texts: How to approach being accepted into PhD lab group verbally while explaining grades

texts:
I was recently offered a verbal offer to join a PhD lab group with a professor that I had taken classes with during my Master of Science program. I did well in the said professor's classes, and I was asked if I would be willing to do a PhD. I was also verbally offered that the professor would be willing to admit me to the lab group.
I sent my transcripts and other information as requested, and explained my grades which are not good during undergrad. However, the professor has also taught my classes during the Master's and I did fairly well in those classes, and demonstrated my research experience during those classes as well.
However, since the professor wants people with exceptional GPAs, I am not sure if my verbal offer (via email) would be rescinded. I have not heard back anything since my email explaining that I did mess up in undergrad, but I have improved and I am committed to tackling the PhD in the lab group.
I am very interested in joining the PhD, but I also don't want to get my hopes up (since a willingness to admit me which the professor mentioned via email is not a written, official offer for admission to the PhD lab group). However, I am not sure what to do, as I don't want to keep prodding on the subject matter and forcing the professor to give me a response when the professor may be busy/thinking about about me to the lab group.
What is a way I can approach this, in order to demonstrate a) I am very interested in joining the group to pursue my PhD and b) I am confident that I will have the capability and willingness to learn and improve?


texts: Should I mention reimbursements for financial expenditures when first contacting tentative speakers for a workshop?

texts:
I am thinking of organizing a workshop in my field and am currently in the process of looking for potential speakers. Some of these I'll be contacting for the first time ever by email. The speakers I am thinking of targeting are a mixture of experienced academics and relatively inexperienced/first-timers, such as postdocs.

Clearly we will cover travel and accommodation expenses for the speakers. Should I mention this up front in the first email, or can it be perceived as rude to do so? Is it usually taken for granted that invited speakers don't pay for travel and accommodation?


texts: Bombed an academic interview, should I do anything about it?

texts:
I had an interview a few days back for a grant for graduate studies. The interview panel consisted of various judges including some of the most renowned and well known researchers/professors in my field(s) of interest. Some of them almost have a celebrity status given the kind of respect they command.

Now comes the bad part. My interview was going good for most of it, I was answering a question when I was told that none of what I said made sense. I was completely caught off-guard. To the best of my knowledge, my answers were correct, but the committee did not share my enthusiasm. I came across to them as an impostor who was simply winging things/saying random rubbish.

The interview went downhill from there. I was so flustered that even the questions which I could have answered in my sleep went wrong. I tried putting some things down on the whiteboard and tried explaining my answers but by then the committee had lost interest. The overall experience was very bitter with me almost coming across as undeserving to even has been shortlisted for the interview. Post the interview, I felt extremely guilty not for torpedoing my interview, but because I felt that I had wasted the time of such esteemed academicians.

My question is regarding, what if any action should I take at this point? I know for a fact that the grant will not be awarded to me, but that is not my concern. Some of the members on the committee are at the forefront of research and work in their field (which heavily aligns with mine). I do not intend to spoil my relation and any chance of a future collaboration with them because of this one interview. Some of the possible actions that came to my mind were:

Sending an email to one or more members of the committee, apologizing for the interview.
Sending an email to one or more members of the committee, asking for feedback.
Sending an email to one or more members of the committee, trying to explain my answers and why they were not completely wrong given the context.

Are any of these too far fetched? Any alternative action that you would recommend? Or should I just let it go?

PS. In case you find any details of my question to be fuzzy, please ask for clarification. Any sort of help/feedback will be appreciated.


texts: Can I ask my supervisor to let me graduate early?

texts:
I am a master’s research student. I am having trouble with my supervisor. I don't like either his research interests (as he is forcing me to do stupid things) or his attitude. I have the option to convert to a course-based master's but I want to consider that as a last option.

Is it advisable to talk to my supervisor directly about early graduation? I would tell him that I am not happy with the research and I want to write a thesis on a closely related but less intriguing subject and just finish my master’s as soon as possible.


texts: Full length articles or multiple letters to publish in Journal?

texts:
Prior to submitting a Journal article, I had a conversation with my supervisor about whether it was suitable for a letter (max 4 pages) or a more detailed article (max 12 pages). My position was that the core contribution (a new method) could be concisely and completely be described in less than 4 pages, and should therefore be a letter. The complication was that some progress had been made on the application of the method to a particular problem.

I therefore wanted to publish the first letter straight away, and later publish a second letter later dealing with the application. My supervisor didn't like this idea. He said it was "playing the game" to increase one's own H-index, and it was more suited to a single article. I subsequently took his advice to submit a full length article. However, now (with the article submitted over 3 months ago, and still under editorial review) he has changed his mind and says it's "up to me" as to whether I would like to withdraw it and resubmit as 2 letters...

So my question is whether there is any disadvantage to publishing research as a series of short (more concise/readable, and faster reviewed) letters in the same Journal?

(In this journal the letters are also mandated as open access, which is an option rarely used for the full length articles, and may improve findability)


texts: How to submit a manuscript in two parts?

texts:
I have a new manuscript to be published in an Elsevier engineering journal that has a maximum limit of 8000 words. I can't fit the content in this space. Fortunately, the manuscript can be easily split into two manuscripts, say A and B. The first will be concerned with assessing the potential of, say, wind energy in country X and the measurements carried out, while the second manuscript B will be focused on simulating wind energy systems. The first manuscript will be independent, but I'll have to refer to it in the second one (although, the second article will be understandable without reading the first manuscript). So, I have the following questions:

Should I split the manuscript, or submit it to another journal with flexible space limitations?
Is it a good idea to do that, based on your experience? (I have read a lot about this, but I want to know what the editors prefer and how they handle this situation)
Most importantly, how do I submit the two manuscripts (to the same journal): at the same time or consecutively?


texts: In biology, can one publish results that were already published in a conference proceedings?

texts:
In my old field (a subdiscipline of computer science) it's not unusual to publish a preliminary version of a paper in a conference proceedings, and then later submit an updated version to a journal, presenting essentially the same result.

My question is, is it possible / accepted to do the same thing in biology? (And theoretical evolutionary biology in particular.)

I ask because some colleagues and I recently developed an evolutionary model that shows some surprising results which are quite relevant to current work in evolutioanry biology. We submitted it to a modelling conference and published it in the proceedings as an 8 page paper. However the feedback I've got from biologists suggests that this result has quite a big potential audience and deserves to be publised in a journal of reasonable impact, where biologists will read it.

To be clear, the journal version would not just be the same text as the conference version - it would be longer, including substantial new analysis as well as more details and context that couldn't be included in the conference version. The question is just whether it's possible (in biology) to present the key result from the model as the main result of the journal paper, or whether the new paper would have to take the form "we present a new analysis of the model previously published in [conference proceedings]". (The latter is possible of course, but I worry that it would limit the impact of the paper, since the new analysis is a much more incremental advance.)


texts: It seems my advisor doesn't trust me, but why?

texts:
Even though my advisor is reasonably friendly with me, it feels like he doesn't 'trust me' as much as he trusts the other grad student (let's call him X) in the lab. A few examples:

I joined a lab a few weeks before X and we both worked on the same project until recently, and both made significant contributions to the project - but I was first author on the paper. Without telling me, my advisor asked X, the second listed author, to present our work at a local conference, instead of simply asking us both who would be available. I did not even know about it until X asked me to review his presentation.
He asked X to review an article in his name, about something that I know more about: the manuscript is focusing on something very similar to what I was working on during my Master's, whereas X is unfamiliar with some fairly important notions in this sub-field. One again, I learned about it by chance.
Both X and I have moved on to different projects now, and are both working full time on these. A collaborator suggested a new side project that would quickly and easily lead to a paper. Guess who was offered the opportunity to join that project (despite not having more relevant experience)? That's right: X again.

I don't think I mentioned anything along the lines of "I have so much work I can't do anything more" but I also don't think I came out as idle or unproductive. I show initiative (or at least I believe I do) so I really have no I idea why I'm not given these opportunities to learn and/or build an academic record.

I'm afraid that asking if something is wrong would make my advisor defensive, and make me appear like a negative person - which obviously does not help. But if I'm doing something wrong (or not sending the right signals, or anything like that) I have no idea what, and I would like to fix it as soon as possible.

Any idea about how to approach this issue diplomatically?


texts: How to supply proof that you are a reviewer for a journal?

texts: How can you prove that you are a reviewer for a certain journal. For example, I have been invited to review a paper in a certain journal and on my CV I want to write that I have reviewed in this journal but since reviewers are supposed to be anonymous, how can I supply proof that I have reviewed in this journal?


texts: Uploading a revised version of published journal article on arXiv

texts: I uploaded a pre-print of an article on arXiv 1 year ago. The article was accepted in SCI journal and currently available online. However, I found a typo mistake in one equation and want to add more discussion related one figure (On researchgate I am receiving a lot of queries regarding that figure). Should i upload a new version of pre-print on arXiv? (How citations will work in this case? as arxiv version is more advanced compare to Journal version) OrI may upload a short document on arXiv as an errata/correction with extra discussion?Or I may address errata and discussion in online page of journal? Actually this journal allows the registered users to comment and start discussion related to published article.


texts:
I am attempting to do my PhD "in the open", to treat the entire project of getting my degree (whose research is unrelatedly Computer Science), as a study. That is, I am going to collect my thought processes and outputs in an Open Notebook Science way. To legitimize this I am creating at Data Management Plan, and it asks if I need IRB approval?

