texts: Relation of concepts "related work"/"background"/"preliminaries"/"state of the art"?

texts:
I'm currently struggling to structure and organize my "related work" chapter of my PhD thesis.

I've stumbled across the terms "related work", "background", "preliminaries" and "state of the art". Mainly, I understand that some deal with established knowledge that is being taught in textbooks, and which is the technological base for my work (e.g., elliptic curve (EC) cryptography and digital signatures to protect communication among servers). The other deal with the most recent academic state of the art, e.g., novel communication protocols based on elliptic curves.

It's also clear to me, that I need to differentiate my work by having contributions which go beyond the state of the art, and which differ from related work.

Hoever, I struggle to realted this terms, and to make up a meaningful chapter outline.

I was thinking of:

Background and related work chapter

Background and preliminaries

Technology X
Technology Y
Technology Z

Related work and state of the art

Overall related work to the kind of system I build
Overall related work to sub-aspect A
Overall related work to sub-aspect B
Overall related work to sub-aspect C
Difference to related work and state of the art

Can anyone help me clarify the relation of these terms, or hint me to page clarifying them? Also suggestions regarding my outline would be welcome.


texts: Does ethnic diversity of the academic staff affect the productivity of the faculty?

texts:
Are there any studies where the effect of ethnic diversity on the productivity studied? If so, what are the criteria?

Do universities with more diversity tend to prepare better publications, or the average salary of alumni is higher than the others?


texts:
Who are transfer applicants?
I was applying for undergraduate program in a university and there I saw a transfer applicants category. I want to know what does that mean?


texts: Where to get ACM references for MS Word?

texts: Does someone know where to get the correctly formatted ACM references for submissions to ACM? Google Scholar and dl.acm.org don't seem to provide the correct formatting.


texts: What would be the correct response if a teacher gives you their own answer without explaining or giving any indication that you are wrong?

texts:
It's not the first time that it has happened to me, but I think many times, tons of times. I'm a bachelor's student with Physics as the major. Let me tell you about today's incident:
So we were taking this elective class online on Modern physics. The topic was Tensor. The teacher asked, "Tell me about tensor and try to tell in one sentence" (which I think I find kind of ridiculous in itself). In any case, I said,

Tensors, like vectors, are objects that transform under rotation of coordinate according to some specific rule.

I couldn't tell the rule as I have only one sentence.

The teacher says I will say, Tensors are a generalization of vectors.

And I kind of find it to be the same thing. But I get out of my mind (it might be my fault) when someone does that, that is, giving their own explanation without explaining or even commenting on my answer. They just say, Well Well I'll say......
What should be my reaction to this? Should I just listen and let it go? Or should I ask what's wrong with my definition or my explanation (my thinking)?


texts: What are my prospects to get a Postdoc position with just 1 publication from PhD?

texts:
I am a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I have already completed my 5 years, am writing my thesis and will be submitting my thesis in 4 months. I have published 1 paper till now. That was 2 years ago. Till then, I have completed 3 more manuscripts, but my supervisor does not have the time to go through them and approve them. As a result, I have manuscripts around 2 years old waiting to get submitted and published.

My supervisor is great with meetings, guidance and advice, but she is frustrating me with her lethargy in correcting my manuscripts. This has made me very anxious about my future. My work is quite different than what is being published at the moment in my field. So, I think my manuscripts would still find a place in a reputed journal in my area of research. However, I can't be very sure of that until I actually submit the drafts. Also, I can't just go behind her back and submit the manuscripts as I don't want to sour my relationship with her.

I am not able to apply for a postdoc position as I am sure that I won't get any response without having any published works. I will be submitting my thesis by end of June. I will defend this fall. But, I don't know what I will do next.

I have applied to various industry positions and have got rejections. I don't think that I will land any position soon.

My question is, what are my career prospects at the moment? And what would the best course of action for me at the moment?

I am almost 30, been in school for Masters and PhD for the past decade. I am feeling quite hopeless. Ideally, I would like to stay in academia as I love doing research and teaching. But, I find that future dissolving away in uncertainty.


texts: I've sent an email to a potential supervisor and I've gotten an email today from the chair of Graduate Studies that says "we would be very pleased to accept you". Now what should I do? in my first email I've just talked about my interest and how it would be an excellent fit to the supervisor's research interests. I think I should send my CV this time, but to whom? The supervisor or The chair of Graduate Studies?


texts: School's Admissions office ignoring me after accepting admission offer

texts:
So I'm in a bit of a weird situation right now.

I recently graduated from university with my BS, but was expecting to continue my education at the school as I was accepted into a BS/MS program at the end of my junior year. I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into my work and knocked out a significant portion of my MS during my senior year.

Since I graduated I had to do some transitioning into the MS program, which consisted of proving that I actually had my degree conferred, filling out some additional paper work -- you get the idea. I filled out every form that needed to be completed, met every deadline, and so on (and have tangible proof/records of me doing so).

And yet for some reason, I'm still not in the graduate program (The offer was never rescinded or anything like that). Even though I've done all of the work I've needed to do and was already accepted, I'm simply not considered to be in the program for some reason and can't register for classes, receive financial aid, etc.

I tried desperately to solve this matter with the graduate admissions office via e-mail, phone, and in-person meetings, and yet I've been continually left without help and without answers every single time. Class registration + Financial Aid deadlines are coming up and yet it looks like I'm posed to miss them due to the admission office's neglegence towards this matter (And mind you, this is not some kind of fake/phony/fraudulent school. This is a very well-known, reputable university in the US)

It's honestly gotten to the point where I'm preparing a letter to send to the president of the school, as I've run out of people to go to for help. It's been really frustrating to have done all of this work for so long and then be treated like this, and I don't know what do to.

I'm not really sure what to ask at this point, but absolutely any help/recommendations would be sincerely appreciated. Are there any actions/repurcussions I can possibly take against the school for this? Or are there any other courses of action I should take to help resolve this matter?

Thank you.


texts: How do multiple PhD scholarships combine?

texts:
I'm currently in the process of applying for various scholarships to fund my PhD.

Since I'm writing to many different organizations/institutions/etc., I started wondering whether these different funding schemes can be combined. I found it hard to find any reliable information on this matter, so I reckoned I'd ask it here:

Suppose I successfully obtain two scholarships, in two different countries, amounting to roughly $15.000 and $25.000 annually, both excluding coverage for university tuition fees. Should I notify both of them of having obtained the other? Or should I make absolutely sure they'll never find out :) ?

I suppose there'll be severe consequences to keeping it silent -- if so, what?


texts: Could/Should I cite a paper that I am refereeing?

texts:
I'm reviewing the paper X related to the topic Y for a conference which is single-blind (in Computer Science). Also, I'm about to submit a paper to a different conference related to the same topic (single-blind).

In fact, I noticed the paper X is a good recent work in the literature to which my paper belongs. However, it does not have the exact purpose as my work does, so I do not need to compare my results to those of paper X.

Therefore, I like to cite paper X in the introduction of my paper, but I'm not sure if it is appropriate. Well, based on the quality of the paper X I expect it to be accepted (with 75% of confidence!), but would it be appropriate if I cite it as a submitted work, especially when it is not my work?


texts:
arxiv has an endorsement system, where

  during the submission process, we may require authors who are submitting papers to an archive or subject class for the first time to get an endorsement from another arXiv author

However, I submitted a paper to arxiv for the first time, and I was not asked for an endorsement. The relevant help page says:

  During the initial deployment of the system, we may also give automatic endorsements to submitters from known academic institutions.

So this may be what happened to me (I have a verified email address from an academic institution), but this seems weird, because it says “during the initial deployment of the system”, and this is dated 2004.

So: does someone know what is the current endorsement policy for arxiv?


texts:
I have a preprint in arXiv, which I submitted at the same time I submitted to a journal. This was a couple of months ago. It was rejected by the journal, and after talking to some experts and getting some advice, one of the changes that I want to make is to the title.

All the other changes qualify as a revision, so normally I would just submit the new version to arXiv. Is it possible to also change the title?

Another solution would be to start a new submission with the new title, but it would probably generate some arXiv overlap warnings, besides not looking too professional. I don't want search engines to find different versions of the paper appearing in different circumstances (what I mean is that I really do want all the old versions to be in the same arXiv page).

Finally, I could just keep the old title. It's not dramatically bad, but I feel the new title reflects more correctly the contents of the paper.


texts: Can it be viewed as a negative for PhD applications in the US if I have children?

texts:
I am currently working on PhD applications in Engineering to start in Fall 2020. I am in my late 30s and have one child. I am planning to apply to at least one quite highly-ranked school in the US.

I am wondering if it might be seen as a negative for the admissions process that I have a child? I have heard that top US PhD programs are not looking for 'balance' and that they typically expect candidates to give everything to the program. However, I have heard of people doing PhDs with kids (even having kids during a PhD program) and still being able to complete without any major problems.

In particular, should I avoid mentioning that I have a kid in my application/personal statement? Or, conversely, should I mention it? Would it be seen as dishonest in some way, if I gain admission and then turn round and tell people I have a child?


texts: Is it reasonable to purchase a professionally designed logo/brand for a research group?

texts:
I have seen a few research groups that have a "stylized" look, including a logo/slide template that is used by the PI and his/her students.  [My particular research area is adjacent to computer graphics, which may explain this.]  I'm told that some groups even pay for a graphic designer to establish a "brand" of sorts.

