texts: Is it common for an undergraduate thesis in pure mathematics to prove something new?

texts:
What do undergraduate students in mathematics do for their thesis, if they have done one, besides expository or applied math?

I was thinking that the kind of research they do is something applied, say using math in social sciences or a problem in one of the less rigorous natural sciences, or discussing such a problem (that's what expository is, right?).

To me it seems something non-expository or non-applied is an original contribution to mathematics, something that PhD students do.

I attended some pure math undergraduate thesis presentations. I was quite surprised: Did they prove anything new? Never bothered to ask due to fear of looking stupid. Would it be out of the ordinary to expect an undergraduate proves something new? If they did not prove anything new, what the heck are they talking about?

It seems like if it's not new, they are giving a lecture. If it's new, that seems like a PhD-level accomplishment.

I mean, do math undergraduates frequently prove new things?


texts: How to get permission from Google to use Google Scholar Data, if needed?

texts:
As you maybe aware, Google does not provide any API for Google Scholar product and despite lots of request still there is no interest from Google to provide API for it. So, I am currently working on a product that can utilize publicly available information from Google Scholar page and render them so researchers and academician can use the data and embed them in their own website.

However, while I am developing the system, it happens sometimes that Google blocks my request to fetch scholar page (I parse HTML page). So, I am thinking that there might be a mechanism in their side that blocks request from applications -rather than human. So, it may suggest to get approval from them.

Do you have any idea that:

Do people need approval/permission from Google to use its Google scholar information? The product I am building is probably donation based for basic version and paid for some other version (not yet confirmed).
If people need permission, how should they approach them? I searched the entire scholar page here and found nothing related to get permission. Also there is no forum for Google Scholar according to this place.

Thanks


texts: How to deal with an author who worked on an analysis that never made it into the paper?

texts:
I have come across the following situation a couple of times:

After an experiment has been designed and data collected, the first author of the paper wants to ascertain whether a special analysis would work. So he asks a colleague to help/do this special analysis, which requires significant thinking and effort. Alas, the results are either inconclusive or don't add anything useful to the conclusions of the paper, so they never make it into the manuscript.

Should the colleague who worked hard on the specia analysis but produced no visible output be included as an author? I would think so, but I wonder how others would deal with this situation.


texts: How to deal with a lazy postdoc colaborator as a PhD student?

texts:
I wonder how to politely handle the following situation as a PhD student. Any suggestion will be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help you could provide.

I was working for almost one year in modelling some results on the work of another PhD student visiting us. He is supposed to be first author.

After a very hard and intensive work I got some positive results and we realized that part of his data was wrongly interpreted or wrong.

That student left time ago and returned to his home country and I sent him the results in order he could prepare a first draft. Aftersome times with no answers I wrote him again asking for the status of the draft but he had stopped because he was close to defend his thesis.

He became a doctor , continued in his lab, and I sent him the results again, as suggested by my supervisors.

After many times of asking him for a draft along several months he sent a document with many figures and almost no text or explanations. I've been kindly asking him to fill it with some information in order to work on something. However he has done anything for longer than 3 months. I feel he is not interested in publishing it anymore. He is always answering 'I will send you something'but no answers.

This work has been extending for almost 2 years already. Other co-authors and supervisors are tired of the situation but they seem not to care about. I have talked about this with the coauthors but not evolution has been observed. I am frustrated as it is been delayed so long and It is not my paper but my work. I am really worried.


texts: Paper stolen by a co author and published as his own

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  My research work stolen and published as his own by the co author without my consent

My research paper was stolen by a co-author. I have reported her but the head of my institution is defending that teacher. I have all the mail correspondences between the unethical co-author and myself along with all the data that I produced as part of my contribution.

How do I go about proving my side of defense? My faculty are trying to prove that she has done this as a part of her MTECH, which is completely false!

What do I do?


texts: Can I use less-known (but defined) abbreviations in section titles to get rid of very long expanded titles?

texts:
I'm in trouble with long section titles in my thesis. For example:
I have defined the following abbreviations in a special section before the table of content, i.e., all abbreviations have been already defined before their usage in the table of content:

CRS: Centralized Reconfiguration Supervisor
DRS: Decentralized Reconfiguration Supervisor
FP: Forcible Path

A section's title is supposed to be something like:
expanded form: Functional commutativity of centralized reconfiguration supervisor, decentralized reconfiguration supervisor, and forcible path
abbreviated form: Functional commutativity of CRS, DRS, and FP
Obviously, the expanded form is so clumsy, however, these abbreviations are not frequently used in the text as @aeismail noted here:

In general, the only abbreviations that should be used in "headlines" and titles are "standard" ones that are normally (or at least very frequently) written in their abbreviated form.

Put differently, these abbreviations are parts of my contribution, with which research community are not familiar.
Which option is the best practice?


texts: I absolutely hate my PhD and I don’t understand the purpose of it

texts:
I am in the fifth year of my PhD and seriously depressed. In my first year of graduate school I was not funded. In my desperation for funding I chose an opportunity that came my way even though I did not like the topic. The research I would say is pretty mundane, I was providing experimental support for an FEM group. I did t have any freedom until the end of my 4th year. Also my advisor was the co-PI and the project was not in his area of expertise and he had no clue about the work being done. Whenever I get lost and ask him for advice, he would commonly uses the phrase “Do what the industry sponsor wants, keep him happy ”. I literally felt like a contract employee and not a PhD researcher. As expected the work did not yield any papers. My lab mates working on other topics (areas of my advisors expertise) get to present at academic conferences and are writing journals. When I point out this fact I get chided for comparing myself with others and  that my work is “unique”. At one point my advisor himself said that the project was ill conceived. You can understand my frustration.

Now I am depressed, lost, and hardly do anything. I wake up, go to the lab and pass time. I absolutely hate my “thesis”, I don’t have anything meaningful or useful for my future career. I don’t even know the purpose of my thesis topic. initially I was scared to leave, now I feel it is too late to leave.

please advise me on what to do? Thanks.


texts: Is there an aggregated up to date list of published articles?

texts:
I'm thinking of an efficient way to stay up to date with recent news from given field (especially in mathematics and its subfields, but it perhaps does not matter for the question itself). Since there are hundreds or thousands of journals, then there are preprint archives such as arxiv.org, it seems quite inefficient to keep checking all of these separately.

So my question is, is there some aggregated service that would allow one to follow up new articels in given field(s)? This question How to 'stay up to date' in your field? seems to be related, and it mentions Google scholars. It just does not seem to allow much of a filtering, so I was interested in some alternatives. I was considering creating a service that would fetch data from different sites for such purpose, but I don't want to do anything that already exists...


texts:
In the above table, we see that 4/10 countries are from the anglosphere. I am surprised to see Ireland and New Zealand not making into the list despite having well-developed economies and higher education sectors.
Switzerland and South Africa are also missing pieces.
China and Japan's popularity surprised me as China is not a developed country and doesn't have that many jobs to offer, and Japan has an unfriendly immigration policy.
Why are some countries more popular destinations for higher education than the other?


texts: Am I allowed to use draft chapters of an early version of a book this way?

texts: I am writing a book and am seeking feedback on different chapters before submitting for final publication.  Can I use the draft chapters as conference papers or at visiting lecture seminars?


texts: Why is it reasonable to believe that this student handed in a term paper from another class?

texts:
I have a student who has handed in a term paper from another class, only changing the title page, and he claims that he only put the due date for the current course's term paper on the cover sheet of the old term paper to remind him of when the new term paper was due. He claims he was then cutting and pasting (appropriately, of course) between the old paper and the new paper and must've gotten the two files mixed up. Of course, the "wrong" file (old term paper with new due date) was "accidentally" uploaded to our learning management system and he did submit the "correct" file two days later (that was extremely poor quality), but only after I pointed out the problem to him.

Now he is claiming I am unreasonable because I don't believe him and have failed him for the course. We are about to go to a grade appeal at the department level. I was wondering if everyone on here could provide suggestions for why it is reasonable to stick to my decision, despite the student arguing very vigorously that I'm unreasonable, unfair, and even irrational for not believing this was "just an honest mistake". (Given my university's fondness for "student friendly" I may not be supported very vigorously by the committee.)

Any help is greatly appreciated.


texts: A year in industry and back to a postdoc in a different field

texts:
I am finishing my PhD in a Statistics department, but my thesis is basically Math. I want to spend a year or two in the industry and then apply for a postdoc in Stats. However,..

It will be hard, so I wanted to collect some information on how it can be done, e.g., what steps can one take in advance to prepare the ground for returning. I was trying to Google stories of this kind, but usually people transition back to academia when they want to go to a grad school. They rarely go back to academia after a post-PhD industry job. Do you have any stories/thoughts/experience to share?
My past academic record is all over the place. However, I have co-written and published a few papers on the topics I've worked on, which hopefully proves that I have a strong interest in academic research in general. To show my dedication to statistics, I have looked up some topics that I find interesting and that I have some ideas on, but I would need some guidance to work on those. (As a matter of fact, if someone wants to work with me on their idea, that's fine too, for now.) Networking with faculty hasn't proved fruitful, because they are mostly looking for 1st/2nd/3rd year PhD students that will commit fully, and not 5th years who are saying directly that they are leaving for the next year or two to make money. Any tips on how to incentivize a faculty member/postdoc to work together in this weird "I'm working a real job but also doing academic research when time allows" setting?
How hard is it these days to land a postdoc in stats? I know that the humanities are having it really tough, but considering that many stats/math/CS PhDs go to industry without looking back, surely there must be some space left? (I can say that the guys from previous years at my department did pretty good landing those, but they were laser-focused on statistics from the beginning.)


texts: Acquaintance is paying friend to do his coding for an Ivy League master's degree. What should I do?

texts:
I'm relatively close to someone who is currently attending an Ivy League graduate program.  He believes he has it all made in life and yet here he is paying one of my friends to do his coding assignments and projects.

