texts:
On the one hand, it seems like "no" - hence some universities like Caltech choose to remain small, while others like Boston University & MIT don't merge into a single super-university in spite of having campuses that are side-by-side.
On the other hand, I don't see why it wouldn't apply. There should be an advantage to pooling resources, e.g. with library subscriptions, campus transport, and so on. At the academic level, more students/faculty would also allow the university to teach more specialized subjects.
Does economy of scale apply to universities? If yes, why are Caltech, Boston University/MIT etc (and Imperial/UCL for that matter) making the decisions they do? If not, why not?


texts: How should I position myself in the US job market if I am an assistant professor with tenure?

texts:
In my country, job rank is not aligned to tenure. You can be an Assistant Professor with tenure (i.e. a permanent contract at the university) or without tenure (on a temporary e.g. 5 year contract), or you could be an Associate Professor with or without tenure. I have tenure, but I am an Assistant Professor... which I understand is fairly rare in the US (if not non-existent)

If the time comes that I want to look for a position in the US, I assume based on the feedback from my previous question that I should focus my search on an Assistant Professor position rather than an Associate Professor level position.

If I were to apply for an academic position in the US, how should I explain this? Is it worthwhile to mention that I have tenure already? Do I need to ask for a shortened tenure clock or will it be decided by the university on their own?


texts: How do I impress my prospective grad advisor? (first meeting)

texts:
I am supposed to meet with a PI to discuss the possibilities of joining his lab as a MSc student.

I have had one meeting with another PI last week, but it went bad. Essentially he was repulsed when I told him about my GPA and mostly, when he asked me specifically what exactly I want to get out of the MSc experience at his lab (e.g. specific instrument that I'm interested in mastering, etc.). He told me that I should know exactly my goals prior to starting a grad program and that an interest in the field isn't
sufficient.

I agree, however, no matter how much literature I read in that field, I will still have that broad answer which is "I want to contribute to your current project" because as a MSc student, very little I can do in terms of research projects. Most graduate students find their passion once they start their program.

He was also repulsed when I told him that I intend to work in the industry, and I was surprised because the majority of students with higher degree decide to go to work in the industry (e.g. GSK, Pfizer, etc.). Perhaps I should have lied? But that shouldn't be the basis of our relationship as a student and a PI. There is no shame in pursuing a research degree because I intend to go to R&D. Why do most PIs make me feel that I should always answer that "I want to become an academic researcher?", because I don't.

If I made mistakes in the previous interview, please highlight them to me so I can avoid making them again for when I speak with the next PI (whose main concerns is funding). Should I not have said that my ultimate goal is to work in the industry? And how exact should I be in terms of my goals as a MSc student?

UPDATES: I met the new PI and it was an instant rapport! I clearly understand now how being genuine about your goals and educational background can serve you well in such situations.


texts: How does the experience of working at a "top" university differ from working at an average one?

texts:
Being a professor at the top university in your field must be a very different experience from being a professor at a top 20 university, which must be a very different experience from working at a top 100, 500, etc. university.

But how do these jobs differ? What are the qualitative differences between working at universities in different tiers? I'm less interested in pay and benefits -- more interested in the day to day experience.


texts: As a graduate student, is it better to use a Gmail address or name@mywebsite.com?

texts:
As a grad student (Note: I am in the humanities, so nobody is really technically inclined), I have an address from my institution (.edu) but I rarely use it. I suppose I do "use" it, but it forwards to my gmail and usually I reply with my gmail address. Almost all of the other grad students, as well as many professors, in my program -- and elsewhere in my field -- do something similar; they don't use their edu addresses, but instead exclusively use gmail. I have been increasingly wary of Google's oversight and have been thinking about switching. But: Considering Gmail's monoculture among academics, is it more "professional" to use a Gmail account, or one that you personally own such as myname@myname.com? Or just weird?

To be clear: This is not about which email address to attach to a publication. That would clearly be my edu address, as it forwards to gmail. This is about what it 'says' about me.


texts: When can asking a question during lecture be offensive?

texts:
During my masters, I used to ask a lot of questions in class and during the lecture. Whenever I had a doubt I used to ask questions. It was my habit which my undergraduate teachers inculcated in me and inspired us to do so. However, here, in my masters, I got the impression that this is probably a bad habit as professors tend to think that I am asking my questions to test them. Ultimately, it was proven to reflect badly on me.

I am about to go to another institution going for my PHD. Since then, I have changed my habit and I haven't asked a single question in the last several lectures. Instead, I wrote my questions down in my notebook and later read books or Googled them to search for answers.

Is this really the right way?

How can I ask a question such that the professors shall not think that I am somehow mocking them?


texts: Full scholarship and student advisor relationship

texts: If a phd student is completely funded by an outside institution and don't cost the school or the university anything, what impact would that have on the student relationship with his advisor? Especially on things like interest on the student progress.


texts: Can I resubmit an unpresented conference paper to the same conference?

texts:
I submitted a paper to a major conference last year, it was accepted, but I had to withdraw from the conference before it could be presented. There is no proceedings for this conference. I am wondering the etiquette surrounding resubmitting the article to the exact same conference this year. Since the first submission, it has not been presented or published anywhere else.
Thanks in advance.


texts:
Is there any extensive research/study/survey that looked at where people that leave academia go?

I mostly interested in the computer science field (machine learning) in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well.

People leaving academia can be PhD students or after (tenure-track, tenured, soft-money research positions, national lab researchers, etc.).


texts: Should I include the names of my Master's and PhD supervisors in my CV?

texts:
Next month I will be graduating from university in the UK with a Master's degree in Astrophysics and in October I will be starting my PhD at a different UK university.

I have seen some academic CVs that list the PhD supervisors that person had, alongside the usual information such as the institution and start/ finish date.

I suppose the advantage of including your supervisor's name on your CV is so that a person reading it can get an idea of the kind of work you're doing (if you don't have any publications of your own yet and if they know what your supervisor's research interests are) and how you fit into their network via the supervisor.

As someone with currently a very short academic CV, is it ok for me to include the names of my Master's and PhD supervisors? What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

Note that I know who my future PhD supervisor is.


texts:
I want to cite a MOOC, but the MOOC is no longer running. The URL I saved only takes me to the course homepage, not the page giving the information I used. Is this acceptable for a reference?
This is the page I end up on, but my citation is linked to peer to peer learning within the MOOC.


texts: verbally accepted offer; got a second interview call

texts:
I was made a verbal offer for a job at a college, which I accepted over the phone. I haven't got the written offer and I have not signed anything yet. I was informed the written offer will be sent to me in a few days.

That evening, I received an interview e-mail from the same college but a different campus (which I prefer).

What should I do? Wait till I get a formal offer letter from the first campus and then let them know I need more time?

What is the wisest and the ethical course of action?


texts: Could getting an MS in CS be bad for my career?

texts:
I'm in the following situation. My first 7 months out of college, I worked software job I really didn't like, and then I hopped on to another job I like. I've been in that second job for about a year now, and even though my career is doing pretty OK, I'm thinking about going back to school for a MS and maybe a PhD. I have some concerns about going back to school that I was hoping I could get some insight on.

I didn't get funding for graduate school because I did no research as an undergrad and thus had weak references, but tuition for one of the better programs I got in to is rather low as its a state school and I'm in state ( Umass amherst). I was making a bit over six figures for both of my jobs, and I've saved up more than enough money to cover both my undergrad loans, and pay the entire cost of the master's program + living expenses.

I want to give grad school a try because I've gotten really into computer science these past two years, and I'd like to study it full time for two years while doing research. In college, I was too busy dealing with a deep depression and health problems to excell as a student to the degree I know I'm capable of, and I want to have the academic computer science experience I dreamed of when I was in highschool but was robbed of due to circumstances.

I am, however, concerned about my employability post-MS. I will have had two short stints on my resume - a 7 month job and a 19 month job - making me look like a disloyal job hopper, and I'm afraid that potential employers might be turned off by my over-education should I choose to go back to programming. I'm also concerned that my department might not treat me with respect as a self-funded student. If they thought I was good, they would have probably offered me funding.

How are MS degrees viewed in the industry? Are my concerns valid at all?


texts: Why is novelty mandatory for a Ph.D. degree?

texts:
The institute I am studying at has added the following requirement recently:

  A PhD scholar must publish two papers in his/her corresponding field
  in SCI journals.

This means that a student cannot get PhD without two SCI rated papers. To the best of my knowledge, novelty is a mandate for such journals; hence, novelty has became mandatory for a student to get PhD in my institute.

In this context, I have the following query: Why is novelty mandatory for a PhD degree?

Consider a scenario in which a student is ambitious and wants to do research on an open problem or famous unsolved problem in his/her field. The student cannot attempt to research such a topic since research may be locally saturated, and he/she cannot come up with a novel idea. Does the rule not restrict the research on such problems? I can see the alternatives like tutorial papers, survey papers, etc., but some of these require only highly experienced geeks.

Note: Assume that neither the PhD student nor the PhD supervisor is an extraordinary person in that particular field.


texts:
What are the best strategies for faculty negotiating a retention offer when they have an external job offer? Are there any nonobvious pitfalls to avoid?