My own artistic ability is severely limited, so any logo I design will be unattractive at best!

Is it worth spending money on design of these sorts of materials when starting to establish my own research group?  If so, how much?  Which services are the best?  What is a reasonable policy?

I feel like this isn't a good use of research resources, but I understand that a coherent "brand" might help a group in the long run.


texts:
I am a postdoc researcher in mathematics and finished my Ph.D. some month ago. I wrote three papers during my Ph.D., and I am the only author for two of them.
The day when I started my postdoc position, my mentor asked me "let's work", but I was not ready, so I made a lot of mistakes. My mentor works some area that is not close to me. We tried to work together, but I couldn't follow what they were working on it.
Monday, we had a meeting with her college about a project that I was working on. I gave a conjecture that I wanted to reach it, and then he gave a contradiction example for it and then left the meeting. I felt so bad.
Moreover, they don't treat me as same as when I came here. I feel they think I cheated them or I am weak or stupid because sometimes I feel they ignore me and they don't answer my emails as either. I asked them to write a recommendation letter for some job, but they didn't do it.
These problems made me think about whether I am a mathematician or a lucky guy that I wrote some papers. You can look at my previous questions and see that I had this problem in my Ph.D., but surprisingly I finished it.
I have had several meetings here, also some online meetings, that all were terrible. Now, I lost my self-confidence and am scared that I am losing my reputation due to the above problems and it will spread in the club soon or later that I am a stupid mathematician.
I wanted to quit academia for industry because of the above problems, but as you know, finding a job is very difficult now due to COVID-19, so I'm just looking for a postdoc position, which is very difficult.
To be honest, I don't have anyone to talk to about my problem (my Ph.D. supervisor doesn't listen to me) which is why I wrote here almost everything. What should I do to break all the failing and walk in the right direction?


texts: Should I obtain permission for publishing a vector drawing based on a published photo?

texts:
I have drawn a schematic image of a museum object for use in my forthcoming paper. The object itself is over 1000 years old, and my vector drawing is based on a photograph published in an exhibition catalogue some 30 years ago (where the photograph is credited to the museum holding the piece). I will of course give credits to the image source in the caption ("Drawn by the author based on the photograph published in Smith 1985, 88 fig. 88" or "Drawn by the author based on the photograph published in ABC 1985, 88 fig. 88 (@ Museum XYZ)"). However, I would like to ask if I should also obtain a permission for publishing my drawing, as I would do if I republish the photograph itself. Or does the fact that I have drawn the image myself free me from that obligation?

My question is thematically close to the two earlier topics on Academia SE ( How do I give credit to some image I included in my paper? and Recreating images from a source ), however these earlier questions concerned primarily with credits, and my question with getting a permission. Besides in these earlier questions the image sources were drawing, and mine concerns with a photograph as an image source.


texts: Another undergrad or a masters degree before PhD?

texts:
I have a low GPA (2.97) and by the time I graduate this coming Summer I'll have roughly >3.01.

I'm debating whether I should add another major and not graduate in Summer or graduate in Summer and get a masters. The assumption is that I will get a 4.0 in either the added major or the masters.

What is the better choice/what looks more attractive or makes up for my GPA more? My only scar on my CV is my GPA as I excel everywhere else.

Background:

I study computer science and the masters or other undergrad major would be mathematics.
I do research in artificial intelligence and would be focusing on cog sci programs for my PhD.
I want to get into a top school for my PhD.

For clarity:

I'd be adding on a major and would eventually graduate with both CS and math.
My PI has said he'd pay for my remaining undergrad provided I stay in the lab (which is a good thing; he's a top AI researcher at my uni)

Update: I've decided that I'm adding a math major and going to attempt to get a 4.0 for the remaining time here while continuing research.


texts: Using leaked proprietary information in scientific paper

texts:
I am working on a project in the area of IT security where we are analyzing a proprietary embedded system. While researching the system, we came across a confidential data sheet that was made publically available by a third party without the consent of the manufacturer of the system. The datasheet is marked confidential and usually only given out after an NDA is signed. It describes an outdated version of the system we are analyzing, but is partially relevant, as some parts of the system have not changed since then.

Is it ethical / acceptable to use and reference this resource in a paper?

"Related Work": this and this question ask about citing documents that aren't widely available (while my document can be found by anyone using Google, and none of the involved researchers have signed any NDAs).

Edit: To add some additional information that I added spread over a few comments:

The datasheet in question describes the security protocols used by an older version of a popular embedded security chip, current versions of which are being used in payment and access control systems
The manufacturer is aware that the data sheet has been leaked and is not happy about it, but has not gotten the datasheet removed from the third-party servers where it is located for the past two years. The reasons for this are unclear
The data is confidential (as in private-sector NDA-confidential), but not classified in a government sense.
The company has already stated that they would prefer if we did not publish based on this document, but that they would not be taking any legal action if we did, as long as all information was factually correct.


texts: Sharing preliminary draft versions of papers with people in the field

texts:
I am a PhD student in mathematical economics and had an interesting idea last month. I modelled my idea and wrote it down. For the moment, it is a preliminary draft but I think my idea is pretty interesting.

I would like to discuss my idea with some people in the field (researchers, professors, other PhD students etc.) with showing them the model in order to take their advices but I am afraid if some people can pick my idea. (I have already heard about this kind of unethical attitude in academia from my friends.)

As it is not a working paper yet, if somebody pick the idea and make a working paper before than me, I think I could do nothing than accepting the situation.

How to deal with this kind of issues ? The best way is to keep this preliminary model for me until the time that I put it as a working paper ?


texts: I want to go to grad school but don't have personal relationships with any of my online professors. What do I do about the LOR requirements?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student expecting to graduate next spring, but i've attended online classes for the past 2-3 years and don't normally have much contact with my online professors. I want to apply for a masters program, but probably not for another year. When I apply next year, I'm afraid i'll have no one to ask for a LOR. I feel like I am supposed to ask for letters of recommendation from professors who know me well, but I don't have anyone who fits that bill. I'm afraid that if I ask for a LOR from a past professor, especially in a year from now, they'll respond negatively to an ask from a random student they don't even remember.
I don't know how I could've (or if I should've) tried to foster relationships with professors online. I am the kind of student to just read the syllabus and do the work. I don't often have questions to contact the professor with and I understand the coursework just fine on my own. I have had especially limited contact because online professors ask you to try every other resource before e-mailing them.
Can anyone give me advice about how to meet the LOR requirements for graduate program application?


texts: Why is college tuition high, but academic salaries low?

texts:
Where is the money going to?

How can it be that interested students pay so much, but many academic salaries are so low (excluding the obvious full professor in a field where the industry pays for getting research results, like IT).


texts: Are there any available studies on the effectiveness of "learning by teaching"?

texts:
There is a study which claims that "learning by teaching" has a 90% retention rate. However, the study is no longer available and it is not clear what kind of research was actually done to support that claim. The legitimacy of that particular study is the subject of a related question on Skeptics.

Are there other studies that are available, proving or disproving that "learning by teaching" is more efficient than other learning methods?


texts: How to respond to "How much funding will you bring?" as an interview question for a faculty job?

texts:
What are the possible answers for such interview question assuming a new graduate with no funds!
How much funding you will bring to the department?


texts: What's holidays entitlement for postdocs in the UK?

texts: I applied for a postdoc position. In the job description, they mentioned that they offer a 30 days holiday plus bank holidays and Christmas closure. But when I received a formal offer, they mentioned this: "219 hours plus all customary and statutory bank holidays per holiday year". This means at most, 2 weeks per year? Am I missing missing? Is this common for postdocs in the UK?


texts: Why didn't more people graduate with a college degree when it was "affordable"?

texts:
Adjusting for inflation, (without too much controversy, I expect), it is evident that college was more affordable in the past.  See for example, this chart of Tuition and Fees and Room and Board over Time, 1975-76 to 2015-16.

And yet, in the United States in 1980, roughly only 15% of the population had a college degree. It seems to me to be a very economical choice to attend.  Are there reasons for the low graduation rate?


texts: I am a new faculty who happen to be chairing a department of 25 professors. Are there any standards/procedures I should follow to organize the work in our (computer science) department? scheduling, teaching loads, accreditations, QA, graduate projects,..etc are all duties need to be carried on sometimes in term basis.


texts: How can one come to conclusion regarding topic for PHD

texts:
I am trying to get my topic from few days yet I am in unable to narrow down it
So I would like to know how budding research scholar narrow down it

PS : Don't include as Google I tried all of it but most of papers are not for Free access like IEEE one so it's more difficult


texts: Who's the Principal investigator if you are doing your degree project abroad?

texts:
Some necessary information:
I study at European university A, but did my degree project at European university B.
I will not get a degree from B but from A.
I was supervised by a professor and one of his assistance at B.
My supervisor at A only received regular updates, but wasn't involved in any other way.
Officially the professor at A is grading my work (in reality he probably will just call and ask the professor at university B for the grade, but nonetheless).
Question:
I'm currently making the last thing for my thesis: The titlepage. How do I refer to the two professors and the assistant on the titlepage? Who is the supervisor, who the PI? I don't want to step on anybody's toes. I definitely need to mention all three of them.
Furthermore I ask myself whether it is acceptable to put the logo of both universities on the title. I feel like it is weird because I only get a degree from A, but also feel like the professor at B will be offended if I don't.
I know this is a silly question, but maybe you can help me resolve this.


texts: Can I add a link to my website in a paper I'm coauthoring?

texts:
I'm writing a paper with a professor. I want to put a link to my website in the paper. I am first author, so I'm wondering if the following is okay:

Bob Smith, Slifer University, https://BobSmith.io
Peter Bob, Georgia Tech of Mechanical Engineering

Suppose I'm Bob Smith and the professor is Peter Bob.

