to survive, preferably with some of my dignity intact (i.e., some way not to cite my advisor's paper). I'd be grateful for comments from folks who are well along in their careers in academia, since I think part of my problem here is really not understanding academic culture.

Context: I did a masters in another subfield before starting my phd; my idea is basically drawing a common set of ideas from the master's subfield into the new subfield (where they are almost never used); I cited all of these things in my dissertation proposal, which I turned in before my advisor's paper came out, and which my committee read. The tricky thing is that I could still see my advisor saying the idea came from him - which is false and unlikely, since again, they don't know my other subfield. But still, I am terrified as well as angry.


texts: Can principal investigators use leftover grant money to take a vacation with their families?

texts:
Can one use leftover grant funding to take a vacation?

Or does leftover funding get returned to the funding agency?

For reference, I am asking about research labs in American universities.


texts: What is the h-index exactly and how does it work?

texts: What is the h-index, and how does it work ?


texts: Research "employment" options for students graduating midyear?

texts: Some students, particularly in the US, face the dilemma of graduating at the end of a fall semester or quarter, but then have the prospect of not having a PhD position start until the following fall. For students for whom working would be an important means of trying to support themselves, what options are available? Companies are typically reluctant to hire someone for a few months (not enough return on investment in such a short period of time), and there aren't a lot of academic programs available. What's a prospective PhD candidate to do in such a case—particularly with reference to students entering science and engineering fields?


texts: Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose

texts:
The internet is littered with information on what makes a good SOP, but I would like to ask a specific question regarding mentioning one's research interests in SOP.

What points should a student keep in mind while writing her statement of purpose? If there is exactly one specific professor the student is targeting, it makes sense to talk of one of his recent papers and ideas for extending its results in the SOP.

If 1) there are a couple of preferred professors or more, 2) each of them has multiple research interests and 3) the student is unable to zero in on a field or topic, how should the student tailor her SOP to make it appealing to more than one professor?
Should the student worry about the feasibility of her ideas in the SOP? Is an extensive literature survey in the relevant field necessary before putting anything in the SOP?


texts: Can I write my affiliation from a current university though I did my work in my previous university?

texts:
Can I write my affiliation from as current university though I did my work in my previous university?
I want to publish a paper from my previous work, my current university has the access to the journal. I do not want to put any professor as coauthor in my paper. So can I use current university as affiliation?


texts: What is the correct APA citation style with two places and two publishers

texts:
Is this the correct APA form of citation with two publishers in different locations?

Cazes, S., & Verick, S. (2013). The labour markets of emerging economies: Has growth translated into more and better jobs? Geneva. UK: ILO-Palgrave Macmillan.


texts: Is it a good idea to pursue a PhD in Singapore as a European student?

texts:
I graduated with a masters from a good university in the Netherlands and am considering to accept a PhD at the National University of Singapore. However, since I have no experience with this university, it's hard for me to decide if this is a good idea academically. The research I'd be doing is very interesting, and both the university and the department where I'd work seem to be very good. I have a good idea what the academic culture is like in Europe, but less so in Singapore. The department of my PhD in Singapore is very international, also about one third of the researchers is European. I'd like to stay in academia after my PhD (at least, that's what I think now) and at least pursue a post-doc. For me, there are two main reasons to accept this PhD position:

Interesting research topic and a good (so it seems, but not sure) research environment.
Personal experience to live and work in an interesting place very different from home.

Does anyone here with a background in academics have experience or advice on the academic side of doing a PhD in Singapore? Specifically, is the academic culture comparable to Europe, and do I stand a good chance of obtaining a post-doc in Europe or the USA afterwards?


texts: How to properly address an unsolved problem that is very hard to solve in mathematical thesis?

texts:
I'm preparing my thesis presentation and I'm trying to address a situation in which the general case has no known solution and is an open, very hard to solve, problem. It involves non-isolated singularities, so, if you're a mathematician, you could have an idea regarding this kind of difficulty.