Details: tenured, public R1 institution in the US, STEM discipline, moderately happy but could be moreso (personally and professionally). External offer has pros and cons relative to the status quo, so it's a tough decision.


texts: How to select dates and times of office hours for the benefit of students and instructors?

texts: Office hours can be selected at any time, but how they can be selected to benefit all? The students to ask the instructors and the instructors to have some time to conduct research? Before a class or after a class? In the same days as the class, days with no classes, or all days?


texts: Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript?

texts:
As with many papers in the sciences, there are multiple authors who aren't physically close to each other. I was curious about the most efficient and simplest way to technically share the writing. On the more complicated side would be LaTeX and subsequently using subversion to merge all of the changes. Then there is google docs. Finally, there is the traditional write out edits on word and email the document with comments back and forth.

What works?


texts: Do "Online" CS/CSE masters programs add any value when applying for doctoral/PhD study?

texts:
How much value do I acquire if I complete an online master's degree in CS and I plan to apply for doctoral study?

For example, Georgia Tech seems to offer an online master's program. Does this type program puts up anything to apply for a Doctoral program?

In short, if somebody wants to get a PhD degree in Computer Science, do Online Master's degrees aid in their ambition?


texts: References that are not literature or qualified sources

texts:
The Duale Hochschule has published this guideline (German) (this question might be specific to the studies in Germany) and it does quite a good job explaining how literature shall be cited and put into a bibliography.

Now, in the evaluation sheet for the paper and thesis, literature research is mainly judged by its academic character, i.e. it should be primary sources, qualified links etc. I'm fine with that as well. My students should try to find and understand primary literature.

However, here's a caveat: the studies is Informatics. When they implement an application, the students use software libraries. Personally, I'd like to know the sources of those libraries, because some of them are not unique by their name.

I can understand that the students don't want to put them into bibliography, because they might not be scientific or academic, they are just a tool. However, there are sentences like

  To get around problem X, I use library Y.

IMHO, such decisions are ok, they don't require special research. Other researchers may simply use a tool ("hammer") to solve a problem without thinking much about it as well. Not mentioning such a library fix would leave others in a situation where the paper is not helpful.

How to deal with that situation and why?

Should the software libraries

be part of the bibliography,
get their separate list of "software" references,
just be mentioned in a footnote when the library name first occurs,
not be mentioned at all
...


texts: Should I choose someone as one of my references while I also have applied to his group?

texts:
I just faced a funny, yet complicated situation!

I want to apply for postdoc positions, and one of my references would be a professor that I had a good collaboration with his group during my PhD. However, I ran into him a few days ago and informally asked if he has any available position in his lab. He said that he is too busy now but likes to sit together and talk about it 4 weeks from now!
Although I liked the idea, it'd be too risky for me to wait that long until I see if our meeting could result in a position or not. So, I want to proceed with my position search meanwhile!

The issue is that I'm not sure how the professor would see it (or react) If anyone contacts him as one of my references for my postdoc applications! Even I am not sure how to tell him that want to add him to my reference list! In fact, I am afraid to lose the chance of working with him as well as his positive recommendation for my applications?

BTW, If it helps, the country is Germany, and the field is computer science!


texts: Should you conform to journal formatting requirements for the initial submission?

texts:
In my past experiences, I have almost never typeset my manuscripts according to the formats required by the journals to which I would like to submit. I leave my manuscripts as produced by the LaTeX article documentclass.

Recently I am wondering: Would such a behavior generally give handling editors a negative first impression?


texts: Google Scholar stopped indexing PDFs on GitHub/GitLab Pages

texts:
I self-archive my papers on a personal homepage hosted using GitHub Pages (sulir.github.io). Some time after the page was published, I had my papers properly indexed and displayed in Google Scholar. Next to each article, there was a link named [PDF] pointing to the file hosted on my site, or after clicking "All versions", I could see a link to the PDF on my website.

A few months ago, I noticed that all these mentioned PDF links disappeared. Furthermore, papers which were published only on my website disappeared completely from the search results.

Note that this problem is not specific to my site. I tried to search for other researchers' papers hosted on GitHub/GitLab and found out that Google Scholar do not display PDF links for them. I suppose it affects all files hosted on GitHub Pages and GitLab Pages (or at least that not using a custom domain).

To support this claim: I know the "site:" operator on Google Scholar is quite limited (only primary versions are returned), but anyway:
filetype:pdf site:github.io - 0 results
filetype:pdf site:gitlab.io - 0 results

Is Google actively blocking such platforms? Or is it related to technical details how these pages are served? I also tried contacting scholar-support@google.com, but I did not get any response.

Edit: I also checked for a robots.txt file - it is not present. Furthermore, traditional Google search can find these files, so this problem is specific to Google Scholar.

Edit 2: Suppose Google Scholar intentionally excluded the whole github.io and gitlab.io domains from indexing. What options do I have to have my PDF files indexed?


texts: Can I reuse the title of a previous poster presentation for my PhD thesis?

texts: I'm currently writing my Ph.D. dissertation, and I would like to use for my thesis exactly the same title as for one of my previous poster presentations.Is this OK?


texts: When citing a paper with a lot of authors; is it OK to shorten the author list in the references section?

texts: I want to cite a paper that has a lot of authors. The list of authors take up half a page in my reference list, and considering the prospect of paying for extra pages, I would like to shorten it, if possible. Is is okay to shorten the author list? If so, how many authors should be included?


texts:
I'm going to finish my undergraduate degree in June and from September I will follow a masters course in the UK. My field of interest is theoretical/mathematical physics.

I had considered applying for a PhD program in the US but I have observed that most graduate programs require following some masters courses and completing an examination before starting your PhD research. If I had known I would have applied for the whole graduate program but all deadlines were around Christmas. So I would like to ask some questions about this.

I guess this will depend on the specific program, but, would there be a possibility of doing some kind of fast-track?, i.e completing the examinations upon arrival and starting your research immediately. Or will I need to spend a year attending to these courses?
I believe this may be a common issue for European students. Does anyone know somebody in the same situation?


texts: Why do law journals require a CV when submitting a paper?

texts:
I recently learned that journal submission in the field of law is very different from other fields of study. In particular, I learned that when a person submits a paper to a law journal, the person must attach a CV.

This sounds to me the exact opposite of the purpose of peer review, where papers should be judged according to the merits of the paper, and not the person.

What is the reasoning behind this practice?


texts: What does a kick-off conference really mean?

texts: I sometimes find that a conference is named with an adjective as kick-off. e.g. kick-off conference. What does it actually mean? Does it mean the final conference?


texts:
I am interested in answers to this question particularly as it pertains to mathematics.

To be more specific, I am interested in using the passive voice in mathematical proofs as I feel that this reinforces the objectiveness and universality of the proof as opposed to the specific instance of the proof or my own self. However, it is my understanding that the first person plural present tense active voice is the norm in mathematics. I want to use this uncommon style in papers and other proofs for these reasons. However, I am concerned this may tarnish my reputation. Would it be looked upon negatively to intentionally employ a writing style uncommon in my field to express what I see as key values in the field?


texts: How much background material should a mathematical research paper include?

texts:
I've just written my first mathematical research paper. It proves some new results, which while not ground-breaking are (according to an expert in the field) at least somewhat interesting and surprising. At the moment however, I spend more of the paper developing the background material (giving standard definitions and constructions, proving standard lemmas) than proving the main theorems.

Is this a problem? The way I see it, there are several arguments for and against:

For:

The background material is "standard" in the sense that anyone who works on this class of problems would know the definitions or results in some form. However, this is at most a few hundred people, while if I include the background material my paper should be comprehensible to an advanced undergraduate.
Some of the background results are part of the folklore of the field, and I've never been able to find a proof of them in literature. While they are believable and not hard to prove, I feel someone should bother doing it. More selfishly, this is one more reason for people to cite my paper.
I don't know of any one reference which states all the background material I need, so if I don't include it my readers have to chase down multiple sources and I have to use conflicting notations.

Against:

It may be annoying to an expert in the field, although they could skip much of it and mainly refer to the background section for notation.
It makes the paper longer, although even with the background the paper is not long (13 pages).
From what I've heard, it is generally considered bad practice to restate definitions and constructions states elsewhere and to reprove theorems available in literature. In part this is because it gives the impression that I haven't read the literature. This is exacerbated by the fact that I only cite ~5 previous works, mostly for further reading or alternative presentations of some of the background.

I'd like advice on this from someone with experience writing such papers.


texts: Is it bad etiquette to contact a named reviewer?

texts: A named reviewer has made some suggestions, which I'm exploring, and I'd like to ask for input on a particular point. I have exchanged emails with this person before asking for input on the same work. Would it be appropriate to email directly to ask?


texts:
I just started my Ph.D. and am trying to participate in a couple reading groups. Often, these groups will cover 2–4 papers a week. Upperclassmen seem to have no issue staying up-to-date and informed, but it typically takes me 2 hours minimum to digest a paper and probably something like 3–4 hours to really start grokking the equations. How can I read papers more efficiently?