This way people can see my other work and potentially hire me. I'd also mention, this is a quite well known professor, so don't say "No one will look at your website".


texts: Is it normal as a researcher publishing a new theory or model to keep having uncertainties and self doubt?

texts:
Even if your theory or model has been proven by experimentation and accepted for publication... is it normal to still doubt oneself and have uncertainty in their proposed theory/model?

Or does this mean there's really something wrong in the theory?

EDIT: And what happens if one day you discover that your theory can be broken.. but, after you had already published it?


texts: How to attract good teachers to a young university?

texts:
I won't go into much detail, but I work at a young private university at a non-managerial position.

The uni has a strong need for better teachers and more adequate students. In my opinion, a viable strategy for quickly increasing the education quality level would be to focus on only 1 faculty/ department/ specialty first, because:

It would be cheaper to focus on one department (i.e. program creation, teachers acquisition and salary, advertizing to students).
Even if a lot of students drop out due to suddenly intensifying the program, students from other departments would continue to financially support the university.
Being great at one thing while temporarily neglecting others is better than being below mediocre at everything.

Focusing on one department would mean:

Intensifying the program.
Attracting good teachers.
Attracting better students (more willing to learn, with better background) (with the help of 1. and 2.).

I believe intensifying the program and attracting good teachers for one department (probably for CS) before attracting better students is the way to go.

I have a CS background and can help with creating the program (classes).

If I manage to convince the people in charge, how should we go about attracting good teachers (probably from other universities)? Adequate salaries would probably not be enough.

Thanks for the answers!


texts:
I understand that in a lot of big-lab fields it is common for the principal investigator to append their name to a paper even if they did not write the paper, design the experiment, or collect data since they spend energy securing funding, and managing the whole lab. What about for small labs?

What are the requirements for a supervisor to be included as an author on a paper, as opposed to just appearing in the acknowledgements? If you are working on your own projects independently of your supervisor, but using funding provided by your supervisor (how does this change when the funding provides resources versus just your salary), are you suppose to add them as authors or just acknowledge the source of funding?


texts: How to state that you “rigorified” an existing paper without sounding arrogant or condescending?

texts:
I am writing a paper aimed at a physics journal which extends an old paper (not by me), which introduced a mathematical formalism for a physical problem in a rather handwaving way and without addressing most of its mathematical background.
In addition to exentding this formalism, my paper elaborates on this mathematical background and relatedly introduces the formalism in a ”more rigorous” way.
I consider the latter one of my paper’s key features for the following reasons:

One might consider the formalism and the methods derived from it not to be properly substantiated in the old paper.
Though the mathematical background has no other application so far, it is interesting for its own sake and perhaps from a philosophical point of view.
My approach to the formalism might be more accessible to some people and make them give a better understanding of what they are doing when applying the formalism and related methods.

As these points are rather opinion-based, I do not intend to elaborate on them in the paper – at most I might shortly mention the didactical aspects in the conclusion.
(I mainly mentioned them here to give you some idea what I am talking about.)
However, I do want to briefly mention in the abstract or the introduction that I “rigorified” the formalism, where briefly can be anything between one word and two sentences.
For example, my abstract could look like:

  [Old paper] introduced [old concept], which is useful for [application].
  We extend this concept to [new concept] and also rigorify its mathematical background.

My problem is that rigorify its mathematical background is far from what I actually want to say.
I am therefore looking for a way to say this without seeming arrogant or condescending on the old paper and in particular without implying that the old paper “did not do its mathematics properly”.

I intentionally do not give my best solutions for now, as I do not want to induce any bias on them, in case I may underestimate them.

I am also torn between Academia and English Language & Usage for posting this question.


texts:
Sorry if the question is weird but I have not seen this terminology before. Who is the president of a university?

In my country, a rector is the leader of a university. A dean might run a faculty, possibly containing several departments. A department head is in charge of a single department.


texts: Is it possible that implementations based on same paper show different performance?

texts:
I'm a junior research engineer of AI.
Looking for the code in the particular paper, I found two git-hub repositories.
However, I think it's weird that how they show different performance, even though they are based on exact same paper and have a similar structure at the code level.
(Of course, I didn't compare the code line by line)
Is it possible, and common things?


texts: On writing critical review: is there any threat?

texts:
During my research on a specific topic, I found two interesting papers by same authors. So, I decided to implement their proposed idea but it was not possible. At first, I thought that I was wrong but after thorough exploration of the papers and reading other papers in the field, I found many mistakes and errors within those papers.

For examples, some of the standard and common rules were presented mistakenly. Since the papers published in highly-esteemed journals, it should be considered as a real drawback. Frankly saying, I take it as some type of betraying to the science and research community.

It seems that either they did not have adequate knowledge to write such a paper or they intentionally added some noise (!) to the paper to make the simulation by others impossible.
So, me and my supervisor have decided to write a critical review for those papers. However, I'm afraid of the consequences.

Can this be a possible scenario that the authors - specifically the somewhat famous ones - affect my future researches, for example trying to reject my papers through their relationships with other editors and researchers, i.e. blacklisting me.


texts: How to annotate/summarize research papers for long-term retrieval?

texts:
I am new to my field (cell biology / immunology) and I would like to ask about the best practice to annotate or summarize research articles and reviews for long-term retrieval. When I start reading into a new topic, I end up highlighting almost each paragraph of the paper/review. This doesn't make any sense, and it is actually making me slow and frustrated and it is holding me from reading more. Could you please share your thoughts.

Update: although two very important points of how to approach new papers and how to tag them have been addressed in the answers so far, my main concern was about the new acquired details which I can't remember a few months later. For example, I read a paper about JAK/STAT signaling two months ago, now I can't remember for example which JAK attaches to which cytokine receptor and interacts with which STAT. I need to skim through the paper again to find this piece of information. So, what I am looking for is an approach to accumulate the new knowledge and to facilitate reviewing them without the need to skim through the paper again and again. I know this will come with experience, but at the beginning there are too many new facts to keep track of.


texts: Is it necessary to send a corrigendum? Does it make my paper look ugly?

texts:
I have a paper which is accepted without any minor or major revisions in a good journal (lucky me). It is fully published. Since I had no chance to revise it, many small mistakes slipped into the proof. During proofreading I tried my best to catch any mistake and correct it. But these were two problems: 1) There were too many small mistakes so at least one of them slided my attention. 2) I couldn't ask the copy-editor to remove a whole "sentence".

If I had the chance to revise it, I would easily fix that up. But now the erroneous sentence is there in my beloved paper. It is now fully published (as online and hard copy). I am tempted to send a corrigendum on that paper, saying that the line is incorrect and should not be there. But on the other hand am afraid that it would make my paper look not-perfect or even ugly.

Do you suggest me sending a corrigendum? Or should I wait until someone notices that and writes a letter to the editor and then I answer in a reply to that letter, saying that "yes you are right, that sentence should not be there in the first place"? And if no one noticed that, I leave that error alone.

Which other ideas do you have about this?

Thanks a lot.


texts: Should a student keep asking questions to a faculty even if the faculty is unsure of the answer?

texts:
I am taking an advance course in Computer Science so the class size is pretty limited (8 to be exact). The faculty is very senior and well respected in the field. For past few lectures, I have been asking questions that make the faculty a little uncomfortable which I can guess from the way the answers are given (I am also on a psychology class :-) )

For example, to understand a concept, I say "why X has been used ?". He tries his best to answer "because of A,B,C reasons". During this explanation, occasionally I can sense high level of uncomfort in him and the answers are ambiguous. So, now I have doubt that "if X, then why A ? " and so on. Should one continue with these kind of questions when you know that the faculty won't be able to answer the questions perfectly or isn't comfortable enough to satisfy your inquisitiveness. I do not doubt his competence at all and respect him very much. But how does a faculty feel in this kind of continuous poking (if it is so) or should one resort to personal interaction so that he may feel more comfortable ?

Does that hold negatively for the student that student is trying to humiliate the faculty ?

Note: Questions are not non-sense but are somewhat basic and supported by logic.


texts:
Why would a scientist or mathematician want to publish a paper under the Creative Commons CC BY licence?  This licence allows the work to be modified.  Why would you want to allow a scientific paper to be altered?

Yet Arxiv at https://arxiv.org/help/license seems to offer only licences that allow changes.

Similary Nature Communications at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/about/open-access:

"Nature Communications articles are published open access under a CC BY license".

The CC licences that do not allow change are the ones with ND (no derive). So the natural choice would seem to be either BY-ND or BY-NC-ND. Can anyone shed light?


texts: The differences between AMS research journals

texts:
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has quite a few journals titled "(something) of the AMS".

The research journals include:

Journal of the AMS
Proceedings of the AMS
Transactions of the AMS
Memoirs of the AMS

How do these journals differ in terms of scope?