It is an online program, so it makes getting away with this even easier.  This situation only benefits both of them, but it's just bothering me.  I just hate the idea of someone bragging about being in an Ivy League graduate just to pay someone else to do his work.  Should I just drop it or report the student?

In response to questions: no, I am not a student myself.


texts: Using open source code in solving course exercises

texts: Is it normal in computer science courses that one can't use open source code to solve exercises on courses even if the licenses of the code allows to use the code? I was confused as I used some code, gave source where I found the original code but still the lecturer said we have to learn to do the code on my own.


texts: Why do the prerequisites to enroll in PhD programs vary between research groups in Germany?

texts: I have been trying to get a Ph.D. position in Germany so I follow the advertising sites frequently. A few days ago I saw a position from a group of X Institute. I wrote the professor about the requirement and he replied a bachelor is a prerequisite and he encouraged me to apply. Today again I saw an advertisement for a position from a different group from the same institute and the professor said a master is needed as a prerequisite for becoming a Ph.D. student. My question is why the requirement varies from group to group whereas they come from the same institute? Can a professor or supervisor can play a role to waive master if he wants?


texts: How to find out if a journal is predatory?

texts:
I am considering the website of this journal and can't really decide if it is a predatory journal or if it is merely a very obscure journal.  As far as I am aware, it does look to be a real journal and there is no mention of article processing charges, but I cannot find information on the impact factor of the journal and cannot seem to find much more information about it apart from what is on its website.  Do people have any advice on being able to tell when a journal is a predator journal or any signs to look for?
I have checked on various lists of predatory journals online and cannot find it there, although I assume that just because a journal is not on any lists does not mean it is not predatory.


texts:
I am printing a poster for presenting at a conference. I would like to print on cloth so that I can carry it easily in the suitcase.

In many print shops I have to select which cloth exactly to print on. There are many kinds of clothes: satin, canvas, flag, net, etc...

Which material both allows a high printing resolution (so that the details are clearly visible), and remains good-looking after transporting it in a suitcase?


texts: How much time before (possible) effect of US sequester is felt on grant funding?

texts:
When a US institution that manages grant programs (such as NSF) suddenly sees its funding cut, as will be the case after the US sequester takes effect in March, how long does it take for that cut to trickle down onto grant programs and grants?

Namely: Can grants already started get cut (like, they tell you you'll lose 20% funding for the last year)? What about grant programs where the selection was already announced, can they make changes to that? Or will it “merely” impact the number of grants they can fund from now on?

(I know that the government will move, and though the situation is stupid, it's not as much of a dead-end as it is pictured… this question assumes that the sequester goes in effect, and not deal is made to lessen its impact.)

This question was spurred by today's PhD Comics:


texts: What precisely does "ISI-indexed publications" mean?

texts:
I'm currently looking at the requirements of a (Comp. Sci.) job that seems to only take into account "ISI-indexed publications". I'm vaguely aware of what ISI is and so forth, but I'm struggling to find a definitive list of ISI-indexed venues, or what "ISI-indexed publications" means.

Or at least I hope it doesn't mean what I think it does ...

I found the following list on the Thomson Reuters' page as a journal list for science. However, the list doesn't contain any conferences (even the "big ones" like WWW, (P)VLDB, SIGMOD, etc.) and a few journals I would expect to be on there aren't.

Would I be correct to say that any Comp. Sci. venue not on that list is not "ISI-indexed"?

Is this "ISI-indexed-only" restriction common?

(If so, seems quite antiquated really. Not being able to mention good, highly-cited, highly-selective conference papers sucks.)


texts: When to withdraw other faculty applications: conditional offer letter or contract?

texts:
I've heard one should let search committees know when you've accepted another offer.  What is the right time to do that?
If I have an offer letter that is conditional on getting a work visa (which I think should be no problem), and I accept this offer, should I wait until I actually sign the contract?
This would probably mean putting several departments through the entire interview process with almost no chance of my actually accepting an offer.


texts: Writing an REU recommendation as an Instructor

texts:
I'm a new full-time faculty member in the process of finishing my PhD. Because I have not yet graduated, Instructor is the only title I feel comfortable using until I defend.

A student has asked for a letter of reference to an REU program, and I've become concerned that a letter from an Instructor may not be as highly received as a letter from some rank of Professor. In particular the REU is a research position and Instructor doesn't make it clear that I've been involved with research in any capacity. (I did in fact mentor 6 REUs while a grad student and several more independent study undergrads, and think that this particular student is a fine candidate.)

I should note that I was asked for a letter based on having this student in class, and I feel I can write a strong letter for this individual on their qualities as a student. Another faculty member (Assistant Professor) is writing a letter based on an extracurricular project.

Two questions:

1) Will my Instructor rank cause problems for this student? Of course my letter will be less highly regarded in general due to my newness, but does being an Instructor present an additional hindrance on top of that?

2) If so, is there anything that can be done in the letter itself to mitigate this? Or, should I counsel the student to pursue a different recommendation?


texts: Should I do Master or PhD to teach in community college?

texts:
I currently have Bachelors in Economics and Math, and I'm doing full-time research in Economics right now.

My initial plan was to do PhD in Economics and work in academia, but after doing research, I realized that I'm not very interested in doing research in Economics, but rather I'm interested in teaching Economics at a post-secondary level.

However, I do know that professors in major universities are usually very researched-driven, so I was considering teaching in community college level (or PUIs, as commented by @NMJD). However, even to teach at community college level, at least Master in Economics is required, if not PhD.

While I'm open to the idea of doing Master in Economics, I feel that it doesn't have much value, other than the certificate of graduation itself, because Masters in Applied Economics is very similar to advanced undergrad Economics that I've taken (at least when I looked at their courses). I've already taken multiple PhD courses as undergraduate, and doing research in Economics in my workplace is generally considered equivalent to completing Masters. Financial burden of enrolling in Masters program is undesirable as well.

My question is: Should I pursue Masters in Economics, knowing that I'll repeat many courses that I've taken as undergraduate while putting myself in a debt? Or should I go to PhD, even though I understand that PhD is a very research-intensive degree?

NOTE: I've read similar article
Can you teach at a community college with a master's degree?.

Although it is similar, it doesn't not quite answer my question, as my question is Economics-specific, and I'm comparing the option of doing Masters or PhD to teach in community college.


texts: How to associate an arxiv paper on Google Scholar with the rest of my account?

texts:
So I'm just beginning my PhD and I want to associate this paper that I put on arxiv with my Google scholar profile, but I don't see how to do this.

Is it possible to do so?


texts: Referring to individual chapters in a review of an edited volume

texts: I have to write a review of an edited volume and wonder what the best approach would be to cite individual papers, to which I refer. The review is for a bulletin rather than a journal and the format is quite open. I want to give enough info that the reader can locate any chapters of interest but think that putting the full titles in the main body will take up too much space, whereas adding a reference/endnote for each chapter seems like overkill. There are 12 chapters overall and I plan to refer to most of them. The field is computer science.


texts: Guidance with publishing a conferences paper alone

texts:
I'm going to try and make this as concise as possible. I need to recap my education quickly. I finished my bachelor's in EE 2012. Between 2012-2016 I was a journalist and learned to code and started a software company. I finished a one-year CS conversion master UK 2017 and now I'm doing a CS masters in NYC. I'm trying to do research in NLP and focus on low resource languages.

I'm trying to publish a paper or two in a conference but no idea how. I tried contacting professors in my department and they don't seem to be interested in working with master's students. I'm trying to apply for research internships in the States but it is very competitive and just got rejected because my background is very different and lacks research experience as I didn't have any chance to do any research in my undergraduate because that just doesn't happen where I come from.

That is why I think my only option is to publish things by myself. I can come up with solutions to problems that are interesting to me after reading a paper and I can implement some of those solutions. The way I do this is I read a few papers about a specific problem see what they recommend for future implementation and try to see if I can do it or if I have another idea.

What I would like to get advice on is:
How would you go about writing the conference paper? It seems to me that there are many different requirements for each different conference. Should I try to publish a conference or journal? Is there a way to quantify a significant finding? Would be easier for me to do a review paper or build a new dataset? Is there another way you think I should approach writing a paper as in how do you usually find a problem and solve it? Would you advise against doing this and try and find a supervisor somehow?

My goal is to research in NLP whether alone (not preferred), in academia, or to do it my Ph.D. but it seems like my profile is lacking big tech or research experience in comparison to students from Europe, States, China, and India.