How can I spell this out in a more appropriate way? I don't want to say "one should notice that solving this problem in the non-isolated singularities case is very hard". It seems out of place and subjective (I mean, what do I mean by "very hard"? That the case I solved in my thesis was easy?).


texts: the paper status was back from "decision in process" to "under review"

texts: I submitted a paper to Journal of comparative physiology-B. After major revision, two reviewers gave me minor revision (only change one word) and the editor was pleased to consider publication. After re-submission, the status changed from "under review" to "decision in process". However, the status was then back to "under review". What does it mean?


texts: Writing papers with deceased co-authors?

texts:
I am doing a literature review for a project and I have come across recent papers in top journals where one of the co-authors is a famous Statistician (Peter G. Hall, 1951 – 2016). This is an example that motivated my question, but my question applies in general. Reviews in those journals usually take less than 2 years (in most cases, about a year). Thus, the papers where submitted a fair amount of time after the famous co-author passed away.
My question is, how do editors check (if at all) if the authors actually worked on those projects with the late famous co-author in order to (i) justify their inclusion, and (ii) determine if the inclusion of that co-author does not follow some sort of political move to increase the chances of getting a paper accepted.


texts: How do I best present my skills when switching fields from electrical engineering to earth sciences?

texts:
I am currently doing my PhD in the US. I am studying electrical engineering with a focus on magnetic sensors and signal processing. I am doing theoretical work (developing a model) and also developing software (mostly MATLAB and LABVIEW) and building hardware for my measurement system. I am also conducting measurements to validate my model. I find the research to be relatively interdisciplinary. I have a few papers (5) in applied physics and engineering journals. I should be graduating soon, within a year hopefully.

I have lately been looking for postdoctoral positions, and I find myself getting more and more interested in earth/atmospheric sciences, particularly analysis of remote sensing data, and also building sensors for remote sensing.

I feel like I need a change of field, as I like to broaden my horizons. I need a fresh perspective.

My question is: how do I present my skills in a way that increases my chances of getting a postdoc in that field? Wouldn't a candidate with a PhD in earth sciences be preferred over me?


texts:
What does the crowd think about how to list an article update on a cv?

For example, I have a peer-reviewed encyclopedia article that the publishers have asked me to update after 2 years. This updated article still has the same title (after all, it's the encyclopedia entry name) but content is approx. 25% different, and will be peer-reviewed.

What is the best way to indicate this new contribution on my cv?

BTW: I am, perhaps obviously by the question, early career.


texts: College Staff Taking Classes and Doing Research

texts:
I presently work in a facilities-type role at a small Liberal Arts college.

One of the benefits of working at the college is the ability to take two classes per academic-year (not including summer or winter terms).

I have a BS in Economics from a larger university as well as a pretty broad quantitative background and I'm interested in taking classes in mathematics, statistics, and computer science (they have an MSCS program here).

What I'm wondering is this:

How likely would it be for me to become involved in research projects?

Would it be odd for a staff member taking a few classes to ask about doing research with a faculty member?

I'm hoping to pad my resume a bit for acceptance into a PhD or MS in Applied Math program down the line; but, I'm wondering if it's worth getting my hopes up about doing research even though I'm just a staff member taking classes.


texts: I've read in the law that logos are protected by the United States Trademark law, not laws of copyright.  Essentially this means that you have immediate permission to use a logo that doesn't belong to you, without asking for direct permission from the logos owner (as long as you follow legal usage guidelines).  So my question is: Do I need to cite these logos I use if they do not have protection by copyright (thereby giving me usage privileges)?  And also do assume I would follow correct guidelines and include a standard legal disclaimer.


texts:
Recently, I have submitted an early draft of a report summarising the results of a year-long project at my university, to my advisor for review. We have met up for a review of the paper, and he pointed out my frequent use of the word "we" in the paper. He considered it a mistake and asked me to change everything to a third-person view.

Personally, I found this incredibly strange. I am in the field of mathematics, and based on other papers and publications in math, it is very common and even considered "good" language to use the word "we" in writing, especially in proofs and discussions of results. For example, instead of

  This proof demonstrates Theorem 3 to be true

it is considered desirable to instead write

  We have thus proven Theorem 3.

