texts: Interviewing for a lecturer position in the UK

texts:
I have been invited to interview for a lecturer position (AFAIK, equivalent to assistant professor elsewhere) in the UK, after being pre-selected following a Skype interview. This means that the department is probably reasonably interested in me as a prospective hire. I have been a postdoc for 3.5 years now, and this is my first interview at this level.

I also do not have much experience with interviews in general, since I got my PhD position at the first try, and then was offered my postdoc position (I did not interview for it). In the middle I had two other interviews for postdocs that I didn't get, one of which went badly on my part. The other one went well but the position was extremely competitive (1% chance) which makes drawing conclusions difficult.

So I would like to have some pointers from academics who are familiar with the UK system on what to expect and how to best prepare for the interview. The email they sent me asked me to deliver a 30-minute presentation on "your research, enterprise and teaching aspirations at [univeristy name], with the first 5 minutes directed at an Undergraduate audience". Then, there will be a panel interview, followed by tour of the department and lunch. I should add this position puts more emphasis on research than teaching (externally funded).

Specifically, I'm interested in:

What to focus on during the presentation, e.g., what is a good balance of my past/present research versus future plans
Should I link the undergradute part to my research topics?
What kind of content the panel is expecting from me: "research, enterprise and teaching aspirations" sounds a bit vague (perhaps that's intentional?)
What to expect from the panel interview: technical questions, career plans, ...?

Update:

I had the interview, which I think went reasonably well. I found the advice given by the accepted answer to be quite valuable in the end. Things that came up were for example 1) subjects that I can contribute to the teaching portfolio of the department which are not currently taught, 2) what kind of funding I am going to secure to do research, 3) how my research ties in with what current members of the department are researching, 4) why I chose this university/department, 5) some more technical/specific questions about the research project attached to the position (as I said this position is externally funded).

Things that did not come up were salary or REF.

Update2:

I was offered the position. Unfortunately (or maybe not) I could not accept it because of a mixture of personal and professional reasons.


texts: Is it ok to write a professor again who did not reply me yet?

texts:
I have written a professor who has an available Ph.D. position with my CV. After 3 days the professor replied with an apology for being late and said she went through my CV carefully and my work aligns very well with the project she is offering. She asked me to apply for the scholarship. Also asked if I would like to discuss the project with her in zoom or skype. I replied to her that I am interested.
Its been a week that she did not write me back.
Is it ok to write to her again? If yes, how to address it?


texts: Etiquette: asking for postdoc position to seminar speaker

texts: A really cool professor is invited to give a seminar in my department, and I would like to ask him/apply for a postdoc position in his lab. I do not know, if he has any openings, but I do have a meeting/lunch scheduled with him, since my project is related to his research interests. I want to know the best way to handle this. Do I send a short email with my CV/cover letter before he arrives on campus or do I ask him in person? Thanks!


texts: What is a tutor in Australia (UniMelb)? Is it like a TA? What are the responsibilities?

texts: I will be starting my PhD at University of Melbourne this October and I have questions about the tutor position. Is this like a teaching assistant (TA) position in other university systems? What does the role of tutor entail? How are these jobs awarded, is it difficult to get one, and how much does it pay?


texts: Is it appropriate to add a co-author at the stage revise & resubmit?

texts:
Context
I've submitted a paper - it was sort of a side-product of my main project - to a high ranked journal from an adjacent field. Recently I got a revise & resubmit that was close to a reject, but the editor sounded really interested in the paper being multidisciplinary. I'm suggested to contextualize my research stronger within the journal's field. I feel like getting one of my experienced in that particular field colleagues involved in the revision in order to get the paper accepted.

The question
If a person helps you a lot during the revision, are you allowed to include him as co-author?


texts: How to name and cite different versions of Microsoft Kinect?

texts:
There are at least two types of Kinect cameras, one is called Kinect for Xbox 360 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect#/media/File:Xbox-360-Kinect-Standalone.png)
and another one is called Kinect for Xbox One (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect#/media/File:Xbox-One-Kinect.jpg).

First, do they have shorter names (eg. Kinect v1 and Kinect v2) widely accepted in the research community? Moreover, how would you cite them in a scientific paper?

I'm now sure if this question is more appropriate for UX stackexchange or for the academica stackexchange. Kindly let me know in the comments. Thank!


texts: Paper accepted at a probably predatory conference, how shall I proceed?

texts: I'm a college student attending a very prestigious university. I did an independent research during this summer, and I recently submitted my conference paper to an international conference. The acceptance letter was very fast (2-3 days), and after doing much research, I realized that the organization is in Beall's list. The DOI number of the conference paper already came out and it seems that my paper is going to be published in a conference proceeding (it's going to be on google scholar as well). I don't want to hurt my career by going to a predatory conference, but at the same time, I think it's going to be a valuable experience for me to attend a non-undergraduate conference, as it is the first time for me. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should do?


texts: The advantage of EPS over PDF? And why so many journals ask for EPS alone?

texts:
I have been curious about why so many journals only accept EPS for vector graphs rather than PDF.

It is indeed weird because these journals have to convert EPS figures to PDF anyway. Adobe also suggests to use PDF instead of EPS.

For me, EPS is much hard to view and process than PDF. Does EPS makes a journal editor's life easier? Why?

In addition, as far as I understand, PDF is an open standard format that is free to anyone (relative sure), while EPS is copyrighted by Adobe (not very sure).


texts:
I sent my manuscript to a journal which they accepted for publication without peer review. They asked for a 1000 euro service fee. I requested a withdrawal instead,  to which they replied asking whether I was interested in free publication to their other journal as part of their 'social responsibility policy'.
My question is: does this sound like a predatory journal? Will they be able to snatch my work? (First time researcher here).


texts: Will I be held responsible for working with a supervisor accused of sexual misconduct?

texts:
I am a first-year Ph.D. student. In the last year of my undergrad I began a research project with my then-advisor, who planned to hand me off to his former postdoc (let's call him John) who is tenured at my current institution. I believe that John is the only researcher working in this subfield at my current institution. However, I have recently learned John was actually on administrative leave for the spring and fall semesters of 2020, because he was accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a female graduate student. He is back now and I do not know if the university's investigation found him at fault. I am trying to determine the appropriate path forward for myself. Currently I am tempted to quickly finish this project, with the help of my undergraduate advisor rather than John as much as possible, and then get out of that subfield; after all, I'm just a first-year, and should be able to switch without too much trouble.
I have two questions about how I may proceed. The second is more important, the first being more of an IPS.SE question than anything.
Is it appropriate to ask the department chair or another authority figure if John was found "guilty"? Though I am a man, I am uncomfortable working with John if the allegations turned out to be true. I have to weight my discomfort against the fact that I really enjoyed the project, and would strongly prefer to finish it this year. On the other hand, he's back, and teaching calculus no less, so maybe the truth turned out to not be as severe as the allegations. In any case, my decision would be a lot easier to make with this information (in fact it seems that the department may have tried to hide the reason John was on administrative leave from the first-years, though the other graduate students all knew). However, I fear that because I have not established much of a personal connection with the authority figures here (thanks mainly due to COVID) that if I ask I will just come off as a gossip.
Will having worked with John, knowing what he was accused of, tarnish my own academic reputation? I certainly don't endorse John's actions (and, again, don't know what he was actually accused of, or whether he was found guilty) and don't intend for him to be my thesis adviser -- I just want to get this one project done, and following the suggestions of this Academia.SE post it seems like I should just go ahead with the project, but I'm not sure if the reputation hit will be worth it. So suppose that I work with John, even though I know he was credibly accused of misconduct. I write a paper, coauthored with John. I recognize that my actions may come off as callous towards the victim of the misconduct, and while I don't know her identity, I strongly suspect that her research interests are similar to mine. Should I expect my reputation to suffer?


texts: Is there deliberate gender preferential treatment in hiring or admission in STEM fields?

texts:
By "gender preferential treatment" I mean: Person A is selected ahead of Person B partly because of gender. In other words, Person B would have been selected ahead of Person A had gender not been taken into account.

By "deliberate" I mean: as a matter of policy at the department  or university or state or national level, or at the discretion of the committee that makes the decision. This does not include unintentional bias, which might occur as part of human nature.

By "STEM fields" I mean: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

I'm interested in four stages.

Graduate school admission
Postdoc hiring
Professor hiring
Tenure or promotion decision

Answers can be about any country. But please keep in mind that the question is not about why deliberate gender preferential treatment is a good or a bad idea. It is about what happens in reality.

Answers should be supported by either references to publicly available policies, research, or firsthand personal experience (e.g. on hiring committees).


texts: What are the biggest differences transitioning from undergrad to grad school?

texts:
I was recently accepted into a graduate biophysics program and have a couple questions about what I should expect going into my first semester. While I'm going into a physics PhD, I'd like general advice from any field. I have two specific questions, but welcome any advice that you are willing to share.