Some information about the roles of these journals can be found on the AMS journals website. However the only distinctions given are that JAMS is for "research articles of the highest quality," while PAMS, TAMS, and MAMS are for short, medium, and long articles respectively.

Are there further differentiations between these journals? If a mathematician wants to submit a paper to an AMS journal is the decision process for which one really as simple as "If my paper isn't good enough for JAMS I'll check its length and ship it off to the appropriate one of the other 3?"


texts: What is a correct way of evaluating the effectiveness of criteria for admissions?

texts:
Most colleges and universities in the US base their admissions on high school grades plus a standardized test (SAT or ACT). To decide whether a particular piece of data X is a good admissions criterion, people seem to focus on how well X correlates with college grades. (This may be freshman grades or total college GPA. Some people think  success in getting a degree would be more appropriate. For the purposes of this question, I don't think these distinctions are relevant.)

Isn't this correlation a completely incorrect way of evaluating X as a tool for admissions?

It seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. A student who has low X is admitted to a nonselective school, where standards are low and they compete with other low-X students. Grades at this school measure how well they did based on the low standards prevailing there. Students who have high X are admitted to a selective school. A "B" grade at Berkeley is not the same as a "B" grade at Cal State Dominguez Hills. A high-X student goes to Berkeley and gets a "B" in calculus. A low-X student goes to CSDH and gets a "B" in calculus. This shows up in the statistics as a lack of correlation between X and grades, since the students differed in X but got the same grade. But isn't that misleading, since the grades mean different things at the two schools?

Is there some more logically justifiable statistic to use in evaluating whether X is a good admissions criterion?


texts: I am a prospective MS student. I am considering emailing graduate professors expressing my interest to work as research assistants under the professor's supervision.  Now I have a provisional certificate (no statement of expected date of result publishing) of my bachelor's degree, and I will get the main certificate of my bachelor's degree in the month of May or June. But the application deadline for graduate program is March and April. Is it a wise decision to email graduate professors my provisional certificate of bachelor's degree?


texts: posting photos of my students in classroom

texts: Is it legal/ethical to include photos of my students in my classroom online (as in my online portfolio)?


texts: Faculty hiring differences in Theoretical Computer Science between US and UK/Germany

texts:
I'm a PhD student in theoretical computer science in the US. This question contains some great answers on how to get a faculty job in Theoretical CS. I wonder whether there are some significant differences if I will be looking for a position in Europe (in particular, UK and Germany) as opposed to in the US. As a PhD student in the US (who's neither a US nor an EU citizen, if that matters), should I do something differently? Some aspects:

Is there more/less weight placed in UK/Germany on professional services such as journal/conference reviewing?
Is there more/less weight placed in UK/Germany on publishing in journals as opposed to conferences?
Should I try to get to know more professors in UK/Germany through conferences? What about doing an internship/research visit/postdoc in UK/Germany?

Other differences are also very welcome.


texts: Math/stat postdoc: how important it is to be a 'named' postdoc?

texts:
It gives me the impression that an 'endowed' (named) postdoc is more prestigious than ordinary postdoc (e.g. grants postdoc). My question is how important it is compared to other factors (e.g. publications, the brand of the university, etc) if one wants to find a TT position in an R1 research university.

'endowed'(named) postdoc: for example, Ritt assistant professor in Columbia,  Dickson instructor in UChicago


texts: Can images from wikipedia article be used for non-commercial use?

texts:
Foe example the following image in Wikipedia article.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014.06.23._Charles_Aznavour_Fot_Mariusz_Kubik_01.jpg

To best of my understanding it has creative common license. Can I use it in my scientific paper without obtaining copyright permission?

Many thanks


texts: Just graduated with a master’s degree, but I internalised nothing

texts:
I just graduated with a software-engineering master’s degree with a good grade from a top-five university in the UK. I also have a bachelor's in computer science.

I always revised just for exams and just enough to get that first-class degree, without actually learning anything. I basically revise for the exam itself, by looking at past paper answers, and I never study the actual material. I then forget everything after finishing the exam. I've been repeating this cycle since school.
This method has given me a great first-class degree but with practically zero knowledge. As @Sule said, I never internalised the material.
I also never did a single internship because I didn’t need to.

Now, I’m facing a problem: How am I supposed to find work if I barely know how to program? Will employers just accept me because I have a fancy software-engineering master’s degree from a top-five university? I also haven’t worked professionally a single day in my life.

I'm thinking of getting a PhD at this point.


texts: Is it common for a postdoc to develop the whole commercial systems on his own for his supervisor's industrial customer

texts:
If a postdoc has strong coding technique, can he be assigned to develop commercial systems from the scratch on his own, including user requirement developing, model design, algorithm design, GUI and database design, system realization and testing, and deployment? You know, a postdoc is usually paid less than industrial employees, it results in relatively lower costs of the system than software companies.

At the same time, is it possible to publish?


texts: Are reputations earned and questions answered on Stack community considered as worthy publications?

texts:
Are reputations earned and questions answered on Stack Exchange community considered as worthy  publications?
Can they be included or considered as publications?


texts: Can I pursue Masters in a field different to the one in which I got my Bachelors degree?

texts:
I will be graduating from BS Aeronautical Engineering in about 6 months. But over the last couple of years, I realized that I'm more passionate about Geopolitics, international relations and diplomacy. So, I'm thinking of changing fields in Masters. I intend to opt a degree in International relations, public policy and economics.

Now, as mentioned in the question, how difficult is changing majors like that? What is the attitude shown by universities toward applicants like me? And how do I go about convincing professors to take me in?


texts: What is the effect of choosing the wrong topic(s) during conference paper submission?

texts:
My domain is Image processing.

While submitting papers to conferences, authors are usually asked to select a primary and secondary topic for there paper.

What is the actual purpose of this?
What if authors by mistake select a wrong (not completely) topic instead of a more suitable topic? Does this get changed before/during the review process?
What if this is not corrected and paper is assigned to a reviewer who thinks this is not the proper topic of the paper? Does this affect the paper review process or increase chances of rejection?


texts:
I am planning on returning to academia for a Master's degree after withdrawing from a PhD program, but there is a long road ahead and I am not sure on how to approach it. A few years ago, I decided to apply to PhD programs mainly due to peer pressure from my family and friends, and went through the application process without any motivation whatsoever due to personal issues (I did not write to the professors I wanted to work with, I did poorly on my GRE and did not know what field I wanted to do research  in). However, I had a good GPA (4.0) and some decent REU projects, so I got into some safety schools, but not the one I had wanted to get in initially; although my reasons for chosing the later were mostly due to the prestige it entailed and not because of any academic pursuits I had at the time.

I went on to pursue my PhD but after a year of getting nowhere I decided to stop wasting the universities' time and ended up withdrawing from the program, not feeling comfortable with my cohort and the city I lived in was a factor in that decision as well. After what's been three years of being directionless I've finally found an area of research I'm passionate about, and my motivation in my field has been renewed (and fixed some underlying personal issues that were dragging me down). I'm currently trying to find a job in the industry to fill some gaps in my CV, but I would like to ultimately earn an MSc, preferably where I did my undergrad in, and after that decide if I would like to move onto a PhD or branch out into the industry. I can fund my studies so that would not be an issue (scholarships are limited for MSc programs), and the time investment is less than a PhD so I think I can manage it. I have some points regarding the application process in which I would like some guidance:

How would I approach the professors I'm interested in working with? Should I mention that I was an undergrad in that university and excelled academically or how would I go about it? I have been reading introductory graduate level textbooks and papers in their fields to be somewhat prepared when I begin my MSc.
When reviewing my application, the committee will definitely notice that I have withdrawn from my PhD program. How can I mention that in my statement of purpose without it being detrimental? I would like to highlight how I have recovered my motivation after a slump without sounding too idealistic.
And lastly, what would be the best way to get recommendation letters? Should I ask them from the professors who wrote my recommendation letters for my PhD applications? I understand that it may be difficult since it has been two years since I have not kept in touch with them (although I did research projects with them during my undergrad).

Thank you in advance for all your criticism and advice.


texts: How exactly does a conference abstract differ from an article abstract?

texts:
I am currently taking a brief course in Technical/Academic Writing. At one point, in passing, the lecturer (who's a researcher in linguistics himself) mentioned that one should not confuse a conference abstract with an article abstract, with the exact phrasing "... that's a whole different story."

Unfortunately, at that moment in time I did not reflect on what those differences might be, but now I am writing a conference abstract I realize that I have never really paid much attention to the fact that I am not writing to a journal. Besides the fact that a conference abstract is preamble to a primarily spoken form presentation (poster/oral) instead of a written one, I don't really see why it would be "a whole different story".

Assuming that there are no differences in requirements and limitations, what are the fundamental differences, between a conference abstract and an article abstract, that one should be aware of?