The reasons cited for this preference, I have seen, is due to both convention and to avoid dodgy writing (third-person wording may suggest that the authors did something, but it could have been taken from somewhere else).

I have seen different questions on this site pertaining to this issue. This question, for example, has answers which suggest to take reference to the style guide provided by one's university, which unfortunately mine does not have. The accepted answer deals with economics, so I am unsure it applies in mathematics. This question suggests it is good to use "we" in mathematical and scientific writing. A quick search on Google, however, apparently suggests it is always undesirable to use first or second person pronouns in academic writing (see this site).

Thus, I am asking this question for my specific scenario for clarification. Should I follow my advisor's advice, or should I discuss with him further? Again, I find his advice rather odd and I definitely prefer to be able to use the word "we" as I please when appropriate.


texts: Uninvited involvement in postgraduate supervision

texts: What is your opinion about another member of staff, uninvited, requiring postgraduate students to discuss their research with him, not even informing the actual supervisor and even requiring / insisting on significant changes? This uninvited intruder has considerably less supervision experience, research experience and in fact lower indices and international accreditation than the supervisor but is the head of department. There is no problem in terms of relationships between the various students and supervisor (in fact those relationships are good - quite possibly excellent). When the topic is raised by the supervisor with the HoD he says it is normal academic practice. He has never indicated that he thinks there is any problem with the current supervision.


texts: Should I always provide my current affilition and address when a paper got accepted?

texts:
I had submitted a manuscript in last year (December, 2014) while working in Institute-A. After one month of submission I left Institute-A and joined in Institute-B from January, 2015. Now that paper got accepted, just yesterday.

So what should be my affiliation and address of the paper?

I would like to mention that my current Institution (Institute-B) has no contribution for this paper. Though the paper was revised during my stay in Institute-B, but I did those revisions through the co-authors still working in Institute-A.


texts: Should I include a research in my thesis which does not have a direct connection to its title?

texts:
Let's say that my Ph.D. project was about mitigating the problem X (e.g. analyzing the specific type of datasets) from different perspectives (CS field), for which one of the methods I have developed was algorithm A.

However, I also developed the algorithm B, which belongs to the same overarching category that also Algorithm A belongs to, but it does not apply to problem X.

Even though I also published Algorithm B as an individual conference paper, I'm not sure if I can bring it in my dissertation. It is a novel method, but not related to the main problem (or the dataset type) that my Ph.D. project is about. So, I'm not sure if I can include it in my Ph.D. thesis despite the time I spent developing it.


texts: Recommended for admission by the department but still haven't received official decision

texts:
I was recommended for admission into the Math PhD program at a large state university in the US two weeks ago and the department informed me that they are forwarding my application to be reviewed by the graduate school. The graduate school said they will review my application and will get back to me in two weeks for official decision. Two weeks have passed and I still haven't received any notification from them, so I sent a polite email asking about my status couple days ago. But at this point, I still haven't got any update.

What should I do now? Thank you.


texts: Help someone in research paper in practical using my coding skills

texts: I'm a developer and I want to help someone in research and be a part of it by implementing it practical. Where I can find those people?


texts:
I have a question about two possible career paths, for which I was unable to come up a better title. Let me explain what I mean:

Path 1, Working in an area: By this I mean, making a career by adding to the knowledge of a field of study. This may include sorting out open questions in that field or identifying new issues or pushing the boundaries of existing knowledge. This typically involves having a larger perspective and understanding of the field and its relevance to the world.

Path 2, Working on problems: By this I mean making a career by solving a series of specific challenging problems not necessarily belonging to a common field of study. Here one only attempts to understand enough about the problem at hand to solve the problem, but does not show an interest in developing the area as such.

Working in an area requires one to have a broader vision, scholarship and commitment to the development of the area. Working on problems does not involve commitment, but requires one to repeated invest oneself in learning about a new area. By working in an area one can encounter a degree of monotony. By working on problems, one can potentially find new challenges at every juncture.