I hope that there is someone who can give me some sort of guidance here.


texts: How to explain a missing grade card in unofficial transcript for online graduate application?

texts:
I'm an international pre-final year undergraduate student. My undergraduate degree consists of 8 semesters and I'm currently in the 6th semester. I'm hoping to apply to US mathematics graduate schools this Nov-Dec, for Fall 2021. I missed a final exam in the 4th semester due to medical reasons and was supposed to re-appear for it in May 2020. However, now that re-test will probably be scheduled in December due to COVID and I won't get the results before the US application deadlines this year.  Moreover, I was not issued any grade card for that 4th semester.

Now several US math graduate programs say that they only require unofficial transcripts in the online application and that hard copy official transcripts can be submitted later. So would it make sense to apply anyway with only my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th semester grade cards, and with the 4th semester grade card missing? Would I have to explain that one missing grade card in the online application? If yes, how? Say, would a letter from my head of department, explaining the situation be helpful? I will hopefully get my 4th semester results by March 2021 though, so I think I will later be able to send the official hard copy transcripts in time, in case I get an admit.


texts: Abstract submission versus full research paper submission

texts:
I am searching for good conferences to submit my hard working. Therefore, I found a conference where they ask authors to submit their work as abstract only consisting of limited 1200 words. The abstract should include [Introduction (300 words), Methods (300 words), Results (300 words) and Conclusions with Contributions (300 words)]. At this time, I already have my research work in 8 pages in IEEE format.

The conference is B rank according to ERA2010 requirements. So if I decided to submit my work there and got accepted, will it be less influential than being accepted with IEEE conference that publishes authors work in 8 double column format papers?


texts:
The following sentences is in the Submission Guidelines of a journal:

  Once a paper has been accepted for publication, the authors are assumed to have the copyright transferred to World Scientific Publishing Company.

I have an accepted paper in this journal, but I have not been requested to submit  the copyright to the publisher yet. Must I send a copyright to the publisher?


texts: Is it academically dishonest to submit the same project to two different classes in the same semester?

texts:
I overheard a student who said that they would use a project done in another course that semester as the final project in an entirely different course. (Let's call the original course Course 0 and the second course Course 2.)

I know it's bad practice to submit work to a class which had been submitted in previous semesters, but I've never heard of anyone turning in the same work to two different classes concurrently before. (Perhaps because opportunities to do so are rare?)

In any event, my initial feeling is that this is dishonesty, but I can't put the reason why into words.

So, is submitting the same project to course 0 and course 2 concurrently dishonest?

For the record: the project involves coding in a certain software (not for the sake of coding, it's just a means to an end), I do not know the name of the student who expressed their intent to do this, but I do know the professors of both courses. I'll edit this section with more pertinent information should anyone want it.

EDIT For the Comments:

The code really is a means to an end, and I furthermore would not describe either course as a programming course. The idea is to perform data analysis on a dataset of the student's choosing.


texts: PhD problem: a new student has the same idea as me

texts:
I am in second year of my PhD. I have a plan for my second paper, I did a full scale literature review etc. But then I put it on hold to finish my first paper.

A new student started this term and is coincidentally pursuing the idea for my second paper!

I highly doubt we can both have the same paper.

I know that co-authoring is a possibility. But, is there grounds for me to argue that she should find a new topic, instead of me. As it will mean that I wasted a large chunk of my first year on this topic.

We plan to use data for the same country, which means that we will ultimately end up with the same statistical model, because the data available is not the best, so there is not much leeway on what model I use.

From what the student has told me, her statistical plan (is the same as mine), which is also the popular method in the literature field.


texts: How to rectify no publication after PhD graduation?

texts:
My situation is very strange.

I have completed a sociology PhD from a well-regarded university. As I was a part-time candidate and holding a full-time job in the private sector, I guess my supervisor did not impress on me the importance of publishing. In addition, the university has no requirements to publish in order to graduate (though all academics there, including my supervisor, have strong publication records).

I cannot blame my supervisor entirely because I should have known better (but doing it part-time outside the university environment and in a role that puts no importance to academic research are the main reasons for my current situation).

I am now realising that lack of publication is severely restricting my career aspirations. For instance, I want to pursue university teaching (one of the main reasons for me to do my PhD) but I have not had any luck so far because most roles require "a proven / demonstrated record of publication" etc. Another example is that I want to establish a credible standing for myself and a list of publications would certainly help in this regard

I can point to various "research" I have done in my current role but they don't count as research in an academic (peer-reviewed) or formal sense.

As I have graduated now, I am no longer affiliated with any university. To make matters worse, my supervisor is mostly out of country doing research etc., so he is largely uncontactable. I can use my company's name, but it is a small obscure firm in the overall scheme of things. My PhD is in the field that I am currently working in, so I can get some credibility in that sense.

I have thought about open access publishing (in reputable journals) and turning my PhD into a book but unsure about them.

QUESTION: How do I rectify my situation of no publication?


texts: Is it harder to get into PhD programs for some disciplines compared to others?

texts: Anecdotally it seems much harder to get into a good math program than a computer science program. How true is that? Are there any statistics available on the selectivity of different disciplines?


texts: Are you required to declare past conflicts of interest?

texts:
This question is triggered by the recent allegations about Willie Soon failing to declare conflicts of interest in his papers on climate change. It got me wondering about situations where an obvious conflict of interest existed in the past, but doesn't exists anymore at the time where a paper is published.

Are there generally accepted practices on when to declare past conflicts of interest, or is this entirely up to each journal? Requiring disclosure of decades-old conflicts of interests does feel a bit silly to me, but making them disappear if they just happened shortly before one worked on a paper seems rather problematic as well.


texts: Is there a correlation between submission date on arXiv and citations?

texts:
July and October seem to be the months with the highest number of papers submitted, and August the month with the lowest number, in average. I wonder if there is a correlation between the month of submission on the arXiv and citations gained, regardless from other factors.

The plot shows the number of submissions per month [source: http://arxiv.org/stats/monthly_submissions ]

I can speculate at least one reason why this correlation is possible.
I imagine that, for example, in August and December most of researchers (at least in Europe and Northern America) are on vacation, and therefore less people are following new submissions in these months. Perhaps this could result in a different rate of citation, just because papers submitted in this period have not gained a critical mass of "early" readers?

Is there, in your opinion, a correlation between submission date and citations gained by a paper on the arXiv?
Extra question: is there a correlation instead between publication date (on a journal) and citations?


texts: How to make a great faculty interview presentation?

texts:
I have a faculty job interview coming up in a few months.
I am trying to prepare the presentation that includes my past (PhD and postdoc) research and future research. I am looking for some sample presentations or guides and tips online , so far could not find any. I would be grateful if anybody could point to me some good faculty interview presentations and guides or tips that could help me crack the interview.

Another question is: I have been a postdoc only for five months, therefore my postdoc research is very limited and major focus is on PhD research, will this affect the interview negatively?


texts: My results are different from my original poster title now. How I should prepare the poster?

texts:
I am a graduate student in an interdisciplinary psychological field. With the help of a paper I have read today, I have realized that a result of mine is now invalid: I missed a covariate in my analysis and when I include it, my result is non-significant. Fortunately it was not that much about the main point of my conclusion, but the non-significant term happens to be in my abstract title (and my abstract is printed on the abstract book of the conference now!).

I told this to my advisor and he said: “you cannot control every single thing, it is not that important”. But I have controlled it and it did affect my results, and I actually had that particular covariate in my analysis while I was writing the abstract and my advisor told me to exclude it.

I do not know what to do now. I cannot pretend like the result is still there; that conference is very important in my field and I do not want to regret it later. I do not think that it is ethical. I cannot pretend like I did not know that particular covariate is actually important for my analysis, because I have read the paper! I do not know what to do if someone asks me: “why you did not include this covariate?” I do not know whether it is okay to change the title and exclude some results from the poster, even when the abstract (in the abstract book) says another thing.

What should I do? I am very confused and hopeless.


texts: Are non-computer science PhD students using ML/AI techniques expected to publish in top CS conferences like NIPS/ICML?

texts:
I am a second-year Ph.D. student where my topic is focus in the domain of civil engineering. However, I am also utilizing several machine learning/artificial intelligence in my application to achieve my end goals. While I understand that publishing in top computer science conferences such as NIPS, ICML is definitely a plus to my resume and achievement, I'm wondering will it be out of my research focus? From what I understand those paper submitted there are focused on producing theoretical contribution in the computer science domain and it would take quite some time to produce such contribution and I feel like I will drift away from my research topic. I'm asking this as I'm sort of being forced to submit there (aka supervisor pressure).

Any suggestion?


texts:
I would like to check if my mathematics paper is worthy of publication.

Is there any guide on the quality and form required for paper to be of publication quality?

Is there organization which will evaluate my paper for free?

How should I determine if my work is substantive enough to be grounds for pursuing PhD thesis?


texts: Quitting a PhD program after four years and applying elsewhere

texts:
I am a fourth year graduate student at a tier 1 research university in the US. I had lot of hiccups in getting started with my research. Our program is rotation bases where you rotate with your potential PIs for a semester (or more). I decided to rotate with Prof. A and continued it for another semester. However, in the summer of the year I was transitioning into my second year, I went to Prof. B to do my last rotation. Prof. B had a more concrete project that I worked on and I was super productive under him so I decided to join Prof. B's lab permanently. However, Prof. A was not happy about this since I had done two rotations with him.