On the one hand, it seems silly that I should need approval to study myself; but I am a human subject. Do people typically need approval to study themselves?


texts: My paper was accepted, but I found an error affecting all of the figures. What will happen next?

texts:
I submitted a paper to a journal, and the decision was "accept with minor revisions."  As I was addressing the reviewer questions to submit a final copy, I realized that I may have misrepresented the data.

Specifically, I may have over-reached with a statistical model.  The model involved repeated measures of individuals who were initially one group (let's call it condition A), but were later split into two groups (B and C).  The model gives me differences between conditions.  My mistake was to calculate the actual values at each condition based on these differences, which was wrong because by dumb luck the 2 groups had a systematic offset at A before they were split (even though the members of each group were chosen randomly).  Hopefully that explanation makes some sense.  I presented the data in terms of "actual" values rather than differences because I thought this would be more informative for the reader.  So, basically, all the numbers are wrong.  It's a stupid mistake in hindsight, since I could find this information in the raw data.

The conclusions of the paper and the statistically significant relationships would still be the same in the corrected version, because I believe the model to be the correct one.  However, almost all of the numbers, tables, and figures would need modification.  And of course the strange systematic offset between randomized groups will raise eyebrows.

I'm certainly going to notify the editor and attempt to submit a corrected version of the paper.  I'm wondering what I should expect to happen, though.  Are journals understanding of this type of error, or does it represent something so egregious that the paper would be rejected and my credibility would be damaged?  Or would it simply be reviewed again?  I understand that it's largely up to the editor to decide, but I'm wondering if anyone with similar experience might give me an idea of what I'm dealing with.  Thanks!


texts:
This is in the US. I have a professor (humanities) who grades everything with check, check plus, or check minus. Then, from these grades, she computes a numerical score and from there gives a letter grade.
I wanted to calculate my score in the class to confirm everything is being calculated correctly (don't trust English profs with arithmetic). The problem is that the professor has not disclosed to us what a check, check plus, or check minus represent numerically, other than to say a check is "in the neighborhood of a B plus".
Would it be fair/non-rude/appropriate to ask her what, exactly, these categories correspond to? Since the score is calculated numerically based on the syllabus weighting, I would like to be able to see e.g. check = 86, etc. (Also, this is a graduate class, but not sure that's relevant.)


texts: What is a numerical value in admission application context?

texts:
I am applying to few universities (Master's degree) and one of them which is University of Helsinki is asking for numerical value included in computer science studies from my degree. Exact question:

  Please state the total amount of computer science studies included in your degree (numerical value, credits/study hours etc.)

My current degree is from Lithuania. I am confused about numerical value. Could somebody elaborate on this matter? In addition, any suggestions what else should I mention to answer this question fully?


texts: Can I successfully adapt to an advisor who will not push me to work?

texts:
I am currently a first-year graduate student, now in the process of figuring out who I'd like to have as my thesis advisor. Of course, compatibility of research interests is quite important, but personality and work style are too.

The issue I'm currently facing (though it sounds odd to cast it in a negative light) is that the professor with whom I'm most compatible research-wise, is the most polite, nice, and soft-spoken person I've ever met. In lecture and  in conversation, he is self-effacing, will go out of his way to make things comfortable for you, never says a bad thing about anyone, etc.

Now, even though I love my field, I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember, and my concern is that I'm eventually going to lose my focus / energy if my advisor is constitutionally unable to say things like "You ought to have read more this week", "You should do a better job of this write-up", etc

My question is, should I opt for Professor Tough Love whose research I like slightly less, but who will do a good job of keeping me working, or should I go with Professor Nice Guy? If I do go with Professor Nice Guy, what strategies could I employ to make sure the effect of his coddling is minimal?

I've discussed this with peers, and I received the following advice:

You're going to have to become self-driven eventually - might as well start getting practice now.
Meet with Professor Tough Love regularly, sort of as an unofficial second advisor, who (besides discussing technical material, which is of course beneficial) will give me the impetus I need.
Directly ask Professor Nice Guy to give me more structure, and to be more demanding of me.

Thoughts about these? Any other suggestions?

I realize there's some overlap with  How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?, but I suppose I'm asking specifically about what to do when my advisor is not automatically going to be a resource for helping me avoid procrastination.

Thanks for all of your help in advance!


texts: Boxplot whiskers for a journal publication using APA style guide

texts:
I want to submit a manuscript with a journal recommending the APA style guide for formatting.

When looking at my boxplots, a colleague of mine wondered why the whiskers do not represent the 95% confidence interval. So I learned that the default setting for matplotlib is 1.5 IQR, which I did not questioned until that point.

According to the very good Wikipedia article on boxplots there are different possibilities for whiskers representation:

the minimum and maximum of all of the data
the lowest datum still within 1.5 IQR of the lower quartile, and the highest datum still within 1.5 IQR of the upper quartile (often called the Tukey boxplot)
one standard deviation above and below the mean of the data
the 9th percentile and the 91st percentile
the 2nd percentile and the 98th percentile

Does anybody know what is the most common whisker boundary and if there is a recommendation in the APA style?


texts: Is it OK to edit my undergraduate thesis results?

texts:
I'm current an undergraduate student working on a research project for my thesis.

In my project, I obtained quite a large number of inconsistent or strange result for my lab analysis of my samples and I just couldn't get a reliable or sound result for my analysis. I have been struggling in repeating the experiments for a prolonged time and done a lot of attempts, yet I still have not got a good result for it.

While my viva session and thesis submission date is approaching nearer, I am really stressed and have thought about modifying my lab results so that it is more presentable for my thesis since time is running out.

However, I really am not sure whether that is it ok for me to do so. I got a guilty feeling that I am doing something that is against my morality for submitting results that are not 100% originated  from my own work. On the other hand, if I report my original results that didn't look appealing for my supervisor, I'm also afraid that she would require me to redo my whole experiment and delay my graduation date.

I really hope I can get an advice from a reliable researcher or student about my case.


texts: How to acknowledge an "anonymous" referee who identified themselves

texts:
I believe that I'm in a rather unusual situation and, as the title suggests, there is some uncertainty about how I should acknowledge a particular referee. This referee was supposed to be anonymous, but clearly (and deliberately) identified themselves in their report for historical context.

  Should I identify this person in the acknowledgements section, or is
  it rude to thank the referees collectively without identifying this
  person?

Thanks.


texts: How to approach the dean and/or provost about a years-old two-body problem?

texts:
Both my wife and I are scientists in the same field. Approximately 4 years ago she accepted a tenure-track position, and in what seemed like a good opportunity at the time, we both decided it was a good move even without seriously discussing a spousal hire for me. At the time I was confident that my field of study and marketable skill set would make the transition a no-brainer "after the fact". By this I mean the dean and/or provost would see the long-term necessity (and benefit) of securing university employment for not one but both persons.

However, this has turned out not to be the case. This place is awash in administrative problems. Compounding this is our location: A realistic job search radius is a very short 25 miles or so. (Our city is also charmingly referred to as an "island".) At this point we are about 1-2 years away from her tenure (which appears to be a good bet), and I'm out of patience. From my point of view, I'm not being fully utilized in an environment where it makes very good long-term sense to do so. In other words, by securing the stability of both "units", one also works toward the stability of the whole. But the standard response is always, there's no money for that. (Given the wealth I see every day around me, I have a hard time believing that.)

My question: how would one approach the upper administration to seriously consider a spousal hire for an individual that fits very well into the research and teaching framework of the department I'm already serving as an adjunct in? My initial plan would be to put together a sales-pitch of sorts with the department head that would outline the creation of a non-fixed-term assistant teaching professor position. Included in the proposal would be a host of benefits:

The department would be expanded by 1
Connections and therefore resources are imported along with myself
The university would gain a research-capable faculty member

Output: papers
Input: money
Low equipment/space requirements
Very portable; no startup needed

The university would also gain a (badly needed) teaching professor

Improve the student/teacher ratio
Produce higher-quality problem solvers / critical thinkers

The stability of one of its existing faculty members would be improved (i.e. reduces "flight risk")

But all this seems to be wasted as an adjunct. I know instinctively that this effort will fail, but I need the satisfaction of having tried.


texts: How do I properly cite the amount of times an article has been cited on Google Scholar?

texts:
I wish to properly cite the amount of times a paper has been cited according to Google Scholar. However, I couldn't find a proper answer to this question.

The paper in question is:

  Blei, David M., Andrew Y. Ng, and Michael I. Jordan. "Latent dirichlet
  allocation." the Journal of machine Learning research 3 (2003):
  993-1022.

Hansen, S., McMahon, M., & Prat, A. (2014) note that

  LDA is widely used (...) and has been cited over 8,000 times

But they cite no source! What is the proper source to cite here?