What is the biggest thing to overcome/accomplish during your first semester and a graduate student? Looking back, what is something you wish you would have done differently?


texts: advantages and disadvantages of white-box testing of students assignments?

texts:
This is a fork of my question homework-testing-method-for-schools but i'm taking it in another direction.

I was asking about a homework testing method that'll encourage students to write better code and reduce the TA's proofreading task to a minimum.

I was thinking of using unit testing, (or anything else you can think of), in order to turn students in the right direction (design wise), and hopefully giving them good thinking and coding habits (we're talking first programming course in collage).

so my new question is:

If you think there's something wrong and not educational about unit testing    students code please explain why do you think so..
If you think this is a good (or just an o.k) idea please tell me if you have any ideas of how to design the tests.

thank you for your answers.


texts: I can't access a reference of an article I am reviewing: what shall I do?

texts:
From time to time, I cannot access a reference of an article that I am reviewing, either because my university did not subscribe to some journals (and I failed to find it myself on sci-hub, Google, and other places), or because the article doesn't seem to be available online.

Pinging the authors of the article (either the one that I am reviewing or the one that was cited) may work, but not always: legal issues (some publishers do not allow sharing papers online), unanswered emails, blind review preventing from contacting authors, etc.

Shall I just ignore the cited article in that case, even though it could be useful to review the article? Or are there other options, aside from asking my library to pay for it (hoping they would agree)?


texts: How do I start a new peer-reviewed open access journal?

texts:
I'm an academic and would like to start a scholarly journal. My reasons are manyfold: primarily I want an open access journal, and think that my field needs an own journal.

How do I start a new open access journal?


texts: To what extent do Easychair Scores Affect Acceptance/Rejection in Theoretical Computer Science Conferences?

texts:
My coauthors and I have submitted a paper for a well respected conference in a subfield of theoretical computer science. This is the kind of conference where the authors receive feedback before the final decision, and they have a chance to respond.

Some information:

There were about 240 submissions. I know this because my paper was sent in the very last minutes and the submission server closed precisely at the announced deadline.
The conference accepts between 25-30% of papers. In the last year there were about 80 accepted papers for about the same number of submissions.
Each reviewer of a paper gives a score from the scale -2(strong reject), -1(weak reject), 0(boderline), 1(weak accept),2(strong accept).
Each reviewer gives a confidence score to its review. I think that it varies from 1(not very sure) to 5(expert)
Each paper has three reviews (ideally).

Once, when talking with a colleague that uses to participate on program committees he told me that in many conferences, a great percentual of papers are accepted/rejected only with basis on the score given by easychair, while those that are not so clear go to voting.

Questions:

What percentual of papers are usually accepted automatically, i.e. only with basis on the automatic ranking system of easychair?
Which score a paper should receive to be a clear accept? (assuming the paper has no flaws, and that no program committee member will claim to have found a flaw.)
My paper got a score of (2,1,1), that is to say, one strong accept and two weak accepts. The reviewers confidence were not disclosed but from the reviews I could see that they were either 4 (high) or 5 (expert). Would such a score guarantee the paper to be on the safe side?


texts: Does mathematical modeling expert need to know subject of interdisciplinary field

texts:
I'm working in chemical engineering field and being mathematician and programmer I'm conducting simulations and mathematical modeling problem solving. Basically the battery processes simulations. There is a problem with my chemists colleagues who can't really help in theory regarding the processes inside of batteries that needs to be modeled. The question is, is it my responsibility to learn chemistry, electrochemistry etc in order to be able to build the math model of the processes by myself not relying on chemists? What is the general practice in this case in the world? Or do people in other research groups and/or universities hire mathematician-chemists specialists for this purpose?

I'm kind of being blamed for making slow progress and I feel like I don't fit into this group as not knowing chemistry field. Publications though can be made using commercial software but ideally I want to be able to build the model of the battery without relying on other software that does it for you, as it is introducing some restrictions.


texts: Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name?

texts:
I am PhD student in computer engineering and visiting a foreign university. My project is near to the end and, since my colleague and I got excellent results, we are writing a scientific paper about it.
I would like to submit the paper to the top best journal in our field.

I sent the draft to my supervisor here, that replied that he does not think that the paper is going to be accepted by the top best journal. He suggested to submit it to another journal, that we can consider the 5th best journal in the field. He said that we can still submit it to the top journal if we want it, but, in that case, we have to remove his name from the author list.

So what should we do?

Should we remove his name from the author list and submit it to the top journal?
Or should we satisfy him and submit the paper to the 5th most prestigious journal?


texts: How to avoid plagiarism if I am learning from other's code?

texts:
I am taking a class that gave us a broad assignment: apply effect to a series of pictures via python. It did not include any lectures on the underlying principles of effects as it would be too broad to cover all.

I am trying to apply focus stacking, but as I didn't know the underlying principles of it (always done it in photoshop). I have looked up the technique of how it is done and landed on a GitHub repo that demonstrated how to do it. I followed along the code and learned the steps of doing it. But in result my code looks very similar to what I just learned.

I didn't copy and paste any of the code, but I did follow along the steps, I would assume this is still plagiarism? Do I just need to pick a new subject and don't look at any code during the learning process?


texts: Are public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in assessing the qualifications of foreign PhD applicants?

texts:
I recently learned about the National Recognition Information Centre for the United Kingdom (UK NARIC). It's a UK agency that assesses international academic qualifications.
According to UK NARIC, a Master's degree from my country is at best equivalent to a British Bachelor's Degree with Honours. Thus, it seems that before I can apply to a PhD program in the UK, I will have to complete another Master's degree in the said country.
My question is, are all public universities in the UK required to follow the UK NARIC guidelines in evaluating the academic credentials of prospective PhD applicants? Or, can these universities still opt to assess PhD applications on a case-by-case basis?
Thanks in advance for your answers!


texts: If you write a thesis, is it legal to ask somebody if things you did are correct in the thesis? When it's my own work and this person says, everything correct, there shouldn't be any problem, right? When does plagiarism start?


texts: How to handle intellectual theft by a colleague

texts:
My question is somewhat related to this one, but with the additional twist that my superior, who could be handling the case, as well as some of my friends, are implicated.
A colleague of mine asked me to do some data analysis for her, which I gladly did. She has published that analysis, even using my own wording, under her name, and also added a number of other colleagues, including our superior, to the list of authors.
Knowing my superior and the other colleagues, I don't believe they wanted to wrong me. They were probably not even aware of the true authorship of the analysis. But, as co-authors, they formally share the responsibility for the publication. I don't want to cause them problems, so how should I handle this?
Edit:
Before the publication, I happened to see the draft and pointed out to the plagiarist that my name was missing. She said she'd add it, but she didn't do it. I don't see a point in discussing it with her any further.


texts: Exchange administrator requesting author order change in exchange student work. Is there an easy way out?

texts:
We are currently hosting in our labs an international postgraduate student on a 12-month exchange visit. We have had students from the same university before without any issues.

We have completed all the modelling, analysis, results etc for an article and we are in the last round of reviews before submission with an agreed author order for the five contributors in the article. However, the exchange administrator from the overseas university has requested that their local supervisor be listed as a second author as well as a corresponding author to the submission otherwise the publication will not be counted towards the student work from the university (and will affect scholarship rankings etc). Oddly enough, the supervisor has agreed to the original author order but the admin person has not budged so far.

Given that in the foreign country where the student is from, first and second authorships are considered important, what would be the best way to convince the administrator about the current author order? Or should we avoid conflicts that might affect the student's scholarship applications and chances and accept the change?


texts: How to cite a google survey in an original paper?

texts:
Is it even possible to cite a google survey (designed by yourself) in an original paper? [via docs.google.com]

Any explanations would be thanked!

Regards.


texts: Academia vs. Industry in a short graduate program (computer science)

texts:
I am an M.S. in Computer Science student at an excellent school, and I am trying to decide between pursuing a career in research (getting a PhD), and going into the industry to work for a company like Google. Unfortunately, the program I am in is only 3 semesters long, so there is not really sufficient time to do research before graduating without sacrificing a course I really want (and need) to take (I also did not do Computer Science as an undergraduate so I have a very high return for any courses I do take / high opportunity cost for any courses I don't take).

With this in mind, my questions are:

What type of factors should I be considering, knowing that doing research to see if I enjoy it is likely not on the table? How does one know that they want to do research? Is loving the theoretical aspects of your courses enough?
I am quite confident I could do the PhD at my current school, which is my top choice given the faculty advisor(s) I would have. The research would be absolutely fascinating, well funded, and almost certainly set me up for a fantastic career in either academia or industry when I graduate.
Getting the PhD would take 5 - 6 years (starting from now).
I would be giving up roughly 600k in income (before tax) if I did the PhD, not including any promotions I may get during the the way or inflation, which would drive this number up. I would also expect to be doing fun and interesting work in industry.

My program is geared towards setting people up for a career in industry, but it has also been made clear that it can be molded to set students up for a PhD track as well. My apologies if this is too open ended. I can clarify further if you would like.


texts: Citing paywalled articles accessed via illegal web sharing

texts:
There are a few sites which offer paid articles for free. It’s something unethical, especially for those who upload to that site, but for me, it’s good for expanding knowledge.