In my third semester Prof. B decided to leave academia and moved to industry. I was given an option of quitting with a Masters or joining another PI. I chose to find a new PI. My research focus was in a particular area that only Prof. A and Prof. B studied. Our department is anyway too small with only 6 faculty who work on completely different areas. So, after being without a PI for almost a semester I decided to approach Prof. A to see if I could join his lab. He was not convinced initially. I had to provide detailed account of things I had worked on with Prof. B. In one of such early meetings, he told me "I don't have to do this. sufficient number of students have graduated from my lab and I have a tenure now.". But eventually, he decided to let me in his lab. Since we both didn't have a concrete project in mind, he suggested I write a review article on the project I had previously been working on. That did not go well. I wasted a semester studying that area in depth, but went in a tangential direction and couldn't finish the review. However, a new project came up through a collaborator and I was assigned to finish it. However, there were very limited questions that could be answered and my progress left him dissatisfied. I was told I could do 'cool things' with the data, without ever being told what these 'cool' things could be given the limited nature of data. In this process, I got another project to work on which I saw as being my main contribution to my field. However my PI has always found my methods to be 'too complicated'.

In this entire process, my realtions with my PI has always been deteriorating. I have been told "I am smarter than you", "I am not interested in your sloppy work", "Don't waste my time with your bullshit". My requests to talk about our method have lately been ignored.

I wanted to work in academia and I want to finish my PhD. However when I think about the relation I share with my PI has forced me to wonder if I even finish my PhD, his letter of recommendation will be a negative one, probably killing my career anyway. My post sounds toxic, but so has been my relation to my PI. I had to seek professional counselling a year back. With the relation we share currently, I don't let it affect my work. However, I am also not at peace with it in my mind.

Hence, I am considering quitting and applying elsewhere. However, I will need letters of recommendation from him to do that. How do I present my case? I have a decent GPA in undergrad/grad schools. In these four years, I was also able to enrol for a Masters in a related field in the same school.


texts: Two potential ways of presenting results, is there a preference?

texts:
In a short paper I am writing, I have developed a fairly complex model. To express it in a highly watered down fashion, the purpose of the paper is to study the variation of a Variable Y with an independent Variable M.

My current way of presenting the results section is as follows:

Show the most important result upfront: plot M vs Y. However its difficult to understand the variation just from this plot, because of the complex nature of the underlying physics. Hence..
Describe the fundamental physics in the domain as a function of time and space c(x,t,M). Plot c(x,t,M) as a function of x and t. Describe why c(x,t,M) makes sense from a fundamental physics perspective. x=space, t=time.
Plot C1(t,M). C1(t,M)=F(c(x,t,M)), and explain why C1(t,M) makes sense
Y(M)=F1(C1(t,M)). So Tie #1 and #3 together, and describe why it makes sense and its implications.

The reason why I chose the above logic structure is because I thought I should present the most important result (plot M vs Y) first. I also learnt about this method of presenting results in a management consulting competitions, and I thought it makes sense at that time.

However, I am starting to feel that maybe this is making it more complicated and is not the way academic journals work. I tried looking at some results, but I am not able to directly relate their work to mine.

I am thinking of an alternate structure

Describe the fundamental physics in the domain as a function of time and space c(x,t,M). Plot c(x,t,M) as a function of x and t. Describe why c(x,t,M) makes sense from a fundamental physics perspective.
Plot C1(t,M)=F(c(x,t,M)), and explain why C1(t,M) makes sense
plot M vs Y. Explain why it makes sense and the implications of the trend.

Do you think that the second logic structure is better?

Hope this make sense, or I can explain more..


texts: I got a review that I cannot understand. It has a number of English grammatical and spelling errors. Also, technically it does not make any sense to me. How should I proceed? Can I somehow ask for clarification?


texts: Is there a stigma in computer science toward too many postdoc positions?

texts:
I am wondering if there is a stigma attached to holding too many soft-money positions when looking for a tenure-track position in the area of computer science.

In computer science, postdoc positions were uncommon, but after the Dot-com bust and a general trend toward not hiring tenure-track faculty in the early 2000s, there are now many more postdoc positions in that discipline.

Do people who hold too many postdocs (or too long of a postdoc) get disadvantaged? Do they acquire a stigma of "This person can't hold a tenure-track job" or "This person bounces around too much" or "This person can't do independent research and relies too much on soft money"?

I know of a handful of faculty members who have been hired after multiple postdocs and visiting faculty positions so it seems that it isn't a permanent roadblock, but it could be a path I might not want to go down just in case it is.


texts: Why would a senior PI need to take a part-time job at another university?

texts:
A senior professor works at one university, has his own lab and research group(s). Recently, he took another part-time job at a better university. So why do professors need to take part-time jobs? Is it because his main university started to pay half salary or is it because he needs extra funding to work together at another university? Or just because he lacks funding and seeking opportunity somewhere else?

Does this professor reserve to right to ask the new faculty to employ or joint pay his research fellow? Or this is more usual that he needs to pay his staff with his own funding.


texts: Is there a term to describe when students are in one classroom for most of the day?

texts:
When I was in elementary school, I was in a single classroom the entire day. I would have different teachers come in and give classes, but we as students wouldn't change our classroom. When I was in high school, we were in two classrooms, first half and second half of the day.

There seems to be a term for every single possible classroom arrangement, but I haven't found one for this. I've seen it once called "Homeroom," but the Internet seems to disagree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeroom amongst other places). Any suggestions?

Additional context: The company I'm working for is building a school software so terminology is critical when initially setting up courses/classrooms etc. We've spent a ton of time researching terminology, but this one has us completely stuck.


texts: How to answer a supervisor's email that includes and presents another professor to you?

texts:
What do you do when professor A wants to present professor B to you and does that by including professor B in the same email with the formula "I have copied him/her into this email so you can make contact with him/her directly"?

I'm a little uncertain if I should answer separately to thank professor A and to present myself to professor B, or if I should answer with the same email to both. If the latter, what is the best approach to use?


texts: Grad student asking department for increase in stipend

texts: If a graduate student knows that they are on the lower end of the stipends offered to their cohort, and if they are performing as good or better than their other cohort members (as measured by grades, number of publications, number of current collaborations, etc.), then is it acceptable to ask for a higher stipend? If so, how would you go about this?


texts: Convince coauthors of reducing self-citations

texts:
I am writing a paper jointly with coauthors from another research group. In their contributions to the paper they include a lot of self-citations, many of which are (in my opinion) irrelevant.

How do I convince them that this is bad style and that they should reduce the number of self-citations, without creating an antagonistic situation between our groups?


texts: Pros and cons of informing students about the outcome of their course’s evaluation

texts: Is it a good practice that a university informs the students of a class about the final outcome (that is, the overall score of the instructor based on the evaluation forms) of their own evaluation of a professor or a course?


texts: Should I dress up for conference banquet/gala dinner?

texts:
I am thinking about what should I bring to the conference.

Normally, will people dress up (like full suit) for the dinner?

p.s. I am in CS domain.


texts: General equivalence of physical chemistry II and undergraduate courses in quantum mechanics

texts:
I am a chemistry major with an interest in mathematical physics. I am planning to take physical chemistry II (currently in p-chem I) and I am wondering if physical chemistry II can be considered equivalent to a course in elementary quantum mechanics. The course is primarily related to quantum chemistry and includes solutions for the Schrodinger equation in multiple dimensions, as well as particle in box situations, etc. I have also taken partial differential equations, so I am wondering if it would be feasible to jump into a qunatum mechanics II course?
My question is a bit convoluted, so forgive me, but anyone who has taken chemistry and physics: will I glean enough QM from p-chem and PDE to take a dedicated quantum mechanics II course (topics in QM II being perturbation theory, entanglement, etc.)


texts: Do I have a chance at an academic career in North America or Europe?

texts: I have two masters, topped both of them, and published articles that have been widely cited, though they date before 2013. I am struggling with my PhD because of a lack of support from the faculty and funds. I have been too busy surviving after that. What can I do to maximize my chances of an academic career in Europe or North America? Is my age a crucial factor?


texts: Does putting an article I wrote on university site conflict with IEEE publishing rights?

texts: I have published a few months ago a paper for an IEEE Conference, the paper got published and it is indexed in the IEEEXplore. I have received an email from a research coordinator at the university that I am currently working on, asking for the online printed version of it. In the affiliation of the article was written the name of this institution, but I wonder if they are going to put in to be available online for free at the university webpage. In that case, that would not cause a problem with the publishing rights of IEEE?


texts: Increasing speed of paper peer-reviewing

texts:
When reviewing a paper for peer review, I consistently find that I spend way more time on a paper than if I were just reading it for understanding.

How can one increase the speed at which they review papers, without compromising on the quality of the review?


texts: Presubmission inquiry sent to multiple co-editors in the same journals

texts:
Those editors are from different institutes with different interests. I am not sure who would be interested. I can only send presubmission inquiries directly to the co-editors' institutional emails.

The journal does not have an editor-in-chief.

Is this a bad practice? Shall I disclose that I am sending the inquiry to multiple editors?


texts: Asking for a site visit as a master's applicant

texts:
I'm currently an undergraduate, and I will finish my bachelors this coming spring. I've been looking at graduate programs, including one physical chemistry masters program in the Amsterdam. I found out that I'm visiting Amsterdam in less than a week, and I am now wondering if it would be appropriate for me to ask the program contact person if I can visit the campus and maybe talk to a professor or two about their research and the program.