My first thought was something like this:

  LDA is widely used (...) and has been cited over 10,000 since its
  publication, a search on Google Scholar reveals (Google Scholar,
  date).

edit: I e-mailed my advisor and ended up citing Hansen et al. (2014) saying that the paper had already been cited 8000 times. Not really a satisfying answer ... alas ..


texts: How can a software developer best volunteer to help childhood cancer research?

texts:
I have 30 years of professional experience as a software engineer and I'm at the point in my career where I can volunteer lots of time. I have helped with several childhood cancer organizations over the years but mostly was pulled into raising money.

At this point in my life, I would like to help with a closer connection to the research aspect in either finding a cure, better medicines/trials, or similar. I do not have experience in the sciences, bioinformatics, etc. but I am willing to learn. Where do I best find researchers in the field of childhood cancer (which I know very well is many different cancers) who might be looking for the help of a software developer?


texts: How much does the choice of professors on my thesis committee matter?

texts:
Would potential employers (for academic or non-academic R&D positions) care about who is on my thesis committee?

Basically, I'm asking if there is any benefit in having more well-known professors on my committee who would provide me with little guidance, as opposed to assistant professors or research professors who are not well known but could possibly provide me with some guidance.

I'm asking because I have been discouraged by fellow graduate students from including a research professor on my thesis committee. Their reasons are that if a potential employer looks him up online and sees that he is not a tenured professor they may think that I tried to put together an 'easy' thesis committee.

The reason I would like to include this person is that he was the only member of my qualifying exam committee who read my paper carefully. He seemed to have a good understanding of my research and after I passed the exam he emailed me a list of suggestions for my future work. I think he may serve as a better committee member, although I could probably discuss my research with him even if I leave him off the thesis committee list.


texts: Is it "okay" to submit to a workshop without proceedings while in review for publication?

texts:
I'm fully aware that in academia one should never submit the same paper to two journals etc. However, would it be okay to submit a paper to a journal and the workshop track of a conference that doesn't have proceedings (i.e. won't publish the paper) at the same time?

I'd really like to get my research into the workshop track in order to get it noticed and more easily obtain funding for this really interesting conference. It's within the field of computer science (CS).


texts: What are the benefits of attending international conferences at student level

texts: Is it beneficial to attend international conferences at student level, and what are tips to follow when attending such international conferences?


texts: Submit a paper to a conference where co-authors are in the committee?

texts:
I recently read a paper whose co-authors are found in the conference committee.

Although they are not in the executive committee, they are in organizing committee and all the committee people know each other well.

So I am wondering how this can happen? I mean, is there any regulation, either ethical or by law, that prohibits this type of thing? Or it's allowed?


texts: Reasons for not releasing bottom-line answers to old exam questions?

texts:
By bottom-line answers, I literally mean the answers on the bottom line of a solution.

So if the question requires two pages of math with the final answer that x=5, all I'm interested in is the x=5 part.

In other words, I just want to know whether I've got the correct numerical answer. I'm not asking for a marking rubric or 'model answer', just a verification.

I completely appreciate the arguments against releasing worked solutions. Students can easily be robbed of learning if solutions are readily available to look at. "Oh yeah I'd have done that".
I don't think the arguments about re-using past questions quite apply here - a numerical answer isn't much help and numbers can be changed to screw people who memorise numerical answers.

Are there any other good reasons for not releasing bottom-line answers? It just seems strange to not be able to verify your own work.

EDIT re Dan Romik's comment: My issue here is just one of feedback. If you told me that I'd receive feedback from a lecturer or tutor (or in the real world, client or boss), I'd agree answers are moot. But the reality in university is that a lot of the learning is independent (some lecturers just say "no time" to any request), and answers are a useful feedback mechanism for students to independently spot and diagnose their own flaws.


texts: Citing into the future on ArXiv – good or bad idea?

texts:
I have coauthored two papers, which are strongly related. The younger paper is thus citing the first and the older paper is annoucing the second along the lines of “a study of aspect X will be published elsewhere“. As ArXiv enables you to update your papers, it would be possible to include a citation to the new paper in the old paper after the aforementioned sentence. This might save a reader of the old paper some time with finding the new paper.

However, this breaks some paradigms that were inherently fulfilled by any pre-internet citation, i.e., that you could not cite future work¹ and that there are no loops in citation graphs (i.e., there can be no papers A₁, …, such that A₁ cites A₂, which cites A₃, which cites …, which cites A₁). Thus I find it conceivable that such a citation into the future may cause some problems, for example some weird software behavior (ignoring for the example’s sake that this would arguably be the software’s fault).

Is there any such issue, which would make the aforementioned citation into the future a problem?

¹ Of course, will be published elswhere existed before, but it could not be accompanied by a regular citation.


texts: When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?

texts:
Naturally I would say "of course", but my current situation makes me doubt.

In my paper I'm briefly covering various alternative cryptographic constructions. I am (of course) familiar with all of them, but I have not (nor have the time to) read the full papers I'm actually referencing. The reason for this is that they contain lengthy specifications complemented with cryptanalysis.

I'm in doubt whether it's acceptable to reference said papers without having actually read them. Is it acceptable to do so?


texts: Should I use a linear function or two linear functions to grade scores?

texts:
In Chile, we score from 1 to 7 (this is a legal normative), where 4 is the minimum grade to pass. Thus, the passing grade corresponds to halfway point (50%) of the grade span (from 1 to 7). However, it is common practice to require a minimum score of 60% to pass (e.g. 6 points of 10). This creates a dissonance between the minimum grade and the minimum score to pass.

If we use a minimum score of 50% (4) to pass, we use a linear function to assign grades. However, if we use a minimum score of 60%, we need two functions to calculate grades from scores. In other words, the function breaks at the minimum grade to pass, such that points at the bottom (below 4.0) are worth less than the points at the top (above 4.0).

Having two functions to assess the performance troubles me. In other words, people that have more troubles in the course are being evaluated with harder standards than the ones with better performance.

One solution to this problem would be to change the grading scale. Unfortunately, this is not legally an option in the short term. A second solution would be just to drop the minimum passing score of 60%. But I think sometimes you may need to increase the grading difficulty because of the importance of the content you are teaching.

Under those circumstances, what is the better solution in this case: a single linear function or two different functions to grade scores?


texts: Is this plagiarism? Can I publish my work

texts:
I happen to have worked on a Mathematical topic. The story is complicated.

It was not my original idea. My professor had already worked on it for a long time, intermittently. In fact, when we started out, I did not understand the concepts that well. Over a period of time, I picked up and managed to implement the algorithm myself; it proved to be even better than professor's implementation and speed was 10% faster.

We were to publish this paper, but it took a different turn. The professor has some different thought process, and wants to prove a substantial finding. He has linked it to a thought that it can be better further. We have a complete discord of thoughts on this. I do not deny what he is saying is true, but I think it should be the next phase. Our work till now produces best results, of course - under certain conditions.

I do not mind working with him further, and bringing it together to the research community. But I am going for a PhD. And I will not be physically available. I suggested an option of remote interaction, but the professor does not agree. He explained why meetings are important and why remote work cannot be carried out efficiently. After the discord, it is more of an ego issue, he did not directly indicate it. But I agree with most of his points on remote work being difficult.

But I have worked hard on the problem, sometimes 10 hours a day, for 5 complete months. And now I have to walk away without anything on my name. The nature of a professor is extremely dominating, and he will NOT mention my name in the paper once it comes to publishing after following his pathway. This is not my analysis, he clearly said this: "If you are not working on it any further, your name will not be included in the paper" He will probably find another student (MS level) and get it through.

Now my questions are:

Can I publish work till now, as it is also a major finding? I firmly believe I completely understand what is being proposed, under what scenarios finding is valid, simply put, I own the work, even though original idea is not mine. I indirectly talked about this with professor, he nullified that this is even possible, indicating I should not.
Will this be termed as plagiarism? I am ready to mention professor's name, but he does not even agree to idea of publishing it at this stage. So I have two options:

a. Mentioning his name as an author without his consent.

b. Mentioning him only in the acknowledgements, and also mentioning it was his idea and we worked together, but he does not agree this should be published without future additions.
Will this come back to me in a bad way, possibly unimaginable to me at this point of time. I am just starting out my research career and do not want it to be hampered because of my behavior/attitude.
Could you suggest any better way of resolving the situation? Talking to the professor is not really helping, yesterday we spent five hours discussing it. He is acting stubborn, uncooperative and because of that I have a feeling of wasting my six months. Of course, I learned lot in the process, my programming is much better now, my research methodology has improved. But unless I publish something, it remains only with me. I genuinely want to demonstrate my work, my abilities through a publication.

Pl suggest.

Edit_1_after_~20_months
I ended up not attempting to write a paper. At that time, I had a feeling that I did SO_MUCH work but have gained nothing, and wanted some output. I was wrong though, I learned how to approach a problem, how to carry out research iteratively, my programming improved a lot. The professor is still in touch. I have moved to different country and working on my PhD. Not having that work on my name does not matter a bit, but learnings do make a positive difference. I thank people who put out their thinking and suggestion. It was a vile effort from a bu**hurt person and that thinking does not make sense now.


texts: Are anonymous online surveys exempt from IRB?

texts:
This is for a research paper, and the survey was sent to thousands of people through publically available email information.
Because the response rate is low, and we don't ask for any self-identity information, it is a truly anonymous survey.
We already finished the process, but someone shows concern about whether our anonymous online survey needs IRB approval.
Any ideas and links to valid sources are appreciated.


texts: Value of a German Industrial PhD in India

texts:
I have an offer for a full time job with a contract for 3 years in which I would be a PhD candidate in Germany at a reputed firm. I would have a supervisor at a technical university besides a supervisor at the company. The area of specialization is wireless communications. My plan is to go back to India in a couple of years and start working as an Assistant Professor in an IIT or some reputed institution in India.