PS: if it matters, the field I'm mostly concerned about is medical research


texts: Getting a scientific article published with no qualifications to any scientific journal?

texts:
I hope I have found the right website for my query. Would it be possible to get a psychological experiment that you carried out published to any journal, despite the fact that you are:

Only 17 (nearly 18) years old
Have no degree or qualification

I've got some really great ideas for psychological experiments that I haven't been able to find them done yet. I really just want to do science and get recognised for it. I was thinking Google Science fair, but that has ended. I'm just doing this for self-pursuit and interest. I am hoping exposure to a scientific audience can lead me to my future career path.


texts: Should I explain my grades in my cover letter?

texts:
I'm a sophomore undergrad and I'm thinking of applying to research interns in various labs for the following summer. I do not have an excellent GPA because my freshman year had been a mess due to various reasons. I'm however working/planning to work on self/supervised projects currently which I believe might make up for the "why I'm fit" part. But, I still feel bad about my grades. It's also that most of them have nothing to do with my actual major (Computer Science) and the intern I'm applying to. This is because students of all engineering majors at my university do common courses in their freshman year. I did slightly improve my grades from the first semester to the second but they're still far below what I want. Usually, students from my batch who get interns at excellent labs have 9.5+/10 GPA, I'm merely slightly above 8.
I think that I might lose many opportunities just due to my GPA, as it demonstrates my inability to learn or focus even if the courses taken aren't really relevant (except few basic ones) but are easier to score in. Should I bother explaining my GPA in my cover letter? If yes, how can I put it so that it doesn't seem like they're just excuses to my supposed lazy-ness? Is there any other way of going about this situation?


texts: How common is redundancy in the British (UK/Australia/NZ/Ireland) system?

texts:
The British permanent faculty system seems to differ from the US tenured system mainly in that in the former the management can 'fire' one on the basis of redundancy (What is the difference between permanent faculty positions in the UK and tenured faculty positions in the US/Canada?). How common is redundancy in practice in the countries having the British system (UK/Australia/NZ/Ireland)?
Thanks,
John


texts: Open Lab Notebook in early postdoc career, advantages vs disadvantages

texts:
so I've found a few open lab notebooks such as this online. I think the philosophy is great, basically an extreme form of open-access. I work in theoretical neuroscience as a fresh post-doc. I'm also continuing to work for my PhD supervisor, but I plan to look for a position elsewhere ASAP to 'fly the nest' so to speak. I don't have any of my own publications yet, just the publications that came from my PhD. As a general career move I would either like to start publishing myself or with new collaborators.

My question is about the advantages vs disadvantages of starting an open lab notebook. A few pros would be:

Increased scientific visibility
Extra motivation
Possible feedback, discovering new research directions

The the big danger are:

Getting 'scooped'
Getting sidetracked from current post-doc

If anyone has any advice for a person in my position, I would like to hear your viewpoint. Specifically, it should relate to an early career researcher looking to make a name for himself.


texts:
I currently work as a TT Assistant Professor in a very comfortable and welcoming top-100 university in my field. My wife lives in another country for the time being and I would like to spend more time with her so I was looking for opportunities there as well. I noticed a top-10 university there that I have connections with that I would like to collaborate with. After making introductions and such, they are willing to collaborate and are additionally offering me a visiting professor position.

The way I understood this offer (one line in an e-mail), is that this would allow me to go there and do research and teach some courses every once in a while and probably get my costs reimbursed. After reading some threads here, it seems that my view is too simplistic and possibly wrong.

Is such a visiting professor position actually combineable with an existing TT position?
Is there a name for what I described in the second paragraph?
What would you recommend for my situation? Visiting researcher? Visiting scholar? Visiting professor?


texts: Author has published a graph but won't share their results table

texts:
I am trying to reproduce some of the results in a paper from 2018 where the results were included in a graph but no exact values were given. There is no results table to go with the graph. I can't exactly compare what I produce with my guesses as to what the values in the graph are. They also did not specify one of the parameters used to produce the results.
I have emailed the authors multiple times and they keep ignoring my question about sharing these values with me and apparently do not have the parameter values as they don't have the logs any longer. I am unsure how to proceed with this. It's a paper published in a high-impact well respected journal.
Any help or guidance would be appreciated. I am not being rude or brash about the way I've asked for these results. I just explained I want to compare to them and can't use the graph because I need some level of accuracy.


texts: How important is Master thesis when applying for a Ph.D.?

texts:
I am willing to apply for a Ph.D next year and by September I am planning to graduate from a M.Sc. in Economics. I am trying to choose my mentor for my final thesis but I was wondering which is the impact of a Master thesis on a Ph.D. application.

I know there are many thing that will be taken into account when analyzing an application but I thought a good thesis in the field for which one is applying could be a nice introduction as well as the name of the professor (the more "famous", the better) chosen as tutor.

Are my considerations right or wrong?


texts:
I've been asked by my former department to write a letter for my doctoral advisor's promotion. What kind of information do departments typically want in these letters?

They specifically asked to mention any areas for improvement. While I got along with him very well overall, I can, with hindsight, see some areas in which he could improve. To what extent would this hurt his chances for promotion?

Thanks!


texts: Invited paper: who has to be the first author?

texts:
My supervisor received an invitation to submit a paper to a special issue of a prestigious journal. Naturally, I have done most of the writing (80%) and all the results in the manuscript are my work.

In this case, who has to be the first author? Is it him, for he is the one invited to submit the paper? Or is it me for doing most of the work?


texts: Postdoc job inteview presentation - slide "livery" / logos and references?

texts:
I'm applying to my first postdoc position, and I've been asked to attend an interview that will start with a 5 minute presentation on how I meet the job criteria. The work that I'm going to talk about is all from my PhD at University A. The postdoc is at a different institution (University B). What is typical practice for the design of slides in this situation? A conference talk would usually:

1) Utilise University A's branding/identity through the use of logos etc.

2) Include a thank you slide that shows which other people were involved in the work.

At an interview, do I drop the branding to make it clear that I'm representing myself, not a different university? Or do I continue to "credit" them by displaying the branding?

And what about the "contributors" slide - do I use some of the 5 minutes to show that I had been working in a team? Or not mention other people to make it clear that it's (mostly) my work? I am also wary of wasting any of the short presentation time allotted.

Thanks for any help.


texts: Decision to peer-review a paper by author who does not believe in acknowledging reviewers

texts:
I have been asked to peer-review a manuscript for journal X (field of psychology). I recognised the author name as someone I've reviewed a past paper for last year, in journal Y. The topic of his research is still of interest to me, and before accepting, I wanted to see how their now-published journal Y paper (which I recommended minor revisions for, while correcting several mistakes) looked like - and noticed they did not bother to acknowledge the reviewers. I realised I was put off by this: to my mind it is a question of common courtesy to thank your reviewers by at least including a note in the Acknowledgements. I can see that other papers by this author also lack this 'feature'.

I know we all do peer-review without expecting compensation or recognition - however I feel this is contingent on us not forgetting to somehow thank (if even superficially) each other for what is a rather ungrateful albeit necessary work. This is especially necessary when journals (such as Journal Y) do not openly disclose reviewers' names, nor have any schemes whereby reviewers can add their peer-review contributions to an ORCID-linkable profile etc.

To make up for this (as I perceive it) remaining glitch in the peer-review system, I am myself always careful to thank my own reviewers, either directly if they disclose who they are (as I did in my journal Y review), or at the very least in the Acknowledgements, where I try to make the statement less banal by mentioning a specific way in which the reviewers' comments have improved the manuscript.

Am I putting undue weight on this, or am I right to think that, if I'm going to devote an entire day (sometimes two days) to peer-reviewing an unknown colleague's paper, and since I anyway cannot say yes to all the requests I get, I might as well do it for authors who don't appear to take this effort for granted?


texts: Is it possible to get accepted in a PhD program without reference/recommendation letters?

texts:
Is it possible to get accepted into a Ph.D. program without reference/recommendation letters?

How likely is it ?

If it is very unlikely, is there any way to get around this unlikeliness?


texts: How do graduate research methods differ from those learned in undergraduate research?

texts: Are the research methods learned in the undergraduate equivalent to the method in graduate school?  That is, do the grad students learn another method of research, a more advanced version of how undergrads research or is it at the grad level the quality is just higher?


texts: Submitting to Journals - impact factor versus subject specialism

texts:
I am coming to the end of my PhD in which I have been working under an NDA and not yet published anything directly from the thesis itself. Pretty soon we will be able to publish the work, and I am eager to get my chapters out there as papers.

I had eyeballed a journal within my field (a journal that I use/cite heavily) that I consider to be relevant and would give my paper great exposure to the people working in my field. I suggested this journal to my main supervisor, but they were dismissive due to a low impact factor of 2.31. They instead suggested going for more of a broad, catch-all journal with a factor of 4.57 that covers a lot of topics in my field albeit (in my opinion) not very thoroughly. Typically papers in that journal are not technical - the paper I want to publish would be technical and have my code/algorithm published alongside the manuscript for reproducibility.

So my question is what to do? The paper is primarily a new method, but also has a bunch of case studies alongside the method that tell their own story and are relevant in their own right.

If anyone is wondering, I am in Earth Sciences/Geophysics.


texts: Is it good practice to share pre-print of PhD thesis?

texts:
I know it's common practice for researchers to share the pre-prints of their papers on online repositories such as ArXiv , SocArXiv, SSRN, OSF. This practice helps speed up the process of receiving feedback from more people and it helps drawing more attention to the study.

