texts:
I am currently writing my thesis. At times, I find it may be helpful to add additional context to a quotation or I may want to include an additional, interesting fact that complements the main body of the text whilst not being directly pertinent to the point at hand.

For example, I'm quoting "God does not play dice" and want to add a footnote regarding the discrepancy between the popular interpretation of what Einstein meant by god and his "cosmic religion". It's not relevant to the academic point I'm making with regards to quantum physics but it is interesting and pertinent to how the reader may interpret the connotations of the quotation.

Is it acceptable to include things like this in the footnotes or should I leave them out entirely?


texts: Capitalisation of "Section" and "Chapter" in a Ph.D. Thesis

texts:
I am submitting a Ph.D. thesis fairly soon and my supervisor has flagged my use of capitalisation in "Section" and "Chapter" as possibly incorrect. I have googled about a bit and I see mixed opinions.

So my question is, when writing a computer science Ph.D. thesis, what is the correct way to capitalise "Section", "Chapter", "Appendix", "Figure", "Table", ... ?

For example, what is the correct capitalisation for the following:

"In Chapter 3, it was shown that..."
"In the previous Section, a method was presented to..."
"The graph in Figure 3 shows..."


texts: Can I defer a math postdoc for a year till I complete my current postdoc?

texts:
I currently have a postdoc position at University X. Now, I was wondering: if I apply to math postdocs advertised by the departments in the U.S. (sth. like Szego Assistant, Benjamin Peirce etc.), would I be able to accept such a postdoc position and defer it by one year to continue my postdoc at Uni X, or is this in general impossible?
I think I've seen people doing this where they would spend one year at let's say IAS or MSRI, but I am not entirely sure if such a procedure can be negotiated or whether it is rather unlikely.


texts: What do I do if somebody asks me to join his accusation of my colleague of academic misconduct?

texts:
One of my colleagues at my institution, Prof. A, is the editor of a journal, Journal X, (and I am not involved in the journal in any way). I received an email by a professor, Prof. B, who had submitted two articles to Journal X and accuses Prof. A. of intentionally delaying the publication of these articles by not handling them properly. Prof. B claims that Prof. A did not answer his queries per email and that another editor of Journal X also did not answer his emails. The email I got from Prof. B was openly targeted to several other colleagues at my institution and also to a number of other people I do not know and also to Prof A. At the end of his email, Prof. B asks me (and the others - more or less verbatim) "Is this attitude of Prof. A normal or are there any unethical elements [...]?" and to "join in this story".

I found it disturbing that Prof. B wrote such an email to such an audience and I would say that his way of addressing the situation was not ok. However, I wonder what my reaction should be. Normally, I would just stop by at Prof. A's office, but I am on sabbatical leave so this is not an option. I do not know more details about the issue of the publication, but I think that these do not really matter in this case, as I only want to ask about what I should do:

Should I answer Prof. B that this way of addressing the issue was not ok?
Should I inform Prof. A that I found this email inappropriate?
Should I just act as if I haven't read this email?

I would especially appreciate answers from people with experience on an editorial board, but other guiding comments are also helpful.


texts: Are papers entirely unrelated to my field going to hurt my chances in the future?

texts:
For the past year I have been doing a postdoc in a Neuroscience lab, the position advertised was for computer science.

For the first year, the work was mostly related to my discipline, but my PI's funding got cut and now he has been pushing me to write and do experiments in an area that is entirely out of my expertise or even my field (electrodeposition/ impedance characterization). To be honest, I do not like the area, and was not written anywhere neither in the job posting or the offer letter.

I got a postdoc offer in a different University, and have already accepted, but my PI is pushing me to delay my start date or even come back over the summer to finish these experiments and the paper. (Probably at my own expense, the position is in a different US state)

As I would like to apply for a Tenure track position after the coming Postdoc, I would like to know how much can this affect my chances, would a publication in a field that is not even remotely similar to my own (Machine Learning) can hurt me more than help me?

I've tried to think on ways to turn it around so I can come with a feasible explanation on how is a paper on that topic even going to help build my ML expertise, but so far I have come with nothing.


texts: Is it a problem that my CV rounded-up my GPA while my transcript shows more digits?

texts:
I recently applied to a PhD program, now accepted and planning  to attend, in my CV I entered my GPA as 3.8 although the true value is 3.78.

Will that be a problem when I send the hardcopy transcripts to school?


texts: Effect of passing management courses on research career

texts:
By reviewing syllabus of a MBA course, and its entry requirements such as some years of industry job experience; it comes to mind that these type of management courses are designed only for the people seeking jobs in industry and studying management sciences does not have any positive impact on a person's career aiming to do research.

In my opinion, having knowledge of management, will help researchers in many aspects; such as if they are managing a laboratory, by having management knowledge, they will better manage their labs and be more effective in their scientific contracts, managing human resources, etc. Also, having project management knowledge may help the students or people in academia better organize their projects, whether academic or industry projects.

How does studying management short-time courses or degrees help a researcher?
How does these type of courses help research students improve their effectiveness in academia?

Please focus your answers specifically on MBA, project-management courses and short time classes or workshops on management sciences.


texts: How can publishers justify author fees for open access journals?

texts:
The context for my question is that I recently discovered a new journal called Experimental Results, published by Cambridge University Press. Their mission, as stated on their website, is:

  Experimental Results is an Open Access journal providing a forum for experimental findings that disclose the small incremental steps vitally important to experimental research; experiments and findings which have so far remained hidden. Such results often go unpublished due to the traditional scholarly communication process, in which only a select group of experiments are chosen to make up the narrative of a single paper.

  Articles for consideration in Experimental Results include validation
  and reproducibility of existing findings, null results, supplementary
  findings, improvements or amendments to published results, as well as
  results that could be of importance, but for whatever reason, the
  researcher has not followed a particular line of questioning to
  produce a full narrative for a traditional paper. Where applicable,
  work published in Experimental Results will clearly link back to the
  related article.

While I applaud the idea of open access and publishing the science that Experimental Results is targeting, I can’t say that I understand how Cambridge University Press can justify the absurd 700 EUR article processing charge (ACP). How can they rely on authors’ good intentions to pay that amount to publish <750 words (the stated word limit) of science that is largely procedural?

Furthermore, when publishers houses see >35% profit margins on their “products” by relying on faculty service obligations for manuscript reviewing (among other factors), why does Cambridge University Press (one of the oldest and most well-established scientific publishers) need to charge a fee for this, at all? Why can’t it be truly free and open access?

Speaking generally, I do understand the common justification for fees relating to open-access publishing (i.e., someone's gotta pay, and if it won't be the university libraries, it's going to be the authors) - but this seems like it has gone too far, in my opinion.

To summarize my specific questions for clarity:
1. What is a reasonable justification for author fees in journals like this?
2. Why would authors be motivated to pay such fees to publish, instead of freely sharing information?

(Also, I am new to asking questions on SE, so I apologize if this type of opinionated/targeted question is inappropriate or violates policy by lacking a "correct" answer. This just seemed like a well-informed community in which to have this discussion.)


texts: When is a good time (during graduate studies) to start thinking about writing the thesis?

texts:
A significant number of colleagues had their thesis defense in the past year and talking to them got me thinking about my own dissertation to come in about 2 years (I am approximately half-way through my graduate studies).

Based on my experience, the norm appears to be so that the focus of a PhD student shifts from initial getting-used-to-things, to getting-papers-out, do your coursework/teaching (if applicable), getting-papers-out (repeat)... until you are a couple of months away from the dissertation date, and you panic your way into writing your thesis. The panic then leads to stress and errors, which I witness with many colleagues.

Seeing as my projects are particularly detached from one-another, it would perhaps be good to start thinking about some structure, and perhaps even start jotting down some text; not long paragraphs but at least some bullet points on the points I want to mention, statements I want to make in my thesis.

Seeing that I am only half-way in, is this a reasonable approach? ... or am I stressing way too early? Does one need to leave the thesis writing to the end when the stress is maxed-out, or are there smarter ways to handle the writing? I imagine one drawback of starting now, is that I do not yet have the "bigger picture" but yet again, since the projects are not built up on one another, I don't know if it's a real issue in my case.

Any perspective on the matter is welcome, of course.


texts: Math Professors -- On average, how many hours per week do you think is required to gain tenure?

texts:
I have a question particularly for the math professors here. I just finished my second year as a PhD student at a top30 University, passed all my qualifying exams, and I've begun working with an adviser in an area I'm excited about. Since the end of the Spring semester I've done a LOT of thinking, and I'm not sure academia is for me. The main issue is my perception of the time that will be required (in terms of hours per week) to get tenure. I have a wife and kids, and I just can't sacrifice the time spent with them, even if it means giving up something I love. I figure I could put in 40-45 hours a week, but then I need to be home. My first year of grad school, I put in 60-70 hours a week, and I certainly never want to go back to that. This last year, I've kept it between 40-50, and that seems about right for work/life balance.

So my question is this... am I correct in ruling Academia out for this reason? I had considering smaller colleges, but I'm looking to earn at least $60k and from what research I've done, I won't make that much.