Will this PhD have the same importance as compared to a PhD done at a university when looking for such Professorship in India?


texts: How often is transfer of Copyright to University required to submit PhD Thesis?

texts:
My university apparently requires Ph.D. students to transfer copyright of their thesis completely to the university. The copyright agreement, as written, seems to prevent them from publishing the work elsewhere after the work is submitted, as it only permits the author to reproduce sections of the thesis for "personal use."

I want to prepare an argument for my university that copyright to a Ph.D. thesis should stay with author, (but that the university should be granted unlimited permission to reprint or distribute the thesis, etc., as may be the norm in international universities.)

In most US and Canadian universities, how common is it for a university to require Ph.D. Students to transfer the copyright of their thesis to the University? Can anyone give me a partial list of any universities with this policy.


texts: How beneficial is IEEE student membership for a mathematics student?

texts:
I am a Ph.D. mathematics student. I have no idea regarding IEEE student membership. IEEE has advertised many benefits and opportunities of it in their web pages.

Can you kindly explain how beneficial it may be for me? How may I use it for my academic and research works?


texts: Is it safe to assume that all faculty know what a DOI is?

texts: Can I refer to DOIs without explaining what they are?  I am writing for an audience of experienced academics.


texts: Should I tell students that it's my first time teaching the course?

texts: I'm a TA teaching a class this fall for the first time.  I've taught before, but never this class, and never felt an obligation to tell my students it's my first time teaching a given class.  But, being a bit more experienced I thought it might be a good idea this time by perhaps endearing me to my students, being so candid on the first day.  Does anyone have similar thoughts on approaching a first-time teaching role?


texts: Modify the submitted manuscript to journal

texts: I submitted my manuscript to journal. one week after submission I found out that 2 references must be added and a little modification is needed. we sent them an email,but any answer have not been received yet(Maybe due to chrismass holiday). My manuscript status is assigned reviewers. please answer following questions: 1. is it possible that the editor didn't answer because the manuscript sent to reviewers and the editor decided not to let me modify it before the reviewers announce the review result? 2.If the editor removed the manuscript in the profile,whenever I resubmit the modified version,Is it necessary to change the title and abstract?someone told me if i resubmit the modified version with the same title and abstract,they will reject it. 3. is this mistake which leads to email sending to editor and resubmit the manuscript, decrease my chance for acceptance? I have too much stress . Thanks


texts:
I received an email from the university saying that the similarity report for my work identified that one of my answers shows a similarity to the answer within the script of a fellow student. They are asking to write a statement and explain what happened. Basically myself and my partner...we are studying the same thing and he copied one of my answers as he came from a night shift and he was very tired and he couldn’t think. Could you please advise what to answer.
He received the same email and he has to write a statement as well. What should he write?
Thank you for your answers and advice.


texts: I just passed my Ph.D. defence in a French speaking University. Ph.Ds, here, can be passed with different "distinctions" levels (from "acceptable" to "excellent"). What is the proper term in English for this kind of distinctions? (what we would call "mention excellente" in French...)


texts: Philippine grade equivalent in the UK grading system

texts: My GPA for my bachelor's degree here in the Philippines is 1.4259 (equivalent to magna cum laude). In the UK system, to which honors class will it belong?


texts: Are there universities or places within universities that cater specifically to shy people?

texts: Are there universities that cater specifically to shy or reserved people? It seems like many universities have the usual social hierarchy set up of 'popular' student , 'overachievers' , 'sports-inclined' , 'outcasts' or 'rebels' and the very reserved who might also fit into 'outcasts'. Unfortunately nothing seems to be done about this academic social-caste system which is in regular schools and university. Though I'm primarily concerned about the socially reserved students. As young minds are very vulnerable to emotional instability it would be great if reserved students had a special university or at least a special part of a university where they could learn freely without worrying about the problems of socializing. Are there such universities that can be a haven for reserved students?


texts: What's the consensus on sharing raw data?

texts:
Let's say I authored a paper or a study - published either in an academic journal or release just on a website. The study is well received, but I've received some requests from "colleagues" who want access to some of the data sources. The issue I have is that either I'd paid for some of the data sources - or spent considerable time and labor (or paid to have the data collected, transcribed etc)- thus I am conflicted about just releasing the data to those who did not expend the same amount of time or resources.

I once requested something similar from a professor (we only knew each other's names via the industry) - and he explained that his research data was as a result of along time relationship with people inside a particular company (who collected such data), and he did not feel comfortable giving it away. I did not think less of him, nor did I think he was hiding anything.

Is there any kind of consensus among academic or professional researchers about sharing raw data?


texts: How should students react to inaccuracies in professors' teaching without causing resentment

texts:
I am an undergraduate in the UC system.  I sometimes encounter situations where professors or TA's make errors, or there are inaccuracies in the material.  These situations tend to be quite awkward for both the student and the TA or professor.

It is painful for me not to speak up, but there is a fear, possibly exaggerated, that this could lead to resentment by the TA, or professor, or even future unfair treatment.

The most frequent response by senior students is that the professor is always right, and you should never attempt to argue with the professor. Confronting a professor about a misconception could end up being detrimental to the student in the long run.

What should a student do (and how?) when a teacher makes an error or gives inaccurate information or material?  Is there any reasonable way to anonymously point out mistakes?


texts: Professor won't let me see final exam grade

texts:
I emailed a professor asking for my final exam grade (just the number). Nothing else in the email, tried to keep the inquiry as short as possible. The professor refused.
Is there anything I can do about this, or are professors able to withhold grades at their discretion (other than the final course grade)?


texts: Who to ask to proofread my MSc dissertation?

texts: Who should I ask to proofread my MSc dissertation? Is proofreading required?


texts: Is it good practice to have hyperlinks in bibliographies?

texts:
Lately I have been thinking about what is the right way to cite other papers (i.e., what to put in the bibliography entries, in the section which is typically called "References"). As many papers are available online nowadays, it seems to me that bibliographic references should include, whenever possible, a link to the paper being cited: this is supported by the PDF format, and is easy to do (at least for works typeset in LaTeX: e.g., with \href{} or \url{}). Yet, strangely, I have never seen a paper whose bibliography entries consistently featured URLs or hyperlinks to the works being cited. Is it good practice to include hyperlinks in bibliographies? If yes, why is essentially no one doing it?

One possible explanation is laziness on the part of the authors, but, strangely, there are still many papers whose bibliography entries include information about volumes, series, and page numbers, even though in my field (computer science) I have never seen anyone look up a paper using this information: people just search for papers with Google using the title and authors every time (in other words, they work around the non-existence of a hyperlink which should be there). Maybe the explanation is that existing bibliography management tools make it easier to manage page information than URLs? But is this just inertia, or is there a good reason?

A side question is assuming you want to have hyperlinks in your bibliography, which hyperlinks should you use? I have a preference to link to open-access versions of the cited papers (i.e., which aren't paywalled, so everyone can follow the link), but this sometimes conflicts with other desiderata, such as having a stable URL (e.g., not a PDF on some author's personal web site), having a link which indicates the DOI of the paper, etc. Which criteria should one preferably follow?

Another side question in this case is how should the links be formatted? One possibility is to write out the URLs explicitly, but this ends up taking a lot of space, and may be illegible, especially for long URLs. The other option is to use \href{}, i.e., put a hyperlink on the paper title, but this is probably not very discoverable, and it means information is lost whenever someone prints the paper. Which one is preferable, or are there other formatting options?

Edit: For papers submitted to publishers, indeed, it probably suffices to follow the publisher style (although the question remains of why so little publishers seem to be doing it). My question was more about preprints and author-final versions, prepared by the authors to be published online (e.g., on arXiv) independently from any specific publisher.

Related questions (with URLs ;)):

Should I include a DOI/website URL for a publication in dissertation bibliography?
Publishing DOIs instead of traditional references?
What are the downsides of using DOIs in reference sections of publications?


texts: Master's institution forcing me to deposit $5000 immediately -- what can I do if I accept?

texts:
I applied to CS masters programs in the US, and I have recently received an offer from a top-15 institution.

The program is unfunded, and I want to wait for decisions from other programs I applied to, some of which are funded.

However, the institution is telling me that they are only giving me one week to make my decision (I must respond by 3/13) and that I must deposit a non-refundable $5000 by that date in order to secure my admission.

As the school is not giving out a funded offer, they need not abide by the April 15th resolution.