As a readers, can we cite those documents, and can the editorial board know that I’m using those articles?


texts: Why is data falsification reported to be more usual in some fields than others?

texts:
This big info-graphic (at the end of the question) explains that biomedicine and psychology have greater rate of data fabrication/falsification/mishandling than other fields. A similar effect was reported a PLOS ONE paper:

  Once these factors were controlled for, surveys conducted among clinical, medical and pharmacological researchers appeared to yield higher rates of misconduct than surveys in other fields or in mixed samples.

and

  it suggests that misconduct in clinical, pharmacological and medical research is more widespread than in other fields. This would support growing fears that the large financial interests that often drive medical research are severely biasing it.

However, the paper does not offer any further discussion of the field dependence of data manipulation. So, have there been explanations proposed about why these fields are "special"?


texts:
In my masters thesis I need to cite from "NIST Special Publication 800-22".
We are to use IEEE referencing style and I am using an online LaTeX editor to get this done.

Now that this document I need to refer to is a PDF document, I have no idea what is the type of the document that I should treat it as. Is that okay if I treat it as an article? Or else is there any other type that it should fall under?


texts: Choosing Writing Samples for Ph.D application

texts:
The following is the description for the required writing samples:

"You must submit at least three papers that best represent your ability to conduct research and write effectively about your area of specialization. We encourage you to submit published work."

I view "three papers" as three different articles (rather than three publications such as conference papers) and, say, could make choices from the below options:

a. A conference paper on which I am the first author (4 authors in total)

b. A conference paper on which I am the second author (3 authors in total)

c. My Master's thesis which is extended from a. (pretty much the same with a. in the abstract section)

d. Final project report in the class taken during my Master.

What I am wondering is that if I can just combine all four without modification in a single pdf file (about 60 pages total), or I am supposed to extract the main idea in the articles and make it as short as possible.

Another thing is that since c. is just the extension of a., so their abstract sections are pretty much the same. Is it redundant to include both of them?


texts: Need a good, inexpensive app to catalogue journal articles and books

texts:
Like the title says, I'm looking for an inexpensive app or program that can catalogue both journal articles and books. I need something that has or can take input from an ISBN/QR/barcode scanner, and can also do in-line article annotation like Mendeley.

Background: I work at a very small consulting firm. We do IT, custom software, creative services (design and UXD) and user research (theory, strategy and testing). We're just starting to put together a research library, and we quite frankly don't have the money for high-powered library software.

I know I'm probably asking for a magical unicorn here, and if what I want doesn't exist, please tell me. I figured research professionals would have had the most need for something like this; any help you could throw my way would be much appreciated.

-Z


texts: Is it bizarre that a professor asks every student for a 3 inch by 5 inch photograph?

texts:
The professor asks this of every student. It's 2 points on an introductory assignment worth 10. Does anyone think this is bizarre? I'm against it to the point that I think it should not be allowed by the university.

addendum
It's an online class, by the way. A Senior Communications class is required that most have taken by now. Within that communications class it is required to upload a photo of yourself to the online university system which all classes can see, like in class rosters and private messaging. The professor also asked us to call him (it's explicitly advised at my university not to give your professor your phone number). What really annoyed me was when he then asked permission to share our email among the class. The class already has a messaging system and it can be tied into the university email. This instructor was too pathetic for me, so I dropped the course within a few days.

addendum 2
USA school. top 50 USNews. After seeing these comments I actually find them helpful, because the only reasons I see are to learn the students name, but in this case the professor already has photos of a strong majority of the students. What I'm getting at is the professor is really showing some incompetence and its annoying to a significant extent.


texts:
I was doing my PhD in computer science from a university in USA. I had done most of the work, the research, papers, proposal and the like. I had some personal issues and had to leave it unfinished (just 3-6 months from my final defense) and come back to my country. I did talk with my advisor and he said I can come back any time (as in a few years maybe) and defend my thesis.

Now the problem is it's been a 3 years already and it's very unlikely for me to go back even for a week. I have already stated everywhere (my employers) that I have almost finished it and they know that I had to leave because of personal reasons.

My questions are:

Is it worth trying to go back and finish it risking my health.
What kind of problems should I expect to face because of it in my future.
What are the likely setbacks I will have in my career.
How to deal or what steps to take to minimize the damage?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.


texts: Ramifications of withdrawing publication offer (question from student editor)?

texts:
I am the editor of a student-edited journal at a graduate school. We extended a publication offer to an author that has published with the journal in the past, and with whom I do not wish to burn any bridges. The normal process of an offer goes like this: (1) extend the offer, (2) author either accepts or rejects, (3) send copyright agreement, (4) author signs and returns copyright agreement, (5) we edit and publish the article.

The author accepted the offer within the time frame (step 2), but we have not progressed beyond that. I have to withdraw/rescind the offer because we have maxed out our page numbers for this year. I tried telling the author that I would be happy to work with the incoming editor in chief to see if they want to make him an offer to publish next year, but he insists that because he accepted the offer we are now obligated to publish it next year. I reminded him that we have not sent him a copyright agreement or entered into a publication contract, and even if we did so the journal reserves the right to terminate the agreement at its sole discretion. He essentially said that his acceptance of the publication offer formed the publication contract and now we have to publish him or else (said he turned down other offers, etc.).

I feel terrible about the situation (we've tried our best to never put authors in this position, and have never had to rescind/withdraw an offer before). Since I've only experienced this from the editor's point of view, I'm wondering what published authors have to say about the situation? Is it your understanding that once you accept an offer you've formed a contract with the publication, and they are obliged to print it? Have you ever had an offer withdrawn, and did it burn all bridges with that institution/publication?


texts: Can cited works hold grammatical positions in sentences?

texts:
Though I read this style quite often, I was recently told unambiguously by a reviewer that I was NOT supposed to use citations "as if they are objects in a sentence."  The following sentence is an example of what the reviewer considered unacceptable:

  We analyzed the data using the Wilmerding method, guided by [12].

The references section might include the following:

  [12] Smith, D., Marshawn, J., & Devenshaw, A. 2011. Techniques and
  Procedures for Applying the Wilmerding Method.  Prince Publications,
  Inc, New York, NY.

The Wilmerding method1 is not a step-by-step algorithm that can be precisely followed as if by a machine, and thus [12] does not provide a step-by-step algorithmic description but rather guidance for using  the method. [12] is a relatively slim but authoritative textbook about how to use the Wilmerding method.

Within this question, for the purpose of discussion, I have intentionally put [12] in grammatical positions where it's an important element of the sentence and the sentence would make less sense without the reference.  Sometimes that seems to be the most efficient way to communicate the intended message.  Is using a reference as a grammatical sentence element like this OK?   Why might this not be considered acceptable?   Should I be rewording those sentences?  Is it enough of a violation to be worth passing the note on to authors of papers I review?

I considered posting this on EL&U but it seems more specific to academia than general English usage, and the comment came from a content reviewer rather than a copy editor.  This question is related but it seems to be more about when to put authors names' in vs. outside of the parentheses in an APA-like style.

The numbered citation style (as opposed to following APA, for example) is required by the venue.

1: Fictionalized for the purpose of this discussion


texts: Correct answers were visible in a test; should I notify my instructor?

texts:
In a multiple-choice test at my nursing school, our teacher accidentally left the right answers in bold; not super dark bold, but dark enough for people to figure out. To add insult to injury, the week before, she had given the same exact exam to another class, who had spread the word to some people in my class that the answers were in sight. I, of course, was livid because I got an 88 and 95% of the class got a 100. You would think the instructor would find it a bit odd that so many people got the whole exam correct. Anyway, I am really tempted to notify her, but I know that my friends would hate me, and we may have to retake another and more difficult exam. Should I just take the 88 or speak up about the mass cheating that occurred?

So far, the school really emphasizes on ethics and doing what is right. I am one of those people who covers the answers with my scantron before I make my choice, hence, I do not laser focus on the answers.


texts: What do grad schools want to hear about why I'm changing PhD programs?

texts:
TL;DR: I'm reapplying to schools in the US for Fall 2021 because (1) the research project I'm getting paid to work on isn't in my area(s) of interest, (2) in general, mathematics at this university is heavily applied and computational, so there's little scope for me to do something else I'd like here, (3) I'm making much less than minimum wage (assuming a 40-hour work week for 52 weeks a year), and (4) I don't like living here. These are listed in order of importance to me. The question is, which of these points do I emphasise to an admissions committee?
More context: I'm an international student (for US and Canadian schools). I graduated with a Master's in math from a well-known university in Europe. I was "on-track" to start a PhD in Fall 2020, but due to personal reasons and global events I couldn't go to any schools in the US or Canada. I didn't want to take a year off from math, and I needed to make at least some money, so the best option seemed to be to enroll in a PhD program in Europe.
I plan to reapply to US and Canadian schools (for the reasons listed above). Only, I'm not sure how to explain that despite already being enrolled in a PhD program, I want to "transfer" to a different one. I have a solid academic record otherwise---how will this affect my application? How do I explain this in my statement of purpose?


texts: Search if a term already exists in an older research

texts:
My research led me to introduce a term that describes a certain group of web applications.