I'm concerned because it is short notice, and I haven't started any application with the school. But, I would like to know if the school is a good fit. I don't live in Europe so this is my only opportunity to visit the campus in the foreseeable future.

Would it be appropriate for me to ask if I could visit the college/institute? Also, should I mention a few projects that caught my eye and ask to meet the professors in charge? If so, how would be the best way for me to phrase it?

Thank you for the input.


texts:
I'm told there are conventions in scientific papers around graphs. I'm publish material for a general audience based on a the findings of a scientific paper (unpublished) and having a disagreement with the author of the paper about how graphs must be presented.

I'm specifically asking here about the conventions for scientific publishing. I'm very aware that conventions outside scientific papers for graphs are much more open, I take my visual data cues mostly from Edward Tufte's books.

I'm being told that displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater accuracy in modelling data and therefore should be absent in the case of this carbon sequestration modelling since it's not the results of measurements? (I would have thought significant figures on axis, axis spacing and fundamentally the caption explaining the data source and assumptions were more relevant to that)

I'm told that titles are a no go, captions only. (I've found a Uni spec online for science papers saying titles are mandatory). I'm told titles are rare in journals.

Is there any right or wrong to these matters of convention or is it just opinion?


texts: Are author names typically visible to reviewers for paper award decisions?

texts:
I wonder whether author names are typically visible to reviewers when they decide paper award recipients. (i.e. non-anonymous process)

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science (especially machine learning and natural language processing), and English-speaking venues.

Ideally, I would like to have a list of awards labeled with anonymous / non-anonymous.


texts: What are good reasons to write my thesis in English?

texts:
I'm studying in Germany. German and English are not my native tongue, but I prefer to write my thesis in English for the following reasons:

My English is better than my German (not a good reason).
My supervisor's native tongue is English (not a good reason).
I'm analyzing the socio-political situations in an Asian country. Although the official language there is not English, the bulk of the existing literature review (written by natives and non-natives) is in English. Also, English is virtually the only foreign language learnt and used over there. It's just easier to find materials in English; thus, if I write my thesis in German, it would be a laborious task to translate any cited materials. These are probably good reasons.

Could you suggest a convincing way to word my reasons as to why I prefer to write in English? I'm filling a form of demand to write in language other than German, and they only give a small space (a line) to state my reasons. How about the following?

  The existing literature review is mainly, if not almost entirely, in English; the country's second language is also English.

Is this convincing? Thanks.


texts: How should one 'pitch' a research idea to someone in another institution?

texts:
And moreover, how to do so outside of one's own discipline?  I realize the burden of entry is necessarily high in this kind of case, but if I have a literature search, discussion, and conclusion written, followed by tentative methodology proposal, would that be enough to 'shop around' to researchers in relevant fields?

(background: I am working in the humanities, although before switching tracks I'd gotten a BS in cognitive and perceptual psychology, with 3+ years of experience working in a human factors lab.  However, having kept up with other fields after switching to humanities, I've noticed some implications in a biomedical paper; I've emailed authors in and around that topic, and while there's some interest, no one's in a position to experimentally follow up.)


texts: If one got good feedback from a double-blind review, is it ever possible/ justifiable to find out who the reviewer was?

texts: I got some impressively lengthy, detailed and mostly positive feedback in a double-blind peer review for a paper. Is it ok (or even possible), or is it against best practices (and considered taboo), to try to find out who the reviewer was - just in case you can get more feedback and share ideas related to the topic at hand?


texts: Replacing tech reports: can we put good undergrad dissertations in arxiv?

texts:
My department requires dissertations from all honours students (being England, that's basically all of them).  Some of these are extremely good, even though they are written by undergraduates.  My department for some years created a tech report series, which included undergraduate dissertations with high enough marks and the agreement of the supervisor, but now this system has gotten lost in a morass of web redesigns etc.

Is there any new norm for archiving good undergraduate dissertations?  We were thinking of just putting it in arxiv.org, is that considered acceptable?  We are writing an article and want to cite the dissertation for the full implementation details.


texts: How do I politely decline a research grant?

texts:
I am working on a research project that the university and my PI talked me into applying for a research grant through the university, and I got it. I'm happy that they considered my part of the project worth the award, but now I have concerns and want to decline it, mainly because of the presentation requirement.

The presentation will take a lot more time and effort than I thought it would.
The project involves things that I know nothing about. I know my piece, but it's my understanding that I need to present on the entire project.
It will be an all day thing and I can honestly make more money at my job that day than the grant is worth.

I'm thrilled they awarded me the grant, and I want to stay on for the project, but I want to politely decline the money.

Edit I didn't really want to apply for the grant, but my PI wanted me to and the stipend I'll get directly offsets a small bill from the university, so I applied. I found out that I get the money after I present my work at the end of next semester, long after I paid the bill. Nowhere in the paperwork did it mention the delay, otherwise I would not have applied and just worked on the project for free.


texts: Is it plagiarism to use an online tutorial as the basis for completing a programming assignment?

texts:
Let's suppose that you were assigned a programming project, which is considered from your teacher/professor, not easy. However, you manage to find an online tutorial, that guides you step-by-step through the process needed (so the source code you have written doesn't have much difference from the one on that tutorial).

The final solution is based on this tutorial, but you have also added your own information, corrected some minor errors, etc. I don't know if this matters, but you know exactly what every single line of your code does, you are able to explain and answer complex questions, etc.

Is that considered plagiarism, and if yes, why? If not, how can somebody support that on a teacher/professor?


texts: How to get a research paper all together

texts:
The "research portion" of my paper is mostly done, but I'm having trouble putting together my research. (Keep in mind this is at the undergraduate level). It's not so much that I don't know how to organize my thoughts; in fact, I've written a very detailed outline. I seem to have a two questions I'm wrestling with (I apologize if this is a tad long-winded)

The monotonous proof-theorem-proof-theorem style that essentially consists of a list of facts with no exposition seems to be most accepted. But will this really make my paper stand out? When I think about texts with proof-theorem-proof-theorem, I think of the color gray. If I try to be clever and witty, it could certainly backfire on me, but such papers are the most memorable papers I've ever read!

  So what should the tone/style of my paper be?

I'm struggling very much with how detailed my paper should be. By no means am I writing a textbook, but I need to show the audience (namely admission committees) that I know what I'm talking about.  On the other hand, I have a deadline! There's always this looming thought in the back of my head that says "But you can't leave that out!" when I debate if I should skip something just to speed up the process -- it's as if I have a hoarder living in my head. I have this same issue with considering how much background/prerequisite math I should include for the reader -- it is confusing, to say the least,  writing to an audience that is more knowledgeable than the author. This is certainly very difficult for me to figure out.

  So how detailed should my paper be?

I'd really like to hear feedback from professors and/or admission committees members. But, of course, feedback from anyone with research experience is appreciated!


texts: No response from Journal editor after misinformed rejection

texts:
I recently submitted an article to a journal, which was later rejected. But the grounds for rejection were completely unfounded.

Also, a few oddities stand out with regards to the rejection. Normally, the rejection from this journal is signed by the editor but in this case it was unsigned.

We promptly emailed the editorial office asking for a clarification, as clearly there had been some misunderstanding. Since then, the assistant editor has continued to provide stereotypic responses which can be summarised as "we have emailed the editor with a reminder". Since our first correspondence with the editorial office regarding this issue, almost a month has passed.

Please note, the article in question is a short format article, and for this particular article type the journal normally responds to article submissions within two weeks.

This is an article coming out of my PhD and it has got me worried about what I can or should do to get a clear and concise response from the editor.


texts: Should I sound needy in my Statement of Purpose?

texts: I am going to apply for a Ph.D. position in Europe and I am asked to write a 1200 words statement of purpose (SoP). I was wondering whether I should be cold and objective about past experiences and future ambitions or let them know my feelings and how much I care about the program. The point is that I really want to join the program and I feel like it could change my life, therefore I would be willing to work hard as hell and give them everything I can, however, I guess that other applicants might likely be in my same position and faculty could be annoyed by these kinds of motivations.


texts: Why do some Thomson indexed Journals not have impact factors?

texts:
My paper was accepted in a conference, and among their journals there was this one:
https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/0974-6455
And this one :
http://soeagra.com/abr.html#
And while inspecting their websites, I couldn't find their impact factor. is this sign of low quality or what ? Knowing that these are Thomson indexed journals.
Thanks


texts: Searching for specific characters in publication titles

texts: Is there any way to search for articles that include a specific character in their name? For instance, suppose you want to find articles that include $, £ or € in their title.  When I have tried to search for such characters in PubMed or Google Scholar, I fail to get any results.


texts: How frequently should PhD students update their advisor?

texts: I'm a 1st year phd student in math. My advisor adopts a more ambiguous meeting policy that I approach him whenever I want to talk. So I was sending him long emails on a biweekly basis with updates of what I read and thought about in that duration, out of my own initiative. Of course, a lot of it is not substantial progress and probably doesn't even worth reporting. I do this because the actual meeting is sporadic and the frequency is definitely below once per several months. So I feel that I should update him on a regular basis. My advisor didn't say stop sending the updates but just stopped responding to them. I guess it is kind of annoying seeing a lot of stuff from your students without actual breakthrough. Before I ask him anything, I just wonder what would be the norm of phd student updating their advisors regarding frequency and whether they should update without any actual progress.


texts: Is it appropriate to drop by another university's professor's lecture to talk about research afterwards?

texts:
There is a professor at a university different from the one I study in, who I like to do some research with. I emailed her and did not receive any answer even after sending a follow-up email (a week after the first email). I knew her class schedule, but not her office hours. I thought about going to where the class meets to talk to her after her lecture (introduce myself, try to remind her of the email and express my interest in working with her over and ask her to read my CV that I emailed to her, or arrange some time to meet me and discuss about possible opportunities) .