Seems somewhat unethical to me, but in any case, I have some questions:

a) How common is this? For MS programs to force you to deposit huge sums of money within one week of the decision?

b) If I accept this offer, would it somehow notify other schools that I have accepted this offer, and make other schools less likely to give me an offer?

c) Let's say I decide to shell out my 5k -- would it be unethical for me to withdraw at a later date if I get into another school? They're not investing anything into me, and they get free money.

d) If I go the route of c), with whom would I be burning bridges with? Only the admissions folk?


texts: Email affiliation for an undergraduate student with a complex university address

texts:
Imagine I'm doing research on my own, and studying at a university. I publish this research, get accepted, and now I have to provide my affiliation. I have no problems of course using my university and the department I'm studying for, and in fact, I want to. However, I've read (on this site) that using my personal @gmail.com email looks unprofessional even if you provide the university as affiliation. I have a student email but looks quite awful like: lmatteis.123112311@studenti.uniroma1.it - where the number is my student code number.

Is that ugly email better than a personal @gmail.com email?

Another option would be that I go talk to a professor, show that the paper got accepted and ask them whether they can give me a quick affiliation; provide me with the email... but then I'd probably need to add the professor as a co-author as well, which I guess is also fine? This option would however take much longer. But maybe a good way to build connections with professors in the department.

Thoughts?

EDIT

The question that appears linked is a different question. It talks about "rotting emails" and the possibility of using your personal email to avoid that. My question is regarding what email I should provide for a research that I want my university to be affiliated with, although I haven't been officially given any email by the university (apart from my student email).


texts: Advice for teaching older "non-traditional" undergraduate students

texts:
I will be teaching a class in my university's evening degree program. The students are undergraduates but are what I've heard referred to as "non-traditional" students. Basically, the students are all older than the 18-22 year range common in undergraduate programs and most of them have full time jobs. I have taught older students before, but only in the context of masters programs targeted mostly at students with professional experience (e.g., a part-time executive MBA program).

I'm looking for advice, or links to resources with advice that you have found useful, on teaching older working students. In particular, I am interested in techniques, approaches, or things to keep in mind that are different from teaching (a) traditional undergraduate students (i.e., ~18-22 year-old) students and (b) working professional master students.


texts: How to become an Editorial board member?Is it appropriate to contact journal's Editor in Chief to show interest for joining editorial board?


texts: My advisor escalated things after not getting a coauthorship he did not deserve

texts:
I am a 3rd year PhD Student (Computer Science, India). I have two advisors, one internal and one external.

The internal advisor has no knowledge of my area and he doesn’t care what I am doing. He has no contribution to my research so far, but he keeps forcing me to make him co-author (2nd author) of my papers. I am a part-time PhD student (full time faculty in my college) in my college and he is my colleague. He has contributed nothing, did not even know title of my paper.

The external advisor is the one who actually helps me with my research. He wants all authorship to be based on contribution. He is external to my college and lives in a different city.

Recently I refused to make my internal advisor second author of a paper. Due to this, he got upset and he wrote in my progress report that I have attitude problem and I don’t obey my advisor. Now I have to stand in front of the dean, head of department and the entire committee (my advisor will also be there in the meeting with me).

Should I tell the monitoring committee about how my internal advisor unethically tried to manipulate me? Can it worsen the situation in future?


texts: Should I be content with poster paper or should I try again?

texts:
A  research paper of mine has been accepted at an IEEE conference.  Although I submitted my best work as a research paper, my best was not  good enough and the reviewers threw it with the poster papers. So, it  will get published in the conference proceeding but will NOT get  uploaded to Xplore Library.

Now  if I go with this, can I try submitting the same paper (as it won't be  online) to other IEEE conferences or reputed journals or do I have to  change it substantially before submitting to other publishers? This  would be a problem because I can not work on it any more without a  top-notch laboratory with chemical equipment; I already did what I  could with just a PC and a lot of time (I am an undergraduate student in a  developing country btw).

Or keeping this in mind, should I simply  withdraw the paper and try elsewhere from scratch?


texts:
The Episciences project was all the rage a few years ago, back in the days of the now-defunct math2.0 forum and the Cost of Knowledge boycott (ca. 2013). Its goal is to build "epijournals", which are journals trimmed down to the one essential ingredient of publishing -- peer review (as everything else, such as archival, dissemination, to some extent also formatting, is handled just as good if not better by repositories such as arXiv and HAL). Of course, this reduction of editorial (and other) overhead takes the wind out of the sails of the "who is going to pay for it" argument.

The project was supposed to be launched shortly, which I understood to mean in a matter of months. Fast forward to April 2015, there is only one epijournal running. What has happened? What type of difficulties came up? Not enough universities lending authority to the fledgling epijournals? Disagreements on the way forward? Political sabotage? Obsoletion in favor of a newer, better project? Or is it just moving on, slowly and steadily, and what is needed is just more patience? Any answers would be of interest, as other open-content initiatives might face similar problems.

EDIT: Andrew Stacey has resurrected the math2.0 archives, so I can link to the old discussion of the episciences delay there. Most relevant is the reply by Benoit Kloeckner (Mar 20th 2014):

  About the lack of communication about épisciences: I understand your frustration, but since the technical team is small the development has taken some time, and I feel that keeping communicating without having much new to propose could have been counterproductive. People know it has been proposed, and communicating largely once it is up and accepting submission might be more effective.

  When we launch, there should be a couple of starting titles as well as a standard way to process applications for creating new epijournal. Basically, an epicommittee (which has been gathered already long ago) will be in charge of examining the applicant titles. If you feel that a new journal is needed, or that a journal you are participating in should join, you can start gathering a editorial board or discussing the question in the journal and with us (contact@episciences.org).

  Finally, I prefer not give a tentative opening date as the previous ones had to be delayed. Things are moving forward, please keep the project in mind but be patient.

EDIT2: The journals page has grown! There is now a Hardy-Ramanujan journal (the link on the Episciences page has typos, whence I'm linking to it here) and DMTCS (which, IIRC, has been something like an epijournal since before the episciences project). It looks like more is coming up...


texts: Can we stop looking at recommendation letters and rely purely on "objective" measurements during the admission process?

texts:
My question has different emphases from Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon?.

As we know, the letter of recommendations are heavily relied in the process of university/graduate school applications and job market. Sometimes it is considered the most important part of the application. Sometimes if a referee wants to strongly recommend someone, s/he may even directly makes a phone call to certain departments/professors.

However, as we know, the quality and importance of recommendation letters depends largely on the subjective opinions and the reputations of the referees. As a result, the system of recommendation letters sometimes encourages young scholars to spend more (and perhaps unnecessary) time using strategies to gain the favor of professional scholars (I believe there are clever ways for average students to "demonstrate" to the professors that they are strong...) or spend less time in communication to avoid bad opinions(if you can't show people that you are smart, then you'd better talk less and try not to show people that you are stupid).

Meanwhile, writing letters seems to be a heavy burden of professors. You might want to argue that this is part of their job, but shouldn't they be given more time on their research and teaching? I heard some professors write dozens of letters every year which costs them a lot of time (excluding the time for communication with applicants).

My question is, is the letter of recommendation really an indispensable part of academic application processes? Can "objective" things like GPA(well, "transcripts" or "courses and grades" might be a more accurate measurement), test and competition scores, publications alone provide enough information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of applicants?

Aside: I don't know much about the application of professional positions (postdoc and tenure-track positions). However, for university/graduate school applications, can we simply raise the difficulty of standard tests(for the information of those who think SAT and GRE general and even subject tests are too easy) to set the applicants apart from each other better? I heard in China, Ph.D. applicants need to take qualifying exams BEFORE being considered.


texts: Should I cite a concept I have already cited earlier?

texts:
I am writing a proposal for my PhD and it is majorly based on numerical modelling. I have cited the original model that I will be using earlier, and I think it is very clear throughout the proposal which model I am talking about. Should I still cite it again when I mention it later even though I think the running theme throughout is of the specific model I want to use? For example here:

  The experimental data thus acquired will then be used to construct the deformation history for the fractured rock, which will then be used to parametrise the numerical models.

I cite the models a few sections earlier, but the models are discussed throughout the whole text.


texts: Journal editor does not appear to pursue report of self-plagiarism

texts:
This is a follow-up to an earlier question about a case of blatant self-plagiarism, following which I contacted the editor of the concerned journal.

The editor did not acknowledge my initial report. It took a polite follow-up email about a month later before I got an answer saying that they were looking into the report and that they would let me know what they found. Since it is a blatant case, I expected that the investigation would be over pretty quickly. After I hadn't heard anything for about another month, I sent another polite email to ask about the status of the investigation. Another month has passed since then and still there has been no reply.

I get the impression that the editor does not appear to pursue this case. Of course I know that the editor must be very busy, but I do not think it is unreasonable to expect something to have happened more than 3 months after the initial report.

I tried to get in touch with the managing editor of the journal, but was told that the publisher will not provide the contact information. To put it mildly, I find this all very discouraging. I expected that reports of self-plagiarism would be taken more seriously despite the offence not being as serious as plagiarism or fabrication.

What should I do next?


texts: Is it possible to switch from condensed matter theory PhD to high energy theory in postdoc work?

texts: Suppose that my PhD work is on CMT, very field theoretic in techniques. Then, is it possible to work on hep-ph and hep-th areas in postdoc? Is it a lot harder than the opposite way or other people who have PhD in high energy theory? Do you know any examples of success?


texts: Negotiating boundaries with a conflict avoidant advisor

texts:
My PhD advisor is someone who values workplace/personal life boundaries. Sometimes I feel that he gets mad at me for accidentally crossing those boundaries in small ways. The problem is that he doesn't explain when he is mad at me, and this can cause problems in our working relationship - for example, he tries to avoid me online and in real life, probably in order to avoid confrontation.