My next question involves research outside Academia. Is there any place for research in combinatorics, asymptotics, probability, and analysis of algorithms outside of Academia, where the work-culture is a typical 40 hour workweek? I see a lot of research in other areas of mathematics that I'm not interested in (PDE's, Scientific/Engineering, Number Theory) -- but not really what I'm interested in.

So with all that, it seems to me that I'm not even sure why I would get a PhD anymore, other than it might open doors, but it's hard to stay motivated when there is no clear goal, or thing to work towards. My current thinking is just take some CS courses and learn some programming languages, get an internship next summer and perhaps leave with a masters after a year or so unless I can think of a very good reason to stay.

Any advice is appreciated!!


texts: OpenStreetMaps in research publications: Is that possible?

texts:
In connection with Scholia (https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/), we are making OpenStreetMap plots online with the tiler from Wikimedia Foundation. When presented online OSM-derived maps are not a problem. However, if we take a screenshot, use that as part of a scientific article (likely a "Collective Work" - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Common_licence_interpretations) and send that to a publisher there might come a problem: Publishers may require either transferal/waive of copyright or a CC BY license - neither of these options seems to work with the OSM license, AFAIU.

Would there be any possible way out?


texts: How to deal with this type of rejection without review report?

texts:
After being in "Under Review" status for 4.5 months (before that it stayed in "Reviewing" status for 3 weeks), I get the following cold rejection without any review report or review comments. How to deal with this cold rejection? If it had come much early, without going into "Under Review", I would have saved time (valuable for an independent researcher. I am not disheartened by rejection but the lack of review report or comments.

  Dear Professor XXXXX,

  This message concerns the manuscript

  XXXXX A XXXXX(XX) XXXXX XX XXXXX    by XXXXX XXXXX

  submitted to the Journal of XXXXX & XXXXX.

  We regret that we cannot consider it, in part because at present we
  have a large backlog of excellent articles awaiting publication. We
  are thus forced to return articles that might otherwise be considered.

  Thank you for considering the Journal of XXXXX & XXXXX.

  Sincerely,

  XXXXX XXX     University of XXXXX, XXXXX Editor - XXXXX & XXXXX


texts: Would it be seen ok to change PhD more than once?

texts:
Last year I was doing a PhD in an area I happened to not be interested in after a while, and I decided to change PhD project which end up taking me to a different university and different country.

At the moment my topic is good, of my interest, but I don't like the way my supervisory team works, more specifically, I am not making too much progress on my PhD thesis, because I'm helping with other stuff and my supervisor already said that is the way in which the department works, so is either accept their system or quit.

Plus, I've been having a hard time to adapt to this place, my work is all in English but I am in a non-English speaking country so my life is not that easy in that sense. I don't speak the language of this place, and I am trying to learn it but it would take me a while, plus I feel isolated as well and with very few friends, therefore I am deeply missing the city in which I was doing my former PhD.

Due to those reasons I've been thinking on applying to a project of my interest in a city nearby where I used to be, but I don't know if this would be seen badly by supervisors. And instead of being helping myself, start being considered as quitter and not suitable for PhD research.

What is your advice? Should I just endure here and try to finish on time despite the way of working of my supervisors, and then leave?

If you were a supervisor and I tell you this story would you take me on for a project or you'd consider me as a student that is better not to accept?


texts: Mimeo, Technical report, Manuscript: what kind of creatures are they?

texts:
(I consider this question to be an extension and complement of this one).

My field is Economics. It is not uncommon for a published research paper to reference a (third-party) "technical report", or a "mimeo" or a "manuscript", usually accompanied by the name of a University only (apart of course from author and a year as date). I know the meaning of these words, and that they represent something different from a "working paper" - the latter is almost always part of an instituted series of publications by a research or academic institution.

My question asks help in clarifying how such documents come about as part of the activity of a professional academic, and why they are "left" at that "status" and not, say, "advance" to at least "working paper" status. After all, they are referenced because they contain research results.

I can imagine some situations: for example a "Technical Report" could be the very detailed presentation of a large-scale econometric or simulation study, that was then condensed to a working paper and then maybe to a published one. Or some very specialized theoretical/mathematical result which has value but it is too narrow to even be published as a "note" (and perhaps belongs to some future monograph or textbook). Or even, these are works that have been submitted and rejected, but their author thinks they nevertheless have value, and it so happens that he stops trying to publish them and decides to keep them public in his university and/or personal website, as proof that he is fulfilling his obligation to do research.

Am I off the mark? How publicly accessible and referenced scientific works (even from recent years) come to settle in a "manuscript/mimeo/Technical Report" status?


texts: Do large number of attended conferences favour application to postdoctoral or tenured positions?

texts:
Situation: I started my PhD (Pure Maths) in January 2018. My research interest lies on functional analysis but not on applied side.
  If possible, I would like to stay at academia as a Maths researcher or lecturer (or even better, professor).

Recently I came across a few conferences that I would like to attend. However, due to my scholarship terms and conditions, I am able to obtain financial assistance from the school only once per year.
However, some of my peers attended more than one conference per year due to their prestigious scholarship.

  Question: Would a Phd student with few conference attendances be at a disadvantage when applying for postdoctoral / tenured track position?

By conference attendance, I mean attend AND give a talk at conference.


texts: Submitting ACM Conference papers to ArXiv

texts:
I'm a little confused. The ACM Author Rights and Publishing Policy states:

  ACM authors hold the right to post copies of their own peer-reviewed accepted ACM works on any non-commercial repository or aggregation that does not duplicate ACM tables of contents, i.e., whose patterns of links do not substantially duplicate an ACM-copyrighted volume or issue. Non-commercial repositories are here understood as repositories owned by non-profit organizations that do not charge a fee for accessing deposited articles and that do not sell advertising or otherwise profit from serving articles.

However, the ACM Fair Access site states:

  Can I publish the published version of my publication on arXiv?
      No. An ACM author cannot grant arXiv.org or any other publisher rights to distribute their works that have been published by ACM.

SHERPA/Romeo shows ACM as being a "Green Publisher", which would support the case that I can upload to ArXiv.

Dissem.in states that I can upload pre- or postprints under certain circumstances, but does not explicitly mention Arxiv, positively or negatively.

So, what is it? Can I submit a paper I published with an ACM Conference (ACM WiSec, if that makes a difference) to ArXiv or not? As I understand it, ArXiv is a non-profit, so it would fit the terms of the publishing policy. Or is this related to the rights you have to grant ArXiv upon submission?

If I can only publish a specific version of the paper, which one?


texts: Contradiction on findings in existing literature

texts: I'm currently writing my thesis where I have two underlying sources where one says that a variable (has the founder of a kickstarter project backed other projects?) has influence on the dependent variable, while another source says it doesn't. What do I do in such a situation?


texts: My name was added to manuscript as co-author without my consent; how to get it removed?

texts: My name has been included in a paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal without my consent, however I did not contributed anything to it. The corresponding author, a former colleague of mine, ignores my request to be removed off of the author list. According to the trace of the communications I have received, the paper is under review now. Thus, how can I professionally deal with this case to get my name removed?


texts: On the originality of a master's thesis topic

texts:
While choosing a master's thesis topic to write about, I usually find that it's pretty rare to find something 'totally original', I mean, is it a requirement?

I have decided what I want to write about and, while searching the net for something similar, it turned out that my topic isn't too original after all, however what makes mine 'new' is 1) a new country, 2) the chosen industry and 3) the chosen sample. Is this acceptable?

Usually, how common for one to come up with and write something totally original (e.g. That has never been done before in any context)?

EDIT: I also would like to add that, to make sure that my topic has never been done before in my chosen country and industry, I've heavily searched the net. Is this enough? I mean, I don't want to do a study and later on discover that some people have done it before exactly in the same manner as mine (country, industry, etc...) for either the study was done 1) at some obscure university or 2) simply was never published and kept in the library of a particular university. What do people usually do in such cases?


texts: How to ask professor to explain something again?

texts:
I had a class last week and I was 10 minutes late. I missed part of the class, and I want to write an email to my professor to arrange a time to meet.
I prepared this email:

Dear .....
I’ve missed part of the previous session and this part is not clear for me.  Could I meet up with you this week so you can explain it to me?
Thank you

Is it appropriate?


texts: Applying to a second MSci/PhD with a PhD

texts:
After completing a PhD in Particle Physics I left academia and have been working in industry for a few years now. However, during that time I've become more and more interested in Pure Math, to the point that I am considering trying to go back to academia and pursue my interest in full.

However, since the topic is so different from my PhD, I realise this would involve doing another PhD, if not a MSci before that. The grades that got me into my first PhD (an MSci equivalent degree) were not bad, but perhaps not enough to get me into a top MSci/PhD program now. My PhD dissertation, on the other hand, was awarded the maximum grade.

My question is: is it possible to use a previous PhD as an entrance degree to a second MSci/PhD? Would this be regarded positively by a top-level admissions committee?

As background, my first MSci and PhD were in Spain, and I am considering studying either in the UK (my current residence) or Germany.


texts: Instead of an old work, can I cite a new work that shares an author and cites it?

texts:
In my research field (operations research), several works have been published in the last couple of years by different authors that cover most of the recent developments in the field.
I’m writing a review paper and even though I read and used a couple of papers dated as far back as the 90s (mainly for my introduction and review), I want all references to be from 2010 or later.