So my question is: career wise, what is a better option? Specifically, which of these kind of academics are more valued by the community? What, if any, are pitfalls of these paths?
Meta question: is path 2 a path at all or do all academics eventually settle into path 1 after spending some time on path 2?

Edit: I guess the key difference between the two paths is that path 1 leads one to become an "expert" with extensive knowledge in a particular area. Path 2 exposes one to a variety of problem situations and makes one a better problem solver, though it may not make one an expert in any field. For the purpose of this question, you may take the area to be a well studied field such as, say integer programming, which has some long-standing open problems, but is not necessarily so young that it allows for a variety of research opportunities.


texts: Ways to manage something like a 'work-life balance'?

texts:
According to a recent international study on work-life balance within academia

  "a majority of researchers and scientists had conflicts between their work schedules and personal lives at least two to three times a week."

Nevertheless,

  "about 60 percent of scientists were happy with their work-life balance. The rates for women were lower, at 52 percent."

I wonder what differentiates these 60 percent 'happy people' from the remaining 40 percent. What do you think are good strategies for a healthy work-life balance? How do you balance your academic work/life with your personal life?


texts: I just started my post doc and currently writing a paper but I don't have any professional writing experience. Is there a learning curve or forums that can help with improving writing skills? E.g. I want to rephrase "The review paper published recently talked about the wide range of.." into more professional sentence. How can I get help on this?


texts: Recommendation letter from a professor who knows me for a short amount of time

texts: I'm going to be applying for a Master's program at the end of this year. The problem is that I need a recommendation letter from my professor who would know me only for 4-6 months. Does that make the letter less credible? I don't want my application to be dismissed on the grounds that the professor doesn't know me very well. For additional info, I will be sending in my application to universities in the US and the UK. How do admission officers look at that?


texts: Have trouble retaining material I learn in grad school. Is this common?

texts:
I have just began my first year as a math graduate student at a US school. I am having an issue in the fact that

During my undergraduate years, I would only take 2-3 classes a semester, and usually only one or two of them were a math class. This got me used to a particular style of learning; I always had as much time as I wanted to spend on any particular topic; I would read about the topic from different books, read about the history of the topic, etc. I feel like I learned very slowly, but what I did learn, I learned well.

Now I am in grad school, and the atmosphere is completely different. I have 3 math classes which move very fast, and assign a lot of homework. I feel like I do not really have time to learn the material well; I learn the material just barely enough to to do the homework and pass the exams, and then I have to immediately push on to the next topic. I solve the problems and try to understand the theorems/proofs, but then one week later I often retain very little. I always feel like I need 2-3 more passes over the material to learn it well, I never get a chance to do it.

I feel like some of those undergrads who just learn the material to pass the class, not really to use it. But this is terrible to do as a grad student, since math is supposed to be my specialty.

My question is, is this common? I am trying to figure out if this is normal, or if I handicapped myself in undergrad by taking it too easy. It seems to me like there are some students who retain information much better; they study much less than me, and seem to recall information from weeks before, and I can't do that.


texts: Publication sponsorship for research conducted elsewhere

texts:
Do universities sponsor a student's conference travel and publication costs if the research on the paper has been done elsewhere? For example, a student may have published a paper during a master's at university 1 and may currently be pursuing PhD at university 2. Similarly will the second university bear the cost of the journal publication? Are there any caveats involved (eg., indication of university's name in the paper, related department, etc)?

On the other hand, will the first university sponsor one of its alumni for the travel? (This looks unlikely to me.)


texts: Publishing at a venue without ACM/IEEE brand?

texts:
My PhD Supervisor asked me to submit one of my work at an upcoming International Conference. He is amongst the program committee members. I was having a look at its committee members, the Advisory committee etc. It boasts of researchers from reputed Universities- with some of them quite well established (I know some of them personally). Further, the conference is happening for the 6th time.

However I found it quite strange that they are organizing the conference without any branding of IEEE/ACM etc. behind them. The proceedings of the conference will be compiled on a CD-ROM. This obviously means that if my paper gets accepted there, it is not going to be archived with IEEE-xplore or ACM digital library. Google may index it because they may put the PDFs on the conference's website, but that PDF exists only as long as the website for the conference exists.