I confronted him recently about why he was acting mad at me, and it surfaced that he expected me to figure out why he was angry. This is a waste of my time and energy. How can I manage my relationship with him; in particular, what are some steps that we can take so that we understand clearly what the boundaries are in our relationship? How can I encourage him to communicate his boundaries to me, without such a question seeming overly personal?

Has anyone been in a similar situation? What insights or advice do you have to offer?

Thank you!


texts: How do I find the ML model referenced in a specific paper when the authors don't provide it?

texts:
I'm trying to locate the architecture of an LSTM neural network as described here, but the authors don't provide a repository for other academics.
From arXiv, I see more than a dozen other researchers have referenced this paper and specifically utilized the same model architecture but it's unclear to me how they got access to the python source code. I've tried emailing some researchers but none of them have responded. Does anyone have any suggestions?


texts: Writing PhD thesis by copying and pasting paragraphs from publications I authored or co-authored: is this plagiarism?

texts: I'm planning to write my PhD thesis about the work I authored or co-authored in published journal. In this case, is it okay to simply copy and paste the paragraph from the paper to my thesis? Is this considered plagiarism if I am the author or co-author of the paper? I'm particular concerned for those papers that I'm not the first author.


texts: Does improving systems count as “research experience” in grad application?

texts:
Like What is exactly meant by “research experience” in grad application? but situation-specific:

Between graduating master's in 2016 and applying now for PhD admissions for 2018-9, I started teaching maths at a branch of a company that is something like Kumon.
During this time, I looked up Google Sheets and SQL programming to learn on my own supplemented by my experience with Excel in master's and then created paperless spreadsheet templates.
I wasn't guided, instructed, requested or paid to do this, but I did improve processes at work.

Could said looking up then creation count as "research" ? If so, how? If not, why?

From other post:

  As a rule of thumb, the more that what you did was something other people could not have done

Additional comments based on aforementioned:

Well I think what I did would've been pretty simple for a/an CS/Engineering/IT/ICT person but not just any employee in my company could've developed the paperless systems I made.
Also, the IT department in my company didn't for reasons I guess I'm not allowed to disclose.


texts: Should I submit an expression of interest for another position although I still have 1.5 years left in my current contract?

texts:
I am a postdoc with slightly more than 1.5 out of 3 years left in my contract. Recently I have received an email about a postdoctoral position in another country, which interests me. The position is not yet formally advertised, but potential candidates are invited to submit a brief expression of interest, and to indicate the date they will be available.

Is it a common practice to submit an expression of interest although I will only be available 1.5 years from now?


texts:
During my master thesis I have been working on a project. The professor used a good bunch of my work and included it in a publication. She even requested some of the data at the beginning of the year, which I provided for her. She did not put my name on the publication. The paper has been already published. Is there anything I can do in such case?

Edit: I did not have any publication based on this project. And there is an acknowledgment part, but my name is not there. The data was used for the core of the paper. The ex-supervisor contacted me earlier this year to send her my data, claiming that she lost everything on her hard disk. Then she used all that in the paper. She even put 12 authors on the publication, needless to say, most of them did not contribute. Half of the experimental section and analysis part is my work. I mean even if she didn't want to put my name on it, at least she could have let me know that she is publishing the data.


texts: Etiquette in difficult situation with colleague

texts:
A former colleague of mine who I thought that I knew quite well has recently become verbally abusive towards me because I would not leave my current job  to work with him in his lab on different project at another university.

Looking back on our interactions I now see that he was manipulating me much of the time and was angry that his latest effort was unsuccessful. I am concerned that because I have refused his request he will try and ruin my reputation (he made some veiled threats that I won't go into and implied I owed him because he "mentored" me).

To make matters worse, I had agreed to collaborate on some things with him before his behaviour became obvious to me.

Is it appropriate to simply avoid/ refuse all contact with this person or will this make things worse (especially with the collaboration dilemma)?

How would you deal with this? I do not feel that I have done anything wrong and that his reaction was very bizarre.


texts: Semi-administrative position in academic/research setting after finishing Ph.D. and postdoc(s)

texts:
I would like to know what are the scopes for semi-administrative positions like research coordinator, scientific coordinator, program manager or something similar that are available for someone with PhD and postdoctoral experience. I have definitely seen LinkedIn profiles where they completed a postdoc in certain universities in France, it was 4th or 5th year after their PhD in STEM field (his are was astronomy and data analysis), and then got a senior project manager (not even Junior manager) in Ireland.

I have some questions regarding this type of positions:

What is the nature of the job outside their research?
What prerequisites are needed to get these jobs apart from PhD+postdoc? Is it just university research in PhD+postdoc? Or something more?


texts: Can I become a tenure-track prof in one dept (biology) and teach in a different dept (math) with only one PhD?

texts:
I recently defended my PhD in Neuroscience and am starting a postdoc soon. Like a lot of people who take this track, I hope to one day have my own research lab at a university. I would also like to teach, but here's the thing — I don't want to teach neuroscience or biology. I taught lower-division math at my undergrad university as an adjunct before leaving for my PhD (when I had just a BS in Bio, Math) and I loved it. I would ideally like to have a research career in neuroscience and teach lower-division math courses.
My question is: is it possible to span fields like this if you can demonstrate capability or have subject-specific teaching on your CV even without PhD-level training in both fields? I don't have math-specific training beyond my BS. Many adjunct/lower-division math professors have a Master's in Math and no PhD in any field. Do I also need a Master's if I have a PhD in a different field (neuroscience is more quantitative than other life sciences, but it's not math)?


texts: How can code be classified in a Thesis(Figure, Table, Listing, etc)

texts: I am writing a Thesis and there are sections that require me to add fragments of code or a complete code. Should this be classified as a figure, table,listing or snippet ?


texts: Research promotions in the middle of post-doc contract

texts:
I noticed that a few people in my field (Computer Science / Community Informatics) have taken up post-doc positions immediately after their PhD but within a year of starting those post-docs have been promoted to Lectureships either internally or in another academic organization.

The individuals concerned have been very active in their field, and published considerably either during their PhDs or immediately after their PhD write-up or often both (so I do feel like they've earned this!).

Is this a common practice for academic recruiters (project managers, professors) to employ someone like this for 18month/2 year/3 year contracts knowing that most likely in a year or two they will be promoted or hired by another institution?

And as a recruiter/senior academic, do you encourage this kind of rapid promotion even if the individual doesn't fulfil their full contract length?

Any responses, particularly from people who've made switches like this or hired people like these would be appreciated!


texts: Two conflicting reports on a Combinatorics paper

texts:
(Originally asked on MathOverflow)
I'm a PhD student in Mathematics. Last year I submitted a short paper in enumerative combinatorics (which is far from the subject of my thesis) to one of the top combinatorics journals, which sought two referee reports on my paper.
One of these reports was exhaustive, went into the complete details of the then somewhat poorly written paper, suggested a lot of changes and asked for illustrative examples that were missing then, and said very positive things such as "the paper deserves to be widely read", "the method is very ingenuous and should be influential", "the revisions though tedious are well worth the effort for the many readers the paper deserves".
However the second referee thought the paper was only "somewhat interesting" and said there was a lack of examples and explicit constructions, and the totally new theorems lacked sufficient appeal on their own to get published in this journal, although the purpose was to give new and hopefully interesting proofs to old results as well. It didn't seem like the second referee read beyond the introduction, which would be fine with me if this was the only feedback, and I would have immediately tried a new journal.
The editor requested me to make all the exhaustive changes that the first referee asked for. I took a while to do this, with several explicit examples added that also partly addressed the second referee's concerns, and resubmitted. However now the second referee had more general negative comments and opinions about the purpose of the paper, whereas the first referee suggested acceptance. The editor rejected the paper.
Now I again rewrote the article to address some of the further concerns of the second referee, and in my humble opinion the article remains just as interesting as I thought it was in the beginning.
Would it be pertinent to contact the same journal again, with these few further changes, or would it be proper to submit to a new journal of similar stature and request the editor to contact the old referee who substantially read the paper and eventually recommended acceptance?
Looking at a few other questions, it seems it is usually standard practice for referees in mathematics journals to consent to having the referee reports transferred, but would it be considered improper for an author to suggest contacting the old referee, not knowing if the old referee consented in a form to having his report transferred?


texts: How to respond to papers that put forward unreasonable criticisms of my research area?

texts:
My research area (not me specifically) sometimes gets attacked by a handful of people who don't know what they're talking about. I don't have a problem with fair criticism, but these people are just being unprofessional.
To be more specific, the abstract of a critical paper might be something like:

We use technique X. After extensive testing we find that X is completely impractical. Moreover, X fails to do Y or Z. We conclude that X is a research dead end and the researchers working on X don't understand what they are doing.