Since I am not a student at the institution where she works and given the nature of my inquiry and the fact that she didn't answer my emails, I thought this might not be appropriate. I wanted to ask your opinion on whether you think there is a way for me to go and talk to her without it being inappropriate. (I thought about emailing the TA of the class and asking about the office hours of the professor, but I doubt if that's any better.)


texts: Is it appropriate to submit a co-authored writing sample to PhD applications?

texts:
I will be applying to PhD programs in Psychology this fall. Currently, I am in an MA program where we will be assigned to draft a research proposal in the topic of our interest. However, There will be another student co-authoring this assignment with me (we must work in pairs). Is it acceptable or favorable to submit such draft as a writing sample?
If not, what do you suggest might be a good piece to submit?


texts: How serious can this review invitation be?

texts:
I published my first article a while ago, nothing special, just rigorous formalization of some well-known facts.

Now I got a mail writing

  We have read about your published precious paper in FORMALIZED MATHEMATICS titled About Quotient Orders and Ordering Sequences, and the topic of the paper has impressed us a lot.
  The paper has attracted attention from researchers and scholars specializing in quotient order; ordered finite sequences.

Especially the last part looks manufactured, that are just the keywords extracted.

  On behalf of the Editorial Board of the journal, we sincerely invite you to join our team as the editorial board member or reviewer of ******. Taking your academic background and rich experience in this field into account, the Board believe that you are quite qualified for this position. We believe that your position as the editorial board member or reviewer will shine a light on your research in related fields.

"academic background and rich experience" Yeah, but no. Really, really no, at this point in time.

So the email is clearly generated automatically, but the links seem to work and the journal does have entries in Google Scholar and an archive on their website, it is not a scam per se. It is an Open Access and Peer reviewed journal, but it is obvious I was just some entry and no one looked at my paper (or my academic background) seriously.

How serious can such an invitation be? Since it's a peer reviewed journal, are they just frantically looking for reviewers? Would they even consider a positive reaction of me, due to my academic short comings which start with me not even having a M.Sc. yet?

I'm specifically not asking for career advice. I'm not in the league of publication for too long, I don't really know how things like becoming a reviewer work, if this would be payed for anyhow, etc. If this mail constitutes a bad practice I would like to know because I will likely get more of these in the future.


texts: Tenure possibilities for junior professorship

texts:
I have read whatever I could find online about W1 (junior) professorship in Germany, and to me it seems it is somewhat close to a full time lecturer and the tenure possibilities are slim if none, all the more slimmer at the same university. However, the person who has invited me for an interview said this is rather because they are legally required to do so, but there are tenure possibilities. I will ask him for more information, but 1. I do have a tenure option at other university (and another country), however the university is not at all in a good ranking, I also have an invitation from a couple of really good universities but I will need to decide soon so I don't know if I will be able to act upon those.

First things first, I don't want to be a lecturer - meaning that I don't want to focus on coursework but research, I heard that junior professors can have students and a research group? But they also teach a lot of entry level courses? so what are these "tenure possibilities" exactly? Does he mean a remote possibility in 6 years? Or does he mean somewhat something close to a tenure-track? What are tenure chances?


texts: How should 'van'-names be ordered in a bibliography?

texts:
How would names with 'van', written in the Dutch style - e.g. van Beukering, J., be ordered in a  bibliography?

Do we count the 'van' element so that e.g. van Beukering, J. would be some point after Campbell, S. - or do ignore the 'van' element so that the first letter is  and would therefore come before Campbell in a bibliography?

Does this depend on whether the author uses the Dutch 'van X' style or the American 'Van X'? Obviously concatenated forms such as Vancouver, C. would be counted as .


texts: Admission in research based Master's/Doctoral programme with a bachelor's from a low-ranked University in India

texts:
I applied in Master's programmes in Europe / Asia (mostly Germany) this year and most of them were rejected or are still pending. My GPA in the Bachelor's is 7.19 / 10 while my TOELF iBT score is 100 / 120. Most of the Universities stated on their websites that the GRE (General or Subject) is optional, so I did not take the GRE.

After getting so many rejections and still being unable to figure out why, I am now thinking of strengthening my application to apply again in fall 2014. I have mailed universities / professors inquiring about reasons for rejection / shortcomings of my application, but none have replied. The only reply I get is that there were a lot of applications and mine just failed to compete with them.

I wish to know more about why my applications failed and how to improve? Also, as I don't know anyone around, I prepared my Statement of Purpose, Letter of Recommendations, Research Proposal, etc by going through the internet and information on website of universities (I did not copy-paste, but used the tips on how to write and stuff). I have no idea if the reason for my failed applications were because of low GPA / no GRE score or ill-prepared statement / research plan. Also, where can I get these checked and get suggestions on improving them?

I am very passionate about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Ubiquitous Computing. I am planning on quitting my job at Oracle Financial Services (where I'm working as as Associate Consultant, writing code since SEP 2011 after my Bachelor's) to prepare for my application and dedicate full time and energy. I am aiming for admission in top 20 universities for Computer Science of the world and also aiming for a good scholarship. I want to appear for GRE later this year and get very good scores to try to compensate for my low GPA. But, when I checked few top universities (like MIT), it was mentioned they don't accept GRE scores. How can I try and get into such universities?

My goal is to complete my Master's, PhD and then continue researching on my areas of interest. Furthermore, the Subject GRE for Computer Science has been discontinued as per the ETS website!

Is there any hope of getting in top universities with a Bachelor's degree from an unknown university which is practically nowhere in the rankings? What to do now and how to do it, I am pretty confused and hope that someone here can help me.

Thanks for your time.

Rahul


texts: Publishing a very mediocre paper as undergraduate?

texts:
Given that I am an undergraduate is it a good idea to publish a very mediocre paper (nothing novel, results way bellow state of art) in a conference/competition that accepts such papers?

Our results are good compared to everyone else (we are ranked 3rd) but the paper adds little to no value to the field and the conference/competition is mediocre (but not very bad).

Should I include myself in the authors or not, given that I am in the top of class in terms of grades and aiming for top US universities for PhD? My professor declined to be in the paper but everyone else in the team is okay with it.


texts: "Do you need travel support?" Questions on Conference Applications

texts:
I am applying for conferences now for the first time while I have my own grant. My grant is mainly for my living stipend but has some money set aside for travel over 4 years. I am starting to apply for conferences and they are asking if I need support. The technical answer is "no," but the more complicated answer is that to go to all the conferences I want to go to, then I will need support from some of these conferences in order to pay for it for the course of 4 years.

Do I just say "yes" despite the short answer? It's very clear I have this grant that has some travel money, but in the end it's not unlimited, but I don't want to come off as greedy.

How detailed should a response to a travel support requirement inquiry be?


texts: Tuning the PhD journey for Industry jobs

texts:
I have just started my PhD and although I love research and everything that accompanies it but I am put off by Academia a bit and would prefer an Industry job at the end of my PhD.

What can I do differently during my PhD years with this ambition in mind?

I have read "PhD Grind" by Philip Guo wherein he states that at the end, he disliked Academia and thus his motives at conferences and other events changed from "crazy networking". Further, he spent more summers working in companies (Google and Microsoft Research, in his case) than with other research groups.

Specifically, should I handle the following any differently:

Relation with Advisor
How I spend my summers
Conferences
Publications


texts: Continuum from collaboration on homework to copying

texts:
Some of the work I grade does not seem to be copied verbatim, but also seems close enough that one student or another is being a parrot and does not totally understood what they are saying. My students are working under a collaboration policy similar to the example on this page, which says "Peer collaboration is highly encouraged. It is a highly efficient and fun way to learn [statistics]. However, your homework must be entirely your own work and in your own words." If Alice and Bob discuss problem 3, shouldn't I expect Alice's words, mathematical notation, and problem-solving strategies to appear in Bob's writeup? Please advise me on how to reconcile "collaboration is great etc." with "homework must be entirely your own work."

I have browsed all the other questions tagged grading and a few besides; none seemed relevant.


texts: Do grad schools google their students before acceptance?

texts: If I have an internet presence where I am published on some websites, would that affect my chances of getting into grad school? More specifically, do grad schools google their applicants before getting accepted for a PhD program? For example, if someone posted some defamatory things about me on some websites, would grad schools google me to find these things beforehand? And if they do find these defamatory things, how much does it affect my chances of getting in?


texts: Publishing with Elsevier - Does the manuscript have the author info?

texts: I am uploading a paper for an Elsevier journal. The system indicates that a Manuscript should be uploaded. I don't have previous experience with this system. My question is: should the Manuscript exclude all the information about the author? Or should the manuscript be the whole paper in its final form?


texts: Masters in math, bland PhD in CS, want to go back to math

texts:
All of the following is in Italy.