I would like to write something like:

  Ref. 3 discussed branch & bound and dynamic programming approaches for KP, MKP and some of its variants.

Reference 3 is Kellerer, Pferschy, and Pisinger (2004).
Another paper, namely Puchinger, Raidl, and Pferschy (2010) shares one of its authors with Reference 3 and also cites it.

My question is: Instead of citing Reference 3 as it is, can I cite Puchinger, Raidl, and Pferschy (2010) because it is more recent?


texts: How to cite a github repository that I used for data collection (research paper)

texts: I am working on a research paper where I work with large amounts of data. The data was collected using a python code that I found on someone's Github repository. I was wondering how I would go about citing the repository in an apa style.


texts:
I am looking for a database/web-service that allows me to find the top researchers (e.g., by number of citations) in a specific field (e.g., by keywords such as nutrigenomics). I once used it but for some reasons I am not able to retrieve it.
I am not looking for the Highly Cited Researchers list from the Web of Science Group.


texts:
I am interested in developing a set of postgraduate level courses that will be taught entirely online aimed at a primarily international (non-UK) audience.

I am seeking strategies for defining a set of learner profiles to help understand broad educational needs to help inform the course design process.  While there will be many subject-specific student needs, there will be many more that could be considered generic or trans-discipline.

What strategies are there for defining learner profiles for an online course aimed at international students?

Are there particular parameters I should set eg demographic data, technological ability,  experience of higher education etc?  These are fairly obvious (although this could be questioned), are there others?

Also, is there an evidence base in support of a given strategy or approach?

Thank you for your time!

EDIT:

A (loose) definition of a 'learner profile'.  Essentially, a generic image of a learner that outlines their needs and characteristics relevant to the learning environment.  The expectation is to create a set of broad generalizations about students in order to help inform course design.

This could be informed by research into actual student experiences that are distilled into key questions or criteria, or through professional practice.

This is not to say that the needs of individual learners will be disregarded in a one-size fits all mentality, rather it is to set broad expectations of what learners might need.


texts: What contents should I put on my academic website?

texts:
I'm planing to setup a personal academic website. From visiting other researchers websites I have a rough idea of the things I want to put on it:

- Research interests
- List of articles & conference contributions
- CV
- Links to affiliated institutions
- Contact information

Would you agree that this list constitutes the information an academic should put on his/her website? Is there anything else you would hope or expect to find? Would you advise against putting any of these pieces of information on the website?


texts: Should I do exercises given in online course and accompanying textbook if I want to do research in machine learning ahead?

texts:
I'm a junior year computer science undergrad just began to study machine learning a month ago. My aim is to start reading papers in my area of interest under Machine Learning and begin to do research in ML as an intern/independent project. I want to further go to grad school after a gap year and earn an MS + Ph.D. in machine learning.

I'm taking Prof. Andrew Ng's CS229 lectures online and side by side reading relevant chapters from Bishop's "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" book.

The mathematical problems/exercises given in both the problem sets of CS229 and PRML textbook are mathematically too sophisticated for me to solve on my own, although I can follow the solutions. How much of these exercises would an undergrad/masters student be expected to solve? And if I am considering a Ph.D., should I solve them or skip them at all?

Will only the mathematical knowledge and implementation of machine learning algorithms matter to start with research and later in grad school without spending time on these exercises?


texts:
When refereeing a paper, I usually receive a pdf version of a paper and then write my report separately in latex or a text file editor. When it comes to specific comments to the text, I like to include a page number and line number to specify the relevant position in the text, although counting the line numbers is pretty boring for long papers. I was wondering if there were any tips on how to speed up this process?

  Ideally, I would like to edit comments directly in the pdf file of the paper, and then
  export the comments, along with the page numbers/line numbers, to a
  text file.

I guess this would only work in some cases, when it is possible to extract line numbers for the pdf. Is anyone aware of ways of doing something like this?

Thanks in advance!


texts: How should I avoid being in the shadow of my PhD advisor after I have my own faculty position?

texts:
I would like to receive some feedback from the community about the following situation.

I have a permanent position as associate professor in an institution for some years now (3). This institution is the one I did my PhD 10 years ago, and in particular I am in the same department as my PhD advisor (who is a Full Professor).

Despite having my own research line independent of the one of my PhD advisor (namely, I have my own research problems, projects, collaborators, etc), the truth is that I also continue working with her, and being sincere I trust that my contribution on works is as important as her contribution. I am advising PhD students on different topics, I have my own national research project, etc.

I know that this should not bother me too much, but the truth is that at the end the person who receives the recognition of our work is her. Here by recognition I mean invitations to conferences, seminars, being in committees and things like this. I also know that being on an early stage is not the same as being a well-stablished professor, but when this happens on a regular basis, it makes me start to feel bad. Just to give an example, in the last year I have not been invited to give any seminars abroad, while she has been invited to present our work at least 3 times.

It has come to a point where I believe that having worked as crazy to get this position in a university in the city I wanted to live (because this one of the main reasons I picked this position... I love the city and most important, it solved the 2 body problem), it comes with the problem that I will always be 'the student of *' in the eyes of everybody, even if I obtain significant breakthroughs on my own. I trust that this will affect, for instance, if I want to become a full professor some day soon.

The question is the following: how to act when you have tried hard (and in part having been successful) to be (researchally speaking) independent of your PhD advisor, but in the eyes of almost everybody you are still her student? If this situation is rephrased saying that we are in the same institution then it explains a little what I was explaining in the previous paragraphs.

So, I would really appreciate advice from the community. I find it a little radical to stop collaborating scientifically with her (in part because there is no one around working on this area!), but as time goes by it seems to me that the best option is to start working alone on this common area, or some similar solution...


texts: Create contact for future postdoc without disappointing PhD supervisor

texts:
I am a physical science PhD student and after completed my PhD I would like to work as a postdoc in a second, specific, university's research group.

Therefore, I would like to start making some networking with this new group, e.g. by contacting the director OR any academic with same research interests as me, explaining my PhD project and eventually involve he/she in a possible research which will lead to a paper together. This would mean visiting that particular university, meet the staff, spend some time working with them, etc..

The point is that my actual PhD supervisor seems not so keen to these kind of connections for whatever reason (possibly because he imagines my final aim?) and therefore I feel worry to talk with him about this subject because I already know his answer, i.e. No.

I believe that starting early (i.e. during a PhD) making connections with this (or any other) research group would be better for me, instead of contacting them after e.g. my PhD thesis submission or Viva, but I don't want to ruin the relation with my PhD supervisor.

In your opinion, what should I do?

1) Should I impose to him my choice to contact and hopefully work with this particular group, because it is my PhD project but possibly ruining the relation

or

2) Wait until the end of my PhD (I am a 1st year) and tell him to write for me a letter of recommendation for a postdoc job in that group

or

other options?

In any case he will know my decision.

Thanks


texts: How to merge citations from two different google scholar accounts?

texts:
I have two gmail accounts. Each has its own Scholar account. I want to merge them both so that my citations are unified. As I have different citations on both accounts.
Can someone help?


texts: Who gets to write book reviews for academic journals?

texts: Some journals publish reviews of newly published books in their field. It's not clear how authors for these reviews are typically chosen. Can you apply for writing a review? Or should you do just like for a regular paper: buy the book, read it, write your review and submit it? How is this typically handled? Is it reserved to the editors to initiate such reviews?


texts: How can a PhD in Machine Learning and AI help you in a life out of Academia?

texts:
I have applied for a Ph.D. in Computer Science. I do not, however, plan to become an academic afterward. What I want to achieve is to try to commercialize my research by founding a startup or find a job outside of Academia, using the knowledge I will obtain for enhancing or building products/services for my employer.

What I would like ideally, is to achieve Academic as well as Industry expertise in machine learning and AI, through a job or by trying to found a startup with a related thematology. Becoming a professor is completely out of my goals. However, I want to be able to study academic literature with ease.

Do you think my goal is reasonable, or a Ph.D. is an overkill that would make me overqualified, losing precious time in case I change my mind in the future?

The reason I want the Ph.D. is to learn more things and receive more hands-on experience in Machine Learning. I believe that this process will also enhance my critical skills and analytical thinking.

I understand this can get difficult and risky but I am willing to try.

Does my goal make any sense or do I need a reality check? I need a hard critique...
Is that a healthy reason for attending graduate school?


texts: What is the meaning of pre-doctoral program?

texts:
I do not know the exact meaning of pre-doctoral?
Can someone be a predoctoral in university X and then goes to university Y to start Ph.D?


texts: How do academics find time to write books?

texts:
Books covering primarily academic topics, from philosophy and neuroscience to physics and geopolitics, are usually written (not surprisingly) by experts in the field, which are normally academics themselves. I wonder how these academics secure the time and funding to write such books?

To give a few arbitrary examples, I refer to books like these (note that these are not college textbooks):

Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction - at the time of publication, the author was an associate professor of philosophy;
Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul - the author is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin;
Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter - the author is a professor of biological anthropology;
The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy - the author is a professor of economics.

Is this something academics normally work on in their spare time, or do they get paid to actually do it? Are there grants or donations involved? Is it a privilege that comes with tenure? I'm mostly familiar with life science research, where people will constantly publish papers in journals and that's it - there seems to be no time nor funding to write anything beyond that, at least not as a part of the job.