A more accurate summary of the paper would be:

We implement A - one of many techniques from area X. A is widely known to be inferior to other techniques in the literature of X, but we are unaware of more sophisticated techniques. Some basic tests confirm A's inferiority.
 Due to failing to properly use A, it doesn't do Y. Moreover, A doesn't do impossible task Z. (No one claimed that A does Z.) We thereby demonstrate that we don't know what we are doing.

How does such a paper get through peer review? Simple: They publish it in a different community, where no one understands X. Unfortunately, this terrible paper then becomes one of the most visible papers on X in that community.
Most people in my area completely ignore the criticism, although some do try to rebut it. As easy as it would be to ignore the critical papers and hope that others do too, the reality is that the misinformation they spread is harmful to my area.
I was wondering whether others have similar experience and can share what worked and what didn't. Can you win by arguing with an idiot/troll?


texts: Authorship when PhD project given to new post-doc?

texts:
I'm in the mid stages of my PhD, working on 3/4 of the components of a major project in our group. A post-doc has just started working on the remaining 1/4 using protocols I established (to keep our work comparable). My supervisor has now reassigned a lot of my original work to the post-doc, and let them re-optimise protocols independently.

Now it's looking like I will have no authorship for the majority of the project, as the post-doc modified my protocols (which were meant to be consistent between us) and has taken over the bulk of my project.

What can I do to ensure I still get first-author publications out of my PhD? I have spoken with my supervisor who does not want to discuss authorship 'at this stage' and has been known to publish in the past without consulting other members of the group.

Thanks


texts:
EDIT: I asked the question poorly, so what follows is an edit of the original.
When submitting an abstract for a presentation on research that is based on joint-work, should all authors be listed or only the presenter(s)?


texts: Can you submit two different abstracts about the same data to two different conferences?

texts: We were working as a team to gather some data in the medical field and our research was concluded in the summer. I was the only member of the team that was interested in presenting the data so I contacted our senior who supervised the whole research about doing so. He sent me the data and I began writing my abstract for a conference next year. He then told me that he has already sent an abstract to a conference this year for the same data and it has been accepted for oral presentation. Our abstracts are obviously not the same and I am submitting to a different conference entirely but we are using the same data and trying to answer the same question. I am aware that it is forbidden to present data that has been published or presented before as I have submitted abstracts in the past and I have seen it in the rules section. However for the conference I want to send my abstract to, they don't mention anywhere that the results cannot have been published previously. I don't want to do something that is against the rules as I understand these conferences rely on publishing novel data. But its a conference on a totally different topic, a completely different abstract and they do not mention that the data cant have been published before. What should I do in this case?


texts: Etiquette or useful guidelines while making video lectures

texts:
I'm in the midst of creating a series of videos to teach statistics online. Do any of you have a list of common do's and don'ts that can make a big difference?

Also, how does one assess how much to explain a topic, since you do not get instant feedback by looking at facial reactions to a given concept?

In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.

Any way to minimize this?


texts: Applying to a graduate program in molecular and cell biology

texts: I'm a medical school graduate student. However, I wish to apply for a PhD program in molecular and cell biology, I'm interested in understanding the interactions within and between cells at molecular level. However, it seems that at many programs, courses on physics and mathematics are required. I didn't take any mathematical or physical courses. Is it possible to take these courses without having to go through the whole bachelor's curriculum? If this is possible, how could I do this?


texts: How do new tax rules apply to a Ph.D. student receiving a fellowship?

texts:
I read that some revamping had happened in the recent times with respect to the tax policies in the US. Say,I get an admission for Ph.D. for Engineering at New York University with a fellowship which offers $2600 stipend per month. How much will be the tax I have to pay OR what is the 'real' stipend I will get?

Edit: I am an international student planning for Ph.D.


texts: Can I have the same project as another master's student (same experiments and results) and we both write two different theses?

texts:
I am currently doing a research thesis with another master's student and we both are designated the same project by the same promotor and we work together through every single experiment that we did.
Is it acceptable for us to use the same results (graphs and images) that we both obtained together and write them in our thesis? The only thing that's different will be the wording in our explanations. However, we have the same overall conclusion and take.
Our supervisor and promotor said it is okay but I hope the scientific integrity committee is going to say the same.


texts: Chances of getting into a PhD program (Physics) after an MS from another stream (Chemistry)

texts:
I am an international student who started my PhD program in chemistry at an R1 university in the US, at the beginning of Fall 2019.
As I credited graduate level courses in Physics like Mathematical Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Optics etc., I realized that I would rather see myself getting a PhD in Physics than in Chemistry. But, COVID-19 made it impossible for me to transition into the physics program at my university. Therefore, I ended up taking summer research credits enough to graduate with an MS in Chemistry.
What are the chances of getting into the graduate program in Physics again if I apply this Fall for starting next Fall?


texts: Choosing between MS Word, PDF, and latex formats when submitting a manuscript for publication when all are allowed?

texts:
I've been working on an article, and for ease of collaboration among co-authors and advisers I have used Google Docs thus far, so I'll likely need to do at least a little post-formatting once in .doc format. In addition, I use linux and LibreOffice when I have to, and I generally dislike using MS products.

I'm now preparing the article to submit and the journal I am considering accepts a wide range of file formats: .doc, .docx, .rtf, & .pdf (with .tex files after acceptance).

I feel inclined to put things in LaTeX since I am well-versed and like the idea of having finer control of the appearance of things, but it will certainly take a bit more time and I am ignorant of the layout process journals use when preparing an article.

Is there any real benefit of using LaTeX or another format when submitting an article to a journal (in this case PLOS One)?


texts: How valuable is being in an A+ rank CS conference with a short paper?

texts:
My paper is accepted in an A-rank conference in computer science as a short paper. I need to reduce it to 6-pages instead of 10-pages.
All the reviewers said the paper has all the required elements to be a decent paper, but the presentation and problem introduction should have been better.

Also if i have to cut 4 pages, I need to reduce the references and the propositions and the proofs, and some of the related works!

So I'm not sure if it is better to withdraw it from this conference and submit the revised full version to another one? Or i should take the opportunity of having my paper in this top conference and try to submit the extended version to a journal paper?

BTW, i'm almost at the end of my PhD study and have not yet published any paper in a top-tier conference, and this work is one of the main results of my work (however there might be one another work to be submitted to another A-rank conference).


texts:
During a collaborative experimental project in my PhD, I developed a rather intricate simulation + data processing tool. The work was published with myself as the lead author. One of the collaborators, who is located in a different country, was keen on extending that work and, based on ideas and inputs during the course of the project, she got one of her students to prepare the experiment at their end. (Meanwhile, I finished my PhD and am now working as a Postdoc at a different group).

Recently, they got their first results and now to bring this study to a conclusion, the collaborator requested me to process their experimental data through that tool I had developed. I haven't been offered an authorship yet but chances are fair that I would be if the tool gives publication-worthy results (As also mentioned above: I have already contributed a bit in this study through ideas). My question however is, in the event I am offered a co-authorship, am I obliged to also share the entire code with them?

While I am certainly open to giving them a gist of how the tool works (or to even get it lightly reviewed) via code snippets, screenshots etc., I am wary of simply handing them all the files. This is due to the fact that we had had some authorship issues with the collaborator in the past (though I wasn't directly involved at that time). If they have the files, there is a good probability that they would obtain the results themselves, publish them, with my name -- at the very best -- being in the acknowledgements section.

Additional info in response to some answers: Certain parts of the code are generic and could be useful to the broad community. Being pro open source myself, I intend to release those parts publicly soon. The other part of the code is very specific to the current work and would be of use to only a handful of people, including the collaborator's group.


texts: What are the legal ramifications of citing scientific articles for producing commercial software?

texts:
I am a sophomore student building some software with friends that are heavily based on various articles about distributed hash tables, networking, and various topological mathematical concepts. Since we do plan to sell it after completion, we are worried about potential legal obligations of citing our sources (from different scientific journals)

If we cite some professor, will they be entitled to all our work, perhaps even lay claim to profits and or have the right to sue for copyright infringement? Obviously, I am not asking for the nitty gritty details, but a general rule of thumb.

Is copying theories from scientific journals a big bad idea. Or is it "public knowledge" kind of and I have nothing to fear.

Summary

Does citing scientific sources for your program entitle the researchers to some intellectual property? Am I legally bound to them as if I were to a Lady Gaga if I used one of her songs in my videos?


texts: Why are there barely any Masters programs in Pure Mathematics in the USA?

texts: I was just wondering why most graduate programs in the US have no Master's programs. They mostly are PhD programs. Why is this the case? After obtaining an undergraduate degree from a Canadian university, what would be your advice about going straight to a PhD in the US? Do you gain the same knowledge en route to the PhD as you would in a Master's program or would it be more beneficial to do a Master's elsewhere first and then apply for a PhD?


texts: Is it rude to ask another faculty member if you can reuse their slides, notes etc?  I am new to teaching in a 4-year college and I am not sure if I can even ask my new colleagues this question.  It pops up when they help me and add me to their course pages they have taught a previous semester.  I see that their material is good and prompted to ask if I can reuse them.


texts: Is it acceptable to apply to a masters program based on your weakness, rather than you strength?

texts:
As an undergrad, I took a wide variety of courses, but focused on one or two fields and took advanced courses only in those, and those fields are my strengths. I intend to do a PhD, but now I'm applying for Master's programs, and I actually want to focus on the fields that I received little to none education in my undergrad on, and the subjects that I wasn't very good at. What I want to do for my PhD is more directly related to the subjects I'm stronger at, but a knowledge in those I'm not very strong in would be significantly useful too.