I assume part of the answer is just practice. After a while, I will get faster. But are there any habits I can form now that will help?


texts: Does PowerPoint presentation require in-text referencing if there is a written script?

texts: I have to make a PowerPoint presentation for one of my subjects and it requires a written script. I will be referencing on my written script including in-text referencing. However, I’m unsure when it comes to the PowerPoint if it requires the same in-text referencing or a reference list at the very end. The thing is there will be several references and the assignment requires specifically that only 8 slides are allowed each with the intended question I’m required to talk about in each slide. I’m confused because how am I meant to include all my references and at the same fit everything into that one slide. My referencing style will be Apa 7th edition


texts: How to deal with papers/authors that provide no details of implementation?

texts:
I was reading a conference paper relevant to my area of study, and I found it interesting - they did what I was planning to do anyways, and had some extremely promising results.

Now, I don't really believe their claims, as the success seems a bit extreme (300-400x speed up for an algorithm by switching from CPU to GPU). It feels like they compared optimized GPU code to an unoptimized CPU algorithm. Nevertheless, I am in general a reasonable person, so I wanted to see what they did and how they did it.

Unfortunately, the paper is very vague on the implementation used. There is a snippet of pseudocode that doesn't really share anything new (it is obvious). I emailed the authors and asked them for source code, if at all possible. The first author replied to me, and provided a GitHub link. The code in the repository is undocumented, and isn't exactly for the implementation I asked about anyways. It is for another implementation they did (also distributed computing).

I tried contacting the author with some questions, but he has never responded to me again... So that link has not been successful.

The paper doesn't have many citations, and all of them but one are self-references. I haven't found evidence that anyone built on these findings so far.

So: I figured I would just move ahead with my idea and not rely on their implementation. However, do I need to address this paper somehow in my thesis? I assume so - the committee could ask me about it, and how my work is different. But how can I compare my work to something else that I have no source code for? Do I take their word for it and compare my results to their published results? Am I allowed to criticize work that provides no supporting code? Probably not...

Should I pester the authors some more? They are probably sick of me by now.


texts: How to check whether a journal is still listed in Scopus?

texts:
In the time when I submitted a paper to a journal " Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology", ISSN:  2040-7459, they indicated in their website that the journal is indexed in scopus but now is not, so i checked scimagojr.com for information and i found that the Coverage is: 2009-2014.

How do you check whether a journal is still listed in scopus?


texts: Can I conduct independent research and publish a paper on a H4 visa?

texts: I am in the USA on H-4 visa (family member of a H-1B visa holder which is an employee visa), waiting for my Employment Authorization Document (EAD). Can I conduct independent research and publish a paper?


texts: Would graduate committee be more favorable to a barely passed grad course or no grad course at all while undergrad

texts:
I recently completely messed up a graduate level class I'm taking.

There is little hope that I will get a reasonably good grade out of this course, therefore I'm contemplating dropping it. Even I don't drop and get everything to 100%, I will wind up with around 65 at the end. Horrible.

If I drop it, my GPA will be preserved but I will have a lot of explanation to do to my recommenders for grad school, and it is kind of awful that it would most likely to be the first course I will take in grad school. I'm glad I found out how hard it was while still being an undergrad, but I'm not happy at all that so much efforts were spent for a miserable result.

Would grad committee look more favorably towards a barely passed grad course you took as an undergrad, or no grad course at all but reasonable gpa.


texts: PhD admissions: Overlap between B.Sc. and M.Sc. transcripts

texts:
As I wrote in my previous question, I am currently applying to PhD departments in the US (from a German institution). Beyond the language problem, there is another aspect that worries me:

I finished my degree back in March 2015 and then decided to fill the time from then to Fall 2016 (start of PhD programs in the US) by starting a 2 year M.Sc. in the same subject, which I planned to finish in 1.5 years (and will also manage to do so).

Officially I enrolled in that degree this September. Nevertheless, I "unofficially" started with the degree already during April 2015, by staying enrolled as an undergraduate and taking "additional courses" (i.e. graded courses beyond the required number of credits, which also do not influence the final grade). Since the Master and Bachelor degree were offered from the same university, they then simply approved all those additional credits as part of my MSc degree.

Now, my problem is that these courses are mentioned twice in my transcripts, once as additional courses of my Bachelor's degree and once for my Master's degree transcript. Do you think this could confuse the admissions committee? Should I maybe refrain from submitting the M.Sc. transcript since officially I am enrolled only from the Fall semester and the universities do not require transcripts from the Fall semester? Also note that currently the M.Sc. transcript does not contain any information about courses not included in my B.Sc. transcript. Or should I try to mention this somewhere (I am particularly worried about some universities which do not provide any opportunity to leave such comments/remarks).


texts: Thoughts on if it's possible to succeed in math @ PhD level w/o natural ability in quant reasoning?

texts:
As someone who has a relative deficit in quantitive reasoning (63%ile) vs. verbal (97%ile), but a strong interest in applied math, is it possible to be successful and competitive at the PhD level?

I am committed to putting in the effort, and I want to believe that this is possible - but it is very daunting.

EDIT1:

To flesh out the q:
I’ve taken Calc 1, Calc 2, Calc 3, Stat/ w Calc & Discrete Math. I got a B+ in the first 2, A in the third and 4th, and B in the 4th. Taking Linear Algebra/Real Analysis and expecting an A or a B. Calc 1&2 and Discrete math were taught at the liberal arts college I went to where I received a BA in the humanities. After my BA in the humanities I pursued ad-hoc post-bac in math so that I’d be able to apply to grad school. Calc III and Stats with Calc were taken at Columbia and LA/RA At Harvard.

I will say, I have improved dramatically since I first began taking math (w/ Calc I & II).

The test I took was WAIS-III full scale IQ test, designed to be taken with no preparation and administered at a world renown  neuropsych facility.

Regarding the GRE, I expect I’d be able to score in a percentile on par with other prospective applicants.

My plan is to apply to a terminal masters, ace that, and the go one to apply to PhD programs.

Lastly, I have significant adhd for which I was unmedicated in undergrad and may but may not account for relative split in grades before and after.

EDIT2:

I'm specifically interested in applied math. I want to pursue it because I find it challenging and interesting and immensely rewarding when I grasp a concept -- and I want to go into a field that helps people.


texts: Is it normal for an Associate Editor to keep the paper for over a month after the reviews are done?

texts:
I have submitted a paper to IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting on September 12th and after about 4 months the status changed from "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" to "Awaiting AE Decision". However, it's been around 40 days that the status has not changed and I haven't received a decision. I have contacted the AE twice politely through email (one month apart) and asked about the status but no response.

What can be the reason for this? Has anyone had a similar experience?


texts: What factors do I consider before deciding to ask my summer research guide for a recommendation for grad school?

texts:
I've currently finished two years of undergraduate study in physics. I'm at the end of a close to two month summer research program in math, at one of the best universities in my country. While I'd applied for a mathematical physics type project, the problem I was assigned has to do more with math and my job is to make a program in order to understand (the outcome of) this problem. My background in mathematics is not good, since the way it works where I study is that there is an extremely small math component in a physics degree and some extremely important concepts in math were excluded from this math component. While I have been studying independently, my course is generally lacking in rigour and depth in coursework so there always ends up being a lot of independent study that I need to do.

I wish to apply for a Master's program in Physics once I complete my undergrad (I'm doing a three year degree) and I'm considering applying to places in the UK and/or Europe. My background in math and my never having had formal education in CS certainly put me at a disadvantage during this internship. However, I am unable to decide if I should be asking this professor for a letter of recommendation in case my applications require one from a summer research guide or someone in such a position.

This is the only such research internship that I will be doing before applications begin (which happen in 2 months) so I do not have the option of asking anyone else for this specific position.
I'm also not sure how having only one summer research experience, and that too not in physics, plays out while I apply for a Master's in physics.
I'm also quite disillusioned at this point regarding just going forward with physics itself because it seems like I already have heaps and heaps of catching up to do and I'm feeling extremely overwhelmed and unsure of whether this is something that I'm good enough to do. I've always wanted to do physics and I enjoy learning and I understand that this is simply one summer, but I am quite anxious at this point.

I'm unsure of what to do, specifically regarding the recommendation. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.


texts: How can we promote better writing skills in academic education?

texts:
This question may be too wide or in some perspective perceived as unclear but covers a key issue (for me) in academia, namely, academic writing.

Students start their academic career with varying skills in writing. Often, and this the case in my department, there is no thought through progression to go from beginner through novice and proficient to expert level (the latter perhaps in graduate school) or some such scale.

My question is therefore how to get students to progress in appropriate steps through an education. In other words what is a reasonable progression of writing skills through an education. I am looking for suggestions of appropriate expectations for, say, an annual or semester wise increase in difficulty or complexity of exercises with the aim of learning academic writing skills through an education including graduate school.


texts: Do teachers generally refer to hard-to-comprehend books?

texts:
I have studied at 4 universities, and in 3 different programs.
I always observed that when asked for a recommendation for a  book to understand a topic easily and clearly, university-professors always referred to books that are not student-friendly, i.e. written for more advanced level than that of the student. Then, after several years, I discovered that there were easier-to-comprehend books available which could have helped me acquire better grades.
Is this intentional?
If Yes, why?
If No, is there anything wrong with the higher education culture of the country I am studying in?


texts: Will working as a Teaching Assistant as an Undergrad help for Graduate Admissions?

texts:
Graduate admissions in an EECS field, either Ph.D or Masters. I know research experience is the most important but is having prior teaching experience also desirable?