Apparently, the amount of books written by academics also varies with discipline - e.g. there are more books by professors of philosophy compared to professors of physics. Is this also due to the differences in funding mechanisms and day-to-day job duties among various disciplines?

What are the main factors that influence this?


texts: Purpose of meeting with the dean and provost during campus visit

texts:
I was invited to a campus visit for a faculty position at a university in the U.S.
The visit will include a job talk, a class presentation to students, meeting with faculty members, meeting with the dean of the school and meeting with the provost from the university’s president’s office. This is by no means not a small university.

I was wondering what is the goal of meeting with each one of these parties. I do realize that I am being tested as much as I am also doing the same, but I would like to know what the dean and the provost would want to talk about with me.


texts: Mediocre research career so far. Can I salvage my career by continuing as a postdoc with my PhD advisor?

texts:
I made a huge mistake of working in a field different than my advisor's expertise. My PhD research was in computational modeling of 3D printing process using finite element analysis.
While my advisor's expertise is in density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations. She works on battery research and my colleagues working on those projects get  published in >15 impact factor journals.
Due to covid, I did not relocate to other place for postdoc and I have been pursuing postdoc with my PhD advisor for the past 9 months.
I have already destroyed my chances of getting an academic position by being a simulation guy in a experimental heavy research field. I am trying to find another position but failed so far. I am having an ongoing discussion about a postdoc position with another professor from another university. He will let me know if he secures a grant.
Meanwhile, my advisor has offered me one more year of postdoc position. Am I heading on to disastrous career by considering her offer?
For the past 9 months, my work has been different and I am enjoying the new learning opportunity.  But I extremely worried about my future.
Please advise.


texts: Acknowledge funding institute, sending and hosting universities

texts:
I have a question that is related to this one and it is about a paper acknowledgements section.

I am an economist.
I am currently working in university "A."
I am preparing a paper, and in this initial stage of the study I will visit the foreign university "B," where I will collect data.
For this visiting period, I am going to receive a travel grant from the third party institute "C," which covers both the travel and the stay abroad.

Within a few months, I shall leave my current university "A," so when the paper will be published (if it will be good enough, ça va sans dire) I will be in another university, maybe university "D."

Also, assume in university "D" I won't get any additional funding for this study.

Given this situation, which one of these four institutes will have to be thanked in the acknowledgements of this paper?

the current university A
the hosting university B
the granting institute C
the future university D (I think this won't have to be thanked; I have never seen anybody thanking her own university when this university does not provide any extra funds)

What is the academic bon ton in this case?


texts: Colleague presented poster of our shared work at conferences without my knowledge or express permission

texts:
My colleague presented two separate posters, one at a domestic conference and another at an international conference, based on the work both of us have been collaborating for past 1.5 years.

Before submitting the abstract or the poster, they did not seek my approval. In fact, I was not aware of this until recently.

In the poster, they put themselves first in the author list and me as second. Apart from the fact that poster submission was not disclosed, the authorship order was not explicitly discussed.

In the poster, they included an elaborate set of their contact information, even (non-traditional in academic publishing) details such as tweet handle and other auxiliary information, when clearly there was space to include the rest of the authors information.

I am offended by this. I am not sure what the universally accepted academic code of conduct in such instances is?


texts: Difficulty in admission to online software engineering graduate programs

texts:
I am currently in my junior year of undergraduate work at Creighton University and have found out that my employer may possibly pay for me to work towards a Master's degree. I don't know all the specifics yet, but I have been browsing schools that offer Graduate programs in software engineering (or computer science with a focus in software engineering). It appears that the only school near me is the University of Nebraska-Omaha, so I have been checking out online programs as well, since I would have to stay in the Omaha area. It looks like USC has an excellent program in computer science, and I have also looked at Penn State and Drexel. So my questions are:

How difficult are these programs to get into?

Is it worth it to work towards a Master's Degree right after undergraduate?

What other programs should I be looking at?

I currently have a 4.0 GPA in my Computer Science Major, but I still have 4 classes left to take. I am also minoring in Business Administration and Interactive Web Development(basically Graphic Design classes).

Thanks ahead of time!


texts: Where is the best place to refer to the system of transliteration in an article?

texts:
Following APA style, "if you are citing a work written in a non-Latin script (e.g., Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Russian), the reference must be transliterated into the English alphabet."

Sometimes, for a given language, e.g, Persian, there are more than one system for transliteration and the researcher needs to choose one of them. In such cases, shall we tell our audience what system have been used for transliteration? If yes, where is the best section to put it in an academic journal? In the methods?


texts:
I recently submitted an article to a math journal and got a response
from a reviewer, with an attachment. In it, I have found some good
advice that could improve my article tremendously.

I am a bit suspicious of its accuracy since it could resolve
what I have been working with for some months in a few
sentences.

But anyway, it was enough for me to ask the reviewer for
coauthoring with me.

My question would be, does it often happen that
an author asks a referee for coauthoring during
the review process? Or could it even be possible?

I was given a month to revise my article, but
the chance that I could revise successfully
by myself seems to be fat.

I would be looking forward to any advice.

Thanks in advance.


texts: Math Major and Grad School -- Necessary?

texts:
I decided fairly late in life (21) that I feel like studying mathematics. I've always been interested in higher maths, I've just been daunted by some of the esoteric notations and theorems. But, no longer a philistine, I'm infatuated with pure mathematics. Right now I'm pursuing a Bachelor's degree in English. Is there a way I can get a Phd via an MSc?

I guess what I'm really asking is this: Is it possible to get into a Masters program without having a Bachelors in the field?


texts:
How should I go about determining the quality of an undergraduate program that is just starting given that the field in general is relatively young?

To be more specific, I am considering a new cyber security program at the University of Tampa. It starts Fall 2015. There aren't many other programs i can compare to, or accreditations to look for.

How can I measure the quality of a program that hasn't even started?


texts: What is the meaning of the various postdoctoral job descriptions in the US?

texts:
As somebody who wasn't born or raised in North America, is there a schematic explanation what those various terms are supposed to be mean? Does it differ between the types of institutions? Are there specific fixed meanings to keywords such as

Assistant
Associate
Visitor
Fellow
Research

If there are not specific meanings, how do committees decide what to call a position?


texts:
I am instructing a section of a senior level capstone design course at an engineering university, split into two groups each working on a different project. One group of six is working with some specialized computer hardware, the relatively cheap RTL-SDR USB devices. They have expressed an interest in continuing to learn with these devices after the project is over, but I of course can't give them University-owned equipment. So, I had the bright idea to spend $10 per student out of my own pocket and give them these RTL-SDR devices as a prize for a project successfully completed. My intention is to further their academic interests in this field, and it costs me relatively little to do so, similar to treating them to dinner.

So, two ethical queries:

Is giving a $10 prize/gift to each of six students itself ethically questionable? It bears mentioning that I am research faculty, not a tenure track professor, and my teaching evaluations have no bearing on my career at this stage.
Is it unethical to give a gift/prize to one team and not the other? I have four more students working on the second project, and would gladly invest $10 per student in that group as well. However, their project doesn't lend itself to some low cost, project related hardware that they can continue to learn with after the project is over.


texts: Does "minor revision" mean "accepted with minor revision"?

texts: I just received a decision letter from a journal editor (after three rounds of major revision). The letter shows that the reviewers "have asked for some other minor revisions". After getting the minor revision letter, I immediately completed the revision in accordance with the feedback from the reviewers (the suggested changes just involve adding a few sentences) and immediately resubmitted the revision to ScholarOne. A week has passed since I submitted the revision, but the status in ScholarOne remains unchanged. Is this normal? Can I assume that this basically means "acceptance with minor revision"? Thanks for your insight and sharing.


texts: Is it a good idea to ask the person who one has applied to for a postdoc position about the status of that application? If yes, what should be the "reasonable" time period after the deadline of the application to enquire about the position.


texts: How does the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome?

texts: Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome? E.g. students often complain when class are too early in the morning, students on Monday might be more rested than on Friday, etc.; I wonder whether there exist any significant impact on how well students understand and remember the class materials.


texts: Should I resubmit a modified computer science conference paper to a journal?

texts:
Here is the situation; I made an article that got published in a Computer Science conference; the final decision was that it was considered a borderline paper. After a while I got an email from the organizers of that conference, letting the authors know that there would be the chance to resubmit our articles to a journal, but that the work should contain at least 30% more contribution than the original paper. Long story short, I worked through all the reviewers comments and added more information on my original article.

Actually I am a little bit afraid if my article would make it through the journal, but because I worked hard on doing the asked changes I would not like to leave it like that.

For that reason, I was wondering that in case of a rejection, Could I submit my expanded work to another conference; or should I just leave it like that? I am afraid that maybe the reviewers from another conference could see it like a case of self-plagiarized, even though I am citing my original article.

What to do in this situation? Should I paraphrase all the article again before submitting it with the new material? or should just let it be?


texts: Studies on lost teaching hours due to USA Affordable Care Act?

texts:
In the USA, the Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide health care to employees working above 30 hours. Some employers to save on costs have either cut full-time employees hours to part-time or eliminated some full-time positions entirely.
 I'm a part-time instructor at my university. My hours were cut to put them below the 30 hour cut off for next semester. This reduced my classes from three to two, with a reduction in pay.