In order to ensure that the term does not already exist, I searched on IEEE, ACM and Elsevier libraries, using keywords, but I feel this search is incomplete.

What is the most efficient way to search for a term by name (search for the word "MyTerm" in all the archives)
and search a term by context (search for a derm that defines specific characteristics of a group of applications, in all the archives).

Thanks.


texts: Dealing with unpleasant people in conferences

texts:
My current strategy when seeing unpleasant, toxic academics in conferences is to ignore them, but I'm wondering if people have other suggestions.
When I was a grad student, I spent a few months at a research institution. I was in the computer room trying to print something, but it wasn't printing. Then a senior academic (mathematician) came in and I told him that the printer wasn't working. It turned out that he just wanted to make a photocopy, and that was fine. He told me, "It's working." Then he proceeded to get very angry and said, "You're lying! You're a liar!" I wanted to explain that it was the printer that wasn't working, but he interrupted and continued to call me a liar and stormed out.
Well! I continued my work but in later talks at the conference he would be quite nasty. For example, he would sit next to someone and tell them, "I want to sit here, not over there" referring to me. This was a senior mathematician who spoke at the ICM at some point in the 1970s.
I just ignored him but the whole situation was unpleasant and over something very petty. What is the correct protocol for dealing with people like this?


texts: Should graduate applicants follow instructions by department NOT to contact potential advisors?

texts:
I am applying for doctoral programs in biostatistics and have read multiple places to attempt to set up contact with a potential advisor before applying.

What if the department website specifically says to not contact potential advisors? There is a research lab I am very interested in joining (my top pick), but I still should not contact this professor, right?

Here's the exact wording of the website:

  "Should I contact faculty about RA opportunities?
  No. All applications are reviewed by our admission committee and students do not need to (nor can they) try to find their own mentors prior to admissions. Having an interested faculty member in no way influences the admission process, which is based on an evaluation of your application only."


texts: Can I challenge a paper already published in a peer reviewed conference/journal?

texts:
I recently came across several papers in the area of Information Extraction and Data Mining which seem to have passed the review process even if they (1) use some new terminology without describing it, (2) replicate some old and popular technique and just describe it in a new way, (3) use new datasets without releasing them publicly or describing them in detail, (4) confusing language that doesn't seem to describe the methods... and much more.

Why challenge them? Such papers give these people a kind of leverage in situations where number of publications count rather than quality of genuine work. They also encourage, let's say, 'pseudoscience' within the scientific community - or fraud, as those more experienced among you say.

I've faced situations like:-

Someone hired me from a freelance site to implement a previously published paper. The paper doesn't adequately describe the novel methods they claim. I spend a week on it but don't get paid.
Similar situation but the implementation's accuracy doesn't match the claim.
In a semi-academic gathering (tea time in a summer school), a discussion turned into a debate. Though I wasn't involved in it, one of the others said something which I pointed out as being logically wrong. It turned personal and one of them claimed that they knew better because of having twice the number of papers than me. Later when I read their papers I found that they didn't contain any ideas that would count as a genuine research.

I guess some of you might have been in similar situations before. Yes it doesn't matter in the longer term; but it is hard to avoid some situations like this and I think it might be hampering the research community as a whole.

Here are the exact points of my question:

Should we confront such publications? Would we get anything out of it?
Is it even feasible?
How can I do so? What actions are possible in such cases? What is the best course of action?

p.s. Yes citations matter more than just throwing papers - but such publications also get citations from other equally content-less papers published in similar conferences.

pps. Most of these papers are from less-than-tier-3 level conferences but still published by top publishers like IEEE and Springer.


texts:
I am a Ph.D. student currently doing research at a top engineering school in North America.

I am becoming more and more jaded at the fact that a sizable portion of the research conducted at my university as well as publications to engineering conferences seem to have very limited practical relevance, and with no attempts to address implementation concerns. Many of these papers seem to be published just for the sake of it.

One glaring example is power engineering. The methodologies
proposed by recent graduates from power engineering are so extremely far-fetched from practical implementation, it raises the question as to why any such
research should be continued.

Power is a very safety critical field: people can die after going for too long without power (case in point), and the industry itself is highly government regulated. The algorithms that have been proposed from my
research department as well as many like it completely ignore things
like safety guarantees. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that
government employees in the power industry would rely on some biology
motivated or learning based algorithm to arrange the power supply to millions of actual
people. There are decades old well-regulated power markets for that!
But power is just one example out of many. I have read many papers on
signal processing and control theory. Most of the papers are completely
math and proof based; their proposed methods are so mathematical, with extremely limited robustness or safety guarantees, etc. These researchers are more concerned with epsilons and deltas than how their proposed methods can be realistically
implemented in people's cars or mobile phones.

An "implementation"
nowadays is just a MATLAB simulation, a few equations, and a graph. Even during undergraduate
engineering training, we have seen how difficult it is to go from
simulation to actual software/hardware that people can use. I can easily show you highly technical papers from these fields published by people who do not even care about the readability of their notation, let alone practical implementation.
So it is a legitimate question as to why anyone would ever use these
highly-theoretical, and assumption laden research results. It is
unclear what "the small-gain signal must belong to a Hilbert space on
the extended half-line" actually means in real life cache design. Furthermore, many
papers are completely without any mention of practical implementation of
the algorithms, so it is completely unknown if anyone would actually
be able to use these research results.

Engineering research is ultimately used to create new technologies that promise to improve the lives of people. However, it is unknown to me at this point how a "bat-echolocation based meta-heuristic algorithm for nuclear generator dispatch" could benefit anyone.

So my question boils down to how we as researchers should attempt to bridge the gap between the highly mathematical, highly theoretical modern engineering research and the practical implementation of research results. What good is engineering research with no practical relevance?


texts: Is it allowed to submit accepted and published journal articles in Elsevier, to arXiv?

texts: As arXiv allows submitting research articles which helps in increasing its visibility. I was wondering if it is alright to submit accepted and published journal articles in Elsevier (Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal of Medical Informatics) to arXiv?


texts: How aware are grad school application readers of differing standards internationally?

texts:
Recently two friends of mine have come back to Australia after having done 2 semesters of 3rd and 4th year subjects (about half mathematics) at different branches of the University of California.
They said that the tests would only ask questions directly from or similar to material covered in lectures and example sheets. If questions deviated from the lectures or example sheets very much students would complain to the lecturer. Thus, if one studied the example sheets enough they got an A relatively easily. They returned with A or A+ in all of their maths subjects, but they average about 75-80 for their maths subjects here.
In Australia, about 70% of the exam is usually like that. The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.
My questions are

Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?
If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?
How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications? How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?

Edit: Chris's answer below seems to answer the first question by "not quite", which is what I expected I suppose. The other questions still stand.


texts: Saying "good question" during a seminar talk

texts:
During seminars and talks, some presenters hear a question and compliment it by saying "Good question." Could this possibly offend the asker? Could this be viewed as a tactic to pretend being unfazed by a difficult question?

Or is it really a good psychological ploy to mollify the interrogator so that he/she is more accepting to the answer?


texts: Advice. on posting a bilingual paper on arXiv

texts:
I couldn't get this question past the spam filter to arXiv...

I am preparing to post an article that has been written in two languages (French and English).  I wanted some advice on how to make this article visible in the best way possible.

The article is an introduction article.  We are submitting in French with an English language supplemental information.  French language introductions are used world wide in Québec, France, parts of Africa, and more where paid journal articles are not always easily available.  I expect this article will be useful for French speaking students to have both the English and French versions, so the French language article will have an English language translation as a supplement.  I also think our presentation will be useful to both audiences.

I wanted it was better to submit an arXiv version as two separate submissions for the English language supplemental and the French language main article.  Another option would be to make the second version the English language version.  Still another option is to bundle the English and French versions together in one (very long) pdf.  Does anyone have advice to make sure this is visible, searchable, and both versions are linked to each other?


texts: What is a good set-up for the board of directors/executive committee of research institutes?

texts:
I have been elected as employee representative for the board (edit: not really a board of directors, the competences seem partially advisory and partly decision making) of a new interdisciplinary research institute at my university. The board in its current setup consists of ~ 10 professors (all stakeholder in the institute as department heads) + dean + 1 employee representative, all with the right to vote, only the employee representative is elected, there is no student representative.

Is this a common setup? Are there any good examples of other boards with better parity/more egalitarian representation of relevant groups?


texts: Is it acceptable to paraphrase or include reviewer's comments in revised manuscript?

texts:
When you submit a manuscript and receive the reviewer's comments, some of these comments are really useful, and might improve the manuscript with some critical comments.