The question in my mind: Is such a publication bad for a PhD student? If I put this work on my CV, nobody can find it on the Internet (except on my personal website or archived on arXiv). Then where is the credibility that work was actually peer-reviewed and published at an International Conference?

And what about copyright issues? The website says nothing of it. These are a group of researchers from different parts of the world coming together to organize a conference. There is no organization like ACM or IEEE behind them. So I am assuming that the issue of copyright transfers may never arise. Does that mean I can submit this work to other venues as well (since exclusive copyright are never transferred)?

Truly speaking, the only reasons I am going for it is because (1) my Supervisor wants me to, and (2) selected high-quality papers will get the opportunity to submit extended versions to special issue of a SCI journal (which is great for me!).

p.s.: In case it matters: until the past year, it was being organized as a 'workshop'. This is the first time they are calling it a conference and have a Journal extension.

p.p.s: My field is Computer Science.


texts: I am currently a PhD student and I was invited to co-author a review paper on my field. Would it be ok to co-author a paper outside my PhD work without my supervisor as a co-author? My supervisor is supportive of all my work and networking I'm just worried about this kind of move now.


texts: How are office hours for PhD classes different from office hours for undergraduate classes?

texts:
I plan on attending office hours this week for a PhD class (in math, to be specific).  This would be at a U.S. university, at a strong math department.

My question is:  are the expectations different from undergraduate (and masters) class office hours, when the time is mostly spent on HW questions?

If you're a professor for PhD courses, what do you expect to talk about with your PhD students during office hours, if you indeed have different expectations and rather not discuss homework?


texts: Can you teach at a community college with a master's degree?

texts:
I'm interested in teaching a class at the community college level.  I'm not interested in it as a career, but rather because I like teaching people about computer science.  How likely is it that I would be able to teach a evening class at a local community college with a masters degree (Computer Science).

I don't have a lot of formal experience teaching (TA/tutoring).  I spent most of my time doing research in the lab, but during that time I mentored/managed/herded a number of undergrads.

Maybe being a TA would be a nice way to get my feet wet and see if it's for me.  Is that possible, now that I've already graduated?

I have a regular 9-6 job that I would have to work around.


texts:
I got a paper accepted with the feedback

"Use the ACM ICPS template"

However, I used the latex template found at http://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template (\documentclass{sig-alternate-05-2015}) and had followed the ACM citation style... or at least, I thought I had done so.

The feedback does not give any further detail on how the paper has failed to conform to the ACM style. As this seems to be a prerequisite for the camera-ready version, does anyone know how I can work out whether I have adhered to the style demanded, and what steps I must take to fix my paper?


texts:
I'm looking at some academic CVs by PhDs and professors. The focus seems to be long list of talks, conferences, publications and teaching experiences. I have none of these things. Whhat I have now of any substance is (i) 3 preprints of my research work so far that I have put on arxiv, and (ii) my 2 industry internships and 1 lab experience (iii) my grades and relevant classes.

I have received very few scholarships since I did not really need any financial assistance and did not apply. So there isn't really much content. I'm considering doing a bullet point list to provide detailed description for each of internships and research projects but none of the professional academic CVs I have seen have done this. Would this be a good idea? What else can I put on CV as a PhD applicants.


texts: Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?

texts:
If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization. This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.

Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits? Do academic institutions frown upon this practice? Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?


texts: Can being a reviewer for a top journal improve my chances in PhD admissions?

texts:
I have got an email of invitation to review a paper in a best journal of my field. I had a paper there and somewhere else almost in that field.

As I must invest serious time and attention to complete the review, I wanted to know if that does any advantage on improving my resumé for getting a better chance of acceptance and scholarship for my future PhD program abroad?
Basically, should I mention in my CV that I am a reviewer of that journal, when I am sending it to other universities?