Have there been any studies on how the ACA has affected employment of adjunct faculty?


texts: How to decline a postdoc interview if there is some possible future collaboration?

texts:
I am applying for post-doc position. I was invited for two interviews on close dates. I already did the first one and got the job. I am going to accept the offer because the research is very nice, the institution has high publication-records and it is closer to my family. Unfortunately one of the tasks at this post-doc requires close collaboration with the second interviewer. My question is:

how to inform the second interviewer that I got a post-doc position already?
Should I go to the interview anyway, although I know I am going to reject the offer?
Could I say something like:

  Dear blablabla, In the past few days I was offered to work somewhere and I think I am going to accept the offer for personal reasons, but in any case, as our research is going to be close I would like to use my "interview-time" for giving a talk and know the research being conducted at your institute better?

Some of my colleagues told me that they have had very bad experience while rejecting job's offers or interview, so please, let's me know if you have been in a similar situation and which way you think is the less "harmful"?


texts:
Shortly before I viva'd I was informed about my universities wordcount policy 70,000 words (this is nowhere on their website). At my viva, I was advised to resubmit and hundreds of pages of additional write up were requested (my thesis is very interdisciplinary so there is a huge amount of background in maths, medicine, bio chemistry and engineering that needs to be covered),  I told my examiners that this would put me over the word count, they told me it doesn't matter.

8 months into my year of rewrites, and after 8 months of ignoring emails my supervisor has started rereading my corrected chapters. Of course its easier to find a reason not to read a thesis than it is to read it, so he has been complaining that its over the word count- and more particularly he has told me that my internal examiner is also concerned about wordcounts. I am not sure if this is true, but I am worried that my examiners might have changed their mind on this issue.

This would be especially frustrating as the graduate school does not check the wordcount, leaving it to the examiners.

Also my supervisor doesn't want me speaking to my internal examiner. What on earth do I do?


texts: How should I address my two supervisors (one man, one woman) in an email?

texts:
I am currently doing a PhD. My professor, which is my first supervisor, is a man. My second supervisor is a woman and works for my first supervisor. The etiquette and the courtesy, at least in my country, requires to greet the female first, e.g.:

Dear Dr. Female,
Dear Prof. Dr. Male,

This sounds wrong to me, since my professor is my main supervisor. Can I greet my professor first without violating etiquette?
My PhD position is located in Germany; my research field is mathematics and I write everything in English.


texts: When do most students publish in a European PhD?

texts: in US PhDs, it's typical to start publishing (first author or not) in their latter-half years. How does that work in the EU? Since EU PhDs are shorter than US programs, is it common for EU phd students to publish in their final year or so? Or do some people not even make that and wait till their post-doc or something?


texts: "Research Statement" vs. "Research Plan" for assistant professor applications

texts:
I'm putting together applications for assistant professor positions and some ask for a research statement whereas others ask for a research plan (still others, although a rarity, ask for neither).

It appears there is much more advice online for writing research statements for faculty applications than for writing research plans. Is there a difference between a statement and a plan? My understanding was that a research statement is a brief statement of your research interests whereas a research plan is a longer document that is written like a short proposal with background, references and a tentative plan for how you would pursue your research; now I'm not so sure. Please help!


texts:
I've been tinkering with the idea of installing several glass boards in the lab & offices instead of white boards. They look cool, and seem to erase better. But I do not have extended experience using them.

What are the pros and cons of using glass boards compared to white boards in general?


texts: Salutation for a letter of recommendation to be uploaded to mathjobs

texts:
What is a standard opening salutation for a letter of recommendation to be posted on mathjobs?

One possibility might be, "Dear hiring committee", or "Dear search committee".


texts: College / University level IT (instructor/professor) education requirements

texts:
I live in Canada, and I have a dilemma regarding continuing my education. Currently I have a two year college diploma in "Information Systems", I am planing to extend that into a degree with in next two years. I enjoy development and programming side of IT. Currently I am happily employed at a marketing firm doing back/front end development.

I am not sure exactly how I want to attack my future, I would be the happiest owning or partnering with a firm like the one that I am working for now. However that may not be possible.

Since IT changes constantly and lot of young people coming into the industry are exceptionally good. There might be a time where I won't be able to cut it any more.

This makes me thing that I might need to possibly focus on acquiring education so that I could teach (programming) at a college or university level.

My question here would be does anyone know best way to achieve this? Do I need an eq. (Masters Degree in IT) or some sort of education degree?

Open to suggestions recommendations, some solid facts.

Thanks


texts: Why would the review system status go from "awaiting recommendation" back to "awaiting referee assignment"?

texts:
I recently submitted my first  paper to a philosophy journal. After about a month,
the status switched from "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" to "Awaiting recommendation". Then a few days later it switched back to "Awaiting referee assignment" again. Thus, seemingly, the review process ended only for a second one to be initiated by the EA just days later.

Why would the system change back to "Awaiting referee assignment"?
Does this mean that EA has sent the manuscript out for a second review?
Why would the EA send the manuscript out for a second review?
Is the EA unsatisfied with the referees' report, so he wants to get an additional review?


texts: Not publishing an author photo on Elsevier journals

texts:
This is related to Co-author does not want biography+photo in paper submission but specific to Elsevier journals. In the mentioned question, answers showed that for IEEE they have a policy where a biography/photo could be omitted.

Can a paper be published with Elsevier, in journals which ask for an author bio/photo, without the author photo?
You can find several journals which ask for this on https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site:elsevier.com+passport-like+photo


texts: When is it appropriate for a post-doc/grad student to be the senior author?

texts:
This is slightly different from What does author order indicate?. Our group has debated when would it be appropriate for a student or a post-doc to be considered the senior ie. the corresponding author.

As an aside, for CV building purposes, would it be more beneficial to be the first author or the last author? Does it matter if one is an academic vs. in the industry?


texts: Writing papers: do I include citation into an unrelated parenthesis?

texts:
Consider the following sentence:

"We can also divide calls into stereotyped (discrete) and graded (continuous) (Marler & Mitani, 1988)"

My supervisor corrected it including the citation in the second parenthesis:
"We can also divide calls into stereotyped (discrete) and graded (continuous; Marler & Mitani, 1988)"

I disagree with it because the citation is relative to the entire sentence.

Which is the correct formulation?

Thanks


texts: Should I choose a journal for submission from the journals I have cited and should I cite papers from the journal I intend to submit to?

texts: Manuscripts should provide new contribution in the particular field which is listed as the scope of the journal. But is it necessary to cite papers from the particular journal for which I am going to submit my paper?


texts: What is an informed evaluation of resource availability?

texts:
I am applying for a postdoctoral fellowship at an American University and I have to submit the research proposal. Besides the usual description of my own research, it is written that I must describe the

  resources necessary to conduct the project
  and an informed evaluation of resource availability.

What does this exactly mean?


texts: How to not let paper rejection affect you?

texts: At times I am really frustrated with constant rejections when the papers just fail to make it to acceptance. And if this keeps happening for quite some time, especially when your peers are moving on, how do you deal with it? I am working, trying to address the reviews but somehow at some point, it is getting too much for me.


texts: How to decide whether a statement requires citing a reliable source

texts:
When writing a paper, I usually face the problem of deciding whether a sentence is cite-able or not. Let's say I am writing about optimization of an algorithm. And I used Java to implement it. So, in the introduction, I would say something like "Java is a class based object oriented language..."  This information is available in many java books and online tutorials. Does the ubiquity of the sentence make it un-citeable? Or do I cite that fact. I have read many prominent papers that simply use that sentence without quoting a source.

Or do we only cite numerical facts that go like "Java is x times slower/faster than c++". I once read an article that says "when writing a paper, you should cite every sentence that you happen to read some where." But this is unrealistic; and we might have almost as many citations as the number of sentences in the paper.

Is there any rule that dictates on what is quotable or not?


texts: May I include results from a collaboration in my PhD thesis?

texts:
As a Ph.D. student, I am curious about the following: if you collaborate with a researcher(not necessarily your advisor) while being a student, should you write in your dissertation the work of the other collaborator?

Assume that while being a student, you collaborate with Prof. X, and you write a paper together. In this paper, the work was split 50-50, so that half of the results belong to Prof. X.

What should you do when writing your dissertation? Most probably, omitting the results of Prof. X will result in a significant gap in the thesis. I am particularly interested in the case of mathematics: if I cite the result, should I give a proof?


texts: Stackoverflow reputation - worth mentioning in personal statement?

texts:
It is going to be my last year in school, and I am thinking about studies abroad - I would love to study computer science. Lately, I started participating more in Stackoverflow, answering to PHP, MySQL, and HTML questions. If I manage to answer to a decent amount of questions(now I have 26, I am thinking about ~75-100) would it be worth mentioning in my personal statement (not the number, but that I am participating in the community, providing university with my nickname used here). I have other experiences that I am planning to write there:

I have taught people online of how to use microcomputers
I have taught people of HTML basics
I am writing my extended essay on computer science (I am attending IB diploma program)
I am currently working on quite a big project for my school using not spaghetti code, but a normal MVC architecture and OOP (at least, I am trying)

Is participating in Stackoverflow community worth mentioning among these (or maybe it is even stronger than what I mentioned?), or not?


texts: What to do if a peer-reviewed journal took so much time to review your paper?

texts:
This happened many times, and following are some cases:

You submit an article to a good journal with high impact factor. Then after 6 months or sometimes more you dont receive their comments. We tried once to contact them to see the updates they replied ( it is currently under review we will reply once finished).
Many times they reply after a long period with (out of scope).