I have a master's degree in mathematics and at the moment I'm in the final months of funding in a PhD in Computer Science (not sure if I'll be able to finish my thesis in these months).

I'm in this PhD due to a series of unfortunate circumstances and mistakes on my part, fact is that I am totally unhappy with where I am and I'd like to plan on the best way to go back to doing mathematics.

The reasons that I'm unhappy with my PhD are:

lack of interest in the subject (basically a very out-of-trend subfield of Natural Language Processing, more like a one-man project that my advisor started a few years ago and keep pushing it but never took off, which I instead thinks is a dead-end and the community seems to go in other directions);
the fact that my PhD is totally unstructured, by this I mean that there was never a clear plan of action, no courses to take, no real training at all, and no real topic for the thesis, just relatively uncorrelated publications that now I find difficult to unite in a thesis; for the same reason there was no possibility of changing advisor mid-term, nor there was any help like a career center or similar structures (I actually discovered the existence of such things on this site). also there is no formal recording of my experiences (for example as a teaching assistant) so there is not much I can show for this three years;
last, I plain and simple find out that I like mathematics way more and I miss it a lot.

So I would like to ask opinion about what is my best course of action given that:

I have a rather uninteresting CV: master's grades are not bad but most are in courses not pertinent to what I'd like to do; moreover my master thesis was not strictly mathematics, but was done with the professor that later became my PhD advisor, and I fear that not having done any mathematical research is a serious problem;
As mentioned before there is not much I can show for the three years of my PhD: no transcript of courses, no formal review of my work, just a few publications and the word of my advisor, with whom I don't even have a great relationship;
I never spent time to create a network, I don't know any other professors to which I could ask for letters of recommendation;
by the time I'll have finished my PhD I'll be 30.


texts: Should I mention personal information in this thank you letter?

texts:
So I got an email from my university that a donor is willing to provide me with a scholarship to help me finish my program. I don't know him and I never met him before.

I mentioned these points in my thank you letter:

Introduction:

Purpose of the letter / Thank you
Informing about the university and that I received the scholarship

Paragraph 1:

How would the scholarship reflect on my education
Appreciation
Willing to do better

Paragraph 2:

Introducing my major and all the projects that I accomplished so far.
Excitement
Thank you

Last paragraph:

Thank you

This might sound weird but am I missing personal information? Is it usually supposed to introduce yourself and maybe your contact information in a thank you letter?

I want it to be professional but I never done this before and excuse me this is my first time here


texts: Will people think negatively of owning a nice car in grad school?

texts:
I graduated from college 5 years ago, and I was very fortunate to graduate with no debt. For the 3 years after graduating I worked hard, had solid employment, and saved very carefully. This afforded me the opportunity to use a portion of those savings to buy a used car that people comment on while I am driving down the street which I have owned for 2 years. It looks a lot nicer than the cost because I bought it after a large portion of the value depreciated. I love the car, it is very reliable, and I very much want to keep it.

I know I am supposed to be a "poor graduate student", and my offer included funding plus a stipend, so I consider myself very fortunate.

I was very adamantly told by someone that owning such a car would make me look bad, and that if funding became tight I would get the short end of the stick because my car was too nice. He said the exact same thing happened to a fellow graduate student when he was in a PhD program at the same school 30 years ago.

If it really would reflect poorly on me to have a certain car I'm willing to take a step down, but I wanted to hear from others. Is this perception accurate?


texts:
I am going to apply for a postdoc position and there is an item about career break.
Having finished my Master degree, I got a position titles Director of Research in a College for about 6 years. In the meanwhile, I was visiting lecturer for some courses for different academic levels such as sub-bachelor, Bachelor students. After that experience I was involved in a research project as an assistant professor, then after 6 months  I commenced my Ph.D studies. I do not know whether the years before stating Ph.D ( 6 years as lecturer and director of research) is career break or not?


texts:
Recently a friend of mine who was a professor died and I am hoping to help create a post-doctoral fellowship at the university to carry on the work of his small laboratory in conjunction with others who knew him. I am hoping to understand better the typical way that fellowships are endowed.

According to my initial calculations, it would seem we need about $4 million to endow the fellowship, so that assuming a 4% return on bonds in the foundation, every year we could disburse 2.5% ($70,000 stipend to the fellow, $25,000 upkeep fee to the university, and $5,000 for lab expenses) and retain 1.5% to build the capital of the endowment to account for inflation.

Is this a typical setup for an endowed fellowship in the current academic environment?


texts: Is it ok for PhD to come from same school as BA?

texts:
If my ultimate goal is to obtain a tenured teaching position, is it more desirable to get a PhD from a different university than the one where I obtained my BA? What are the possible pros and cons?

The original university has a large philosophy department, which is also a factor for me.


texts: I wrote a major report and our client put it online. How to present it in a CV?

texts:
Last year I spend a few months working on a 100-page design report for a client. I was the primary writer, and it was reviewed by my supervisor and then signed off by HIS supervisor. According to them, the report is a major technical publication, but the "publication" section entails the client putting it out on their webpage as a PDF.

From the perspective of academia looking through a CV, is such a report respectable? How would I cite it?


texts: Will a mail to the journal asking about the status of my article have a negative effect on the decision of the article?

texts: One of my journal article was submitted to a journal last year. It has been under review for more than 3 months now. I want to send them a mail asking for my article status. It is given in the website of the journal that the average time for first decision after the article goes under review is 8.5 week. Is there a chance that this mail may affect the journals decision, like they may think that I am being pushy and might just not even go through the paper and reject it?


texts: How cite sources of 100-years-old analytical technique in a theory section?

texts:
In my master’s thesis in inorganic characterization, I have a theory chapter about X-ray (powder) diffraction. This technique is almost 100 years old, and have been described in a vast number of books, articles, and web-pages.

I could easily take any book about X-ray diffraction and just cite that book, but I don’t want to keep citing the same book every four sentences for basic knowledge. So I was thinking that something like the following might be suited:

  The principles of X-ray diffraction are described in a number of books [1-4], articles [5-9], and web-pages [10-13]. The theory presented in this section is just a brief summary of what one might encounter in published works, such as those cited above.

This way I give some sources of the principles of X-ray diffraction, and I explain that what I present could be found in the cited sources. Thus, I don’t need to cite anything in-text, and the reading is easier.

Is this approach acceptable?


texts: Repetitively citing studies in a literature review

texts:
I am writing my first literature review (not using a systematic methodology) and I am trying to put some thought into the underlying structure of the literature review. I have considered these two structures:

Structure 1

  Study A does this...
  Study B does that...
  Study C does this...
  My study does this...

Structure 2

In this structure, (at least early on in the review) I write about how the papers that I have gathered vary based on their collective characteristics as parts of a greater whole, e.g. general modelling approach, spatial and temporal scale, problem framing:

  These studies differ based on their general modelling approach.
  These studies differ in their spatiotemporal scale.
  These studies differ in their framing of the problem.
  My study is similar in characteristic XYZ, but differs in characteristic ABC, and advances the field through characteristic EFG.

I personally think that Structure 2 is more interesting in terms of content layout and synthesis of the material relative to Structure 1, but at each point of discussion it requires me to talk about mostly the same papers, just in different contexts.
So I am concerned that repetition in Structure 2 could be a problem as compared to Structure 1.

Are my concerns justified and are there any further arguments for one of the structures?


texts: Best PhD application strategy for infrequent PhD vacancies

texts:
I want to apply for a PhD position in Computer Science in a particular subarea (in Europe). Now I've been observing the PhD vacancies for quite a while. The number of PhD vacancies in the subarea (together with some personal criteria) is about one vacancy per two weeks. Given the infrequent number of PhD positions, what is the best thing I can do on top of applying? I was thinking of doing the following (or a combination of the following):

Contact the professors I know in the subarea or related areas.
Contact professors I do not know in the subarea or related areas.
Contact PhD students of research groups I am interested in in the particular subarea.
Apply to all the interesting PhD positions.
Send out open applications for funded PhD positions.
Focus on projects related to the subarea I am interested in.

What is your advice? What strategy did you use to start at a PhD position?


texts: Should I apply for a MA or a PHD(in mathematics) after undergraduate study?

texts:
I am entering my 4th year undergraduate BS math program next month. I am certain I will want to do a PhD program eventually but I am not sure if I should do a MA before it.

I have decent undergraduate non-math grades(8.8~) and pretty good math grades (9.8~). I also have done quite a few graduate courses(most of them self study) in various topics: Algebraic number theory, Algebraic topology(homotopy, homology, cohomology under a professor), Lie groups, Galois theory(introductory), Model theory(under a professor), Universal Algebra(under a prof), Set theory(under a professor) and Functional Analysis.

I also expect close to full on my gre subject test(from mock tests).

I am not sure how much value this adds and/or how to present it properly but this is all I have to show for my undergraduate years. Under these circumstances, what would the chances of acceptance into a very good PhD program be? I would like apply to an algebraic number theory/logic oriented program(like Berkley and UCLA). Also, what is the best way to make them aware of my self study? Do I mention it in my statement or should I ask my professors to mention it for me?