Now, I've just submitted my PhD thesis to university/examiners and the whole process will take a while until I get my PhD defence (viva), eventual corrections etc until the university puts my thesis available online. My question is: is it Ok to share the submitted thesis manuscript as a pre-print online before having the PhD defence?

edit: I've recently been informed that The Center for Open Science (the same group behind SocArXiv and OSF) also has a preprint repository devoted to theses called Thesis Commons.


texts: Is it discrimination to hold someone from a minority or underprivileged background to the same academic standard as regular students?

texts:
Suppose a graduate student is found to be noticeably or even significantly behind in overall academic and research competence. For example, they may have significantly weaker language and comprehension skills and technical skills such as using a computer or navigating the web. They may also be lacking other peripheral skills which are often important for graduate students. This may be indirectly related to being from a minority and/or underprivileged background where such exposure and opportunities to learn can be limited.

If he/she are held to the same standards as his/her peers when comparing their relative performance, would this be considered to be discrimination if his/her situation was known? On one hand, same treatment would be fair to his/her peers and avoids human judgement. On the other hand, one could argue that it is unreasonable to expect the same amount of performance when they are missing necessary skills and experience.

There was a comment that 'held to the same standards' was too vague. As a result I want to provide some hypothetical situations in which it is necessary to compare the performance of a student with his/her peers.

Suppose an advisor has limited funding for RA and travel opportunities. They want to provide them to students with the best performance either as a means of rewarding them or to provide a better return on investment. This would mean the graduate student in question would have little chance of obtaining it. Is this discrimination or an unfair bias?

Suppose again the average graduation time for a program is 5 years. However, due to the slow progress of the student (compared to their peers) they may be held for 6 or 7 years before being deemed ready to graduate. Is this a discriminatory practice?


texts: Is it fine to send a message to the author of a paper if I don't understand something and want to clarify it?

texts:
I'm a Physics Ph.D. student and I have been studying one paper and had some doubt in one point. More specifically the author defines a concept in a way which is a little bit different from other texts I've read before and I'm failing to understand why it is the same thing. I believe I would benefit from understanding this correctly.

More specifically to the situation, the paper has been posted on arXiv and is really some lecture notes which were latter transformed into a book. The author also says to email any questions or corrections to his email in the first page.

Considering this situation (that it is really some lecture notes later transformed into a book and that the author says to email any questions to his email) is it considered ok to ask it?
More generally, if it is really some paper published in some journal, and if there is nothing written saying that "any questions should be sent to that email", is it still ok to ask of the author in case of any doubts?
My main issue is that I fear if the author might consider my doubt something "too basic". Is that really a problem?


texts: Is it necessary for a journal submission to include the names of the authors' departments?

texts: I would like to know if it is an unwritten rule to include the names of the departments of the authors' of a journal submission?


texts: Citations in a Paper After the Whole Quotation is Shown

texts:
Say I have a quotation that is written at the top of my page something like this:

Abook
Robert Contor was always an odd fellow, but when the neighbors discovered his secret, everything changed. (p. 12)

Then, in my paragraph, I reference the quotation like this:

In Abook, it says that Robert Contor's life changed irreversibly after "the neighbors discovered his secret". This shows that .......

To be fully correct and not even have to worry about plagiarism and incorrect citations, do I have to include:

(Abook Leauthor p. 12)

or something like that? Can I legitimately get away with not adding the inline citations after every quotation, even though it is obvious what I'm citing? Does this apply in general when it is fairly obvious where the quotation came from?
Thanks a lot in advance. All responses are greatly appreciated!


texts: Can I withdraw from one conference and attend another one with the same abstract?

texts:
A few weeks ago I submitted a two-page abstract to a conference in environmental sciences/ecology/biology. I haven't received the decision yet – poster or presentation. A few days ago I found out there will be a different conference, where my contribution would fit better and the main speakers are directly from my field and I could finally meet them.

Due to funding I probably cannot attend both conferences, so I have to choose. Another approach would be to withdraw my current submission and send a different one to the second conference.

Is it unethical to withdraw my submission and send it to other conference?


texts: What if your reviewer told you need to cite author A and Author A is you?

texts:
It is common practice in my field to remove self-citations completely in a manuscript for consideration. Even if you use neutral language like: “Author A said XYZ” (with Author A being myself), it is frowned upon. One of my senior colleagues was telling us she got a review that said she needed to read more works of Author A and cite Author A more and her not mentioning her shows a distinct lack of the literature! (She is Author A.)

This is quite an amusing situation but while it is under revise and resubmit still, she is considering withdrawing it and submitting elsewhere because saying “Hey, I am Author A and I think I know my own work quite well” wouldn’t really cut it, right? How would you respond to this largely negative review without compromising anonymity? Or would you just let the editors know?


texts: How to respond to a perceived unfair editorial decision?

texts:
We have an editorial decision after major revision: decline and resubmit.

Decisive is a reviewer who feels that the novelty of our work is too much limited into a specific area.

This reviewer gave concrete directions in the first round of review. We had to remove a full explanatory section because it should be well known to the audience. We had to add an additional analysis to support the relevance of our method development. We had to restructure the paper and change our line of reasoning and writing style. Otherwise, the submission would not qualify to be publishable. The reviewer even explicitly expressed his future support as the reviewer saw ‘promise in our intentions’.

We carefully followed all the reviewer’s critiques and basically rewrote our paper. For language we send the paper to a publishing service. The reviewer acknowledges and applauds our improved work, but still rejects the work.

The editor encourages us to decline and resubmit (with the assurance that we will get new reviewers), which I interpret as the paper is considered to be publishable for this journal and its audience. But I also feel, addressing this reviewer’s critiques, has not improved its chances for acceptance (here or elsewhere) because the paper has become more specialized.

If we had refuted the reviewer’s critiques in the first place, the paper would have been rejected. Now we followed the reviewer’s critiques carefully and the paper is still rejected.

Why do certain reviewers recommend major revision if they never intend to accept a paper in the first place? Is it not much more fair to reject a paper immediately if you feel the topic is too specialized for the audience, although this journal publishes many other papers which are highly specialized in their domains?

Or should I ask why the editor chooses the easy route: decline and resubmit? The final reviewer’s comment is not repairable and the editor is in charge.

Or should I ask what I did wrong? I just do not know. How can I improve my work further if I just don’t know what to improve?

What should we do? Appeal, resubmit the revised version with this journal, resubmit the original version somewhere else?


texts: Do you have to have a PhD to be a PI on a grant for your own funding?

texts:
Do you have to have a PhD in order to become a PI on a grant for your own funding?

What if you only have a Bachelor's or a Master's degree, and are not even working towards a PhD?


texts: What should be included in an extended abstract (CS)

texts:
I've been tasked with writing an extended abstract. I'm studying computer science (CS) and I have had a look online for an idea of what an extended abstract should contain.

So far, I gather that it should contain roughly 1000 words, excluding graphs, diagrams and references. It also appears that it should contain an introduction, and some preliminary results as well as address the what, why and how questions.

I was wondering, could someone provide me with a bullet-point-style breakdown of what an extended abstract needs to contain?

As an example of what I mean, here is how I would break down an abstract:

Define the topic
Describe the problem that the topic is facing
State why this research is important and what it provides
Describe the main contribution of the paper and summarise the conclusion
Describe future avenues of research


texts: Permission for changing the title of a paper

texts:
I am revising a paper and want to change the title of the paper and send for editor-in-chief.

My Question: Is there an formal sentences to announce to editor-in-chief and reviewers that I want to change the title of paper in this revision.

For instance, is it acceptable that I write the following text?

  With the editor-in-chief’s and reviewers’ permission, the authors want to change the title of paper because of ...


texts: Startup funds and lab space when leaving tenure-track faculty position

texts:
I've been in a tenure-track faculty position at an R1 for just over a year. I want to leave this position for a non-academic job, but have not yet lined anything up. I haven't made a decision about when to leave or give notice, but my intention is to give the university at least a few months' notice.

My question is about my research lab, which I run with startup funds. What can I expect to happen to my remaining startup funds and lab space once I announce my intention to leave? Do faculty in this situation normally continue to have access to startup funds, or does funding typically get cut off? My main concern is whether I'll be able to continue paying my employees until my departure.


texts: Should I argue with the conference chairs in this situation？

texts: I submitted a paper last month. And the result came out yesterday. Two reviewers gave me high scores while the other one said he saw part of my paper three months ago. In fact, three months ago, I drafted part of my paper and submitted it to a workshop because I want to own a paper which could help me apply for Ph.D. Now this reviewer gave me only 1 for originality. But the paper for a workshop should not be the "record of publication" according to the rules of conference. Should I argue with the chairs of the conference? This is a top conference in our field so I really want this paper published.


texts: Claiming that the model is the first model of its kind

texts:
I read somehere in this stack-exchange that its best to not make strong statements (such as stating the previous method is completely wrong) etc. In my paper, I thought that stating this the model I am presenting is the first model for this type of device would bolster the chances of publication. It is true that there hasn’t been any model for this type of device, atleast not to my knowledge and extensive search.

But is claiming that this is the first model too strong a statement? Is this looked down upon in academic publications?


texts: To what extent does the prospect of a guaranteed-for-life job (tenure) motivate researchers to stay in academia?

texts:
Is there any research/study that looked at the extent to which the prospect of a guaranteed-for-life job (tenure) motivate researchers to stay in academia?

I am most interested in the United States and the field of computer science.


texts: Listing inner-department seminars/presentations that focused on presenting current research by other authors?

texts:
At my university there are weekly seminars where faculty or students can do presentations for the department.