P.S. I have graduated from M.Sc. two years ago.


texts: Online "database" for mathematical conferences?

texts:
I am about to start applying for Ph.D programs (mathematics), and while compiling my CV, comparing it with many examples avaliable across the internet, I noticed that almost everyone attended one or two conferences during his bachelor/master years.
Now, I just didn't do that. I don't know if this could be an issue or anything, anyway, that is not my question.

Since I have at least four months until most programs start, I wanted to look for some conference that could be interesting. At my university there is a hallway where posters of such things are hanged, but I couldn't find anything online (apparently each university publishes its own conferences on its website, and that's it).

I can't believe there isn't an online equivalent of the above mentioned hallway, my question is: is there?


texts: Comparison of methods in a paper with a table

texts:
In my current paper I describe two methods for solving a problem in different ways. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
At the end of the paper I would like to compare the two methodologies with a table. So far it looks something like this:

 -------------------------------------------------
|           |     Method 1     |     Method 2    |
--------------------------------------------------
|Critera 1: |    very good     |       good      |
|Critera 2: | satisfactorily   |     very good   |
|Critera 3: |    very good     |       good      |
--------------------------------------------------

How would you manage that? Is such a table scientifically accepted?


texts: Assistant Professor at my state university, Research Scientist at my Ivy League, or both?

texts:
I am a Research Scientist at an Ivy League. I have been offered an Assistant Professorship at the state school. The Ivy League has suggested that if I take the professorship, I could stay on in a 20% role and continue my present research. The state school seems amenable to this arrangement, and would credit my past time here toward tenure, and the ongoing 20% as a tenure-admissible external collaboration.

Within my network, I cannot find a single person with this kind of arrangement. Are joint appointments an uncommon thing? Pointed questions:

What might be the unanticipated issues of joint appointment at different ranks (asst. prof. and research scientist)?
How can I frame this relationship such that my tenure committee is positive about the arrangement? Any other political considerations?
Is it generally permissible to write for money from two institutions, in effect to be your own subcontractor?
The department at the Ivy is much more highly ranked than that at the state school (top 10 vs 80-90s, engineering). When I move to my next position, how will the time at each institution likely be viewed? Will the Research Scientist role even be considered? Worse, will it be fairly necessary for such a move, such that I dare not let it end?


texts: How often should I meet my direct mentor in bachelor's thesis?

texts:
I am doing my bachelor's (undergraduate) thesis in a research lab. My supervisor, who is head of the lab, has assigned a junior professor and his PhD student as my direct point of contact. With both of them, I have a weekly meeting where I present the work that I have done.

I get severe doubts while reading the literature, etc. Should I approach my PhD point of contact for this? How often should I approach the head of the lab?

The PhD student seems willing to help. But, as a new researcher, am I supposed to ask him the conceptual doubts I am getting? The way you ask professors after a lecture? The topic of my research is completely new to me (I haven't been taught it formally before).


texts: How to make sure graduate admissions committees are able to recognize/verify the material a student has self studied

texts:
I posted a similar question at the following link yesterday; since, however, the focus of the question was different, I'm posting this question in a separate post.

It seems as if I'll be taking the next year off and studying a lot of mathematics on my own and apply to graduate schools in the next cycle. There's a lot of advice both on this website and Academia StackExchange for such students. However, I'd like to know how can students who have studied material outside of class better convince the admissions committee of the work they have done thus far. I know it's generally difficult to do this as an international student; the situation must be different for U.S citizens, I suppose.

Assuming I don't get to take courses which I'll be self studying over the next few months, how should I go about making sure the admissions committee take due notice of the work I have done, and more importantly, they can recognize it, if not verify it completely. Of course, I will keep in touch with my math adviser. In addition, what else can I do? Say, I am studying abstract algebra on my own in the summer, working out problems in, say, Dummit and Foote's book. Should I, perhaps, make a website (a Google site), periodically type the solutions to the work I have done and post it online, so when I apply to graduate schools, I can refer admissions committees to this portfolio of sorts.

In a nutshell, I'd like to know, especially for students who have gone through such a process/situation, of the list of best possible set of actions one can do to make sure the work one has done outside of class is duly considered, if someone who is interested in mathematics schools doesn't have a large number of math courses.