What are the benefits of doing a MA before PhD or vice versa?

Edit: In response to one of the comments, my career goals are to eventually get a research position in math(maybe academia, maybe elsewhere but definitely pure math oriented research).


texts: Can deadlines for PhD admission in US be approximated?

texts:
I am expecting to finish my masters degree in computer science by mid October and then I was planning to apply for a PhD program this year.

My question is, how much time will I have after being done with my masters to apply? I know different US universities have different deadlines but a general safe assumption would really be appreciated.

I still haven't decided which universities I would be applying to. I am also aware of the fact that eventually I'll have to look up at the websites for the exact deadlines but for now I just needed an approximate idea of a date by which I should have everything ready for submission including my GRE scores (which I am planning to retake).


texts: How many times is OK to register for a PhD program?

texts:
I started a PhD program few years ago. My first PhD supervisor decided he wanted to quit university and stopped supervising PhDs (he was 70 years old). I lost about a year trying to convince this supervisor to continue, and another year trying to find another supervisor when he quit (he pretty much left all his PhD students in the air).

I transferred to another university, but nobody counts the missing years and I should finish in few months. The condition put by my new supervisor in order to be allowed to present my thesis was to come up with at least 2 new contributions in addition to my previous contributions (I have published some papers with some contributions, but many of them were group research and this supervisor said that only 2 or 3 of them really count as mine).

Now the problem is that during the last year I have worked a lot both at the university and at the PhD, but only during last weeks I started to have some ideas about what these new potential contributions could be. Considering the lack of time, there is a high chance that I won't finish on time (due to the regulations from this country you have to finish in 5 years, nobody takes into account the fact that you lost several years with other problems like replacing your PhD supervisor).

I'm not a lazy person, but first time I really had no luck, and with the second supervisor it took me a lot of time to play in the league he wanted ... Basically all articles discussed with him about Machine Learning were from MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. Essentially I had to spend about a year and a half to get my knowledge to the level where I can design new algorithms or create new things that would get accepted to top journals reviewed by people from these institutions.

Of course, I can register again for the PhD, take the exams again, and present my contributions in a new thesis. The problem is when I will add all these years it will result a large interval for Europe: 7-8 years, instead of 4-5 years. My question is this: how will a potential future employer from both Academia or Private Company look at this time interval? Is it ok to try 2-3 times to finish your PhD? Will the fact that it took to long finish the PhD affect my career?


texts: Excluding a coauthor based on data misuse and misrepresentation?

texts: My graduate student utilized some particles produced by a collaborator's lab in some animal imaging experiments, which were designed and analyzed by my student and me.  The protocol for synthesizing the particles has already been published by my collaborator, and a technician in the collaborator's lab made the particles according to the protocol.  I shared some of the resulting in vivo images from this study with my collaborator, but unfortunately, I subsequently discovered that the collaborator used some of these images in a fraudulent manner (grossly misrepresenting them as preliminary data in some grant applications).  The collaborator's institution conducted a formal investigation of this and other incidents and found scientific misconduct had occurred.  I would like to publish my graduate student's image data, in part to make sure that a legitimate representation of the data is in the literature, but mostly because the work was publicly-funded and represents the hard work of many good people.  If the misconduct hadn't occurred, I probably would have considered including the collaborator as a co-author on the publication, by getting them more involved in the manuscript, even though the particle prep was not novel. But now there are many reasons why I do not wish to publish something with this collaborator!  Is documented scientific misconduct involving the data from this study a valid reason for not including this collaborator as a coauthor of a paper describing this study?  Can I simply acknowledge the technician who provided the particles and reference the prior publication of the protocol?


texts: Should I inform authorities of someone falsely claiming a non-existing PhD?

texts:
I know a person who falsely claims having a PhD in computer science.

His name card reads as "Name, PhD" and he has long been working in a high profile and remunerative position for a semi-government company.

However, he does not have a PhD!

He had enrolled for a PhD program in a X university, but his PhD program was terminated, because he could not publish any papers within the allotted time. I have complete details on this person including his registration number with the university, supervisor name, the company name, address and company supervisor name.

Specifically: the maximum duration of the PhD program in this X university is 6 years. To graduate, the university requires the candidate to publish one ISI indexed journal paper or two Scopus indexed papers. This person did not meet the requirements and, in fact, does not even have a conference paper to his credit.

I often feel like informing the company he is serving, as I find this infuriating and deeply unfair, but I just can't seem to make up my mind:

Is this the right thing to do?
Why should I report this?
Why shouldn't I report this?


texts: How to retrieve number of citations for a list of papers?

texts: I have a long list of papers in a word file and I want to quickly retrieve how often each of them has been cited to get a quick (although of course somewhat rough) idea of which ones are the most influential. Is there a tool that allows to retrieve for a list of papers from e.g. Google Scholar the number of times each of them has been cited? I would prefer not to have to check manually for each paper on Google Scholar.


texts: I am a tenured full professor in the humanities, teaching at an elite liberal arts institution. Currently our department is struggling to attract majors and student scholars in our particular humanities field, for a number of reasons - the academic work is perceived as exotic, irrelevant vis a vis the more valuable STEM fields, and considered intellectually "useless" for those whose primary goal is "getting jobs" after graduation. I would still like to teach courses in my area, because I consider this to be valuable. My institution permits me to teach whatever I wish, but our students have requested courses that are more general and more suited for non-majors and non-scholars. Does it make more sense to offer courses for those few students who desire deep study in narrow topics, or should I cater to student demands for general classes that appeal to non-humanities undergraduates? I do not wish for my courses to be seen as irrelevant, but I resist "trends" and the constantly shifting and sometimes fickle interests of the students in popular subject matter.


texts: What is a good grade for an MS student expecting to apply for a PhD in a top-tier school?

texts:
Although I understand that getting an admission into a PhD program depends on many factors, for example--BS and MS GPA, number of journal papers and their quality, number of conference papers and their quality, GRE, Statement of Objective, job experience, profile of other applicants, funding situation etc-- what should be the GPA of an MS student in the US, who is expecting to do a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in any of the top 30 grad schools?

Thanks in advance!


texts: Editor invites many reviewers simultaneously

texts:
I have been reviewing for a particular prestigious journal in my field for some time. I noticed that the editor invites a significant number of reviewers (4-7) simultaneously. In most cases, not all reviewers submit their reviews in time, but in one particular case, 5 reviewers submitted a review, and the paper was rejected.

While I understand that it is common to invite a number reviewers because many end up declining or not submitting a review, I feel like it is unethical to do so simultaneously, and is a situation similar to an author submitting to multiple journals, as it "wastes" reviewer-hours. In the particular 5-reviewer case, the paper did not need 5 reviewers to be rejected.

Is this kind of practice common and/or is it considered ethical in general?


texts: My master's thesis is extremely similar to an article that had already been published. Is that okay?

texts: My thesis is related to hispanic literature and culture. After doing a fair bit of research I formed my thesis and now as I am in the process of writing my literature review, I am realizing that my thesis is very similar to an article that I have read. The papers differ in that their theory is only applied to the events that happened in one country and I am applying a very similar theory to about 10 different countries throughout Latin America. I cite their work throughout my paper and plan on including it in my literature review. Is this allowed? Or is my thesis no longer valid/ acceptable because someone else had the same ideas applied on a much smaller scale? I do not intend to publish my work in a journal or other publication, I just need the paper to graduate.


texts: How important is it to work in industry before attempting a PhD?

texts: I am wanting to know how necessary it is to work in industry after undergrad and before applying to a PhD. On one hand, I have a lot of industry/ research experience and have a good deal of specialized knowledge in the area of computer science that I want to research. On the other hand, most people I work with worked in industry before getting their PhD. What's the general consensus?


texts: Are there any online tool for translating a Russian-language PDF to English?

texts:
I am reading a paper on arXiv

However the paper is completely in Russian:

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1701/1701.02595.pdf

Is there any free online service I can use to translate this paper to English?


texts: Should you mention previous rejections when resubmitting a paper? What is common practice?

texts:
You submit a manuscript to journal A. The paper is rejected, either with a short dismissal ("not good enough for this journal") or with a longer rebuttal from the referees. You wish to resubmit it to a different journal B.

Should you inform the editor at B of the previous rejection?

What is ethically correct? What do people do in the real world?

Possible arguments in favor:

It is important information regarding the manuscript, you shouldn't withhold it.
In this way the editor at B can contact the editor at journal A to solicit an opinion from the same referees, who already know the paper and are in a better position to give a report.
It is not honest to submit and resubmit the same paper at different venues until you are lucky enough to get better-inclined reviewers; mentioning all previous history is needed to expose this practice.

Possible arguments against:

The editor at B will perceive what has happened as an indication that you consider journal B to be lower-tier than A, and possibly get offended (and biased against publication).
If the information gets to the referees, they might be negatively influenced, too.
Ultimately, is it fair that the previous referees are brought into the picture again, or should you start with a clean slate and new reviewers?
It feels silly to write "we got a negative report with no suggestions for changes, so we are sending the exact same manuscript at you with minor modifications".

The arguments against look weaker in my view, because they all imply a bias that "perfect" editors and reviewers should not have.