I had done several of these during my time as a graduate student, although admittedly they were seldomly composed of original work.  They were often taking a recently published paper and presenting the findings, sketching the proofs, and illustrating how it applies to research you are interested in and/or doing.

I started to list these on my CV as a more generic "Department Seminar Presentations" of a given paper/topic, but as I thought about it more I began to wonder if this is actually improper to do?

This is in mathematics.


texts:
How can I convert marks in the Egyptian scale to marks in the UK scale.
for example if I got a mark of 40 in Egypt what is the equivalent mark in the UK.


texts: Can I call an assistant professor "Professor"?

texts:
My former teacher, who had done her PhD in a top-10 university in the UK in 2009, is an assistant professor in my former school.
On the day when I visited my former school, I saw her at the school canteen unexpectedly. I smiled and nodded to her before I said "Good afternoon, Professor Aiko." We were talking for a few minutes before she went back to her office. When I was sitting on a subway train on my way home, however, I was wondering
if it was impolite for me to call her that.
Can I call an assistant professor a professor, and say "Hello Prof. Nickname"?


texts: Do editors know how many papers I am refereeing on the same platform?

texts:
I have very recently returned two referee reports for two different Elsevier journals. Within two days, I have received two new requests from the exact same two journals (but from different editors).

Of course this might be a coincidence, but now naturally I am wondering: did these editors somehow know that I had just 'freed myself' from the previous commitments and was again available as a reviewer? Is there, for instance, a field in Elsevier's online platform that tells editors how many assignments I have at a given time?


texts: Assessing a penalty for inquiries regarding exceptions to deadline policy

texts:
My problem: Though it's made explicitly clear to my students that I do not accept late work and do not grant extensions, I get at least 5-10 e-mails a week asking about extensions. I want to deter these emails, I feel obligated to respond, but my response is usually "See the syllabus regarding missed assignments". Dealing with this is costly in terms of time spent replying and clearing my inbox.

I make it very, very clear in my syllabus that I do not give extensions for assignments under any circumstances except limited administration excused cases and that I will not respond to requests (a blatant lie, I do respond because I care what they think of me and the course). I remind my students at the beginning and end of every class of their impending deadlines. I also regularly remind my students in class that deadlines matter and there are no extensions and no late work. My assignments are brief, and are available for over a week for the student to attempt, I don't feel my demands are unreasonable. I stress in the syllabus and in class that the way I accommodate the various life issues that cause missed deadlines is that I will drop their lowest X assignments, where X is a very generous number

My question: is it unfair of me to put a syllabus clause that specifies a minor penalty for e-mail inquiries regarding an exception to the deadline rule?
Something along the lines of "Each e-mail inquiry asking for an extension on a late assignment may be subject to a Z point penalty on your overall homework grade" where Z is not an unreasonable number.

Would I be a total jerk? Is there a better way of solving my problem?


texts: I'm worried my former collaborators are going to publish without including me as an author. What should I do?

texts:
I have worked for a project of a Ex-Postdoc, as I was promised an authorship. I was told “You will be a major author”.  I did almost all the labor job as postdoc was my cosupervisor too. I trusted the person.
This was while ago and I had inquire PI few times how is the current status of the project. I got told they are preparing a manuscript several times about a year.
Now I sense manuscript is about to submit and I have not heard back. I need the promised authorship.
After reading an answer from SE politely refusing authorship opportunity?
As they can publish without giving credit to me, I am worried thinking what can I do if they it publish bypassing me. As a international student I do not think I have any support around.
Could it be possible to write to the editor of the journal then?


texts: Why would an author forward my inquiry about a paper to all its other authors?

texts:
I am a grad student and I am reading a certain recent breakthrough paper.  There is a part of the paper which is not making sense to me at all.  So I wrote to one of the authors inquiring about it. But this person forwarded my email to every of the other authors! (and that includes some of the living legends in the fields!)

Why did this person do this?

Is this a scary situation to be in?


texts: What should I do if my advisor and committee members want me to do two different things?

texts:
My advisor said that when I write my thesis I should staple together my three papers.  One of my committee members says my thesis should have a unifying theme and a narrative that ties together all the papers.  My advisor thinks this is stupid and explicitly told me not to listen to my committee member.

Both of them have to sign off on my thesis.  What should I do?


texts: Has the proportions of articles to citations changed?

texts:
In 2014 Nature looked at the top 10 and top 100 papers with most citations.
Has similar research been done more recently?
I am particularly interested in whether the relative numbers have changed: In the image above 1000 citations would put a paper in the top 14499 of 57798126 papers = 0.025%. Since 2014 a lot of papers have been published (thus growing the pile), but more papers have also been cited (thus growing the part with 1000 citations). Do they grow equally? In other words: Would 1000 citations today still mean it is cited more than 99.975% of other papers? And if not: What are the numbers today?
Ideally the answer would include a percentile function that given a year and a percentage returns the number of citations to be in that percentile that year: percentile(year,pct) = number of citations.


texts: Do schools/departments ever evaluate their own admissions process?

texts:
I'm curious as to whether or not any departments ever attempt to evaluate their own admissions decisions. It seems quite plausible to do for any college or graduate program, but I've never heard of it done. I have in mind some kind of data analysis comparing student success in the program or beyond with variables from the application.

I understand some might not like the idea, but as noisy as admissions are, I was wondering if schools ever reflect on their own decisions and attempt to identify strengths and weaknesses?


texts: At what point should I no longer include my former professor as a coauthor?

texts:
I graduated from university somewhat recently with a four year undergraduate degree and during my junior/senior year I worked on a research project with a professor.

At the beginning of the project (nearly three years ago) he helped me a lot with understanding the background/context of the research, but after so long I was the only one contributing to it (he's an applied mathematician and I'm a computer scientist, and the project is a computer based A.I. so I have been the only one programming it).

Now that I've graduated and have continued working on the project, and maybe will try to publish within the next year or so, I'm wondering if/how he should be included as an author/contributor?

Edit: At no point has he ever actually contributed to the project in the form of code. All he's done is mentor me through the concepts, bridging the mathematics and biology/chemistry so that I could understand it and translate into computer code. Additionally, all the code design and approach has been developed by me.


texts:
I'm currently halfway through a PhD in computer science at a good school in the US. After I graduate, I want to stay in academia. I also want to return home to Australia to be closer to my family.

However, I worry that I will struggle to do good research when I am thousands of miles from where the action is happening. It's hard to collaborate when you can't meet in person and are in a vastly different time zone. It's also hard to keep up with recent developments from afar. I find that collaboration and keeping up with developments are essential to doing good research. Computer science is a rapidly-moving field, so being behind can make your results much less interesting.

How do academics in Australia, New Zealand, and other "remote" places deal with this?


texts: What will happen to Academia in the future when it takes too long to become an Academic?

texts:
Currently, here's how Academia works:

Study for many, many years, so that you have the necessary background knowledge to embark on your own research. You can still do a bit of research on the side, but mostly you are a student learning the ropes. You are (usually) not paid during this step. Even if you are, it won't be much.
Do research. You can (and probably must) still do a bit of study on the side, but mostly you are a researcher contributing to new knowledge in your field. You are paid during this step.

This path is only tenable if the first step, the unpaid one, is relatively short, otherwise it becomes economically unfeasible to become an Academic.

But in Academia, we build upon past knowledge. Hence, it stands to reason that as time progresses, the time and effort needed to complete step 1 and acquire all the necessary background knowledge also increases.

It increases sloooowly, but it does increase. So my question is, what happens when the time needed to complete step 1 has increased by so much that it simply isn't feasible anymore to become an Academic? Hell, what happens when the time needed to complete step 1 increases beyond the life expectancy of humans?

Again, this happens extremely slowly, but it does happen. So does this mean that in a few hundred years, Academia will be a dying field, since nobody simply has time to learn all the background knowledge?


texts: Where to put related works in a PhD thesis (Computer Science)

texts:
My thesis consists of an introduction, background, literature review and a chapter for every approach I proposed. The literature chapter contains a related work subsection for every approach I proposed. These related work subsections describe the structure of the area in general (for example: computer science consists of Software Engineering and Hardware Engineering... Hardware Engineering can be divided into ..etc). They also mention and describe the tools proposed to solve theses issues.

I thought it would be better if I move the part where I mention and describe the tools from the literature into their correspondent chapters. So I will add a related work section after introducing and evaluation every approach I proposed. This allows a theoretical evaluation and for the related work to be precise and specific. It also keeps the size of the chapters balanced to some extent.

My questions: do you recommend it? (I found PhD thesis  that did that) & what do you suggest I call the section where I just talk about the structure of the area not the tools? (is "overview of ... techniques", for example, a good title?).


texts: Would/could PIs hire a consulting company to do partial work that's not in his/her field

texts:
I understand that it is usually not difficult for PI to find another professor in the same campus or city for collaboration on a multi-field project (e.g. computational chemistry). However, when the demand of long term collaboration is not huge, would PIs consider to hire some outsiders or consulting companies to do the work? And is it allowed under NIH funding systems?