Edit:

I have an additional query: I'll be taking next year off, but I'll be able to visit my college. Even though I won't be enrolled in classes, preferably with the instructor(s) who already know me, sit in their classes, work on problem, and perhaps even take exams. even though I won't get a grade, I could ask the instructor to mention in the letter that I completed this task. She could also comment on how well I did relative to my peers. Thoughts?


texts: How to search private annotations in Mendeley?

texts:
I have dozens of papers in Mendeley. Most are filled with post-it notes, what Mendeley calls "private annotations". Unfortunately, these are not searchable.

Mendeley users have been asking this feature for years. It still hasn't been implemented.

There is a workaround: exporting the article as PDF. The private annotations are added in pages appended to the PDF. But it is tedious: it requires to manually export each and every paper one by one...

I know Zotero's annotations are searchable. So I exported my Mendeley Library to Zotero. But the private annotations don't follow. Furthermore, Zotero only has a 300 Mb capacity, whereas Mendeley offers 2 Gb. So back to square one.

Would anyone have found a way (maybe a programmatic way) to search Mendeley's private annotations?


texts:
I developed a system, and wrote a paper about it.  It includes formulas and pseudo-code.  During the course of development I used Roman letters in the formulas.  I eventually ran out of meaningful letters (letters that I could associate to some extent with what they represented), and started using Greek letters.  The development went on until somehow I ended up having about 8 Greek letters and 2 Roman letters used in the final formulas and pseudo-code.

Now that the paper is written, I wonder if having all of these Greek letters is unusual.  Would it be better to replace them with Roman letters?  Would it be better to use Roman letters with subscripts, such as t for time, and t_scaled for scaled time, instead of using Greek letters for that?

EDIT: To clear things up a little, my general question is: is it preferable to use Roman letters or Greek letters in a technical (engineering) publication, and is it acceptable or even preferable to use letters with word subscripts instead of entirely new symbols to label related variables or constants?


texts: What makes a Bachelor's thesis different from Master's and PhD theses?

texts:
All the three types of research revolve around an argument, a thesis. They of course differ in terms of student level, that is complexity.

But, what makes a bachelor's thesis different from master's and PhD theses in terms of procedures of researching given that all of them may follow the same process of research, questions or hypotheses, review of the literature, methodology, results and discussion?


texts: Rejected by fellowships, worrying about my future

texts:
This is the first time I use Stack Exchange. Here are my backgrounds. I am a first-generation poor male immigrant from China to America. None of my members have education beyond middle school. So they cannot help me. Because I was 19 years old, I was too old to go to high school. I attended a community college, transfered to Berkeley to study nuclear physics. I am now a Physics PhD student at MIT. I am now a naturalized U.S. citizen. I applied for all fellowships that I am elligible such as NSF, DOE CSGF, DOE SSGF, Hertz, Soros, Ford, SMART, and NDSEG. I get rejected by Hertz for two cycles and NSF, Soros, DOE CSGF so far. I still have 5 fellowship application pending (DOE CSGF and DOE SSGF are not submitted yet).

I just wonder how to win (or even just get honorable mention or even just move to the interview) these fellowships. I have similar experience when I applied for REU. I applied to about 20 REUs and got an only one REU because the PI was Chinese. I suspect there are connections requirement for some fellowships, which I obviously do not have. Do you think you have any suggestion for my future career in academia if I end up with not getting any fellowships. I also attach the comments of my reviewers from NSF GRFP here. NSF GRFP Comments. Thank you for your inputs.


texts: How detailed should one be in writing the referee's report?

texts:
When writing a referee's report for an editor of a journal, does one always aim and  try to be as brief as possible, saying yes or no to the publication (giving a couple of sentences in support of one's decision regarding the reasons for recommending/rejecting the paper)? Is it ever appropriate for the referee to write about finer details of the work they are reporting on, in their report to the editor?