What is the best action to do in such cases?


texts:
I have a master degree in Management with extensive work experience. Now, I wish to continue my education, but cannot afford it without a proper scholarship. As I see, many people have good scholarships for PhD programs, but I tried to get one in the UK universities, but there was only a few.

This year, I want to try Canadian and American universities, but I feel I am missing something. There should be more practical approach (than limiting to scholarships advertised on university websites).

I appreciate any advice that how can I find a decent scholarship in North American universities. I do not expect top university or highly paid scholarships.


texts: Do mathematics researchers regularly solve problems like the ones from Project Euler?

texts:
I'm not sure that this is the right exchange for this question. It asks about the possibilities of research in mathematics and computer science.

Extended Background

I am very interested in mathematics and theoretical computer science. Over the past few years I've gained lots of experience from math competitions, programming competitions, software development internships, and talking to professors, and I've learned that I do not enjoy writing code; I enjoy writing "beautiful" and elegant code in practice, just as I enjoy beautiful and elegant proofs in mathematics, but I do not enjoy writing hundreds of trivial imperative lines of code to make some company money. I've learned that I like to think critically about problems, and I like finding the quickest, most efficient, most elegant solutions. I enjoy the mathematical (or theoretical) side of computer science.

So, recently, after coding only with imperative languages my whole life, I discovered Haskell, a functional programming language. It is extremely close to mathematics: Everything is a function. Ideas are defined rather than executed; instead of giving a computer step-by-step instructions, the computer is given a definition. This discovery reaffirmed my passion for mathematics and the mathematical and theoretical side of computer science.

Minimal Background/Question

I've also been frequenting a website called Project Euler, which is filled with 450+ mathematics-based programming problems. This is essentially the epitome of my passion. I love solving these problems with Haskell (and sometimes, when I'm clever enough, with merely a pen and paper).

I know that many of the questions (if not all of them) have already been solved and researched in both the field of mathematics and the field of computer science, and hundreds of their variants have been as well. However, many of these problems were initially proposed and solved hundreds of years ago by mathematicians (such as Euler and Gauss), and most of the relatively newer problems were all proposed and solved by the 1980s.

So my question is, are there still problems like this that I can think about for a living? If so, which field and sub-field is closest to this type of research? If not, would I be involved in these problems by teaching and then introducing them to students of mine, or hosting competitions?

TL;DR

Can I solve problems like this one as a career?
If this research isn't viable, would I be more involved with this type of problems by teaching and hosting competitions, etc?


texts: Correctly formatting automatic APA 7th edition style citations in Word

texts:
I have Office 365 and in Microsoft Word which is updated to the latest edition. I could manually enter inline citations, but for speed and ease of citing, I have elected to use the automatic citation generator.

I need to cite in the APA 7th edition style. However, I have noticed that when using the automatic citation generator, the correct APA citation is not provided in a couple of situations; and maybe more issues may come to light as I move forward.

One situation is that when, let's say you have a citation with say 4 authors, the inline citation will mention all 4 authors followed by the year, when it should mention the first author surname followed by et al.

For example, Word will cite

  (Okami, Olmstead, Abramson, & Pendleton, 1998)

when it should be

  (Okami et al., 1998)

There is also a known bug where if you have multiple citations from the same author, the citation generator fills in the publication title when it's not supposed to.

The Microsoft website provides a workaround for the meantime on the incorrect addition of the publication title, but has not been very helpful in dealing with other issues.

It says on the link above

  Important: APA and MLA can change their formats, so you’ll want to ensure that these format versions meet your requirements. You can create your own updated version of a style or build custom styles. For more information see Bibliography & Citations 102 – Building Custom styles.

but the link is dead.

Is there a more reliable style I can download and use in Word?  If not, how can I edit the current APA style to correct the issues or create a custom version?


texts: The exam time was less than the students expected

texts:
Some time ago, a course I visited had final exams, and the time announced to the students in advance (several weeks earlier via email by the instructor) was 3 hours. Rather shortly after the students began to write (about 20 minutes), it was announced as a clarification that the room was booked for 3 hours, while the test itself would only take 2 hours.

I did not take part in this exam (I took the second one, which had similar conditions), but I'm sure the students were quite surprised. The exam itself was of average difficulty, had it been 3 hours, but very tough in only 2. This was reflected in the results: 90% failed, instead of the usual 30-50%, and the best grade was only a "B-".

I'm interested if this sort of thing is less unusual than I would think, or if there is a protocol how to deal with it as a student?


texts: Providing additional material for a paper in external source

texts:
I have a short paper and there is a need to include additional material like figures, graphs, and tables. I want to keep the paper short.

Is it acceptable to upload all the additional material on the external source (github or other), and to add a link with description in the paper?


texts:
I would like to include some cartoons in my lecture notes, just to spice up things a bit and relax the atmosphere before moving to serious stuff. However, I am not sure if there is any issue with doing this (in terms of intellectual property) or if I can include any cartoon with the corresponding reference?

I am thinking of simple stuff like xkcd, phdcomics, and other nerdy jokes (nothing like the death of Superman or the first comic of Batman).


texts: Correct regalia when collecting a masters degree but you already hold a doctorate

texts:
What is the correct regalia to wear in the United States when you receive a Masters degree but you have previously earned a doctorate. (And you own your doctoral regalia )
I.e. you’re a physician and you’ve earned a masters in anthropology for fun/enrichment
Would it be appropriate to wear your doctoral robe? Masters robe?


texts: Is it possible to move past bad decisions made during PhD and hope for a bright future if I do a good job in postdoc?

texts:
I completed my PhD in mechanical engineering last year. It took me 5.5 years to complete it. I already held a master's degree previously albeit in a different research area. The main reason was my inability to understand the topic, develop ideas and carry out focused work during the first 2 years of PhD.

I got disinterested in my topic/research area early on in my PhD. This was mainly because I had to self learn many advanced topics which were not taught in my university. That made me less sure about my knowledge.

However, post 3rd year, I worked hard, got interested in the topic and published 2 papers in decent journals.

In addition, I did very few TAs during my PhD because I was unfocused during my first few years and couldn't invest time in any other activities.

Now, I am pursuing a postdoc with my PhD supervisor on a different approach to my PhD project which is interesting and will help me secure better positions later. I plan to use this time to publish 4-5 papers.

Will the ghost of my past bad decisions made during PhD haunt me and affect my future even if I do a focused and productive job in my postdoc?


texts: Do they know about previous submission history of my article?

texts:
I got my article rejected from two journals in a row as they think my work is not suitable for submission in their journals. It was my fault that I could not properly understand the aim and scope of these journals. Now I am submitting my work to a third journal after thoroughly checking the aim and scope along with already published articles related to my field.

My question is, as I will not provide the previous rejection history of my article to the third journal, would this third journal have any information about the rejection history of my article ?


texts: No reviews after 7 months of paper submission

texts:
I have submitted a paper to IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering (TKDE).
Until now, it has been 7 months and the status of my paper is still "Under Review".
It has stayed in the same status from the first day of the submission.
I have sent an email to the admin of the journal, and she replied to me that the paper was being processed. I have waited more than 1 month without any update.

Has anyone experienced the same situation? What should I do?
Many thanks.


texts: Realizing possible academic misconduct after degree award

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A few days ago, I was notified of my degree award, and my imposter syndrome kicked in - trying to see if I've done anything to not warrant earning it. I found myself looking through good academic practice guidelines and noticed something I'd previously overlooked -- that it was considered exam cheating to attempt to look at another candidate's exam paper even if nothing was gained from it. I'm pretty sure that on at least one occasion I've looked at another person's script while they were taking an exam. To be honest, I have no clue which exam(s) I would've done this on (although I know this wasn't a very common behavior of mine) and, again, I've never been able to benefit from it as I've never been able to actually read anything from anyone's papers (My conscience wouldn't have let me forget this) -- so all my work on my exams are my own knowledge and not gained from anyone's scripts. I also can't remember precisely if my intentions in doing so were to try and get answer from him/her or to see which part of the exam script they were on to judge whether I was behind or not and should pick up the pace (although there must've been some instance where I actually tried to get an answer but couldn't make anything out) - I just have a feeling that I've looked at a person's script before and specifics are pretty hazy.
What should I do about this? My friend told me that he himself and friends he knows (who I know as well and are high achieving students) have been guilty of this and most students are and that this isn't a big deal. I also fail to recollect when this would've happened, and how often (although it couldn't have happened more than a few times as I think I would remember an incident more clearly if it happened more often). Should I tell the college about this, or take it as a learning experience and move on? Part of me doesn't want to penalize myself if this is a fairly common thing, and I worked very hard to get the degree award I have.


texts: When to get a doctors note if I might have to miss an exam?