I want to TA (it seems fun), but I'm debating on whether it will be worth it or not if it won't help me with either job prospects or graduate school.


texts: Participants had to be rejected - where and how do I explain that in my paper?

texts:
I recruited N participants for an eye tracking study and had to reject the data of 3 participants because of bad recording quality or technical issues.

Where should I report that the data for 3 of the participants was rejected? Up front in the "Participants" section? Or later, such as in the Results section?
In the paper abstract, do I report the larger N, or the smaller N - 3 as the number of participants?

A useful piece of information is that I am still using questionnaire data for the 3 participants that had bad recordings. Still, most of the results are about eye tracking data. All the participants consented to having different types of data used in the study.


texts: Which problems would a blind person have when applying for a professorship?

texts:
One day, I spoke with one of my professors about if it were possible for a blind person to obtain a professorship in my university. This was motivated by thinking on the Russian and blind mathematician Lev Poyntriagin who made important work in topological groups and control theory.

So my question, which is hypothetical, is the following one: Suppose that we have a blind person such that is a very "good" researcher in his/her field in the sense that he/she has "good" articles in his/her field, which problems would this person have in applying for a professorship in a University due to his condition?

Ii is important to address the problem that this person would probably need an assistant for continuing doing his/her research and for giving lectures at some extent. So, will this be something that would could count negatively?


texts: How quickly do masters students and/or PhD students move from being TAs to RAs?

texts:
To support myself while studying, I'd find it ideal to be paid doing work or research that advances my credentials. (TAing is definitely educationally valuable for both a TAer and students, but I feel that, unlike RAing, it loses its value after a while).

If it is common for graduate TAs to eventually become RAs, then how quickly (if at all) does this take place for either masters (2-3 years) or PhD students?


texts:
Is it a bad sign in a department if most of those who do their thesis in that department also did their undergraduate studies there and most of those who get their PhD there either

are employed in said university

or more often than that

find themselves outside of academia roughly within 5 years after defense?

EDIT: The department is a European mathematics department. It is mostly focused on teaching. There are (maybe?) roughly 10-20 PhD students. The department has been around from 1959 I think. The country in question has a handful of universities.


texts: Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time?

texts:
Lets say an undergraduate student does some research in his/her free time and wants to write a paper about the findings. What are the rules regarding affiliation when the student tries to publish?

The student is required to include the university as affiliation, because he/she is enrolled in a program at the university
The student is not allowed to include the university as affiliation, because he/she is not officially hired/approved to do research under the name of the university
There are no rules, the student can choose
...?

I guess for graduate students / postdocs / professors it is mandatory to include the university as affiliation, as they get paid by the university to do the research they are doing!?


texts: How to best approach literature with low information content for good retention

texts:
My question relates to a certain type of opaque pseudo-technical prose that unfortunately is so pervasive in management literature. Authors with this kind of writing style like to make completely arbitrary distinctions between imaginary concepts which are devoid of any internal logical structure, inconsistent throughout the literature even within individual sources, and of highly questionable empirical value. Because of the low information density of such literature, I find it very difficult to retain and it is frustrating me to tears.

How can I approach this kind of literature in a way that allows for satisfactory information retention?

Again the most important characteristics:

Extremely low information density
Complete lack of academic wit
Inconsistent use of unclear terminology throughout
Distinctions which are introduced only to be violated
High noun-to-verb ratio which obstructs flow

To give you an example from a 'leading' textbook in this field:

  The financial perspective specifies the financial performance objectives anticipated from pursuing the organisation's strategy and also the economic consequences of the outcomes expected from achieving the objectives specified from the other [...] perspectives

While this is merely a badly-written, not necessarily difficult sentence, I find it very difficult to pinpoint the central statement or to paraphrase the sentence in such a way that a clear, concise, and informative sentence results. This is typical of the kind of literature I have described above.

To clarify: Ignoring this source -- which I would usually do with literature of this kind -- is not an option as this source is the official textbook for a class I am taking and which I would like to complete. So what I am looking for are little tricks which I can use to maximise retention of this thin material and to extract what's truly important, while efficiently ignoring the rest.


texts: How can I structure my undergraduate thesis to include two slightly different projects?

texts:
I did a research internship/ co-op in my final semester (our uni gives the option to choose between that and staying on campus for project work under professors). There, I was a part of two slightly different projects, one completed and another ongoing. I am finding it really hard to come up with a direction on how to include both of them in my thesis.

A bit of brief into the work done: The main problem was to design a Content-Based Image Retrieval System. It mainly consists of three parts- User Interface(web development), Feature extraction and Similar Image Retrieval (Deep Learning). For the first project, we designed and developed such a system after reviewing established papers. I was responsible for the literature survey and designing the user interface. For the second project, we are designing a system based on Ontology and Deep Learning both.

Although the problem statement is similar, both the parts have vast and different literature surveys. The proposed method, as well as conclusions, also differ.  While I was responsible for survey and website development in the first project(ie.software-based work), for the second one I am responsible for all research, design and development of the project (ie. research-based work).

What could be a possible coherent structure that includes both the projects in a single thesis?
Any help is appreciated!


texts: about academic proof-reading, what to do in this situation?

texts:
I have submitted an article for a journal in the field of CS and it has been returned and suggested to pass thru a professional editor or proof-reading (this is because my mother language is not English). So far what I did was to pass my article to some online paid tools such as Grammarly and Paper Rater, checking the suggestions, lifted the corrections made by these programs (and being careful enough to check it first with some English grammar books). After that I sent the new version to a past Professor from my master studies and he returned me back the paper with some corrections (he is an English native speaker, but he told me that he was not a professional editor so maybe there could be some mistakes along the way). With all these changes I submitted again the paper, which by the way in the reviews that I got it was accepted by three reviewers, but one of them mentioned that the English needed more work. So I waited, and again it was rejected by the editor pointing me that still the English part needs to be corrected.

So what to do? I have found that there are some proof editing services online, but how to know if they are good? I have not seen the reviews of any of them and well the prices are not so cheap also (ranging from USD 350 to even USD 700). The services that I found were:

Enago, https://www.enago.com

Elsevier, https://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices/languageediting/pages/howdoesitwork.html

American Journal Experts, https://secure.aje.com/en/prices

Wiley, https://secure.wileyeditingservices.com/en/prices/quote/new (this one its pricing form looks mysteriously the same as the AJS)

Any advice what to do in a situation like this? I would not like to submit to another journal because it passed quite a long time since this research started.


texts: How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants in the US?

texts:
For US universities, I believe electrical engineering professors earn money in two ways:

salary from the university, normally $70k to start
grants from researching projects involving different companies or other

How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants normally?


texts: Why do professors give 'updates' about their unpublished, ongoing research?

texts: Why do some professors arrange meetings to give updates about their ongoing work?  The updates are certainly exciting, especially for the other people who have been in the lab for awhile and was involved in the work in some small way.  But these meetings are also open to visitors, and visiting professors and post docs come too.  Isn't there a fear of outsiders (or even insiders) scooping the ideas and beating them to publication?  Although I highly doubt that, but I'm curious to know.


texts: How much emphasis should be put on programming ability in a letter of recommendation for CS graduate studies?

texts:
I have a little computer science background.  In one of my statistic courses we did significant data analysis with SAS and R coding.  I'm getting this professor to write a LOR for me.  He wants me to draft the LOR for him.

How should I write this letter so I don't come across as someone who confuses computer science with coding?

In other words, I want to convey how this course makes me a good candidate for a computer science graduate program.


texts: Are professors required to perform research as a necessity to teaching?

texts:
In my country, in order to teach mathematics (or any subject) to college students one doesn't have to have a PhD. Just a good academic record in the masters level of one's subject and one must clear a (reasonably difficult) national level teachers eligibility test in one's subject. Having a PhD and research publications is a bonus but not mandatory.

So my question then is - would it be necessary to do research once you have secured a permanent faculty position? By necessary I mean, will I face any difficulties in teaching or explaining concepts and ideas to students if I don't spend some time doing research, publishing papers, learning and asking new questions in a given field?


texts: Research topics that gain importance quickly

texts: For instance, there's currently a great deal of attention towards the theory of "spin glasses" in probability theory.  But how does a research direction gain its importance so quickly?  Does it simply start with one researcher who declares that this research direction should be given a lot of attention?


texts: Double or single quotation marks non-obvious citation in citation?

texts:
My university’s guidelines about say that quotations in text should appear in single quotation marsks whereas when the writer quotes something in that paper and I am using it, I must use double quotation marks.

Now what confuses me is that I am quoting some bits from a paper about someone’s lectures, and the author of the paper gives a footnote saying the text is edited and annotated, but he doesn’t make clear which bits he annotates or he has edited himself, although this might sound simple it is a bit confusing.