To me, that sounds totally acceptable, since I want to fill in the gaps and learn something new, rather than repeating what I already have a good knowledge on and possibly going a little deeper in it, especially as I took quite a few graduate-level courses in the fields I focused on.

I am wondering if that's acceptable and sounds reasonable to admission committee and graduate schools too. Given that they probably have applicants who are actually applying for what they have a strong background in, would it make sense for me to compete with them with this justification that I want to improve the weaknesses in my background by throwing myself at those fields and "learn to love them", or should I just apply for what I'm stronger in and try to improve my knowledge in other fields through self studying?

(Please note that by "field", I'm actually referring to subfields within a major field. So it's not that I've done Management and I want to study Dance Performance, it's more like PDEs vs Algebra, which would mean applying to Applied Math vs Pure Math.)


texts: LaTeX Document - would I make every instance of a term internally hyperlinked?

texts:
I'm writing a Computer Science Dissertation and am wondering if I should make all mentions of terms in my glossary hyper linkable to the corresponding glossary definition. Should I or shouldn't I?
EDIT: Thanks for the feedback guys. Although the advice is somewhat conflicting, I think I'll hyperlink the first mention of these terms in the report. Might leave this until I've written the entire dissertation too! Else I might get too caught up in ironing out something that isn't worth very much, haha.
More advice is welcome! Thank you!


texts: As an engineering student, will there be a problem listing my graduate school on my resume when I haven't accepted the offer yet?

texts:
I will be going to a career fair tomorrow where no company with my undergraduate engineering specialty (it is a rather distinctive field) will be there. Therefore, it would be very hard to obtain a summer internship from one of these companies.  However, I will attending graduate school in a more broad specialty of engineering (ME) and would like to list my new school which I would start in the fall on my resume even though I won't be graduating my undergrad until late April. Normally I would imagine that companies wouldn't even give me a look since I haven't even taken many basic ME courses except fluids, thermo, materials, etc, but I will be attending a very prestigious graduate school where I am pretty confident I will get looks even though I don't have an undergrad in the field.

First off, will listing a school I haven't started yet but will almost certainly be attending cause problems?

Second, I have been accepted to this school BUT have not accepted the offer yet. I am worried that if a company does a background check and they call up my future graduate school, that the school won't have me registered because I haven't accepted the offer yet and might not check a list of accepted students.

Please keep in mind I am just looking for a summer internship. Thanks


texts: What to do if I find actual exam marks higher than the marks I made for my exam?

texts:
In course specification for the course I teach there should be two mid-term exams. For each one that total marks should be 20.  I forgot about that and gave the students the first mid-term with only 15 multiple choice (1 mark for each).

Now how can I correct my mistake? Should I give them a bonus of 5 marks or what is the best way to correct my mistake?

It also would be helpful to suggest a book that discuss such situations.


texts: Transferring to another university due to discrimination/policies/healthcare availability?

texts:
I've read some threads on transferring to another university based on many factors, but mine are focused around my ability to live comfortably with workplace protections, opportunities, and medical care (among other things).

I'm fairly certain that if I laid out my concerns with my department, they would understand and be supportive (although I have no plans to do this as of yet). My question is essentially whether another university would be willing to accept my transfer for these reasons, especially this late in the game (year 2, recently finished qualifiers).

Would personal safety and access to resources be considered a respectable choice? I just don't want to shoot myself in the foot in terms of having a future, I suppose.

(Apologies if this has been posted before in some respect, also please let me know if this breaks any rules, this is my first question on this Stack!)


texts: What is the significance of the corresponding author?

texts:
In your field of research, what is the significance of the corresponding author?

Does the title "corresponding" imply that the person is the expert out of the list of all authors, or that the person is responsible for communicating with the journal / reviewers?

When should the PhD student, if she/he is set as the first author, also be the corresponding author?


texts:
I have seen couple of questions related to rejection of submissions to conferences (CS). Coming to my case, this is my third rejection, I agree that first two were fair decisions as the paper was not clear and needed more thorough experiments. However in this third submission I have put in all possible effort to make it the best considering feedback from prior submissions.

I received initial comments from 4 reviewers with no scores and based on their comments it was on borderline. Since there was a rebuttal phase, I have sent a response clarifying issues raised by them. I received my final notification today and it was a 'reject' decision. The final reviews had comments from an additional reviewer. His comments are atrocious and unfair. He pointed out that he is rejecting the paper as some issue X was not addressed at all. However we have addressed X with a thorough evaluation in a subsection and results put up in a graph. I'm sure that this reviewer has not read it properly. If he raised his issue may be on the way we solved X, it would have been more appropriate.

I know that appealing to the PC chairs would be a futile effort but at the same time I do not want an unfair review. This feeling of rejection based on unfair review is depressing me. How do I go about it. I feel the only way out is to resubmit it for another conference in near future.

Please advise.


texts: Signed up for a talk, not enough material

texts:
I am a PhD student in pure mathematics about 4 months into my program. After consulting with my supervisor and some peers, I have signed up to give a 20 minute talk at an online conference, which has invited final year undergraduates writing a bachelor's thesis, masters students, PhD students and postdocs to sign up and optionally give a talk.
My supervisor and peers have told me that it is a good idea to sign up as it's really good for my CV. At this point in my program however, I am mainly learning about my field, and haven't produced very much original research. I have however come up an (in my opinion) interesting question that would make for a good talk if I had a partial answer, but at this stage I have not had much time to explore the answer.
The conference is in about a month's time, and I think it would be a great exercise to write a talk giving an introduction to the field and how it came about, but at this stage this is all I could do, and even this would be quite a task to do in a month!
The sign up page for the conference does encourage works in progress however, but I am not sure how much I can do in a month.
My questions are:

Was it a mistake to sign up for this talk?

If, in a week's time say, I feel that I can't present any partial progress, can I ask to be removed from the schedule, or is this unacceptable?


texts: How to prepare for long-term dissertation fieldwork?

texts:
I am a PhD student in the social sciences at an American university. I have completed coursework, my prospectus, qualifying exams, and teaching. I am about to leave for one year of dissertation fieldwork.

As is the case for most PhD students in my position, the project is larger, longer, and more independent than anything I have done before -- conducting one year of full-time original research, writing a dissertation, and then writing a book. Although my prospectus outlines a research plan, it feels too abstract to give day-to-day, week-to-week guidance.

What strategies have you used to succeed in a large, long-term research project, especially when it is based on fieldwork and for a dissertation? Personal anecdotes, experience, advice, and tips are welcome.


texts:
I have accumulated a lot of textbooks, many of which I have yet to read, and I am wondering how to determine the relevance of those books for me based on my field of study, my interests, and academic relevance (which I suspect varies by field of study).

What are some techniques for determining the relevance of a textbook for future reading?


texts: What suffix should you use when you are a PhD Scholar filling out membership form for IEEE Xplore?

texts:
I was filling IEEE Xplore membership form. In the form, there was a field "Suffix", the values for this field are I, II, III, IV, Jr., M.D., P. Eng, PE, PhD, Sr., V.

Which one does best describe me? Currently I am a Research/PhD scholar in a department of information technology.


texts: When is reference for a definition needed and not needed?

texts: Does all definitions need a reference? Is there any rules to when you need one(or more) and when you don't?


texts: How to Constructively Deal with Email Invitations to Scam Conferences or Journals?

texts:
Today I received the following email which was entitled the same as one of my publications:

Dear Dr. Ian,
I followed your research works which were of extremely high standard. I would like to invite you to the World Pediatrics Webinar 2021 which aims to accelerate scientific discoveries and major milestones in the field of Pediatrics. The conference will be held during June 08-09, 2021.
Conference Website: https://www.▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮-▮▮▮▮▮▮▮.com/
You can directly contact me through Whatsapp: +37▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮
Please let me know your interest so that we can discuss further. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Ian Watson | Program Manger
World Pediatrics Webinar 2021

I get a few of these scam conference or predatory journal emails a week. It takes about 500 milliseconds to recognize the scam. First, that paper was not of extremely high standard. Second, Whatsapp, really? I dutifully report them as junk to my organization's email platform, but they keep coming.
I've found a couple of tangentially related questions:

How to warn others about a conference-related scam?
How to make sure that a conference is not a scam when you are invited as a speaker?

The first has to do with a specific scam associated with a particular conference and the second is about identifying the scam.
In contrast, my question is about how to deal with the problem once identified, productively.

What arguments can I make to my academic institution's IT department that blocking these emails should be a priority?
If I can't convince my IT department to block the emails for everyone, is there an authority I can complain to? Google? The website's hosting provider? The payment processor?

In addition to the annoyance (which spread over an organization sized number of individuals is considerable and detracts from meaningful academic pursuits), academics fall for prey to deceptive practices all the time [1] [2]. This means potentially hundreds  wasted on registration fees, which are frequently paid by funds provided by taxpayers or charitable organizations.