If a reviewer provides a very useful comment that is very detailed and a few paragraphs long, is it acceptable to simply paraphrase said comment in the revised manuscript? The reviewer has described a concept very well and it is difficult to improve this description.


texts: How to cite in text a citation translated by me

texts:
Thats the question. I'm writing a paper in Spanish and I need to cite (APA) several citations in Spanish of books written in English that doesn't have translated versions. My reviewer is telling me that I need to be explicit about it but I don't now how to do it. Should I write "Name (2001, translated by me)"?

I have it clear for the reference, put it on brackets with my translation, but I don't know how to do it in text.

Any help is greatly appreciated.


texts:
I was wondering if there is a website that allows you to rate research groups/professors that you've worked for. I know about 'http://www.ratemyprofessors.com', but I was thinking about a website specifically for academic reviews, and this example is more or less limited to lectures.

If my research is correct, there's currently no such options, it sounds like an idea to implement something similar. What do you guys think? Would you be interested in using something like this?

The goal of the project would be creating transparency in science, and the build could be similar to glassdoor. There are for sure some concerns about the sample size and anonymity, especially in the case of smaller research groups, but it might still be better than nothing.


texts: Is it legal to upload CC BY papers to academia.edu? Terms of Use are vague on this

texts:
There have been discussions regarding academia.edu's Terms of Use (https://www.academia.edu/terms) and some responses have stated that it is impossible to upload published papers to academia even with the most liberal copyright licenses is illegal (Why does academia.edu reserve the right to sell, modify, and "exploit" my papers if I post them there?). They have recently updated their terms of use and changed the paragraph "License granted by Member".

However, does this new agreement allow articles under CC BY licenses of open access journals to be uploaded? The new terms state that academia may modify and sublicense any materials, but that they will not claim ownership. Is this sufficient for legally uploading a document licensed under CC BY?

Edit: To further clarify, CC BY requires the citation of the original publication usually embedded in final PDFs. Do the current terms of use comply to CC BY by means of the statement that academia.edu will not claim ownership?


texts: Negotiating startup package given differences in institutional norms

texts:
There is a story on Inside Higher Ed (based on this blog post) about a candidate who received a tenure-track offer from a U.S. philosophy department.

She emailed the search committee with some requests related to: salary, maternity leave, sabbatical, teaching load, and start date. Her email ended with "I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others. Let me know what you think." In response, the institution withdrew the offer, saying that her requests revealed that she wasn't a good fit for a teaching institution.

Many of the comments on the IHE story or blog post are in support of the school, saying such things as:

The candidate asked for too much and came across as "entitled"
The candidate shouldn't have requested a light teaching load initially, when the school in question is a teaching institution
The candidate shouldn't have asked about a pre-tenure sabbatical, which is apparently unheard of at teaching institutions

In particular, one comment says this:

  indicates how important it is to do your best to understand the culture and needs of the hiring institution, both before and during negotiations

and another that it is

  an example of knowing the difference between negotiating with a research school and with a small teaching school

There have been quite a few questions on this site about negotiating a startup package, but these mostly describe the various things you can ask for, and which are likely to have more "wiggle room." Most of the U.S. faculty who answered those are at research institutions, and they suggest that

  It's perfectly reasonable to ask for anything

and

  Definitely ask for all that you need, and let them whittle you down.

Apparently, that advice may be more or less applicable depending on the type and culture of the institution. My questions are:

Are there really different norms with respect to negotiation in a teaching vs. research institution? What are they?

and, more generally,

What can I do pre-offer to get a sense for what the institution's culture is, and what I can reasonably ask for?

Possibly, the candidate in the story came from a research institution, got advice from her advisor there on negotiation, and never realized that her requests would be perceived poorly at a teaching institution. What could she have done differently?

I am especially interested in a response from anyone who's been on a search committee at both kinds of institutions (though I don't know if we have anyone like that on this site).


texts: How difficult is it to obtain a postgraduate qualification in the academic field that's unrelated to your undergraduate programme?

texts: How hard is it to obtain postgraduate qualification in the academic field unrelated to your undergraduate programme (or sharing a rather strenuous connection with it)? I'm looking for answers that would accommodate one's personal experiences in doing a U-turn in their academic career, and in switching to a totally new field of study (e.g. from Theoretical Physics to Art History, or vice versa).


texts: Is it important who submits the paper to the journal?

texts:
I'm a PhD student in computer engineering and I have recently finished writing and editing a paper under the supervision of my professor. Now it is ready to be submitted to a journal. We have chosen an Elsevier journal. Since my professor seems to be busy, I've decided to submit the paper myself. Now my question is that:

  Is there any difference between submitting the paper myself or my
  professor? I mean if my professor submits the paper, is it better and
  may have a better influence on reviewer?

The paper contains the names of both of us (my professor and I), I just want to know if it is important who submits the paper (ant does the submission related tasks).

If it is not important, I don't want to waste the time and I want to submit the paper ASAP. Otherwise, I should wait until my professor find the enough time to submit the paper.


texts: Do positions exist in philosophical research?

texts: For example, in the same fashion that medical professionals might do research on cancer, does there exist comparable positions in philosophy where one "researches," say, Free Will Determinism?


texts: How to refer to a source with typos in the title?

texts: How to cite a paper with a typographical error in the title. In the reference list, should I correct it (and make it hard to find) or let it as is (and make an impression I was sloppy)?


texts: How should I phrase a résumé if I have an uncertain degree plan?

texts:
I have been working towards a degree in mathematics and in computer science for the last two and a half years. That corresponds to the following bit in my résumé:

  Education
  B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2016 expected)
  B.S. in Computer Science (2012 - 2016 expected)

However, I recently found out that I can graduate next semester with a major in mathematics and a minor in computer science. If that was my plan, I would write this:

  Education
  B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2015 expected)
  Minor: Computer Science

However, at the moment I am undecided about which path I plan to take.

Which should I include in the résumé? I am considering just writing down whichever one would seem more impressive, but I don't want to be deceitful.


texts: I have accidentally given students assignment guidelines that conflict with the course coordinator's. How I can rectify my mistake?

texts:
I am a tutor and I have given guidelines to students on how to complete the assignment. After three weeks later I found out that the course coordinator expected different requirements than what I have told students.

There is a clash now and students are very confused. They are emailing me about who they should follow. Given there is still one week left in the due date of assignment. How I can mend my mistake? I worry anything I will do now go against me.

I should have consulted with coordinator before deliver the guidelines to students. But I just wanted to help students as they were feeling lost because the course coordinator didn't provide any guidelines whatsoever. Students said the assignment is vague and I just helped them with the structure of it. But now coordinator wants a different structure than what I have given to students four weeks ago.


texts: displaying mean with sem or confidence interval

texts:
When I look at scientific papers, bar charts I usually come to see are shown with mean +/- sem.

As stated here,

  When standard error (SE) bars do not overlap, you cannot be sure that
  the difference between two means is statistically significant

and

  If 95% CI error bars do not overlap, you can be sure the difference is
  statistically significant (P < 0.05).

Even if the reverse is not true, why don't we always use the confidence interval instead of the sem in bar charts, since it seems more informative ?


texts: How do I teach a course that has an extremely clear textbook?

texts:
I have decided to use Head First Android Development for my mobile application development course this spring. Like other Head First books, it is easy to read and understand. In my 15+ years of college teaching, I have never before found myself in the position of not needing to explain the textbook to my students (perhaps because this book is written for a general audience, not an academic one).

In typical classes, I assign reading before lecture (sometimes with questions to force students to at least skim the material) and then spend lecture explaining the harder material from the book, providing illustrative examples and having students work simple problems.

While I could present the examples from the book, I think that would be babying my students, who should be perfectly capable of reading such material themselves. (This is an upper-division capstone course, with many prerequisites.) The subject matter does not lend itself to doing small-scale exercises with pencil and paper, the way I would when teaching computer architecture or programming languages. While I plan to have some guest lecturers, I can't do that every class session.

The class will have about 25 students in a traditional classroom, not a computer lab. Lectures are 75 minutes long, twice a week.

What do other teachers do in this situation, or is having a clear, understandable book unprecedented?


texts: Applying to PhD programs; do I need to include transcripts from unrelated master's degree program?

texts:
I'm interested in pursuing a PhD in a particular humanities field and I feel that my undergraduate GPA is strong enough for me to get into such a program at a top school. However, my path to deciding this has been somewhat circuitous. Along the way, I completed a master's degree in a completely unrelated subject which I became uninterested in and disillusioned by while I was in the program. I decided to complete it anyway and as a result of my lack of passion for the field, I didn't perform very well in my master's program and just did the minimum to complete my degree.

Now when I look at PhD applications, I see that every school's admission page says you must submit transcripts from all university level courses taken even though only a bachelor's degree is required for admission. My question is, if by omitting transcripts from my master's program, would I be violating most admission policies and/or risk having a misleading or unethical application?


texts: How can I tailor my faculty application to maximize my chances at a liberal arts college?

texts:
I graduated in 2007 with a mathematics degree and have since had multiple postdocs at R1 universities. While I have definitely enjoyed my experiences as a researcher, I am very interested in pursuing a career teaching at a small liberal arts institution.