Where should I use which quotation marks?


texts: Are there any age limits (formal, informal, or guidelines) that schools use when deciding to accept someone into a PhD program? I'm most curious about the upper age limits. For example, will most schools accept someone in their 40's? How about their 50's?


texts: Re-did my experiment, how to properly mention it?

texts:
After doing and evaluating my experiment/model, I decided to redo it (changed some small things based on the results of that experiment), because I believe that this new way would give me even more insight into what I am studying.
How do I properly report this in a thesis? Specifically, where do I mention the description of the second experiment that was done?
The structure of my master thesis is this:
...
4. Experimental procedure
5. Results
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
Currently I have the original experiment/method in the 'Experiment' section, but I am struggling to find a good place to mention the second/improved experiment/method.
Any suggestions are much appreciated


texts: How to go about finding a Thesis advisor for Master degree

texts:
I'm currently enrolled as a graduate student pursuing my masters. I'm wanting to eventually pursue a PhD, but in order to do that, I believe I need to do a thesis for my graduate degree, and for that I need a thesis adviser. What would be the best way of going about this?

There is a long list of professors, and it would take a long time to go through all of them to see what they are currently researching. I thought someone might have some experience with this and be able to offer some thoughts.


texts: What should I do if wrongfully approved a manuscript while references were incorrect?

texts:
I submitted a manuscript to a Springer journal four days ago. After the system built PDF of the manuscript from the latex and image files, I checked the images but due to my tiredness, I forgot to check references of the manuscript. Unfortunately, I approved the submission upon request of the system. After that I checked and discovered the manuscript reference numbers are substituted with question marks and their system didn't correctly recognize my references from the Latex file.

I emailed the Springer contact information which is available in the menu of their system, but even though I emailed two times requesting for help with this manuscript, they didn't respond.
The state of the paper in the system is "pending editor assignment."

What should I do?

Email to Editor-in-Chief of the journal and ask what to do?
Wait and see what will happen? Unfortunately, I am in a hurry to have an answer from a journal because of my university administrative issues. One of the reasons I submitted to this particular journal is its fast average submission to first decision among JCR journals in my field.


texts:
I have been one of the co-authors of a published paper 8 years ago. In those years I was an undergrad student. So, I had no significant scientific contribution to this paper. I have just finished my Ph.D. and I do not want this paper listed in my publications.

Is it possible to remove my name from this paper via a correction?

Clarification: I have concerns about the quality of this work. It was carelessly written and the quality is low. So I do not want my name to come together.


texts: To do another Master's, already holding a PhD

texts: If a STEM PhD holder applies for a Master's in another STEM major, would this be an advantage or disadvantage in the eye of the admission committee?


texts: Copy/paste from the PhD thesis into my future publication

texts: I am writing my PhD thesis right now. I do not have any published paper by now, but a manuscript which will be published probably after or at the same time of my defense. Can I just Copy/ Paste some parts (discussion for example) from my manuscript in thesis? Would be any problem afterwards for publishing this manuscript? In other words, I am afraid if the reviewers of paper say that “you cannot Copy and Paste the discussion of your thesis, without rephrasing it”.


texts: What is the right place to acknowledge another (simultaneous) paper with the same result?

texts:
I'm refereeing a paper for a math journal at the moment.  As happens fairly often, some other folks came up with basically the same result independently at the same time, I think the manuscripts showed up on Arxiv a few days apart.

The authors acknowledge this (and of course this is perfectly normal and won't affect my recommendation on whether or not to accept the paper), but they do it at the very end of a long-ish paper as part of the acknowledgements.  This is not unusual but it strikes me as ungracious and an unnecessary hangover from the pre-digital-publishing era when these coincidences were usually addressed by notes added in proof.  Should I ask them to move it up to, say, the end of the introduction, where it is more likely that readers who might be interested in the other paper will actually see it?


texts: How to judge a potential graduate student based on a short interview?

texts:
In my department, we typically have many more applications for MS/PhD students than we have open positions, so it is a "buyer's market" from the professor's point of view. Each student submits a relatively standard application package of grades, a resume, any awards or trophies from various academic contests, papers or patents they've published, and recommendation letters. Based on this, a short list of students are invited for short (<20 minutes) face-to-face interviews either in person or via teleconference.
My typical questions include:

what kind of career do you see for yourself after graduation?
what about my research interests you most?
explain your particular contribution to your undergrad research project

My problem is that many students look superficially the same, and in the interviews it is difficult to move them beyond standard responses that they know I want to hear. My belief is that this is my fault because I am not asking the right questions. While most of the students I have eventually accepted ended up working out just fine in my group, my error rate is still well above 0%, both in terms of gems I let go and those who were admitted but didn't excel.
In my perfect world I would be able to probe just that one level deeper to separate the wheat from the chaff. Are there any good tips for how, in a 10-20 minute interview, to get a deeper sense of a student beyond their "on paper" appearance?


texts: Is it okay to discuss personal experiences or observations in literature review?

texts:
Is it okay to discuss personal experiences or observations in literature review as long as they are relevant and contribute to the presentation of the summary of literature?

In other words,
I am not intending to reference or cite any of my experiences as a source, but rather, I am seeking to use my experiences to essentially add to the research story.

For instance,

The Blah Blah theory by Smith (2010) suggests A, B, and C. I experienced event M and I observed event N, which may potentially be manifestations of the phenomenon described in the Blah Blah theory, with event M being a possible example of A and event N being an example of C.

Something to this extent.

Many of the papers I have read primarily use examples from their studies or hypothetical scenarios to explain models/theories, but I have only ran across personal experience examples in textbooks and not in academic review papers or theses.


texts: What happens if an author acknowledges a potential anonymous referee in the paper?

texts:
Let's say that you thank Professor X in your paper that you will submit to a Journal Y for providing you some insightful comments. It is never possible to know but let's assume that Professor X is the anonymous referee for your paper. This is possible since you make a list of potential referees (this is quite common for some journals).

What would be the reaction of an editor?


texts: Doing all the simulations and plotting, do I deserve an authorship?

texts:
I, an electrical engineering undergraduate, am currently involved in a research project, wherein I help write all the codes, run all the simulations, and plot all the graphs.

The paper is about to be submitted soon. I am hesitating whether to mention my desire to be listed as a co-author to my advisor.

Admittedly, I have no contributions to the idea and the theoretical analysis, as those are a bit too complicated for an undergraduate, or at least for me myself.

However, I have done all the implementations of the ideas and plotted all the resulting graphs, which, I believe, will be put into the paper.

In such a case, do I deserve an authorship (maybe 3rd or 4th)? Or it is reasonable to just acknowledge me in the Acknowledgement paragraph at the end of the paper?

If I deserve one, should I bring this up now or wait until I have done all my work?


texts: How detailed do I have to provide sources

texts:
I am currently writing my master thesis and I am extremely insecure where and when to give the sources. I tried to google for any recommendations but could not find anything that helps me.

How often do I need to give the source for information when it belongs to the same topic and I introduced the one and only document to this topic already?

For example I am referring to a technical standard and when introducing this standard I give reference to its standard document. Now I will give more information later on on this standard as I compare it to other standards. Do I repeat to mention the standard document? Since this document is quite long: Do I have to exactly say where in that document I found the information?

EDIT:
Also while we at it: I also give information about a the Java programming language. Can I assume that everyone knows this? Especially since it's the teaching language, the most widely spread language used in industry, most probably all my readers know it and it is very easy find out about this language if not. Do I still need to give the source for my information?


texts: Giving a talk on a different topic than what we discussed

texts:
I'm a postdoc in mathematics. I had a conversation with a professor after he gave a talk at my university, and he seemed interested in my ideas. I sent him an email the next day to elaborate on our discussion, and he replied by inviting me to give a talk at his university. I accepted the invitation.

However, I don't feel confident about giving a talk on the subject of our conversation. I wrote something about it in my thesis which I sent to him in my email, but it was just some undeveloped ideas (not central to the thesis), and I am certainly not an expert in that area. Is it okay to give a talk on a different topic?

He didn't specify what he wanted me to talk about, but we didn't discuss anything else than that, and it seems like our only point in common. So, I fear it would be awkward to give a talk on my true expertise area. Or is it?


texts: Should you justify or left-align text when writing?

texts:
I've written a 5,000 word essay on a topic of my choosing.

While reading through my writing, my teacher suggested I justify my text, as opposed to left-aligning it, as this looks neater.

I agree, finding it looks much better; however, after looking around, many people stated that the justification of text makes it much harder to read. Also, most of the sources I consulted, as part of research, used left-aligned text.

Is it just a subjective matter, or is there a standard?


texts: Should I switch to PhD or graduate with a Master's?

texts:
I am doing Master's in Applied Science in Civil Engineering. In my research I work with big data analysis which has gotten a fancy new name in past few years "Data Science". When I joined the master's program I didn't knew much about programming and had basic knowledge of statistical analysis. Over the period of about 2 years I learned a lot about data analysis in R language, developing data apps, creating interactive documents, etc. Although my research area had no direct relation with any of those things, I enjoyed learning them and using them in getting insights about data.

On the other hand, this journey has been very frustrating because I could get very little useful knowledge for my research study. My 2 supervisors have been very supportive and both have asked me to continue my work and switch to PhD.