After doing a fair bit of research to figure out whether to recommend a paper for publication or not, it can still be a hard decision to make. Is it then appropriate to share the finer details with the editor or does one have to make the decision and write only in support of that decision?


texts: How to cite OER textbooks which have had the title and authors removed?

texts:
I would like to cite an OER (Open Educational Resources) book in a concise way.  The book is available here.  The online pdf of the book says

  Normally, the author and publisher would be credited here. However, the publisher has asked for the customary
  Creative Commons attribution to the original publisher, authors, title, and book URI to be removed. Additionally,
  per the publisher's request, their name has been removed in some passages.

I do have the names of the authors, from the "About the Authors" page, but I don't know the original order they were listed in.  I wanted to do something like first-author et al. Is it fair to select the first one listed in the "About the Authors" page for that purpose?


texts: Why do citations in Google Scholar disappear?

texts: What is the reason Google Scholar misses catching a citation from one article of a well-known journal, whereas all other articles of the same issue are discoverable and show citations? Google Scholar cannot find that article, too. We had an article published in January, with 1 citation showing on Springer's website. However, on our Google Scholar accounts, there is no citation. What could be the cause of this problem and how do we correct this?


texts: Is it popular to request TA presence in the classroom for all lectures & is it right?

texts:
A Professor normally send his TA to conduct some sessions of his course (e.g., for problem solving).

It is also possible to ask the TA to attend all sessions to keep the track of the course. This is helpful if the TA is responsible for reading the essays of students, as he can be aware of discussions in the class.

How much the second scheme is popular?

Is it right to force a TA to stay and listen to the basic topics? When someone provide TA service for a course, he knows that topic well, and it is boring to sit and listen it again.


texts: How to publish an original idea which has no citations and has been described as 'possibly notable'?

texts:
I am an amateur mathematician, not a member of academia.  I've created a small algorithm for a twin prime sieve.  It's like a prime number sieve, but for twin primes of the form (6k-1, 6k+1).  However, those details aren't pertinent to this question.

I wrote a paper using LaTex and a template for a math publication, naively submitted it for consideration and was rejected with no reasons given.

With no basis for modifications, no reason to believe submitting to any other publication would be successful, and because publishing is not really a serious driver for me, I naively decided to throw it on Wikipedia.

The reviewer for Wikipedia made a comment that the information might be notable, but without citations to articles discussing it, there was no way to tell and the article could not thus be published on Wikipedia.

As I said, formal publication isn't that important to me.  However, my experience leaves me wondering how a person in this situation actually could publish.  No publication -> no citations -> no publication allowed.  It's a catch-22 situation.

At this point, I'm more interested in publishing as an exercise in figuring out how to actually do it.  What if I thought up something that was actually useful?
How would I go about it?

One challenge is, not being in academia I have no research resources other than Google or a public library.  As far as I can tell my algorithm is original.

Second challenge is, being original, I have no sources to cite in a bibliography.

Third challenge, I suppose, is lack of a more senior academic to serve as my advisor.


texts: Is it OK to discuss a student's work without them present?

texts:
At my university, PhD students need to give a presentation at the end of their first year. A panel of academics judge the work and then have a Q&A session with the student to assess their progress and aptitude. The panel has the power to delay progress if they have any concerns. It can be a stressful time for students.

There has been a suggestion from a colleague that we arrange a discussion after the presentation (during the Q&A time) so that junior students can learn what is required. However, I'm not sure that this is right because the student is not present - they're answering questions of the panel.

Though I do see value in the discussion, I think it might be best for all involved to be done as a separate, trial presentation. This way the PhD candidate can modify their presentation to make it better and the discussion can be had without the student being absent. However, this means two talks so it's more time for all involved and may add stress/confusion for the candidate.

I'd be happy to know how other universities do things and what you think.


texts: What does "shortlisting for this post is still in progress..." mean in the context of a UK job application?

texts:
I am trying to understand a message for an application in the UK that I received today. Here is the message ;

  The shortlisting for this post is still in progress, we hope to be
  able to notify applicants of the final decision shortly.

This message is not clear to me. Does it mean that I am not shortlisted but longlisted? What should I understand from this message?