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I've got a midterm tomorrow and have been increasingly ill for the past few days. I need to decide whether or not I'm going to write the midterm, and if I don't I'd need some sort of proof that I was in fact sick. My question is, how sick should one be to not write a midterm? It is possible I could push through it.

Any advice on when to get a medical note to be excused? The way I see it 99% of the time it is technically possible to at least be present for the exam; even if one has the flu or strep throat they can still write it (though poorly). The institution only asks for a medical certificate, but even unintentionally one could fake being sick for example if I go to the doctor and tell them I'm here to get a note, they would probably give me one even if I'm hardly ill.

When should someone make the call to stop doing the work and get the note? A couple of my recent assignments weren't done to as high a standard as I would've liked because the illness is making it hard to concentrate and work, but I thought I would get better in a few days.

The other thing is I'm having trouble finding a doctor or nurse. I don't have a GP where I'm going to school and the campus medical is fully booked. I've phoned around to some drop in clinics and they have wait times of over an hour and charge at least $10 for a note.

UPDATE: I managed to get a note from a drop in clinic and scanned and e-mailed it to my professor. The course policy is that missed exams cannot be taken at a latter time and a mark for them will be calculated based on everything else in the class excluding the final exam.


texts: Citing abstract only papers/conference proceedings

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I'm doing my MS in Astronomy and Astrophysics so almost all of the literature I need is readily available on NASA ADS website (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu) with links to downloadable PDFs and HTML articles. But sometimes I come across conference proceedings, or some old articles where only abstract is available for reading but it DOES contain what I'm looking for.

Since I can't read the whole thing, is it okay to cite that?

Apart from the original links to downloadable PDFs, if something I want to cite is in the abstract but I want to dig deeper and the paper is not available for download in any form, should I look for other papers that have same information and are available or can I use sci-hub. And how fair is it to use sci-hub?


texts: How do I make a bad semester not look bad during my scholarship application?

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I am applying to the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, and they require a transcript. Now, I have a problem with my grades, in that I had good grades until my final year, where a combination of depression and a death in the family tanked my non-major GPA. During my final year, I went from a cumulative 3.55 to a 3.07, and also failed two courses. More specifically, my first semester of my senior year was awful, with a 1.22 GPA, and in my second semester, I managed to get a respectable 3.0, where I had to take 21 credit hours so I could graduate on time. So it's not as if I am a bad student, it's just one semester of badness which has to be explained.

How do I make this not look bad? I would like to explain myself in the personal statement that I am capable of rebounding from hardship, that I can rise to the challenge when confronted with adversity, that my performance in that one semester is not indicative of my abilities.

I am upset at the moment because after looking at my transcript, it's worse than I initially thought. As for my other materials, I believe I have good letters of recommendation, good industry experience, and I can write some kick-ass essays, despite the fact that English is not my first language.

Also, the bad grades are not in my major (CS), where I managed to keep a GPA above 3.5 during my studies.

Any tips on how to deal with this? Any other tips I could use? I really appreciate it?


texts: Transferring knowledge from one field to another

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A professor once said to me: publication is about intelligent copy paste from one field to another. His claims were right in a sense that he knew what results already exist in one field and apply it to the other non-mature yet field. Ofcourse he didn't mean a literal copying.

  If you are working in a cut-edge research (a new obscure area) and
  already familiar with another stable mature-enough area, is utilizing
  one's techniques to the other is a good approach for making
  contributions to the field?

is it count as a good contribution?
is it common in Academia? (specifically for Computer Science field)


texts: Exam exceptions for student with disabilities

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I am registered as a psychologically disabled student with my University, and (for disability reasons) have asked my professor to allow me to take the exam at a date later than the ordinarily scheduled time.  I have not received a response from my professor yet; my guess is that she is hesitant to agree to this exception for several reasons. One, is the notion that I might have some kind of advantage over the rest of the class. Second, should my professor make modifications to the exam (e.g. change problems, make it harder) for my exam, then she may argue that the other students' exams will have to be graded differently from mine, and that's unfair. Third, the exam is scheduled at the normal class time, 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM, so it can be argued that if a student attends class regularly at those times, then there is no reason why the student should need to take the exam at a different time.

My professor hasn't said any of the above (yet) and I don't read minds; this is just my best guess of what she will think of my request. University policy leaves the decision on such an exception entirely up to the professor. (No department in the University has authority to influence her decision. Not even the office of disability services can influence her decision in this case.)

From your experiences at universities, how do most professors typically respond to such exceptions? For you professors, does the exception I'm requesting appear reasonable to you? Are there any other reasons you can think of for why the professor would/should not grant me an exception for the exam?


texts: Do I need to inform my PI about every single project I am working on?

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I feel like my PI doesn't care much about my thesis (as if I already had one), and keeps assigning me several unrelated tasks to support the publications of his postdocs. Even worse, I don't feel like he is my "academic" advisor: every weekly meeting revolves around grant writing and research expense rather than the experiment itself. And the worst? We differ in our approach to science: his is data-driven, mine is hypothesis-driven.

At the same time, I greatly enjoy the mentoring I have been receiving from three  members of my thesis committee. We did have many exciting sessions of exchanging ideas and fruitful follow-ups. I feel like with their help, I am becoming the kind of scientist I always try to be. Last but not least, although they are experts in different fields, they respect each other and are happy to collaborate through my thesis.

Here is my problem: I have several ideas with each of my three committee members, and want to turn them into publications. However, these are deemed not the interests of my PI's lab. Do I need to inform my PI that I am working on these projects? Do I need to describe these projects in detail (he will yawn his way through the meeting anyways)? And if I can get some publications, should I put my PI's name there?


texts: Long hyphenated surname – what to do when I begin publishing?

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I have a hyphenated surname, namely Kinara-Williams. I intend to be published in the future when I graduate and during/after my PhD.

But Kinara-Williams seems like a mouthful to cite. After reading other threads, it appears pseudonyms are frowned upon in the scientific/academic community; so what do people usually do?
Just go with the preferred one?


texts: Supervisor used graphic without crediting me

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The following situation occurred:

I was asked to modify a figure (originally published in a paper) to be used in a non-further-determined publication by my professor.
I did substantially modify the figure: I redrew the figure from scratch in a vector program, added colours and decoration and made it generally more attractive.
Now, half a year later this same figure or graphic appears in a book and just holds the small remark © Name of professor. Neither my name nor a reference to the original figure is given.
I checked the general acknowledgements of the book and there is no mention of my name.

My question is: How to proceed from here? Naturally I don't want to deteriorate the relationship with my employer but I need to raise this issue, especially so that it does not happen again in the future (my professor asks me on a regular basis to draw graphics for him). Should I insist that my name should somehow be included (second edition of the book, online errata etc.)? What would the copyright implications be for a) not mentioning the creator of the graphic (me) and b) not referencing the original work?

Some context:
I work as a research assistant and I am not employed primarily to do these drawings though - when requested - I usually do them in my work time. The book in which the figure appeared is the output of a research institution (though clearly directed at the general public) and I am not sure if the book is to be sold, i.e. if it could be considered commercial use.

Edit: I may not have explained myself well. In my opinion the resulting image is not a mere modification of a figure but a piece of work that requires creativity and year-long practices with a graphics program.


texts: How to deal with math problems if there is no solution book and no helpful teachers?

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Since a short time ago, I refuse to try solving math questions of which there is no solution available, unless I'm working on an own/open problem in my thesis. In subjects however, I refuse, because it is frustrating to get stuck for days and knowing that a solution exists. So knowing that I miss some important way of thinking.

Now you might think Why? If you can't solve it, just look at the course material and if that doesn't help then ask the teacher. Yes I tried that. By both mouth and mail. Unfortunately a lot of them don't like to get disturbed by students, because they are actually not real teachers, but very busy researchers who hardly have time for anything else. I also tried google, mathstack and asking students, but without a solution book it seems like it is always possible that nothing helps and you thus stay where you are: stuck.

Having said this, is there a way to learn without solution books but with the guarantee that you can always get access to the solution for the problem you work on? Maybe I do something wrong with the ways already tried?


texts: Is it a bad idea to go from EE undergrad to CS(ML/AI) PhD?

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I know questions regarding whether its possible to go from EE undergrad to CS have been answered previously, so please bear with me as I have a few distinct questions. I'm a Junior at a mid-tier state school and I've taken quite a few CS courses (such as data structures, discrete math, programming methodologies and principles, and software development).

I've been doing some reading online and I've come to find that ML/AI(esp. Computer Vision) is something that really piques my interest. I am not sure that I have the proper probability and statistics skills required to pursue a CS PhD with a focus in ML/AI.
NOTE: (I do have a solid background in other math: Multi-variate Calculus, DiffEq, LinearAlg, multi-dimensional signal spaces,etc.)

Do you think that it would be feasible for me to actually gain acceptance into a PhD program with this focus without any research experience in ML/AI or even CS in general?
I have previous academic research experience(5 months) in EE(Semiconductors) as well as a high GPA(3.9+) and should have solid letters of recommendation. What kind of disadvantages could I face?
Would you recommend doing some self-studying of ML/AI in place of continuing my current research in EE? (I'd love to do research in ML/AI but my university doesn't have research opportunities in the area for undergrads).
How can I approach finding well-reputed groups/institutions in this area?