One part of me long for getting out in the 'field' and have a 9 to 5 job with set amount of tasks everyday. But at the same time I am afraid to leave academia as this is all I've ever done in my career (worked as a Lecturer previously and now have graduate assistant positions). Money is another concern as I've not yet determined how much I would be able to get in scholarships/ grants during PhD.
I don't know how to keep myself motivated continuously during research, so there are always some days when I just don't do anything. I am really confused at this stage as to what should I do, complete my master's in next 4 months and graduate or go for a PhD. What are your thoughts/ experiences?


texts: Is it usual to 'cut and paste' from the 'Case for Support' into the Je-S online form?

texts:
I'm in the process of completing a UK grant application. As is usual, a 6-page 'Case for Support' is required, but there is also a lengthy online application process via Je-S (https://je-s.rcuk.ac.uk), which seems to require much the same information as in the CfS.

I understand that the 'Impact Summary' required by Je-S is supposed to be different from the 'Pathways to Impact' in the CfS (the audience for the latter is for the reviewing panel, the former is the general public), but other than that, is it generally acceptable to complete the Je-S form by 'cutting and pasting'?


texts: How to cite an ISO standard where I can only get access to the drafts?

texts:
I am writing my bachelor thesis and want to cite the ISO C++ standard. However I am unable to get my hands on a copy of the standard, since the library does not have a physical or digital copy. I do get the information I need from the working drafts, and there isn’t much of a change in the chapters I need.

Citing ISO 14882:2014 would be my preferred solution, but since I don’t have the document, should I cite a late working draft of the 2014 standard or even the current working draft?


texts: How can I re-use someone's mathematics thesis without plagiarizing?

texts:
I am writing a report for my master's research. One entire section of my report has been expertly written in someone else's PhD thesis, which happens to mostly take the form of a monograph on the subject.

I am not writing a research article, and they don't expect original research from me (or at least not much), but to be self-sufficient, my report needs to include some kind of quick overview of the subject. The problem is that now that I have read this thesis, I seem to not be able to more than heavily take inspiration from it.

Said thesis is available under the BSD3 license and I of course cite everything but I don't know how to approach what is basically copying a large amount of work.

My options seem to be:

Rewrite everything "my way" while citing the thesis. Considering it still would not be original work and would amount to just cleverly changing the original work wording and structure it feels intellectually dishonest.
Just clearly say "The following work is from X" and translate X exactly. This seems academically dishonest.
Forget about this section. Leave it alone for two months and hope that I forgot the thesis so that I can write with a clear mind and conscience.


texts: My student told me his mother has cancer, what do I do?

texts:
Today I saw that one of my students in the class was looking very sad. He sat down at the end of class and he looked like he was in a bad mood. After all the students left the classroom I called  him over. He told me that his mother has cancer.

I told him be strong and try to not think about it too much. But honestly, this was a big lie. How can I try to get him to not think too much of it?

What should I have said to him?


texts: What are the equivalencies between the higher education in France (Licence - Master - Doctorat) and the higher education in the United States?

texts:
In France the higher education is like this:

3 years of "Licence"
2 years of "Master"
3 years of "Doctorat"

But what about in the United States?

I heard that they have things called "undergraduate", "graduate" and "postgraduate". How many years do each of those take? And what are the equivalencies between these and the "Licence - Master - Doctorat"?

Note: If the answer to this question depends on the field of studies, then the field is physics.


texts: CVs: How should I include papers that have been accepted as abstract submissions to a journal, but still need to go through manuscript review?

texts:
To be specific, I've submitted an extended abstract to a special issue of an education journal (I'm a graduate student in STEM). Based on the reviews of that abstract, we've been asked to submit a manuscript in a few months.

This is certainly "acceptance" of some sort, but I'm wary of overstating this on my CV as there's still a chance they could reject in the manuscript review. However, as this paper is super relevant to an award nomination I need to submit my CV for, I'd really like to have it on there somehow.

How can I best note this on my CV?

(While this question and this question are close to my situation, they're referring more to paper manuscripts that have been accepted with some contingency.)


texts: Is it a good idea being involved in your advisor's consulting activities as an exploratory activity during your PhD? For how long?

texts:
I am a first semester PhD student. I am not paid by a grant or scholarship. My advisor has been including me in multiple teams and meetings in consulting jobs he is taking. Most of them are loosely related to my research topic.

They can help in certain aspects, such as:

Learning how to use some of the models developed at the research group (main advantage);
Giving me more professional experience;
Getting in touch with the needs of businesses;
Eventually having access to an interesting dataset (unlikely);

However, in spite of perhaps being an opportunity to learn some tools with a driver that is some real-world issue or problem, this involvement really worries me in some aspects:

It is not clear if it will advance my thesis. I find it unlikely that it improves my research project;
My advisor said the payment from these consulting jobs may help with financing my participation in conferences. I don't get paid as a consultant and don't know if I will be able to put this in my CV. It is time I don't devote to writing articles. I need to publish more to get funding, and this kind of work probably does not help with that. Of three consulting jobs, only one is for a public institution with a history of funding grants.

I consider this kind of an "exploratory" work, but I don't know for how long it would be OK to do this, when it is not clearly advancing my PhD thesis? Is helping your advisor in consulting work a good idea during your PhD? For how long, first year, second year? I intend to finish mine in four years.


texts: How can the choice of "where to publish" affect the potential number of citations?

texts:
I study petroleum engineering; however, I want everybody from different fields to express their opinion based on their personal experience.

Let's assume you have the following options: publishing in a journal that is not open access and has a high impact factor, publishing in a conference, and finally publishing in a journal that is open access and has a low impact factor. The only option that has ever been appealing to me is to publish in a reputable journal, simply because I don't think the other two are challenging enough and also the whole process of modifying your paper based on peer reviews will help improve the quality of your paper. However, I have recently stumbled upon some papers that had me rethink about the whole thing.

It seems to me as if for some reason open access publishing increases the potential number of citations. The straightforward explanation is that many more people will have the chance to see your paper and there is a huge chance that some of them cite your paper at least in their literature review. (I understand that if they don't have access to high quality journals, they might not be currently in the right setting to necessarily publish a good work, but in this context a citation is a citation even if it's by a poor quality paper)

Also, I do have a feeling that depending on the field you're working in, the number of conference publications can hugely exceed the number of journal publications. For example, petroleum engineering is extremely industrialized and  a huge number of fellows in the industry are only willing to publish in conferences. This is simply because publication in a conference is easier, it is fun to travel for free (!) and in general networking is very important to many of them. Also, I keep thinking that there a chance that some of these people, for some reason that I don't know of, have exclusive access to conference papers, but no access to journal papers or maybe they simply don't have the willingness to spend time on reading journal papers because they don't need to! What if my paper gets exposed to this huge number of people if I publish it in a conference, but only to a small number of researchers in the academia if I publish it in a journal.


texts:
I had the thought that I should run a computation on my document to see things like: How many times I cite each source, how many times I cite each author etc.
Then I thought that isn't enough.
What if I cite A_foo, B_foo and C_foo, but both A_foo and B_foo cite C_foo.
That is worth knowing.
A graph of citations between the texts that I am citing will revel interesting information.
For example nodes with out any parent, will generally indicate new and original ideas. While they may draw on other things, those things are distant enough from  my work that I am not citing them.
Nodes that have no links to any others, show that I am bringing in an idea from another subfield, perhaps.

This graph should be computable, I know google scholar maintains a list of almost everything I've cited, and for each thing lists who has cited them.

Has this been experimented with? Are there existing tools for the job?
If there isn't I might mess around with some python and put something together.

My references are all in bibtex.

I would like to construct a graph of the citations.


texts: How to prepare for the job market during a (pure math) PhD

texts:
First of all, I apologise if a similar question has been asked before, I did some research but couldn't find a satisfying answer.

I'm a second-year pure math PhD-student (in EU, if that matters) in a field with relatively few real-world applications (low-dimensional topology). I am already determined that I won't pursue an academic career after the PhD, so I will have to transition into the job market at some point. However, this frightens me because my field has no real-world applications, and I think that it might be a good idea to start expanding my knowledge to a different field (say, computer science or economy). This brings up the following question: How do you do this during a PhD?

To be more precise, let's say I am interested in financial markets and would like to steer towards a job in quantitative finance. What is the best way to prepare for this during my PhD studies? The following options come to my mind:

Reading books and self-study. However, do employers value knowledge purely gained from self-studying (without any degree behind it)?
Participating in relevant courses at my university. However, does that make sense if I'm not a registered student and therefore won't get grades?
Participating in online courses (such as Coursera, for example). However, do employers value the participation in such courses?
Not doing anything, focus on my PhD and start looking for internships afterwards (to get knowledge).

I am aware that in almost any case mentioned above, I will still lack any sort of actual work experience (which is probably going to be the biggest problem in finding a job). However, I believe that I still might be in a better position if I already have some theoretical knowledge about a job's broader field rather than no knowledge. Of course, if there are any other options that I didn't mention above please let me know.

I would highly appreciate any advice, guidance or personal experience on this topic. Thanks!


texts: Should I include my MSc admission in my CV?

texts:
I've been admitted to an MSc programme, however I will probably have to postpone it for a year. Now I'm applying for a job and I'm trying to update my CV a little bit. Should I mention my MSc admittance, or it has no value at all?