So, my question is how to present my research-heavy resume in a way that is palatable to a college which may be wary of my credentials? Is it advisable to drop "invited talks/conferences" from my CV? Do I select only my favorite publications to include?

Also, I understand that it is inappropriate to give an overly detailed research statement. However, as a representation theorist, I think it is to my advantage that my research draws on a lot of different fields. Is it better to explain the broader relevance of my research, or do I ignore that in favor of what I can teach undergraduates to program on a computer? Does it make sense to write separate statements?


texts: What is the industry equivalent of a post doc?

texts:
I've just finished my PhD in Genetics, and I am looking at moving into industry, as a scientist.

"Senior Scientist" seems to be the closest match, because the salary is slightly higher than a junior post-doc.


texts: Etiquette for establishing contact with multiple professors for PhD guidance

texts:
Assuming that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down to a couple of potential advisors, what is the etiquette for approaching them for advisor commitment? Specifically,

How do you get across that you aren't sure yet about him being your advisor  and are fishing around before you decide without sounding rude?


texts: How do I appropriately penalize late projects?

texts:
I am teaching an elective course in which students' grades are determined on the basis of a final project. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this year I had to grant a one-week blanket exception to all of the students. However, several students asked for, and received, an additional extension beyond the general extension, based on legitimate issues related to other academic commitments.

Unfortunately, some of these students have still failed to turn in their project, and this is leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. For this year, I have decided on a policy of deducting a full letter grade for each 24 hours beyond the deadline, but this at once seems too harsh (to the individual students affected) and also too lenient (because everybody else managed to turn things in on time).

Is there a reasonable way to handle tardiness in submissions of final papers or projects, particularly when they are the sole basis for determining a grade?


texts: What is the best way for an amateur researcher to communicate with an academic?

texts:
If a  amateur researcher believes that he  has a result (average result,not ground breaking result),   what  should he  do  to communicate  an academic (who is a stranger)?

How should one approach?


texts: When does a researcher become a computer scientist?

texts: When do you call a researcher a computer scientist? Are Master degree holders computer scientists? Are Phd degree holders computer scientists? Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?


texts: Can one publish ideas well before one has evidence proving the ideas work?

texts:
I am rather disappointed by the existing research in my area of interest. There is a big disconnect between the solutions practitioners need and what researchers look at.

I have read everything available on the subject in e-journals.
I have many ideas which I believe can solve some small problems in my field.
I also have ideas for paradigms (or major expansions of existing paradigms) which I believe can help the researchers and practitioners look at the problems in a different light.
I am not in a PhD program, so I lack the advice, time, resources, and know-how for setting up controlled experiments to validate these ideas, so I can only address them as thought experiments or identify the nearest related experiments not directly testing my ideas.

Can I publish short here-is-an-idea paper (e.g. “Proposed Solution for X” or “(new) Model for Y”) well before having any means of providing some proof?


texts: An invitation to join the editorial board of a newly launched journal

texts:
I am in the first months of my postdoctoral research, where I work in a highly reputed laboratory.

Recently, I got an invitation to join the editorial board of a newly engaged journal. They invited me because of one paper I published during my PhD, which perfectly fits within the scope of the journal. Now, I am wondering whether I should accept or not. I do not know the criteria, based on which I should take my decision. Any suggestion!


texts: When can I withdraw a paper accepted by a conference?

texts:
I recently got my paper accepted by a "look-descent" conference (indexed by  ACM, a leading association in CS). Now, I am considering to withdraw the paper for some considerations, yet, need to know first if that would be fair?

The problem is that i didn't got individual reviews but only a summary from the PC. The review summary looks general and doesn't make me feel
my paper had been seriously reviewed by a peer.
When I asked for review details, which should be available on the submission platform, the PC said they would be available after the registration. What
is weird also is that the registration is due after one week of acceptance notification only, and the paper will automatically be rejected if not registered by the deadline. The registration fee is expensive (more than twice) compared to what is usual in my home country (the conference is in the same country).

NB: I made sure the conference CFP is not fake!

Is it fair to withdraw the paper and what should I write to
 notify the PC?

Since conferences websites doesn't tell that,
it would be beneficial to know in which cases one can
withdraw an accepted paper?


texts: How to prepare for a phone interview with a prospective advisor?

texts:
I sent my initial inquiry email to a prospective advisor on Wednesday with a brief description of my background and my interest in his research (I talked about one of his papers). He emailed me back the next day and seemed very interested in my background and the fact that I took time to research him, and requested more information from me (i.e., marks, certain courses). I sent him the requested information and he emailed me back yesterday morning saying he’s sure I will be accepted into their program and asked me various questions regarding funding (i.e., grants) and plans for the future.

We then scheduled a phone call for this afternoon. I’m not sure what the call will entail, but what are some things I should do to prepare? What are some questions I should ask?

(I am not asking this question at the last minute because I got lazy. My email interactions happened with him very fast. I was usually told it takes prospective advisors weeks to get back to students.)


texts: What is the benefit of review a scientific paper as a referee?

texts:
I got an invitation to review a scientific paper from a journal. I accepted the offer to review but was wondering what benefits I might get if I review a paper? Can I write it in my CV as I will be applying for a Ph.D. position soon?
Someone told me if I write it in my CV that I reviewed an article, no professor is gonna hire me thinking she already knows so many things and it will be hard to control her during the whole Ph.D.! Still, I accepted the offer out of excitement.
Also, if my review is not up to the mark, is it like the editors will never give me anything to review again?


texts: What should I do if I have an idea but can't work on it immediately?

texts:
I am a postdoc working on a research project, which is funded by a grant that runs for 3 years.

After my first year working on the project, I identified a problem which could potentially lead to a new research direction, but it is not directly related to my current project. I am required to work on the problems defined in my current project proposal.

What should I do in this case, given that I may need to wait for another 2 years before I can possibly work on the new problem?


texts: Is "Assistant Professor Position (Tenure Track) for a female Researcher" illegal in Austria?

texts:
Not so long ago an Austrian institution posted a job ad titled "Assistant Professor Position (Tenure Track) for a female Researcher". The description says further

  As part of a special measure towards increasing female employment in scientific positions and promoting young researchers, the Faculty of [censored department] at the [censored institution name] invites applications for an Assistant Professor position (tenure track) for women expected to begin on May 2, 2018.

My understanding is that it is unlawful to ask for a particular gender in a job ad unless the gender is strictly necessary to perform the job duties. For academic tasks, the gender of the researcher is irrelevant. Does the institution run into legal issues with this ad? Could someone legally generate profit from such an ad by suing the institution (or the goverment behind it) for discrimination? Have such attempts been already undertaken in academia? (Outside academia, we see successful lawsuits at least in Germany.)

An aside: Hey, we all agree that in some fields there is a widespread opinion that they would profit from hiring people of the underrepresented gender; we also agree that gender issues exist before hiring, during hiring, and after hiring: they are way too numerous to discuss here. (An example: I see women underrepresented both in my research field and as sewer machine drivers. Why on earth is the politics caring about the first category but not about the second; after all, in an average town, there are way more sewer cars than academic research positions. Another example: my prior boss was an excellent first-class female researcher, but she never ever hired women herself. I could continue with the list ...) So, let us cut short and speak only about the legal and financial part of the particular situation rather than anything else. Let us not discuss whether the job ad and the institution should be condemned or praised or anything of the kind.


texts: Do active researchers in mathematics read a paper in detail?

texts:
Context:
As a researcher you need to read many research papers by others. In the case of mathematics, a paper consists of:

Results (theorems, lemma, propositions)
Proofs that consist of the technique or method by which the researcher obtaining their result.

Clearly, results can be used without learning the proof. However, understanding a proof may help you develop future results (but not necessarily always).

Ideally, it is best to learn the proof and techniques used in detail in order to fully understand the reality.

Question:

Do researchers (graduate students, professors, research fellows) in mathematics have a detailed understanding of the proofs/techniques outlined in contemporary journal papers? What is the convention in math?

Please note that my issue is not whether the proof is correct or not, I want to know what most academics do in the most of the cases when a result is published in a peer-reviewed journal paper. Do they read and understand the proof or they just skip the proof and remember the result? (provided that the proof technique is not out of the box)?

Example: I was reading Simon Singh's book on Fermat's Last Theorem, he wrote that only half dozen people understood the proof of Andrew Wiles. (The number maybe slightly erratic since I read the book long ago.) But the modularity conjecture was proved by him at the same time, I guess this is quite important. This made me think how much actually people understand contemporary work? How much it is actually important? Mathematics is a very very technical subject now a days.


texts: Coursea.org? Comparable to actual college level credit?

texts:
I have the option of undertaking a Coursera.org course in An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python, which is stated to be eligable for a Fundamentals of Computing Specialization , which they state is a Verified Certificate. This certificate costs 50$ though, and even though I can and probably will take the course free, would this type of course be looked upon as something equivalent to a introductory comp. science course at the college level? Would it be resume worthy or am I just being "sold" something?