(For example, a task may only require a few hundreds line of coding, which can be done by an experienced programmer in the field. The work may be a bit too lack of rewards for a new collaborator. Wouldn't it be cheaper and more realistic for a chemistry PI to hire a consultant in this case, than getting a new PhD student or post-doc in programming? )

Thanks.


texts: Academic rank equivalence between the UK and the US systems

texts:
What are the US equivalent ranks to the Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader (or Associate Prof), Professor ranks of the UK system?
Is it correct that in the US system they are Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, Full Prof and Chair/Endowed Prof, respectively?
I know that in the British system, there are further sub-levels in each of these ranks whereas in the US system there is no further gradation within each rank. So I am looking for only rough equivalence.

Edit: It would be great if a formal/informal reference which compares the two is also pointed out.


texts: Theoretical CS research having a math undergrad

texts:
I am currently finishing my undergraduate math studies, and I am really interested in computer science (especially theoretical). However, I realize that most CS departments expect their applicants to have a CS major or at least a significant amount of coursework in CS. I have taken a couple of programming courses and a course in data structures, languages and machines, and design of algorithms, but all very basic (so I would probably be rejected because of insufficient background). Therefore, I have been looking for math departments that do theoretical CS research, but I have found very few.

Is is possible for a mathematician to successfully enter a program of theoretical computer science with few previous experience in CS?


texts:
I recently finished Medical School and I'm interested in getting into a MSc program in Cognitive Neurosciences in Germany.

Regarding my CV, what should I emphasize? I only have two articles in press and another one is under review at a well positioned journal. However I am worried because I don't know if they are too few. Are publications determinant for a Msc program admission, or... are grades and research experience ( i.e. working at my Uni research lab) more important? Also, is teaching experience something important for admission?

Also, I spoke recently with a lady working at admissions in Berlin and she told me that in Germany, specifically for a MSc it is not necessary to contact your possible principal investigator before applying, because you choose your research group during the second year. Is this true? or should I contact a possible PI and ask him for admission before applying to the University?


texts: What is the best way to design a paper questionnaire to support scanning and converting to raw data?

texts:
When surveying my students for various reasons (which have nothing to do with my institution which does not care about, nor fund, any of my "research"), I find that online surveys get a very low response rate. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can get up to 50% of students to respond (sometimes only 10%). However, if I hand questionnaires out during class time I can usually get 80-90% completion rates.

The problem comes that I end up with hundreds of paper surveys and keying them into a computer takes hours. There must be a better way.

I am actually looking for two pieces:

How can I design the paper survey to best support scanning and having a computer convert the scan into raw data which I can then explore
What kind of software can do the scanning and conversion (I realize this might be a question for softwarerecs.SE)

For point 2, I usually use multiple choice or Likert-type scales so full OCR is not required.

Are there standards for questionnaire design which support this process?


texts: Writing thesis with corrected data after being published

texts:
Lack of a systematic strict supervision has lead to inaccuracies in data evaluation. This data was published. While writing thesis I realize that and I don't know what to do. Should I write my "reanalysis" of published data in PhD chapters and explain, what was done incorrect and limitations of the interpretation? Or should I issue errata on the published materials (which is a red flag for thesis and following defense)?

I have learned my lesson for future and will be more accurate and precise. I do realize that it is the main stone of a good scientific practice. But now I just failed.
I feel that I need an advice of what to do with an actual situation to reach defense and be able to complete PhD studies?


texts: Am I harming myself by doing a PhD in a less prestigious university than where I did my MSc if I don't want to stay in academia?

texts:
I did an MSc in an extremely prestigious university, in mathematics and theoretical computer science. I got an offer to stay there for a PhD, but turned it down. Instead, I enrolled on an MRes + PhD programme at a good but far less prestigious university, in a subject I thought I was far more interested in. I will soon have finished the MRes year.

As much as I am enjoying it, I've realised I don't want to stay in academia. What I'd like to go into is probably quantitative finance. What I'm studying at the moment involves a lot of stochastic processes - which would certainly help with quantitative finance. My thinking is that it would be best to finish the PhD, get really good with stochastic processes, and then apply for the kind of job I want. My issue is that, after having read the answers to this question, the less prestigious university might actually harm my career prospects and overshadow the prestige of the university where I got my Master's.

To that extent, I'm wondering: is a MSc from a very prestigious uni + a PhD from a good but less prestigious uni worse than just an MSc from a very prestigious uni (and no PhD)? The jobs I've looked at don't strictly require PhDs.

I'm in the UK (just in case this makes any difference).

Edit: I ended up writing to a place I would've been very interested in working at. They replied saying that they were more interested in my ability to produce great research than in any league table, and that my MSc at a world-reknowned univeristy already proves my ability in the subject. As such, I will continue with my current programme, seeing as I am enjoying it very much and seeing as I find my supervisor to be extremely supportive.


texts:
In writing the introduction of a chapter, I came up with three paragraphs.

Is it necessary that the the chapter introduction be made up of just one paragraph?


texts: How do I decide a field of study for grad school and whether to do a Masters vs a PhD?

texts:
I'm a sophomore in college (undergrad) so I still have a while to go before applying to grad school. I am currently majoring in CS with a minor in Bio since I am also very interested in computational biology and bioengineering. I am definitely more interested in research than going into industry, at least right now, since I have participated in research during my time at my undergrad institution. I have a few questions on applying to grad school.
How do you go about deciding which subject to study in grad school? I am majoring in CS but am interested more in working in computational biology specifically, so I am unsure whether I would apply to a CS program or a Bio program.
Even after deciding a subject of study how do you go about deciding about whether to apply directly to a PhD program or to do a Masters program first? Specifically: I know I am interested in research but does this necessarily mean I should do a PhD or is a Master's fine? Are PhD programs harder to get into than Master's programs and should you apply to a mix of both PhD programs and Master's programs or just one or the other?
I would appreciate if people could share any of their experiences with any of these questions.


texts: Is there a consensus on how long you should know a person before you ask him/ her to write you a recommendation letter for graduate school?

texts: I was wondering if, in general, the length of time you have spent with your professor/ superior has a great impact on your application.


texts:
Many of the journal references in the bibliography of my thesis contain bird names. Journals use birds names in the titles of papers in at least four different ways:

Titlecase, eg Teal
Titlecase plus scientific name, eg Teal Anas crecca
Lowercase, eg teal
Lowercase plus scientific name, eg teal Anas crecca

These different ways of using bird names makes my bibliography look untidy and inconsistent.

Should I adjust the titles of the papers in my bibliography so all bird names are used in a consistent way? Or should I use paper titles exactly as how they are given?


texts: How to review a major revision of a paper?

texts:
A few months ago I reviewed my first paper. The authors submitted a major revision and I am asked to review the paper again. I received a long cover letter where my comments and the comments of two other anonymous reviewers have been answered.

The paper is relatively long (40 pages) so I am trying to avoid unnecessary work. Should I:

Re-review the entire paper as if I saw it the first time,
Just check if all comments have been addressed, or
Just check if my comments have been addressed?

I am afraid that if I just check the comments, it is possible that the authors have made some other changes, or that their changes might have broken the integrity of the paper as a whole. On the other hand if I re-review the entire paper it might be unfair to the authors.


texts: Is it appropriate to put master's and bachelor's theses into ORCID web page as dissertations?

texts:
I recently registered to ORCID and put information of all my journal articles there. I started to think whether it's appropriate to put my master's and bachelor's theses there as well. ORCID doesn't have a category named "thesis", but there is a category named "dissertation".

Is it appropriate to put my master's and bachelor's theses to my ORCID web page using the category named "dissertation"? I have understood that the term "dissertation" usually refers to doctoral theses.

I think the bachelor's thesis might have some value there, as my university doesn't allow people to download bachelor's theses from the university web page, and people may not be aware of an alternative link to the file. Apparently they in the university think that all bachelor's theses are low-quality, but in my opinion my bachelor's and master's theses are very high-quality and have lots of merit. So I certainly am not planning to hide them!

Related question: What is the difference between a thesis and a dissertation?


texts: Will the bad grade in a proposed studied subject be a red flag in my application?

texts: I am currently doing final year project on a subject which I did not have a very good grade(I took three courses in this subject with grade A-, A and B+, only top 5-10% can earn a grade of A and A+). I am quite interested in it and plan to continue in this subject in graduate school. Will this grade have bad effect for my application? Can I indicate my interest clearly in my PS given that my grade is not perfect?


texts: Why doesn't arXiv have a comment section?

texts: One of the main criticism against arXiv is that while there is some basic filtering, but there is no scientific review of the papers. I wonder whether adding a comment section has already being discussed publicly and why as of now arXiv does not have a comment section.


texts: What to do with a result too small to be publishable, but interesting nonetheless?

texts:
Let's assume, for the sake of example, that I have found a new figure of merit which is of the same complexity as the one currently used, but is much more justified from a mathematical and physical standpoint. However, the whole development barely goes over one paragraph (maybe two), as the "proof" is extremely simple and straightforward.

Now, I was planning on saving this smaller result for a bigger paper on the same topic, where I'd introduce this new figure of merit along with other results, but the future of this other paper has become quite uncertain lately.

Is there any way I could still present this new (small) result?


texts: How to politely and logically explain that I don't want to receive notification at my private social media account?

texts:
My department is becoming more and more annoying by posting everything in Facebook group, from exam results, seminar schedule, to private information about students ( telephone numbers, addresses, emails, etc.)

I don't know how to explain them  that I care about safety of personal information and that privacy of my personal information are important to me, but please be aware that I don't want to sound pretentious. Is there any way to address this issue correctly?