Thank you in advance for your time and answers.


texts: Self study vs pre requisite credit hours for graduate admissions

texts:
I am going through the websites of various mathematics graduate schools. Most graduate schools typically require approximately 30-33 credit hours worth of courses.

I have done only approximately 25 credit hour worth of courses, as I am a non mathematics major who has course work in both physics (primarily) and mathematics, and I most probably wish to enroll in a mathematics school and specialize in mathematical physics.

My question is:

  Is it possible for someone to be (seriously) considered at a school if one hasn't completed the required number of credit hours/pre-requisites? I'm asking this question assuming the applicant scores decently on the GRE and has self study under one's belt to compensate for the courses not taken. Hopefully, the self study could be corroborated in a letter.


texts: How to to deal with advisor's criticism of my writing?

texts:
I am about to finish my PhD, which means I have to write a lot. I am also a non-native English speaker, so my English sucks a lot, especially when it comes to formal writing. In contrast, my adviser is a very good writer and good writing is very important to him.

Whenever I write anything, from an e-mail that gets CCed or a draft or a paper, it attracts relentless criticism. I know that I am supposed to use this feedback to improve, but I am a bit tired of this “tough love.” I often get desperate and anxious because I feel I can’t write anything worthy at all. It causes severe writing blocks because whenever I am about to write a sentence, I immediately imagine it being totally destroyed and thrown into a garbage bin.

I do try to improve my writing by reading a lot of high-quality English texts and practicing on my own. I took an online course on writing and developed my own writing routine: at first, I plan paragraphs and the flow between them, write a first crappy draft, then edit into something tangible during multiple rounds.

I also try to incorporate my adviser's guidance. However, my writing morale is currently so low that it stalls my productivity. I do try to not take my adviser's criticism personally, which is quite difficult sometimes, but I am just so tired of being judged all the time. I know many students lack feedback from their advisers, but I am just fed up with feedback. Is there any way to get out of this hole?


texts:
After submitting a paper to a journal, the paper will be sent to a reviewer by editor in such a way the name of authors will be hidden for referee.
In some cases in the list of references, sometimes there exists papers belong to authors which cite them by authors in the paper. In other words, it is not difficult to extract the name of authors from the reference list, isn't it? How can this issue be managed (in the case of importance of not-knowing the name of authors for referee)?


texts:
Are there any drawbacks to dropping out of school and completing a GED instead of finishing and getting a diploma?

I am in the midwest United States and am currently unemployed. I would eventually like to have a job focused on computing and was wondering if getting a GED would let me start college early.


texts: Is it ok as a junior PhD student to review ranked conference papers?

texts:
I am a Ph.D. student in computer science and still in my first year. My professor just assigned a review task of a A-ranked conference to me in order to review research papers submitted by original authors (almost 8 papers).

So far, he wants me to take over the coordination with my fellow Ph.D. colleagues in my department to finish this task asap. So I have to distribute the papers with the right colleague according to his/her research interest and experience.

But, since I am still in the first year (even I am doing well 'as my colleagues say' and published two research paper in peer-reviewed conferences), I want to ask if is it common and normal thing in academia to let junior researchers review high-quality A-ranked conferences research papers, and whether the conference editorial chairs know about this conduct from assigned committee members as external reviewers.


texts: Would it be a good idea to drop out of my Bachelor's program and look for scholarships to restart abroad?

texts:
Currently, I study BA in Mathematics, and because of some problems related to the environment I found myself in, I cannot complete my studies in this place.
I studied most of the courses, except Topology, Fields & Rings, Real Analysis 2, Numerical Analysis, and some elective courses. In general the education level here is not that good, so I have decided to drop it and start again in another (good) place.
But, if I do this, I don't know if it will be good for me and for my journey. I plan to move from the Middle East either to Europe or the USA, to study there and start the bachelor's again. Moreover, I'm 23 years old now. and I don't know if my age will cause a problem.
Any advice?


texts: Should I get a letter of recommendation from my mother, who is a famous researcher in my field?

texts:
My mother is a quite famous researcher (she has a PhD) on the field I want to do a PhD in. She works on the industry (not academia). I helped her on successful projects. She knows more about my work than my professors since we have worked much longer together.

Is it a good idea to ask for a recommendation letter from her? Since our personalities are very similar she can point out the high probability that I will be successful like her?


texts: Advice for getting a paper published as a highschooler

texts:
I have possibly found a somewhat novel method of proving a famous theorem, and after some research, I found a variant of the method published as a paper. So, naturally, I reached out to the professor who wrote that and asked him for opportunities and I am waiting for a reply.
If he declines my request for help on publishing the paper, what other ways is it possible to get a paper published as a person who isn't affiliated with a university/ Has major connections?
Other than that, the process from an outsider's perspective looks a bit tedious right now, but what are the general things to keep in mind while approaching it?
My educational details are that I've passed out my HS this year.
Note: I've checked with some grad students, the result is indeed correct. The current state of whether they'll help me follow through with publishing however is a 'maybe'
Update: Got in touch with the prof and sent the tex file containing the paper to the publisher which he had published too. Hopefully gets some acknowledgment :-)
Update 2.0: Seems to have been done already (See here), not sure if there exists a paper on this but that killed of the novelty.
A word from me to all the answerers: Thank you all. Turns out that my proof was posted before on MSE and I do not wish to publish something already done before. However for the actual question which I had asked, I have received many great answers and I honestly can not objectively choose a single answer which have helped me the most since all of them provided value to me in one way or the other.
As is most relevant to my individual problem of me publishing this result, I will accept Kostya's answer as they were the ones who found that the proof was done before. Again, thank you all.


texts: How to answer the question "Why do you deserve a scholarship?" when applying for a scholarship?

texts:
I'm in the process of applying for master of "Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems" in VU university. The university requires me to write a letter describing why I deserve a scholarship. I have written this letter multiple times, but every time I read it from beginning to end I feel it contains pride words and I think this will not help me to get scholarship.

Can someone help me to write effective letters like this?


texts: What's a polite way of confirming if a position offered is official?

texts:
I'm an undergrad student, and I intend to start assisting a senior PhD student with her research work. I'm really interested in the work (definitely don't want to let go of this opportunity), but I'm unsure if the position being offered to me is official, i.e. if I would be a research assistant or something, so to speak.
I was told by the PhD that if I'm to accept, she will have to seek permission from her PI / keep the PI in the loop - which makes me feel that it's probably official but I'm not sure.
What's a polite way of asking for the necessary clarifications?


texts: I am uncomfortable about students taking pictures of the blackboard, because I don't like appearing in them

texts:
It seems to be the trend that fewer and fewer students take notes in class. Lately, and particularly this semester, for some reason, I have been noticing that several students take pictures of the blackboards with their phones in lieu of taking notes.

While I'm not necessarily against this, if it helps them focus on class, I'm uncomfortable about being in a million pictures by these students. I'd like to speak up, but it's already a few weeks into the semester, and I don't want to make the students feel uncomfortable either. Is there anything that I can do to resolve this without creating discomfort on either side?


texts: Typical phases of student experience/motivation in academic education (e.g. PhD)

texts:
I have heard and experienced anecdotally that students often go through various phases in academic education, be it undergraduate or postgraduate, starting with enthusiasm and excitement, then running into a dip, before climbing out again and feeling more motivated, although later fatigue may set in. This can occur over the course of a single year, but also over the course of a degree (see, for instance, 5 Phases of PhD Motivation Explained). There may be some connection with the stages of culture shock, and for some students traditional culture shock might be compounded with the aforementioned phases.

Have studies been carried out on the phases students seem to go through and are they as widespread, even universal, as experience would suggest? References to particular studies would be appreciated. I would also be interested in references to effective coping strategies for recovering from the first serious dip, which may otherwise derail a student's studies.


texts: Is it possible to complete a Master's degree while working full-time?

texts:
Generally

There's a question which asks is it possible to get a PhD while working full time? The responses to this were essentially "yes but say goodbye to anything except school and work" or "only if you're a prodigy".

My first question then: can I complete a Master's degree while working without killing my social life? Browsing the course names gives me the impression that at least 10% will be review from my undergraduate degree.

Specifically

I'm interested in deepening my knowledge in my area (software/computer science) and am in NYC, where Columbia U would be a great option for this. I have completed an undergraduate degree and since a PhD seems like a stretch, I am considering a Master's degree.

My job has a 40 hour work-week but has flexibility with timing.


texts: Is it appropriate to acknowledge StackExchange in my MSc thesis?

texts:
So, I'm just now finishing my master's thesis. When thinking about who helped me aside from my official supervisors some of the StackExchange fora (especially Stack Overflow and TeX) came into my mind.
I asked some questions in these fora but most of the time I was just looking for information in older posts (and finding it most of the time). Now one the one hand it feels weird to me to acknowledge a site I browsed to, e.g., find out a certain programming command (like I would not really think about acknowledging Wikipedia). But on the other hand I am really grateful for some of the quick and professional answers I got from StackExchange users.

So what do you think, should I acknowledge StackExchange in my thesis?


texts: Graduate student I was working with left

texts:
I am currently an undergraduate, wanting to apply to PhD programs this upcoming fall. So I started talked to a CS professor doing research in deep learning and he set me up to work with one of his graduate students, so I started to work with the grad student and only communicated with him, not the professor. I recently came up with a new idea for a model to be published that the grad student thinks is a good idea, but he told me he has left working with the professor and no longer is working on this research.