Thanks, I really appreciate any input or advice that you may have.


texts: Could I change part of my paper after acceptance

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My paper is accepted in one of the Taylor and Francis journals and Today I figured out that I made a mistake in one row of one of my tables ( the minimum of one of variables in statistic analysis table is 0 in the paper but the actual value is 1). In fact, it does not affect the other parts of paper and the verification part.

Editor will provide the proofread of my paper in a week.

My question is, Will the editor give me a chance to edit the paper again? or he will change the grammatical problems his self?

And if I ask the editor to correct that row of paper, will he give the paper to reviewers again? I am worried that if I ask him to correct that mistake, he ask the reviewers to review my paper again. I need my paper to be published soon.


texts:
I've submitted more papers for review than I've reviewed myself.  I try to review as much as I can, but it's limited by incoming requests.  Publons says I'm somewhat above the median (of 0.3 reviews : 1 publication), although this data is incomplete.

It seems there must be people out there who are reviewing far more papers than they're submitting for review.  But who?

Question: Who are the people reviewing far more papers than they're submitting for review?

I'm just after some mental picture of who is receiving, accepting, and completing large numbers of review requests.  I can't imagine it's high-level professors, who seem constantly busy.  Nor do I expect it's early-career researchers, because they're unestablished and unlikely to be thought of when editors email reviewers.


texts: Is it OK to use "/" in scientific writing?

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For example, would it be OK to write: Many of these articles belong to School of Thought A and/or School of Thought B.

What about the other cases in general just to replace "or" with "/"?
E.g. This brain area might coincide or connect with the brain area responsible for...
Can I write it as "This brain area might coincide/connect with the brain area responsible for..."


texts: Does research experience in a different but related field help in PhD application? (Pure Math->TCS)

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I think the title itself is a good summary of my question.

But to make the situation more specific: I am a double major in math and computer science, and would like to apply to PhD program with theoretical CS as primary research interest. I am well aware that research experience helps a lot to show the committee that one has research potential.

All other academical records of mine are in decent shape so I want to shoot for the top programs. Now I am writing my SoP and here comes the problem: I have only non-TCS research experiences.

What I have in hand are:

1) serious pure math REU (not just expository) with a recently submitted paper

2) technical work (implementing and benchmarking) new numerical algorithm (scientific computing) with tech report

I was planning on doing a senior thesis, but my potential advisor is on a leave so it didn't work out. I went through the old questions and only found one related question. But I guess in my situation, it is worse because I have only research experience in entirely different subject. Although I am very proud of what I did, it is hard to sell them in SoP.

I always thought I don't need to do research in the exactly same area to what I want to do in grad school. Plus trying out interesting areas are fun. But it seems to me now that it was a very bad idea.

Doesn't "I wish to study a_0,a_1 and a_2 in A. I have done research in B and have been a trustworthy cheap labor in C. B and C are somewhat related to A, so I think I will do a decent job in A as well." just sound miserable?

[Thanks for reading - I know it is a bit long. Also I do apologize in advance if this question violates the rules - it is my first question ever. :)]


texts: How to justify quitting PhD because of a professor in statement of purpose?

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I planning to drop out of a PhD program after one semester because of my encounter with a professor with little experience.

This professor is also very intervening, non-perceptable, unapproachable, and worst of all, willing to go to any extent to sabotage my career.

The advisor altered credits of some courses to make sure that even though I got As in those courses, they will have a tiny efect on my cumulative average grade.
Obviously, when I apply for another university, the fact that I've quit and my average grade will raise some questions.

So, what can I say in my statement of purpose that will put my quitting in the best possible light?


texts: What is the proper protocol for addressing one's title and position in an email signature?

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I am creating an email signature and I am not sure what the protocol should be.
Should it say

Dr. Locc
Department of Social and Consumer Sciences.

or should my position within the dept. be referenced??

Dr. Locc
Social and Consumers Science Department Chairman


texts: Can subjects studied in Master and PhD be different?

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I am in the middle of my master studies in math and need to decide which subject I want to choose for my master thesis, geometry or statistics. I have the following questions:

  Is it possible to start the PhD (say in statistics) in a different subject as the master/master thesis (say in geometry)?

  What actions would you recommand, if I want to change the subject? (e.g. first taking a job in statistical area before starting a PhD in this subject)

  Would it make sense to do another master in statistics?

I thought going from the more theoretical subject geometry to the more applied subject statistics more "natural".
Note that I have in both subjects, geometry and statistics, at least 30 Credits, but my studies (also my Bachelor) is more focused on geometry.


texts: How to start doing "more theoretical" research?

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I guess, this question might be not only of my personal interest: I'm a first year PhD CS student, during my BSc and MSc, all research projects I did were purely practical - we hypothesize that certain way of computing or approximating something is "good" in some sense or another. Last year I was mostly doing deep learning that reduces to "if we wire network like this, those interesting properties might appear, here're some clues on possible reasons". But I used to (and still do) like doing math, learning new concepts and figuring out proofs, but:

a) I have no idea of how to come up with such a research project (closest thing to "theory research" I did was proving convergence bounds)

b) professor I am (have been for a while) working with now (and who partially funds my RA) is not very inspired by my intent to do research in theory (with no guarantees that anything would work out) instead of performing real-world publishable  experiments (that also rarely lead to successes, but are at least more "measurable").

More specifically, I have been doing machine learning last few years, and I know that there exist a bunch of cool areas to explore and I took (and I liked)  courses on statistical learning theory, optimization, Bayesian inference and other more rigorous things. But I just don't know how to start "doing research" there.


texts: German linguistic requirements for an assistant professor (Juniorprofessur) in Germany

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Officially, proficiency in the German language is not required for assistant professor positions. However, it is clear that the assistant professor is supposed to teach bachelor students (most probably in German). What are the unpublished requirements regarding language skills?
For someone with basic to intermediate level, is it worth applying for this position?


texts:
I'm a student in the technical field A in a European university. I'm currently doing a master thesis in a field that's notoriously at the interface of subjects A and B, I haven't officially started the thesis time yet, but I've been doing preliminary work for about a month and a half and there is verbal agreement with my supervisor that I'm doing it.

The more I delve into the thesis and the more I realize that, while being at the interface, the topic is mostly subject B, with very little subject A.
While I don't hate subject B, I've come to realize that I'm not really interested in it, and I'm finding working on this thesis rather demotivating.

I still could technically leave the thesis, although I suspect it won't make me look good in the eyes of my supervisor, since I already told them that I intended to go through with it and I've had multiple occasions to leave by now.

On the one hand, I still like other aspects of the interface between A and B, doing A with a B perspective instead of the other way around (which I'm doing right now) is still a possibility for me, hence I don't think it would be wise to break ties with my supervisor and their group. I feel that if I leave the thesis I'm just going to look bad, lose potential references and just restrict my possibilities for the future. The group is quite important in the subject and the master thesis admission process is pretty selective, and I don't have any other readily available alternatives. From this perspective, it seems better to soldier through this thesis and do it well in order to have good references. I've been told that it's not at all uncommon to do a PhD in a different subfield than your master thesis. And who knows, maybe interesting elements of subject A (or even B) might come up along the way, though that seems unlikely to me right now.

On the other hand, I fear that committing to a thesis in a subject I'm not passionate about will prevent me from doing a good job. I fear that I'll just survive through it doing the bare minimum and end up with a mediocre thesis and mediocre references in a subject I don't really enjoy, making it much more difficult to both stay in this subject or switch. Beginning a thesis I do not enjoy, while I have still time to leave, feels somehow like lying to my supervisor, and starting a project alreading looking forward to end it is not a good looking prospect.
Even if I do manage to write a good thesis, I fear its strong element of subject B will make it more difficult for me to be considered for subject A positions.
Also I would like to stay at the same university after my Master's, and I think the chances of that would be made better by doing a thesis on a subject I like, which could be continued in a PhD.

I guess I'm demotivated and looking for advice from experienced researchers on what of the concerns I listed are sound, and what, if any, am I exaggerating.


texts: The Overleaf website has a LaTeX template IEEE Transactions. Does it fully support the format as desired by IEEE?


texts: Does a long period in an MSc program look bad on a CV?

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I'm an MSc student in (pure) math. Based on CV's I've seen of professors and post-docs in the field, it seems that almost all of them graduated in about 2 years. Where I study (let's say, medium-level university) it's common that most good students graduate in 2.5-3 years (with 2 years being the "standard" period of time by the definition of our graduate program).

I expect to graduate a year from now, 3.5 years from the start of my studies. If I decide to apply to a US university for a PhD, I might need to wait another year till the beginning of the PhD program, since I won't make it to the closest deadline.

Would something like this look bad on my CV when applying to a PhD program, or to any further academic position? What would be the best way to deal with the one-year gap in the latter case? Would it be better to extend my MSc studies to 4.5 years to avoid a gap? (In any case I'm planning to continue doing research during that time.)

This question might be considered related: My PhD went over time - advice for explaining this on a CV
However I find it different in that the OP is asking about a PhD degree, which is a different stage in one's career, they are planning to look for a job in industry as opposed to academia, and the question deals with some ethics involved.