I am not trying to badmouth the people at Coursera, I am sure they have noble intentions, but I am a skeptic at heart. Here is a link to the course in question.


texts: Writing a Master's thesis for 2 years ... is that appropriate?

texts:
I am currently three months into writing a Master's thesis for a Master's degree in Mathematics, and the school I am currently attending is a California state university. I was asking my thesis advisor if I can expand the scope of the topic of my thesis, which means I would have to anticipate 2 years of working on the thesis (instead of 1 year).

However, as I am also applying to various math Ph.D programs after completing my Master's thesis and degree, my thesis advisor is not keen to the idea of working on a larger scope of my thesis for 2 years. My advisor says that this would be "inappropriate", that he thinks the faculty on admissions committees would be confused and that my advisor would "not be doing his job" (in having me finish in 1 year, or "soon enough").

I for one disagree with my advisor personally, because I thought that expanding the scope of my thesis, even if it would take longer for me to complete and defend, would look even better on my Ph.D applications. I thought this would actually impress the committee rather than confusing them. I wanted to demonstrate that my finished thesis would reflect my having looked into more mathematical papers in research literature, as opposed to only two papers, which were chosen by my advisor, that I'm reading currently for my thesis topic.

So I'm asking here simply for more thoughts on this matter. I do hope my point is valid, but if it seems most of the people here are agreeing with my thesis advisor, then I'll understand either way.

tl;dr: I want to write more to my Master's thesis and plan to take 2 years instead of 1 year. My advisor disagrees and thinks the Ph.D admissions committees won't like this. Is this true?


texts: In algorithms papers, how common is it to reference accepted software patches based on the algorithm presented in the paper? Is it appropriate to even mention it?


texts: I have a question regarding the use of fantasy books in a PhD thesis. Imagine for example that I'm writing an example motivating the use of databases. Can I design e.g. a database composed of Game of Thrones characters and put it into the thesis? I noticed that some people put some fake examples or examples from Greek mythology so I'm wandering if it is legal to put examples from different books.


texts: Can reviewing papers help increase your credibility as a researcher?

texts:
I was wondering if reviewing papers for established journals was a way to increase ones credibility as a researcher?

My question is related to the fact that the journal editors, that are (frequently) known scientists in your domain, will read the review you made.

I was wondering if we can therefore assume that they will, to some degree, evaluate your reviewing work, and therefore yourself as a scientist, based on your review? Lets imagine I know the editor, and I might want to have a position in his/her lab, then my reviewing work might weight in my evaluation?


texts: Something similar to MBA, but with support?

texts: If someone can't afford to go to school for an MBA, but wants to train to be a manager, is there some compatible Master's, which has a reasonable level of support (teaching assistantships)?


texts: How are reviewers rated by editors after a peer review proccess?

texts:
I am aware that some journals ask the editorial board to rate each reviewer, and use these ratings to select reviewers.

So, my question is: how does this rating proccess work? With respect to what are we reviewers rated? How are these ratings used and are they shared between different journals of the same publisher? Is this practice common for all fields? Details are welcome.

I am aware that there are multiple questions, but they are correlated and a comprehensive response can answer all of those questions.


texts: How to effectively explain casual research assistance projects on CV

texts:
Recently, alongside my day job (high school teacher), I have been taking up casual short-term research assistant jobs - these are not only paid, but also include me being a co-author of the paper(s) that result.

On my CV, I would like to have all this information, what would be an effective means to include all achievements of these projects?

I am hoping for specific examples if people have done this before.


texts: Is it impolite to ask to which journal a preprint was submitted?

texts:
Is it considered impolite to ask the author of a preprint about the journal to which the paper was submitted? The specific reason why I would be asking is that this would help me gauge how high to aim with my own related preprint.

To give a few more details: I recently run into a preprint by someone, let's call him Smith, who obtained a partial result on a problem that struck me as interesting. After giving it a little thought, I stumbled into some ideas that solve the problem completely* and wrote to Smith to ask him about his thoughts. As it turned out, Smith has independently solved the general case as well, by entirely different methods, and we ended up posting our preprints online days apart. Now, I'm trying to figure out how interesting the new result actually is. As is sometimes the case in (certain combinatorial branches of) mathematics, it's somewhat hard to tell, and a significant part of motivation is that people have been thinking about the problem and didn't come up with a solution. Ideally, if Smith's first preprint had already been published, I would send my work to a journal that's one notch higher, or if I knew where the first preprint is sent I would send my work to a journal of the same caliber. Also, I would probably feel a lot of regret if Smith published his paper in a journal more prestigious than me simply because I didn't aim high enough (if the referees find his argument more interesting than mine that's fine of course, I'd just feel regret about not giving it a shot). On the other hand, I'm worried that asking about where he sent his preprints would be considered impolite - it could be considered too intrusive, and there are good reasons why people don't publicise which journals they have submitted to (some discussed here and here on this SE). Then again, maybe it would not - after all, people are generally willing to share more in private communication than publicly. If it matters, I have met Smith on several occasions before and we talked a bit but not a lot; we're on similar stages of our careers with him being slightly senior.

*) Well, almost completely, depending on how you define the problem.


texts: How to automatically retrieve journal ranking and quartile from article list

texts:
For a grant application I need to generate a list of my supervisor's publications (hundreds of articles) sorted by date, and for each publication they want impact factor, ranking, and quartile ranking of the journal in the year of publication. If I have to look up this manually it will take me a week. I only have the list of the publications in a CV, not even in a citation manager.

Can anybody help? How can this be done semi-automatically?


texts: Breaking the (perhaps perceived) academic (poverty) cycle

texts:
Background information: Field: Neuroscience (neuroimaging); Country: India; currently: grad student

Working in a country that may not always have a lot of financial resources, we usually face problems like not having funding to pay for journal charges or the scarcity of funds that allow students to travel to international workshops or conferences etc. This, in turn, pushes the student down in terms of their networking, the number of papers/citations etc. (a slightly weaker CV as compared to other students who may have had these resources). Consequently, when the student next applies for some award or grant, they may get rejected over another candidate who may have had a stronger CV/more publications/better networking, etc.

Essentially, what I am trying to communicate is that I feel that there is a cyclical situation of starting with scarcer resources which in turns keeps getting scarcer (something like a poverty cycle perhaps).

Question: What would be some concrete ways of breaking this (perhaps perceived) cycle?

PS: I understand that my position, compared to many other people, is one of privilege. I also understand that academics have broken free of far worse situations and have gone on to have outstanding academic careers. Not trying to draw any comparison but rather looking for concrete advice!

An example:

Since the field is fairly young and not that many well-established researchers work in the country, it is important for students to attend workshops/training elsewhere
Not being able to go to conferences means that the only way to present your results to the community is via publications (and in turn you don't really get any feedback or get to network with the experts who frequent some of these conferences)
Not having funds to pay for publication charges can sometimes prevent you from submitting papers to certain important journals which in turn reduces visibility of your work
Not being as well trained as your peers, with poorer networking, and with papers not in the most important journals in the field, you end up not building a strong reputation
and ad infinitum


texts:
Some professors publish their papers alone or with a single postdoc/PhD student. In this case, he/she should spend lots of time as a sole or second author.

Some professors publish the same kind of paper by several postdoc/PhD students and international collaborations. He/she is one of say 10 authors who have contributed to the paper. Thus, he/she needs much less time for publishing a paper.

In the latter case, they can publish much more papers. On the other hand, the papers attract more attention as each of 10 authors promote the paper.

I wonder if there is any value/credit for the former scheme? Or it is waste of time, and all professors should adopt the latter scheme as much he/she can?


texts: Is the prestige of a university correlated with how rigorous its undergraduate courses are?

texts: How much harder is it to get an undergraduate degree (say, in computer science) at a highly competitive university compared to a less rigorous institution?


texts: Is it ethical for PhD advisor to collect ideas or even project description text from students/postdocs for his/her own funding proposal? Not sure how common this situation is, but this seems strange. Could anyone help?


texts: Can people in western countries do graduation and post graduation in two completely different fields?

texts:
It might be possible here in India too, I haven't researched on it, but in one movie I have seen the guy is studying mathematics in MIT but his future plan was to study medicine at Harvard. I kept wondering how could he do that.

Here at India at 11th class we have to usually choose either Mathematics or Biology and then our eligibility changes accordingly.


texts: Correct way of referencing equations, figures and tables inline?

texts:
What is the correct way of referencing an equation, figure of table inline?

I would currently say something like:

  It can be seen from Equation (11) that . . .

or

  Inspection of Figure (3) shows . . .

Is this method—capital letter for Equation/Figure/Table and the actual reference in round brackets—acceptable?


texts: How do I improve a paper if they haven't published any code?

texts:
I am new in the field of research and am trying to publish my first paper.