So I am at a crossroads on what to do. I have an idea that was told could be good, but I have no idea what the process looks like for self-publishing and expected that the grad student would be there to help me. I thought about reaching out the professor, but I am not sure what to say, since the grad student left, the project is essentially dead I think so it is more of just me having a new idea and not sure how the professor could help with it.

Any advice on whether I should reach out to the professor or just try to work on it on my own would be greatly appreciated.


texts: PhD Qualification on a CV: Should I list it as ongoing in a separate section?

texts:
I'm just finishing my PhD but don't yet have the qualification.

I'm applying for a post-doc and need to construct a CV.

Should I include my PhD as "ongoing" in a separate section to the rest of my education? Or can I just indicate it as part of my education, but with a note like "2011-present" or something?


texts: Self-plagiarism to re-use figures and key phrases on poster

texts:
I have submitted a conference paper to an IEEE conference, which will be published in IEEE Xplore, once I have appropriately finished presenting this paper in either a lecture or poster setting (of which I was selected to do the latter). Most questions regarding self-plagiarism on the net are in the context of selecting snippets of text or figures from previous papers.
However, my question is, is it self-plagiarism to utilize key figures/phrases from the paper that I am presenting in my poster? As in, I am presenting research by poster that will later be published in a conference paper (which we needed to submit to get accepted to present at the conference). I have made figures and statements in this paper, which would be nice to use in the poster.
Must I start from scratch? Thanks.


texts: Is there a place to review journals or conferences?

texts:
There are plenty of journals and conferences in my research area. And there are things we could look up in advance, like impact factor, journal rank and so on.

But I would like to find a place where I could put my personal experience with the journal (or conference).

For instance, in Amazon the customers can review and criticize the books they read. In my country there is a site where you can complaint about any company that failed to satisfy the customer (a flight company, a magazine, a bank, etc).

One could argue that this would be unfair to the people that invest their time as editors or reviewers, but in my opinion it is a two-way relationship. Things like waiting one year without an answer from editors, poor review or evasive answers, is a disrespect to a research group who invests a lot of time as well.

So, is there a place where one could respectfully give a review and share their experience with a journal or conference?


texts: Can I withdraw a paper from IEEE conference after signing the copyright form?

texts:
I have submitted a manuscript using figures from google. I have cited the web pages from where I have found the figures in my article. The figures are actually figures of apparatus. Later I learnt from IEEE website that IEEE discourages usage of figures from web pages without prior permission which I have not taken. But I have submitted the paper and copyright form to IEEE conference. As the date for camera ready and pdfxpress is already over I can't edit my manuscript now as told by the conference chair.

What should I do now? How may I withdraw it from here and publish it in other place? Is it possible to withdraw after signing copyright? Is it worth requesting the conference chair to open the pdfxress for few minutes so that I may upload my new manuscript there? Please help me.


texts: Roadmap and possible pitfalls for a first-time software author to publish a paper on a Python package?

texts:
I'm not a software developer by trade but I am in the process of writing a Python package which models an experimental apparatus and physical process and generates simulated data. Results can be used to compare to measure data and extract physical parameters, or to predict how an apparatus will perform in order to modify or optimize it.

I'm aware of Github and Python Package Index and will make the software available through Github and hopefully PyPI though the latter may be a challenge for a first time package author.

I will then want to submit a paper for publication in an appropriate journal explaining the details (math and physics) of how the calculation works and demonstrate its agreement with measured data which would then refer to the software's source page(s).

Question: What kind of roadmap should I prepare for myself in order to do this smoothly and efficiently, and what are some likely pitfalls someone publishing software-papers for the first time may face?

I should note that there are one or two legacy packages that perform a somewhat similar set of functions, but they are roughly a decade old or more and available as compiled .exe files rather than open-source packages. I'm not using these or reverse-engineering them, but there will none-the-less be some overlapping in function.


texts:
Problem

I am now applying for the Ph.D. program in electrical engineering.

Now I have a 3-page (2500 words) SOP that should surely be reduced to 1.5 to 2 pages. Now the structure of my SOP looks like

  Paragraph 1: Why I want to do a Ph.D. (0.2 page)
  Paragraph 2-5: Research experience A (1 page). "A" is the research that lasts the longest time and contributes to publications.
  Paragraph 6: Transition from A to B, C, D, E (0.2 page).
  Paragraph 7-10: Research B, C, D, and E (1 page, each about same length)
  Paragraph 11: Why I want to the University. Which professor I would like to work with (0.2 page).

My issues is that the more important experience ("A") is not directly related to "B", "C", "D", and "E". But for sure they are all in the realm of electrical engineering. Therefore, simply aligning paragraph 7-10 does not seem to be a good idea.

So how do I structure my SOP. Any input is appreciated.


texts: First time preparing and teaching a course

texts:
I am a PhD student and I have been given the opportunity to teach a course over a three weeks period (2h per day, 30h in total) at an institution overseas. I feel competent in the field of the course I will be teaching, but in practice it will be my first time preparing and delivering a course (which is not the same as doing tutoring, or being a TA).

What strategies can I put in place to be an efficient teacher? In particular, I am afraid not to have enough materials to cover 2 hours of time for each lecture (but then I realize that if I am thinking that, it means I'll probably be waaayyy too fast, so that's not good). I am also afraid of being unable to read the classroom, and of losing the students' interest too quickly.

Of course, I can prepare a lot of material to cover, then just go on my way, see where I end when the two hours are over, and start from there at the next lecture. But this might be too unstructured for the students, and I have very little time between two lectures to reorganize the material, since I am teaching every day for three weeks.

If you can share with me tips from your experience, I'd be very happy.


texts: Can an advisor use student's data for journal publishing without prior consent?

texts:
A master's student did research under an advisor.  As part of the research, the student had collected and processed a lot of data and finally published the thesis as well. After a few years,  the advisor took a small portion of said data from the master's thesis and published a paper. The student is not a co-author nor was prior consent sought to use that data. However, the advisor added the student's name in the acknowledgment section. Is there anything wrong on the advisor's side? After all, the advisor had also actively guided the research and collection of data and may feel they have a right to use that data without the consent of the student.
The student played no role in publishing the paper except for the fact that a part of the student's published master's thesis data was used for this journal publication. The student was hence not added as a co-author but was acknowledged.


texts: Pros and cons of doing PhD in a research group with a high number of post-docs?

texts:
What are the pros and cons of doing PhD in an experimental/theoretical research group with a high number of post-docs?

For example, if there are a lot of post-docs, this means that the group is doing research on many different problems, in general. However, this also means that the P.I. (i.e your advisor) will have much less time for you, but since there are lots of post-docs, it might be possible for the student to make it up with the post-docs. However, it is much harder to assess a post-doc than a P.I.


texts: Is there any value in publishing screen-cast lectures?

texts: I am getting close to finishing a PhD in applied math (next May), and I'm starting to think about job applications next fall.  I taught for 5 years as a GTA (graduate teaching assistant), but I still feel like my teaching portfolio could use a boost since the last 2 years of my degree I was funded on a research grant.  One idea I cooked up was to create and publish a series of Khan-academy style "screen-cast" lectures on various interesting topics in mathematics.  Since this could potentially consume a fair amount of time, I'm wondering what the benefit of it would actually be for an application to say, a teaching post-doc or tenure track at a SLAC (selective liberal arts college) or (not R1) public university.  Obviously if they're good, it demonstrates an ability to clearly organize and present material, but would anyone actually look at them if they saw it on a CV or in a teaching statement?


texts: Is time from acceptance to publication purely a matter of space issues?

texts:
While it is clear to me why time from submission to acceptance can vary a lot (given that this involves that most fickle of creature: the reviewer), it is less clear what determines how long it takes for an accepted paper to be published.

Is this purely a matter of all accepted papers being put in a queue and then the journal selects from the top until they fill out each issue (possible going a bit further down to make the page counts fit)?
Or is it common that papers are "pushed" forward in the queue based on various factors (and if so, which factors)?

If it makes a difference, I am mostly interested in math journals, but I am also curious about possible dependency on the field.


texts:
I have organized several times some international conferences on my field (computational chemistry), where accepted proceedings are afterwards evaluated again for it submission to a special issue of a journal. Now I am thinking that I could create a journal for all those submission, even if at the beginning we have no impact factor (ISI) or if people are not so interested, but I would like this idea very much.

So I wonder of you can point which steps should I follow for creating a journal. I think I could attract many submissions, and I have servers where I could host it, but do not know the other technical and/or legal details.


texts: Conference presenting: stick to initial paper submission or include recent improvements?

texts:
I submitted a paper for a conference. While the paper got submitted for publication in the proceedings, the feedback seemed quite negative. The main criticism was that the model I have designed uses too many simplifications.

I am giving a presentation at the conference in about a week and a half. Since I submitted the original paper I have achieved a significant amount, and have been able to improve my model and deal with a number of the simplifications.

My question is: for the presentation content, do I have to stick with the work that is going to be published, or can I also present some of the more interesting, newer work?

For reference, my field is engineering (renewable energy)