I am working on improving a paper that involves Machine Learning. However, in order to make changes to it, wouldn't I need to implement it? Does this require that I implement the paper in my own way and not use their code at all? Do authors usually publish their code along with the paper?


texts: Is it much more difficult to enter an Ivy League much later in life?

texts:
Very often there are people that choose to enter the work force after high school instead of starting college. Many of those people decide later in life to go to college and get a bachelors. I believe this usually happens in your late 20's to early 30's but it's not unheard of to have people in their 40's in college. To me it seems like this isn't an unusual occurrence for state colleges and many universities but it seems that it would be much for difficult for this type of student to enter an Ivy League.

The chances of being accepted into an Ivy League are always small, however is it much harder on an older student? I believe there are exceptions for people that enter the military but I have a feeling that even a brilliant older student would be wasting their time applying to an Ivy League for a BS.


texts:
I will soon be in my final PhD year and am about to start my job search. Suppose that for some reason I suspect that I did quite well, research-wise. My main question is:

  What is the optimal job search strategy/advice in this case?

Generally, I can think of two options that are "better" than a regular postdoc:

A fancy fellowship or a named postdoc position
A tenure-track (TT) position

First, do I have to decide between postdoc and tenure track before getting an actual offer? That is, is there anything special I need to do when applying for tenure track besides pressing buttons on mathjobs.org? (Also, is there an option I missed?)

Second, I have questions about each option.

Option 1: Is there a comprehensive list of "really good" postdoc fellowships? Or can we combine a list here? I know that there is Clay fellowship, Miller fellowship at Berkeley, Society fellowship at Harvard, Veblen instructorship at IAS. What other well-known similar positions come to your mind? How do they compare between each other, and to a regular postdoc or a tenure track?

Option 2: Since this depends on many random factors, it seems like if I apply two times, that is, apply next year and then (if I only get a postdoc) apply after my postdoc ends, the probability of landing a nice TT job increases. On the other hand, the quality of a TT job offer I can get after a postdoc will likely be higher because I will have better publications. So I'm not sure whether it is even worth it to seek a TT position now as opposed to settle for a postdoc right now and just apply for TT in 3 years after it ends. Although I've seen people switch between TT jobs, I don't know how common that is. Also, how much of a blocking factor here will be not having lots of teaching experience? (I have some but not as much as most postdocs.) Finally, I understand that when applying for postdoc, I should prefer schools where my area is represented best, but this seems not too crucial when applying for TT, right?

--

To be specific, the field is pure math, the country is US, and I am not eligible for NSF.

A couple of other disclaimers: I understand that the answer depends on my priorities, so let's say the top priority is landing the "best" possible tenured position I can at some point in the next ~7-10 years (which includes not having to teach too much before getting a TT job offer; money is not too important to me personally at this point). I also understand that it's very hard to tell objectively how good my research is, but for the sake of argument let's assume that it's good enough, comparable to other TT job applicants.


texts: How do I phrase (in my thesis) that results in an important study are wrong?

texts:
The title probably comes off wrong, I tried to keep it short. I do not necessarily want to make an absolute statement like "that is wrong". But I do need to address the problems I am facing with a study that is important for my thesis.

There is a relatively influential paper which I have used again and again in my studies, and it shows many very interesting experimental results. I could successfully recreate most of those results, and my research is based on them. However, there is one result where I have to conclude that it is basically nonsense. I have repeated the exact measurement again and again and could never recreate their result. With my new theoretical knowledge I can also safely say that the result shown in the paper makes no sense and has to be wrong, while the one I get from my own measurements makes perfect sense.

So my research means that a result that was described as useful and interesting in this paper is wrong, and therefore not useful. My plan was previously to do multiple studies based on it, and now I want to make clear why that is not possible. So I need to show that their results are wrong, and mine are correct, and I need to explain why that is so.

I have the facts on my side, but I just cannot think of a way to do this in a professional manner. I do not want to sound like I'm reveling in a "gotcha" moment, and I do not want to step on anyone's toes. I just want to make clear that this particular topic is a dead end.

I want to address this in my "Discussion" section of this chapter. I would be grateful for ideas how to approach this. Should I give them the benefit of doubt? I worry that this will water down my own results, which are directly opposed to theirs. Should I think of other potential explanations, like "maybe what they show is a measurement artifact", or will that come off as condescending?


texts: How to avoid being falsely accused of harassment by a student?

texts:
I am a junior faculty member and as part of my work I have to supervise students. I am required by the University to have one-on-one meetings with them every week to check their progress and give feedback. I usually have these meetings in my office like all the other staff.

One piece of advice I have received from senior colleagues and online fora is to always keep my door open during the meetings to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct (in particular harassment). This could happen for instance with a student trying to hurt me or the university for failing a course.

I understand that the probability of this happening (being falsely accused by a student) is very small. Yet, the advice of keeping the door open during meetings is standard in academia, which means a probability must exist (albeit very small) - or, the universities think so.

Question: Is there any other advice, common practice, or university policies for precautions to be taken - along the lines mentioned above (open door) - to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct by a student (with the focus on false harassment accusations) during private meetings?

I reject in advance any answers that might discriminate or bias against any group of students based on their gender, origin, or background history. Also, I would prefer to avoid solutions that include audio-visual recording, as this is not usual in my university.

For context, I am a male professor having meetings with students of all sexes. My main concern though are meetings with female students (due to past experience of a friend being falsely accused by one of his female students, with severe effects to his professional and personal life).

Note: My original question was misinterpreted leading to debates concerning what I actually asked. You can retrieve the original question in the edit history for context on some of the answers.


texts: What "Applicant Confidential Data Form" has to do with tenure-track positions?

texts:
The data collected using "Applicant Confidential Data Form" will be used by US-based universities to monitor University’s Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Programs as required by the US government.

I have seen that in (some) cases, faculty job applicant seeking academic job in US-based universities are asked to submit this form after they successfully submitted their initial application. The point is that, typically there is no instruction in "call for faculty member note" to fill this form and submit along with application. But the faculty search committee asks after while.

So it raises a question:

Do the faculty search committee sends this form to ALL the applicants or particular applicants who are allegedly suitable for the job. Is receiving this notification from the committee can be considered a positive sign in recruitment process?


texts: What is the best policy to deal with students using their cellphones inside the class?

texts:
Is it OK to prevent students from using their cellphones during the lecture by stating that in the syllabus?

and how to deal with students who insist on using their cellphones during the lecture?

(Most of what they do is either to text message or to browse the internet. Often I see those who are used to use the cellphones during the lecture smiling or showing something on the phone to the person next to them which might start a side chat. Is that OK to ignore?)


texts: Personal statement to apply for graduate school with a change in major

texts:
I live in Vietnam and did a Bachelor of Business (Economics and Finance) from an Australian university, Vietnam campus. I am planning to apply for statistics for graduate study in the US. I have always been in math-specialization classes since I was in grade 3 and I attended the best highschool in my country. However, when choosing undergraduate major, I was not fully advised and chose finance, the hottest career in my country. My family's financial condition back then was also not so great for me to think about studying abroad. However, now my family's financial capacity is much better and I also realize the opportunity in statistics in the US.

Really appreciate any inputs about how I should present my case so that the admission committee can realize my ability and passion for statistics, especially from someone who has done this before (change major from undergraduate to graduate)


texts: Response article to a flawed paper you reviewed

texts:
I recently reviewed an article. I found weaknesses in assumptions that meant none of the conclusions that were made could actually be made; basically they had absolutely no result.

As such, I gave a detailed review (~ 2000 words) explaining why the assumptions made by the authors were wrong. I was civil and polite throughout, it was not an attack and I tried to remain constructive. I recommended to the editor to reject the paper and, despite recommendations of accept with major revisions from the other two reviewers, the editor rejected the paper. I believe that the authors will take the easy option and just submit to another journal without making serious edits, rather than paying serious attention too my review.

If the paper does get published in (almost) unchanged state, should/could I write some kind of response article? How does one get to do this (should I email the editor with a draft of a response article)?

Should I contact the authors (before they publish, after they publish, or not at all, before or after I contact the editor, before or after I submit/publish a response article)?


texts: Are reviewers supposed to know each others' identity, after the reviewing process is finished?

texts:
I reviewed an article and submitted my review along with a short letter to the editor. As a service the journal permits to see the decision letter and the other review. However, I am also able to see the other reviewers' letter to the editor, which is signed with a name. My own short letter to the editor I did not sign with my name.

Is this supposed to be? If not, should I do anything in particular if I do find out by accident?

The issue is somewhat addressed in some of the answers for the question Are reviewers allowed to discuss their review with each other?. One answer states you're not meant to find out, while another one states once you've submitted your own review, it is normal to know who the other reviewers are and be able to see their reviews. There are two different issues here:

Knowing the other reviewers' identity during the reviewing process.
Knowing the other reviewers' identity after the reviewing process.

Is case (2) normal?

Edit: I might add that the policy of the journal is not a double-blind: the full list of authors and affiliations of the manuscript were purposefully disclosed to the reviewers.